That's enough London...

So...we're back. We've actually been back for a week, and I can't believe it's already been a whole week since I was in London. Back to reality, I guess. That's the worst part of vacation - when it's over. Although this time, it was okay that vacation was over because we both missed Hannah.

Our flight home from London last Tuesday was wonderfully uneventful. The only glitch was when Brock unknowingly bought carbonated water in the vending machine in the gate waiting area, and we both almost gagged when we tried it. The bottle said it was something like "England's preferred water" or "famous water" or something, but it was disgusting. Water is supposed to be still. If it's carbonated, you're supposed to add a bunch of high fructose corn syrup and carmel color so you get a nice Coke. That's just the way it is.

Anyway, I didn't sleep on the plane home at all, because it was during the middle of the day, so I read half a novel and watched Hairspray on the little in-flight entertainment thing. I liked Hairspray, although John Travolta as a very large woman is a disturbing thing. Very disturbing. They did feed us lunch and dinner, though, and both were pretty good, so I didn't have any complaints about the flight.

The best part about coming home was seeing Hannah. :) Brock's parents were wonderful and drove her home for us, so she was here when we got home from the airport. She yelled, "Mommy!" and gave me the biggest hug ever! She kept randomly hugging both of us for the rest of the evening. And she'd go, "That's my dad! Do you see Hannah's dad over there?" It was pretty cute, and nice to know that she missed us even though she had fun while we were gone. We're still working on backing off on some of the extra-demanding attitude she seems to have developed while we were in London, but otherwise we're pretty much back to normal.

And then Wednesday it was back to work, which felt weird. I mean, the first day after vacation is always weird, but it was odd sitting at my desk and thinking, "Just yesterday I was in London." We have to go back sometime. :)

Thursday I came down with an awful cold, which I still have, which made it definitely feel like vacation was over. I kept joking that I got the plague from all those medieval buildings we were in, but I'm pretty sure it was just the 8+ hours of recirculated air on the plane. Whatever.

When's the next vacation? I'm ready!

London: Big Finish

It was our last day in London today, and it was a big one. Here's what we did:

• Houses of Parliament/Big Ben
• Westminster Abbey
• St. Paul's Cathedral
• Tried (and failed) to see the Temple of Mithras
• Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
• Harrod's

We got started fairly early and made it out of the hotel by 9:30. We stopped to buy a muffin for me and a Coke for Brock, and then we walked to the Houses of Parliament. We didn't go in, but Brock got some really nice pictures. It's funny; I thought I'd kind of gotten used to seeing Big Ben off in the distance, but up close it is really spectacular. There's not a square inch (or centimeter or whatever) on the whole Houses of Parliament that doesn't have some kind of detail going on. I told Brock I thought it was from the "more is more" school of architecture, but that sort of sums up London, really.

Westminster Abbey is right across the street from Parliament, and we were both really excited about going there. I wrote in my journal that the weight of history there is overwhelming, and it really is...I mean, you're walking where people have walked for centuries, and every place you turn is a tomb or monument to some fantastically famous person from the past. It was a little awkward...at first I tried to avoid walking on the tombs, but it's sort of impossible. So, sorry famous dead people buried in Westminster Abbey. I tried.

Anyway, Westminster Abbey was by far my favorite stop on this entire trip. It's totally Gothic and spectacularly beautiful, and I still sort of can't believe I saw where Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and Henry VIII and all these other people I've read about in books are buried. We got the audio tour, and I'm so glad, because without it I don't think I would have known where to look or what I was looking at half the time. It's really too bad you can't take pictures inside, although of course I understand why. One of the sort of amusing things to see there was "the oldest door in Britain," which dates from 1050 (!). We also saw the room where they used to keep the country's gold standard, which I think was from around 1090. I just can't believe I was walking around someplace that's been around for almost 1,000 years. Whoa.

After the Abbey, we got on the Tube and made our way to St. Paul's Cathedral. We stopped for lunch at a pizza place across the street, and Brock gave me a hard time because I was teasing him for considering pizza for lunch yesterday (given that we're from one of the world's great pizza-eating regions). However, today pizza sounded good, so it wasn't silly anymore. :)

St. Paul's is also beautiful and amazing, with the added dimension of being really tiring. We climbed all 530 very tight, mostly spiraling steps to see the Whispering Gallery, the Stone Gallery and then the Golden Gallery all the way at the top. It was worth it, but if you had a vertigo problem you'd never make it! The views were awesome and again, Brock took some great pictures. Like the Abbey, you can't take pictures inside, so we just bought a bunch of post cards and a snow globe for Hannah.

