What a Week!

Here's a smattering of what we experienced. It was a great trip, though one I personally probably didn't appreciate as much as I should. It's a genetic habit. I often find it hard to live in the moment, mostly because I'm so worried about what the men in my life are experiencing. I need to let it go. I know (insert Craig Ferguson's Scottish accent here). Keep telling me that, okay? P.S. The formatting on this stinks, but I'm getting tired, so it's going out there and I'll mess with it later.

First, we stumbled off the plane at 7:30 a.m. London time. We managed to make it to the hotel around 10 a.m. after stumbling our way through immigration (the line that went on forever) and onto the tube.

Thankfully, the hotel had our room ready, which was a surprise, so we went up, showered and generally tried to get ourselves oriented with it being daylight and all. Then, we went and found the first cool thing - the BEST CHINESE FOOD EVER. It's in London. All over the place, but particularly in Chinatown. Big Bit and I can vouch for the fact it's better than Chinatown in San Francisco. It's better than the Chinese food in Chinatown in Singapore, for heaven's sake. This was the first time we ate Chinese, but it wouldn't be the last. This was a pleasant surprise to me - I'd not made it to this end of London in my brief weekends there.




Then, it was on to see "Spamalot". TH and I saw this in Salt Lake City over a year ago. We could get cheap (read, seats that were in a scary steep balcony) for their Boxing Day show in London and we figured the boys would enjoy it - they love The Holy Grail and the Killer Rabbit. We all tried to nod off a bit, but we enjoyed the show and the theatre it was in was truly killer.

Oh, what else? We went to the British Museum (lots of pictures of mummies and so on, that I won't post here at this time), more Chinese Food. Oh and the Tower of London. Here's Big Bit taking a picture of more of the Tower. It was pretty cool.









Here's where the Crown Jewels are. We couldn't fit it all in the first day as the line was too long, so we went back another morning to see the jewels - got in right away. My father in law is right, they're cool but not worth standing in line for. We had bought an annual pass that got us into several palaces, going one time to the Tower all but paid for it, going twice more than paid for it, and we weren't done yet!







Next, Harrod's and Kensington Palace. Harrod's was AWFUL - I'd never seen it so crowded. All of London was crowded, actually. We left there fairly quickly and went to Kensington. Like many American females of my age group, I got up in the middle of the night to see Princess Diana get married and also to see her funeral. I felt very close to her, sometimes you marry a prince and he turns out to be a big fat frog and he has a mean mother who tries to help him take your kids away from you. Sorry, I digress.


The Palace itself is impressive, but the amount they really have for display is fairly small - the highlight, for me, being several of Diana's dresses on display, including the one she wore when she danced with John Travolta. She was very, very tall and very very thin.

The bits wore themselves out. More than once.


















We went on the Eye on New Year's Eve - our wedding anniversary. I don't like heights so I wasn't impressed but we all agreed it was something you should do at least once. It was kind of foggy that day, so most of the pictures weren't that great. (the one at the beginning of the post did, however).


Then - fireworks. We were still trying to figure out the camera, but TH got a couple of good ones, at least. They were magnificent, AND we didn't have to be in the crowd of drunks for four hours with no food, bathrooms or drinks! Yes!


























The last day we went out to Hampton Court Palace, which Cardinal Wolsey built and King Henry VIII stole. And it is very cool indeed.


Last, but not least for now, I leave you with a picture of the ice rink at Somerset House. In the movie Love Actually (my favorite ever!), this is a prominent shot at the beginning of the movie. And it was very cool when we walked in the courtyard and it looked like a scene from the movie. Just perfect.