Untold thousands of Americans will soon be headed to London for some of the biggest events that the UK has seen in many, many years.

On June 3rd, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will commence celebrating her 60th year on the throne.

It all begins with the annual Epsom Derby followed by the unmissable Thames Diamond Jubilee Pagaent, an elaborate royal procession harking back to the golden age that is set to be one of the biggest royal events ever held in England.

Spectators on the Thames will enjoy more than 1,000 boats and 30,000 people take to the River Thames as Her Majesty The Queen leads the largest flotilla London has ever seen.

If that isn’t enough, the eyes of the world will be on London when the 2012 Summer Olympics start on July 27.

With all the hoopla, we thought it might be fun to make a visit this year to London and do some advance scouting for the benefit of our readers who might be planning their own trip.

We have a LOT to share with you over the coming weeks, but the most important story to share in the beginning is how we got there.  You see, Delta Vacations was kind enough to sponsor our trip so that we might share with you our experience in planning and experiencing our first trip across the pond with our “Roaming Boomer” hats on.

As you’re probably aware, we do a lot of traveling.  And we clearly understand that a major trip overseas involves a lot of planning and the task can be very daunting if you’re venturing to a new destination in a foreign country.   Planning a trip of this magnitude can literally involve months of planning.

For roughly the same amount of money that you will spend to do it yourself, Delta Vacations will get you there and do all of the planning for you.

Here’s the first thing you need to know about Delta Vacations: for roughly the same amount of money that you would spend on your own, Delta Vacations will get you to London, provide significant help in planning, and make all your reservations and bookings.  Sweet!

Carol spends untold hours planning and booking our trips.  Let me just say, Carol really, really wishes Delta Vacations would sponsor all of our trips.  They made her job considerably easier, and the process was a piece of cake.

We traveled through Delta Vacations’ luxury division and let me share with you how sweet this all was.

Delta Vacations Luxury Concierge Benefits

Once we made London our destination, we were assigned a personal luxury travel concierge (Nita) to walk us through the process.

Next, we confirmed our travel dates and Nita booked our first class seats to London and back.  Now, let me just say, it takes a good many hours to get to London from Scottsdale, Arizona.  I can’t begin to express how nice it was to experience the trip in first class.  Not only did we enjoy whisking past long airport lines, but we enjoyed a great deal of pampering, and the flat-bed seats on the long flight over the ocean were a complete joy.  After a very tasty dinner, we donned our special Delta Airlines socks, put on our provided eye-masks and settled back for a comfortable night’s sleep as we crossed the Atlantic.  A few hours before we were to touch down, those that wanted to be awakened also enjoyed a hearty breakfast before landing at Heathrow Airport.

After booking the flights, Nita presented us with a list of the very best hotels in London.  After a little of our own scouting, we quickly learned that Delta Vacations had scoured the town very well and had indeed picked the best of the best.  We chose the London Langham which is a veritable icon among London’s hotels.  We’ll tell you more about the hotel in another post.  But, you need to know that Delta Vacations got us from the airport to the hotel in a private, chauffeured Mercedes Benz.  No standing in lines for a taxi, our chauffeur was standing there with a sign and away we went.

Now that our flights were booked and our lodging all set, it was time to consider where to eat and what to do.  We enjoyed a complimentary English breakfast in our hotel each morning, and our spot on the club floor provided us with wonderful hot snacks, beverages, including wine, all throughout the day.  We decided to wing it each day for lunch. However, Delta Vacations has a massive, vetted list to choose from regarding dining, shows, and must-see London attractions.  We’ll tell you more about this in another post, but Delta Vacations booked us on the most delightful day-trip to Paris aboard a high-speed train through the famous Chunnel.  What a great day that was!!!!

Another great comfort to our trip was having Nita available should problems arise.  It turned out that our first-class seats had mysteriously disappeared for our day-trip to Paris.  Carol was major-leagued bummed at the thought of missing a day-trip to Paris.  We made a simple toll-free call to Nita, she fixed the problem, and we were back on track to visit Paris to sip a little wine in one of Paris’ famous street-side cafes.

Coming Up Next

We will be sharing a lot more from our Delta Vacations trip to London.  But the first thing we want you to understand is what a treat this whole travel experience was:

1. For roughly the same amount of money that you will spend to do it yourself, Delta Vacations will do all the planning for you.
2. They’ve planned complete pampering from start to finish.
3. If something does go amuck, a simple phone call to your Delta Vacations concierge will put things back on track.
4. Our job, and your job, when you book with Delta Vacations, is to simply enjoy, take in the sights, and create life-time memories.

Now that’s sweet!

This was our second Delta Vacations experience and we are very confident to highly recommend them to you.

Disclosure: a large portion of our London experience was provided by the cool folks at Delta Vacations.  Thanks Delta Vacations!  Thanks Nita, Sean, and Missy.  We had a GREAT time and hope to experience another Delta Vacations luxury package soon.

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