After that, we attempted to find the Temple of Mithras, but we're pretty sure it was obscured in a construction area so we didn't get to see it. We walked all around, but didn't find anything that looked remotely like the ruins of an ancient Persian god. Just a lot of cranes and large construction equipment. Bummer.

Next up was a walk across the Thames to go to the Globe Theatre, which was a little touristy but worth the trip. We had a nice tour and learned that they built the theatre using Elizabethan materials and methods, which was one of the reasons it took so long to construct. I'm sure that builders in Elizabethan times knew just what to do with plaster that had cow's hair in it, but I imagine modern tradesmen had some trouble dealing with it. :)

Then we had to walk over to the London Bridge Tube station, and I got a little wiggy because we got out of the bustling tourist areas and into some quieter parts of town...Brock pointed out that I should probably be more nervous IN the busy tourist areas, but I generally feel more comfortable knowing I'm among bunches of other people who also "aren't from around here" and probably don't know where they're going any better than I do.

We took the Tube to Harrod's, mostly because I just wanted to see it since it's so famous. It is huge and overwhelming, and I don't see how people normally shop there. We didn't buy anything because it was already expensive, and the exchange rate is awful. We did, however, stumble across the Chocolate Bar, where I had the very best hot chocolate I have ever had in my life. It was "Italian hot chocolate" and was just dark chocolate and cream. It was very thick and very rich and very delicious. That perked me up, because I was getting pretty tired by that point and my feet had started tingling from all the walking. We did find Toy World on the fourth floor, and I took a picture of Brock with a giant crocodile hand puppet.

After that, it was back toward the hotel. We stopped for some "take away" dinner and then came back to the hotel to put our feet up. We ended up going out again for a short time to check out the London souvenir shop around the corner, but it was all pretty cheesy tourist stuff. I mean, if you know someone who collects teapots or something, it's fine, but otherwise there's not much reason to bother.

So...tomorrow we're heading home. It's been a wonderful trip, and I can't think of a single thing I want to do that we haven't done. If we had more time here I'm sure we could explore much more, but we managed to pack a whole bunch of really cool stuff into three days. And I miss Hannah, so I'm looking forward to seeing her tomorrow and giving her the souvenirs we bought for her. Hopefully she a) remembers who we are and b) isn't too mad that we left her.

More observations:

• I'm not sure why, but every time you order a Coke in a restaurant they put a slice of lemon in it. I like lemon in Coke, but it's different. As a side note, Coke in Europe is YUMMY because they put real sugar in it. But like Brock says, you definitely feel like you have to brush your teeth afterward.
• Brock's sense of direction and map-reading abilities are mind-boggling. I would literally have been lost without him, because I have no sense of direction whatsoever. He just walks around like he knows exactly where he's going. We never got lost once.
• I really wish I had a British accent. Everyone here sounds SO COOL. I was sort of thinking in a British accent after awhile, but I tried to make myself stop because it even sounded silly in my head. *chuckle*
• Avoid the Tube at rush hour. It is quite overwhelming.

London is my kind of town. :)

London, Day 2

I LOVE London.

Today's highlights included:

• King's Cross Station - Platform 9 3/4
• Lunch with Andy
• Covent Garden
• The National Gallery
• Buckingham Palace
• The London Eye

We started off a little later than we'd expected, since we slept about 12 hours last night. We were really tired and jet-lagged, I guess. Anyway, we made our way to King's Cross (using the trusty Tube) so I could get my picture taken at Platform 9 3/4. Since there's really not a wall between Platforms 9 and 10, as it says in the Harry Potter books, the brilliant people at King's Cross just made Platform 9 3/4 out of a nearby wall. There's even a "trolley" sticking halfway out of it, which I thought was clever. So Brock took my picture looking like I was trying to make it on the Hogwarts Express:

We had a little break back at the hotel, then Andy, whom Brock knows from the online game he plays and who lives about 2 hours away, came to meet us for lunch. He and Brock had never met in person, so that was cool. He was very nice and even treated us to lunch at a yummy Italian restaurant (thanks, Andy!). Then he showed us around Covent Garden, which is a really fun shopping district that hadn't even been on our list of things to see, so that was a good treat. There were several very interesting street performers there. :)

After Covent Garden, Andy left, and Brock and I went to the National Gallery. If you were really, really into art, that place would be heaven, but Brock and I know just enough to appreciate most of it, so we were able to see all we wanted to see in just a couple of hours. It was cool seeing such old, famous paintings, though. Our favorite was a "cartoon" (drawing made prior to making an actual painting) by Leonardo da Vinci. Neither one of us can really articulate why. It was just really cool. And we saw paintings by Michaelangelo, Renoir, van Eyck, Monet, van Gogh and a bunch of other famous guys.

