Making Plans & Calling for Input

Hubs and I leave for our cruise on May 20th.  We are flying Air Canada with a 5 hour stopover in Montréal then on to London.  We are staying in the Kensington area of London for 2 nights before being bussed down to Southampton to the dock and onto the cruise ship.

Our port itinerary is thus......from Southampton, England to Edinburgh, Scotland, to Inverness, Scotland, to Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, to Belfast Northern Ireland, to Dublin, Ireland, to Holyhead Wales, to Cork, Ireland, to Portland England back to Southampton and then to Heathrow for our flight back to the US, via Montréal again, where we have another lengthy layover(7 hours).

First question.......if you had 2 days in London, what sights would you want to see?  We may book a full day sightseeing tour one of the days there involving a bus ride and a river ride on the Thames, with a stop at Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London(I won't be putting extra $$ into the Crown Jewels room donation box Anne!), a photo op outside of Buckingham Palace and maybe see the changing of the guard or at least the Household Calvary parade(depending on what time we are there).  This tour meets at Victoria Station and leaves you via "the Tube" at Gloucester station which is right near our hotel and we'll toddle back to the hotel for some pints and fish and chips in their pub.
The second day we may go to a museum or two(hotel is near the V and A Museum, Museum of Natural History and something else), have High Tea at Harrod's or elsewhere and end the day with a matineé performance in the West End.  I keep joking that "Hamilton" is playing right now in one of the theatres but being performed in England by English actors it might just end with us losing the Revolutionary war and instead of Hamilton dying in a duel he'll be hanged at intermission and the show ends there. lol
My vote at the moment is to see "Six" which is the musical version of the reign of Henry VIII through the eyes of his 6 wives who make up the cast.  Afterall, except for Anne of Cleves I am related genealogically by cousinry or by marriage to cousinry to 6 of the 7 figures involved in that messy, colorful, misogynistic part of English history. 8-)) 

Of course there are so many tours and sights to see, including tours going off to Salisbury Plain(Stonehenge), Bath(Jane Austen's stomping grounds), etc., but we have at the most two days(unless jet lag takes us down on one of those days, then it's one day).  So what would you do, see in London?

If you know the Kensington area where is the most advantageous place for currency exchange?  I know rates vary from day to day but we'll be needing to have some British pounds on us of should be do that at Heathrow once we land?  And should be also carry Euros as we are going to Ireland, Wales and Scotland?  So many questions I know!

As for the cruise ports, we waited too long to book a couple of excursions we were interested in.  No way I was going to climb to kiss the Blarney Stone but I would have liked to seen the castle as it was built by my McCarthy ancestors(my paternal grandmother was born a McCarthy)outside of Cork.  We did book an On Your Own tour in Edinburgh where they dropped and pick you up on the Royal Mile, a Whisky tasting at Glenmorangie Distillery outside of Inverness(sorry Nessie), a Dublin on your own which will mean lots of pub stops for "real" Guinness, a trip to Caernarfon Castle in Wales since  Edward I and II Plantagenent are my 22nd and 21st GreatGrands respectively, and a coastal bus tour of Kinsale near Cork.  We have no excursions booked for Belfast(Northern Ireland.....they may shoot me as I am a descendant of Free State Irish)nor Portland(nothing looked interesting there really).  In the Orkneys we don't have time to do a tour(only there like 4 hours)so we'll bus to the Kirkwall Transportation Centre and walk to a thing or two(very compact town)or take a cab to see the Ring of Brogdnar and the Stones of Stenness(which are near each other)because Hubs loves that sort of thing(old rocks and mounds of dirt....I can't tell you have many I've visited in the US! lol).  There is also an Orkney pub at the base of the harbor I want to go to.  Maybe I can connect with locals there who also share my Viking heritage over a pint before staggering back to the ship. ;-)

So if you live in or near one of these ports, would you like to meet up or drive us around or something, especially in the on your own towns(Edinburgh, Dublin)or Belfast or Kirkwall in the Orkneys or Portland England?  Or even if you are in London and want to meet, or play tour guide?  Or do you want to meet in Montréal at the airport?
I'd love to meet more blogger friends.
Just email me.

Sluggy