Your Guide to Inspiring European Destinations
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Travelingking
Imagine . Create . Experience
Filed underEngland
Not invited to the Royal Wedding? No worries! Great Getaways has a wonderful option!
(Can you hear the trumpets heralding this announcement?)
On Friday, April 29, 2011
You are cordially invited to enjoy
The Royal Wedding Day
Our friends at The NoteWorthy Group have confirmed a Private Room in Carlton House Terrace overlooking the Route of the Royal Procession to and from Westminster Abbey.
Arrive at 9 am for a champagne breakfast; enjoy the festive atmosphere and watch the crowds gathering to watch the procession. During the morning coffee and tea will be available as well as a bar. Large TV screens will show BBC coverage of the day.
The spacious rooms have tall windows overlooking the Royal Route and the Mall. If you wish, you can walk down to the side of the building where you can stand on the steps of Waterloo Place to watch the couple return from the Abbey by carriage.
Please note that Princess Catherine will be going to the Abbey by car and not by carriage.
11.00 AM : The Wedding Ceremony takes place at Westminster Abbey. The Royal couple returns by coach along the Mall to Buckingham Palace.
After lunch, return to your hotel at your leisure
The details:
· Private Room exclusively for the use of Noteworthy Clients in Carlton House Terrace overlooking the Mall.
· Champagne breakfast and buffet lunch along with house wines & soft drinks
· Large plasma screen to watch BBC coverage live from inside Westminster Abbey and on the balcony at Buckingham Palace afterwards
Wedding Notes:
Cost is based on joining with other Noteworthy clients in a building overlooking the Mall. The view is from the 3rd floor windows of the building on Carlton Terrace overlooking the Mall. Access is not allowed onto the balcony for both Security and Health & Safety reasons. At this stage we are not sure whether we will be able to open the windows on the day, due to security reasons. NoteWorthy cannot accept any responsibility should the Procession route be amended due to security issues closer to the date of the wedding.
If clients wish, they can walk down to the side of the building where you can stand on the steps of Waterloo Place to watch the couple return from the Abbey by carriage.
TERMS & CONDITIONS:
The building requires reservations from at least 20 people in order to confirm usage of this venue. You will be included in the aggregate total (Consider inviting 19 friends to join you and you’ll have the room just for your own private use).The deadline to make a reservation is Friday, March 18th. Completed credit card authorization forms must be received by this date. These will only be charged on the 18th March if the minimum numbers have been achieved.
Price of $950 per person is for the event and does not include hotel accommodations, international flights, taxes, transfers, etc.
Europe Awaits You in this Issue of Virtuoso Life
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See your Great Getaways Virtuoso travel advisor for details. All travel offers are subject to change, availability and alteration without notice. Restrictions apply. © 2011 Virtuoso, Ltd. | 505 Main Street, Suite 500 | Fort Worth, TX 76102 | CST#2069091-40 |
Virtuoso PREVIEW: Coworth Park - Now Open
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Tea and a Garden Tour at High Grove? We CAN DO that!
Big news! New NEWS! This just in from Susie Worthy, Helen Bedford and our friends at NOTEWORTHY:
FOUR DAY “GLORIOUS GARDENS” PACKAGE INCLUDING BOWOOD HOTEL & HRH PRINCE CHARLES’S GARDEN AT HIGHGROVE
Tour No 1: Monday 12th April
Tour No 2: Monday 3rd May
Tour No 3: Monday 17th May
Tour No 4: Monday 7th June
Tour No 5: Monday 12th July
Day 1 - Monday
You will be transferred by luxury transportation from Heathrow Airport or Central London to the Bowood Hotel near Bath and the Cotswolds.
This purpose built 43 bedroom hotel and spa is ideally situated between Calne & Chippenham, yet hidden in 2000 acres of rolling “Capability” Brown parkland. Four different room types are available, each decorated to the highest standard by the Marchioness of Lansdowne. Hotel residents are entitled to use the spa facilities during their stay.
