Christmas 2007

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Friday evening we walked to the York train station in the rain to catch the train to London. Thank heaven for left luggage--we left the two big suitcases at the station overnight, so we didn't have to lug them to the hotel and back. The ride was uneventful, and we splurged on a taxi to the hotel so we didn't have to lug all our bags on the tube; King's Cross was pretty crowded, and we were tired.

That night we ate at the first restaurant we ran across, and that was a huge mistake. It was called Garfunkle's--it's a chain, and it's beyond awful, and overpriced to boot. Never again. We did some reorganizing of our luggage, partly in preparation for getting it on the plane, and partly because the hotel room, for some reason I'm not clear on, had no drawer or shelf space, so we needed to get everything we'd need for three days in one suitcase that we could live out of. That turned out to be worth the effort, though; it made packing to leave a piece of cake. After that we went to bed early; I think we were both tired from being out in the rain all day.

Saturday morning, as we were heading out for breakfast, we saw some people wearing sweatshirts that said "Downers Grove." We said, hey, that's where we're from! And they said, oh, did you come to hear the choir perform? It turns out the D.G. South choir was singing at Westminster Abbey on 3 January. We had no idea! And how funny that they ended up at the same hotel. (Of course, I think everyone in that hotel was from the US, so I suppose it's not that big a surprise.)

We thought about going to Westminster Abbey that morning, but they were charging £10 per person, which we decided was ridiculously high, especially since we weren't planning on staying long. We still had a couple more Christmas presents to buy, so we went to Harrod's instead, which was another huge mistake, as it was the first day of their sale. There were so many people in the store that it was hard to walk from one room to another. It worked out OK, though; we ended up going to a different store and finishing the shopping, so that was good.

This was kind of bizarre:

Oh, and a few photos of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament:

That afternoon we went back to Westminster Abbey for evensong, which at least we could get into for free. The choir sounded terrific; the acoustics in there are amazing. What a fabulous space. And we got another good look at the Houses of Parliament; I'll never stop being amazed at that building, it's so huge and so ornate.

We had an early dinner and went to see Les Miserables that evening. It was a great production, and we haven't seen it since the first time it came through Chicago, ages ago. It turned out to be a really enjoyable evening.

The next day we met up with another of my online friends and her family. We had lunch in the crypty part of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, then we just kind of walked around for a while and went into a few shops. Mid-afternoon Matt and I decided we really needed to ride the London Eye, so our friends went off to other things while we did that. Here's the Eye:

Matt was having a great time checking out the engineering while we were in line; it's a really neat structure. And it's huge! I don't think I'd ever been right up next to it before. It was about twice as high as the Yorkshire Wheel.

Matt got one decent shot of the Houses of Parliament before the batteries in our camera died:

There were a whole bunch of buskers out near the Eye. A lot of them were painted silver and standing on boxes--it's a living, I suppose, but I wasn't exactly entranced. This guy was cute:

We met up with our friends after our "flight" (yes, the Eye is sponsored by British Airways) and ended up stopping at a cafe for tea, then saying goodbye so they could head home. Matt and I wanted to find a pub for dinner, which turned out to be an adventure--the first place we stopped had a table, but they were out of pretty much everything, so we left, and after that, everything was completely packed. We ended up back near Piccadilly Square, where we finally found a place. When we got back to the hotel, much later than expected, we packed, then we went to the bar for a nightcap and to work on filling out VAT refund forms. That was a massive nuisance, but somewhat entertaining when we kind of set one on fire--there was a little tea candle sitting on the table, and one of the receipts got a wee bit too close. Oops. And after all that work, we ended up with a check for about $10--most of the refund went toward "administrative fees." It's a racket. Totally not worth the effort.

The next morning we stopped in the National Gallery. At my friend's recommendation we went looking for the Da Vinci's, which were terrific. We spent some time in 16th century Italy, then went to see the French Impressionists. It's a nice museum; we'll have to spend some more time there next time we're in London. Unfortunately we had to leave and catch our plane, which we ended up being slightly late for, just because we didn't realize how early they'd start boarding. We did get on, though, and I don't think we were quite last.