OK, let’s see… London…
Landed Friday (12/21) noonish. Picked up the rental car (yes, we rented a car. In London. We’re suicidal that way :D) and drove into town. I let my wife off for a work meeting she had to go to (and which will comp her ticket and two days of expenses, which is why she arranged it), got set up at the hotel, picked her up and hit the nearby supermarket (it’s a weekly rental unit, and we cooked for ourselves)
Saturday – Science Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum. Started shopping – Oxford Street and a nice shoe shop on Trafalgar square with **huge **sales all year round. Kind of like a “Show Locker” but with class.
Evening – went to Lion King – first of three musicals we saw during our stay. Good.
Sunday – Blurf, what did we do on Sunday? Can’t remember any more… I’m pretty sure this was the day we went to the National Museum. Then we walked down to Westminster Abbey, but it’s closed on Sunday… Also went to a few bookshops.
Went shopping for Christmas Dinner, ended up with some British meat pies of all sorts and some nice Christmas Desserts.
Monday – Morning shopping in Kensington (where we were staying); went into town to see musical #2 – Lord of the Rings. Matinee. *Very *good. went on to do some book browsing along the Charing Cross Rd.'s little quaint second-hand book stores. Then the Tate Gallery. And walked around that part of London (Southwark) – saw the Golden Hinde (Drake’s ship) and the Southwark Cathedral. Also drove around London in the fog. Makes you understand where ghost stories come from!
Went back to the apartment and I cooked us all a nice (if partly warm-me-up) Christmas dinner.
Tuesday – Christmas day – we went [del]poisoning[/del] feeding pigeons (and squirrels. And geese and swans and…) in the park. Two parks, actually – Kensington Park and St. James Park. T’was wet. In fact, the only **really **rainy day we had our whole visit (which is nothing short of amazing.) Went up into Chinatown (which was mostly open) and Leicester Square (which mostly wasn’t, but a few restaurants were).
Wednesday. Boxing Day! The ‘Black Friday’ of the British Commonwealth! Oxford Street – 70% sales and roughly 5 million people!!
Fun. :rolleyes: For those shopping inclined, that is – which was the female half of the expedition.
I *will *admit we did manage to renew some wardrobes at a fraction of what it would have cost otherwise, though.
And the day ended with Musical #3 – Billy Elliot. Fabulous!!! The best of the three (and none were bad)
Thursday – more post-Christmas shopping, but also the National Museum again, and the Charing X Rd. second-hand bookshops again.
Packing.
Friday – get up at 5:30 for a 9 AM flight from Stanstead. Which we figured was an hour’s drive out at that time of day… It isn’t :eek: We also got a later start than we wanted… about 6:15 instead of 6:00.
We got to the airport at 7:45 :eek::eek:. Dropped the car off without refueling (which will cost us a pretty penny, but what to do?) and hurried in. There was one – ONE – passenger who checked in after us… but we did make it onto the flight.
I probably should hyperlink some of the sites, but I’m lazy, so there. Look them up yourself.
My excuse is, I’m doing laundry. And I’m lazy to boot.
Or was I wrong about that?
I hope things get sorted out there soon.