All hotel rooms benefit from; complimentary Wi-Fi, Plasma televisions, individual climate control, 24 hour room service, Dab Radio, iPod dock, iron & ironing boards, bathrobes, slippers, tea & coffee making facilities plus guests receive complimentary use of the Spa during their stay. In addition, guests also receive a complimentary round of golf.
This evening you will be invited to a private welcome reception hosted by the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne in the private apartments of their stately home, Bowood House.
Depending on the season and before enjoying your Champagne and Canapés Lord Lansdowne will escort you to take in the spectacular colours of the stunning Rhododendron Walk in the grounds of Bowood.
Dinner this evening is a private affair and guests will enjoy a sumptuous three course dinner accompanied by wine, mineral water, coffee and petits fours before retiring for the night.
O/N BOWOOD HOTEL
Day 2 - Tuesday
After enjoying a full English breakfast in the hotel, board your luxury transportation for a full day of sight-seeing in the beautiful Cotswolds accompanied by your Noteworthy Guide.
Two garden visits will be included today to two spectacular and quintessential English Gardens.
Kiftsgate Court, Gloucestershire
The name Kiftsgate means to many gardeners that beautiful and embarrassingly vigorous rambling rose R Filipes ‘Kiftsgate’, but although the garden, started in the 1920’s by Heather Muir, is certainly full of roses there is much else to admire. The house has a splendid setting, teetering on the edge of a precipitous valley across which, through the woods, are views of the Vale of Evesham. About the house is a series of enclosed gardens in which formality is blurred by generous planting. Below all this, paths wind steeply down the valley side where, under the canopy of trees, cistus, hebes, phlomis and senecio relish the dry conditions.
A pub lunch will be included at a charming country inn today.
Hidcote Manor Gardens, Gloucestershire
Although among the best-known gardens in Britain, Hidcote still has the power to startle. It was begun before World War I by and American, Major Lawrence Johnston, who devised a type of garden that many think of as quintessentially English. First, it is a garden built up of separate ‘rooms’, each connected to the next but often with dramatic contrasts. Second, the first layout provides a disciplined setting for an immense range of plants of which Johnston was a pioneer re-discoverer - especially of old roses - and which he used in a swashbuckling manner in contrast with the crisp authority of his layout. Everywhere something enticing is glimpsed through an opening, across a pool, down steps or framed by a distant gate.
Return to your hotel for rest, relaxation and a three course dinner this evening in the hotel’s restaurant.
O/N BOWOOD HOTEL
Day 3 - Wednesday
After enjoying a full English breakfast in the hotel, board your luxury transportation for a full day of sight-seeing in Bath and the surrounding countryside accompanied by your Noteworthy Guide.
Enjoy a walking tour of Bath this morning.
The Georgian city of Bath is a World Heritage Site, full of spectacular 18th century buildings designed for the high society of the day. They descended on the city to take the waters at this elegant and fashionable spa.
The neoclassical buildings were designed to be as competitively elegant as the society they housed. Ambitious mothers brought their daughters to find rich husbands here during “the season” between autumn and spring. The Master of Ceremonies controlled the social calendar of dances, suppers and extravagant entertainments. The writer, Jane Austen, was a resident of Bath for five years and closely observed the behaviour of these people who inspired her novels “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion”.
The Roman Baths and Pump Room
Bath was originally founded by the Romans, almost 2000 years ago. They discovered the natural hot springs, building their bathing complex and city around them. The natural hot springs still provide 250,000 gallons of water every day at a temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
See the water's source and walk where Romans walked on the ancient stone pavements. The extensive ruins and treasures from the spring are beautifully preserved and presented using the best of modern interpretation.
Enjoy time at leisure in Bath
Apart from the Roman Baths there are many more places of interest to visit in this lovely town such as the Fashion Museum located in the old Assembly Rooms (where Jane Austen’s heroines would have attended balls and concerts).
