London's Calling

I could live in London.  

I know I can Keep Calm and Carry On.

I'm all about Minding the Gap.

And being called "love" as in "the loo is down the stairs, love" makes my day.  

Yes, I've been known for being a bit of a travel slut--meaning I'd do any trip, but I'm also finding that a single city can not be my one true love.  Tokyo I admire for her surreal exoticness, Paris for her beauty, New York for her energy and London because you'd have to be daft not to enjoy her mash up of past and present.  The Olympic Rings may hang off the top of Tower Bridge, but it's not hard to imagine Henry VIII staring at the bridge after he condemned another wife to the chopping block.

So sue me if I seem loose with my devotion.  

Dylan and I found a bit of a lull in our schedule. Kind of a limbo land really.  No school till this week, our house isn't ready for move in till the 24th, our official Dutch residency cards (entry to a full Dutch life) were still in the mail, no Wasabi to worry about, and we'd exhausted most of the major shopping and sites of Eindhoven.  So we did what I imagined would be possible living in the Netherlands, and booked a last minute trip to London!

We arrived Thursday around noon and left Sunday morning and in that time managed to cram in:

Visiting Platform 9 3/4

It sucks to be a muggle.

Watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

Walking from Parliament and Big Ben through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace

Window shopping at Harrods

A evening stroll to Hays Galleria where we got great views of Tower Bridge

A proper fish and chips lunch with my Portland friend Rachael and her daughter Amy.

At a pub that looked like this one--kinda.

And then a visit out to Greenwich.  We didn't straddle east and west, but it's nice to know it's there.

Wandering Borough Market, which had the best brownies I've ever eaten and the biggest english muffins I've ever seen.  Talking to the seller about his muffins reminded me how much I miss eggs benedict and then I began to miss Milos--where they have awesome benedicts--and then I wondered why I haven't seen Hollandaise sauce in Holland, which put me into a bit of a funk.

The last/first time Dylan was in London she was nine.  Sadly she doesn't remember much about that trip except for the tube stop at Southwark and a theatre in Leicester Square.  Random, but I guess that's the downside of taking a kid traveling when they are younger than ten.  Don't do it for what they remember but how it forms them.

Dylan, Tina Needham and I at the Hop Exchange, 2006.

Dylan and some random dude, at the Hop Exchange 2012.

Even though she no longer loves rats, for old times sake we had to get this picture of a Plague rat  hand puppet sold at the Globe gift store.

All in all, it was a great weekend.  

Meanwhile back at the ranch...the highlights, or memorable bits of Andy's weekend was stumbling upon the owner of the porn shop (for those who haven't kept up with us on Facebook, we currently live in an adorable temporary rental above a porn shop) sunbathing nude by our back stairs and biking to Belgium.  I think we can guess who had the better time.