England-29th April 2012

Fort Lauderdale, New York, Heathrow and now Banbury...all in two days. The Cruise disembarkation process at Fort Lauderdale went rather smoothly and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight to New York. Our luggage was booked through to Heathrow, so we crossed our fingers and prayed it would be there on arrival.

Coming into New York Dan spotted the Space Shuttle on the back of a jumbo jet, that made his day. As we flew out of New York we could see the skyline of Manhatten with the Empire State Building reaching the highest.

The Space Shuttle, bottom right hand corner.

The flight to Heathrow was smooth, although we didn't get any sleep due to the air conditioning being too warm and a baby crying most of the time. Trina and Bob met us at Heathrow and it was then just an hour and half drive to Banbury. It was raining and cold on arrival and a shock to the system after the heat and humidity we'd experienced on the cruise.

We caught up with sleep last night and woke to another wet day, although as I'm writing this the sun is trying to poke through. We had lunch today at a lovely old English pub, Dan had his favorite...bangers and mash.

A bit of interesting info about our trip through the Panama Canal. It cost the Holland America Line $199,000 to pass thought the canal plus $35,000 booking fee. The Captain said that the Norwegian shipping cruise lines pay $490,000. So the Panama government is raking in some serious money, and the Americans are still regretting handing it over.