The Fashion Museum
The story of fashion over the last 400 years is brought alive at the Museum of Costume, the finest museum of fashionable garments in the world. The displays include 200 dressed figures to illustrate the changing styles in fashionable clothes from the late 16th century to the present day, chosen from the museum’s collection of 30,000 original items.
or
Number One Royal Crescent
Number One was designed by John Wood the Younger and was the first house to be built in the Royal Crescent, now designated a World Heritage Building. It has been redecorated and furnished to show how it might have appeared in the late 18th century.
or
Bath Abbey
Begun in 1499, Bath Abbey is the last of the great medieval churches of England. The West Front is unique as it depicts the dream that inspired the Abbey's founder, Bishop Oliver King, to pull down the ruined Norman cathedral and raise the present building on its foundations.
Bath Abbey's tower is open for guided tours every day except Sunday. You can climb the 212 steps to the top of the tower and enjoy a panoramic and unrivalled view of the city. Visitors can see the 10 bells and hear how the tower was built. You can also sit inside the Abbey's clock face.
After lunch at leisure and some time for shopping in Bath return to the hotel to freshen up for your exclusive visit.
The highlight of the day today is your exclusive visit to HRH The Prince of Wales’s garden at Highgrove in Tetbury. Highgrove is the family home of The Prince, The Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry.
You will arrive at Highgrove at 5.30 pm this afternoon and on arrival will be welcomed by Tea in the Orchard Room. Guests will be divided into intimate groups of 10 and allocated a specialist garden guide for a 1 ½ hour visit to these spectacular gardens.
The garden at Highgrove embodies The Prince's environmental philosophy: that it is better to work with Nature than against it.
When he bought the Highgrove estate in 1980, The Prince was adamant that it should be an entirely organic garden and farm. However, at that time there was no sign of a garden at all. Thirteen years later in the book ‘Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate’ The Prince wrote: “It was difficult to know where to begin and I knew nothing about the practical aspects of gardening..”
His Royal Highness sought the advice of a friend, Lady Salisbury, who was an experienced organic gardener well-known for her work at Cranbourne and at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire. She and The Prince laid out parts of the garden with scented plants. Wisteria, honeysuckle, jasmine, holboellia, lilies and thyme were chosen to surround the house.
On the advice of Miriam Rothschild, another gardening expert and one of the country’s leading advocates of biodiversity, The Prince created an experimental wild flower meadow.
At its westerly end, the meadow is also home to some of the National Collection of Beeches which The Prince maintains on behalf of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens (NCCPG). In addition to part of the National Collection of Beeches, His Royal Highness has the National Collection of Hostas, a large-leafed plant which he loves.
Additional features of the garden are the Walled Kitchen Garden, which helps the Highgrove estate achieve self sufficiency in fruit and vegetables, and the wide variety of apples grown from trees next to the Orchard Room.
After the tour is over you will meet again in the Orchard Room and enjoy Champagne and Canapés. You will also have the chance to spend some time in the Highgrove shop which sells a unique collection of organic foods and lifestyle products for the home and garden. All Highgrove products take their inspiration from the gardens at Highgrove and reflect the wide-ranging interests and passions of HRH The Prince of Wales. The majority of products in the collection have been created by British artisan manufacturers and craftsmen and are exclusive to Highgrove.
Leave Highgrove at 7.30 pm and return to the Bowood Hotel for dinner and overnight.
O/N BOWOOD HOTEL
Day 4
After breakfast a transfer is provided today into central London or continue your program.
Contact me today for availability! This is an absolute MUST for gardeners AND it's an EXCLUSIVE!
One more good-bye
“Good-bye, I love you”—how many times have I said those words and why are they bittersweet? When Josh began 4th grade, we walked into the school together (that wouldn’t last long-that mother-son walking into school together thing—geez, Mom!), found his new classroom and we hugged. “Good-bye, I love you!” I said and slowly walked away. That was a fun “gbily” –my first time as Josh’s mom to escort him to his first day of a new school year.