We took a break in the Gallery's cafe after that for some treats and a rest. Brock had chocolate cake, and I had treacle tart. I got it because I read about it in Harry Potter. I didn't know what it really was. Actually, even after eating a whole slab of treacle tart, I still wasn't sure what it was, but it was tasty. (Later, on the phone with my parents, my dad looked it up and said it's molasses, which makes sense in retrospect. For some reason, while I was eating it I thought it sort of tasted like a lemon bar.)

After the Gallery, we walked through St. James's Park (I would have skipped the second s, but that's how it's written on our London map) to go to Buckingham Palace. It was very pretty and peaceful, even though it was dark by that point. The Palace looked very pretty all lit up. It's hard to believe people live there. I think it would be very weird having people outside your home taking pictures all day. Of course, it would also be weird having a monument to Queen Victoria in your front yard, so I guess I can't really relate to the royal family at all. Anyway, it was neat.

And our last stop of the day (after another rest period - our legs were getting tired) was the absolute coolest: we rode the London Eye! Wow, was that awesome. Even though it was dark (because we just couldn't fit in riding it in the daylight, especially since it gets dark at like 4:00), the views of the city were spectacular. Brock got some really good pictures. And since it wasn't at all crowded, there were only about eight people in our carriage/pod thing and we had plenty of room to walk around and check out the views. It was a little scary if you looked down or up too much, but if you just looked straight out, it was great. My favorite thing we did today, definitely. :)

We did call home to see how Hannah was doing. She was taking a nap, so we didn't get to talk to her, but she apparently thinks I'm at work and hasn't asked about Brock yet. So I guess she's having fun. She also said she wants to go to London. We'll definitely have to bring her someday...after our bank account has a chance to recover.

Some observations:

• American credit card technology is pretty far behind the times, it seems. Everyone's card here has some special chip in it, and they don't have to sign for anything. (This confused the clerk at King's Cross when we were buying snacks today, because Brock's primitive American card doesn't have a chip.) Also, when you pay with your card at a restaurant, they bring a little card reader right to your table, and you can punch in the tip yourself. They don't have to take your card anywhere.
• Today's Fun British Phrase is "Way Out." Nothing says "Exit" here; it's all "Way Out." I love that.
• I don't know how people drive in London. The streets are really small, and they don't make any sense, and there are a million giant double-decker buses to contend with. I'll stick to walking or the train, thank you.
• The light switches in our hotel room are backwards; you flip them down to turn them on. It also took me awhile to figure out how to work the hair dryer this morning because you have to hold a little trigger button to get it to work. This seemed unnecessary and also made my finger tired.
• Treacle tart is very yummy; no wonder Harry Potter likes it.

I can't believe tomorrow's already our last day...but we're having such a great time!!

LONDON, Baby, Yeah!

You're supposed to read the title of this post a la Austin Powers. Go ahead, read it again. :)

We're in London! Wahoo! So, that's my surprise vacation destination, and I still kind of can't believe it.

Today we got to our hotel about 1:00 local time, I think...and we're both tired, so we just went to see a few things this afternoon. We saw the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, and London Bridge (it's not falling down; it's also, unexpectedly, just a regular bridge), and we walked around Trafalgar Square for a bit. I had real English fish and chips for dinner (preserved for posterity in the photo here), which was AWESOME (but also not that much unlike fish and chips at home...except that these were in LONDON). Also, I found it funny that that tiny patch of green on my plate was considered a "mixed salad." It was like three lettuce leaves and a cucumber. I guess perhaps they're not so into the lettuce here.

Tomorrow, we're having lunch with one of Brock's friends, and I think we're going to check out the National Gallery. The National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery are really close to our hotel. When we were walking from the Underground station to our hotel, we saw Big Ben. I almost fainted. Okay, not really, but wow - that was the moment I really felt like I was in London.

My favorite phrase from today is, "Mind the gap." The recorded voice on the Tube says this at almost every stop, and it just makes me laugh. It's so British and polite to "mind the gap." We minded the gap very well and negotiated the Tube without any real trouble. Brock has this weirdly accurate, innate sense of direction that enabled us to find everything we were looking for, and once you find the right station, the train is pretty easy to figure out. You just have to mind the gap. :)

My husband is the best ever. Period.