The previous May Josh and Lauren’s dad, Michael, and I married---on May 24, 1998 to be exact! They had recently lost their wife/mother, Lana, to metastasized breast cancer. Several years before that I experienced the sudden loss of my only child, my son David, at the age of 2. So, as Josh aptly described the union, “God put us together. We needed a wife and a mom and you needed a husband and a son.” Lauren was the “gift with purchase”, the daughter I never had, and with whom I have laughed, cried, argued, celebrated, distanced, drawn together, distanced again and today we are both finding our way to acceptance and love.
So, back to “gbily”--- my next memory of a poignant “Good-bye, I love you” was when Michael, Josh and I drove to Camp Chi in Wisconsin, Josh’s first adventure to be away from home, from us (How will he survive? How will we survive? Quite well, on all counts, as it turned out!). I remember the fragrant towering pine trees and giving Josh the biggest hug I could muster (Come on, Mom, this is embarrassing!), offered the standard “gbily”, turning and walking down the road towards our car with tears streaming down my face.
Another choked up “gbily” was when I took Josh to middle school---this growing up thing is going way too fast! Add a dash of “gbilys” on those occasions that we traveled abroad and weren’t able to include Josh on those journeys (poor kid has only been to more places than most adults have ever experienced—including but not limited to Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France, England, Kenya, the Galapagos, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and countless United States!). When Josh was 16, he and Michael climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. As they unloaded their duffel bags at the airport, I hugged them both and said, “Please be safe! Good-bye, I love you” with a major lump in my throat. The good news was that Lauren and I were going to Kenya a week later to meet our intrepid climbers and go on a family safari (As an aside, Africa is my favorite continent and we’re headed back there in September!). There were two more “gbilys” of note during high school: the first was when Josh drove by himself after having received his driver’s license (Please God, keep him safe and thanks Dateline NBC for airing the scary segment on teen driving that very same evening—oy!); the second was when Josh, along with 37 other Kansas City Jewish teens, participated in The March of The Living, which visited the very real and very sobering death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau followed by a week of celebration in Israel.
It seems there have been a flood of “gbilys” in the past couple of yea or maybe, just maybe, they seem so poignant because they are so recent (like, how about today????). Two years ago Michael and I took Josh to the University of Arizona---“Good-bye, we love you!” we said as we boarded the plane to fly to Vegas to attend Virtuoso’s annual Travel Mart (a very important and exhausting travel industry event we’ve participated in for the past 14 years). The next “gbilys” ran together---Josh’s transferring to KU (only 45 minutes from home—maybe we’ll see Josh more often—oh wrong-o, Mom who doesn’t want to let go!), the abbreviated summer after Freshman year (“Hey, Mom and Dad, I’m moving out the beginning of August into an apartment near campus!”), the Thanksgiving dinner (“I’m staying in Lawrence. What time should I be home for Thanksgiving dinner?”), the Winter Break (break from school AND break from coming home other than a couple of short visits! Come on, Mom, lay off the guilt!), the new and very special relationship with Desi, and Josh and Desi giving birth to their son, Tristan, on July 2nd.
Some things are as they should be. How many times have I heard the saying, “We teach them to walk and we teach them to walk away?” Oh, please, can you say “Vomit?” Haven’t you read my script, Universe? Don’t you know that Josh was supposed to be our Peter Pan, our “I won’t grow up” kid? And why, this spewing of my feelings today, you ask? A couple of hours ago Michael and Josh loaded Josh’s bed and chest of drawers into a U-Haul truck to move to the new duplex Josh, Desi and Tristan will call home for the next year. He took his bed!!!!!!!!! He took the photos of Lana he kept next to the bed!!!!!!!!!! Where will Josh sleep when he comes home? And, that is the cause of the angst---he won’t be coming home…
I could have ended with a dramatic flourish but I assure you that this moment of pain, of self-pity, is in fact, just a moment. In my heart I know I will have many more life experiences with our son, Desi, our grandson, our daughter ( who now lives in Hawaii but is coming home to visit in September!) and her friends, our travels, our friends, our newest business venture (TBA in a couple of months)…but, God, could you just give me a little sneak preview?
