London in January

This is a long overdue post about our trip to London over the last weekend in January. We had a wonderful time. And the weather was perfect. But, the best thing of all was that we were all together. The reason for the trip was the graduation ceremony for our DS1. So, of course, he and Liz were there. They flew in from California. We (my DH and I) and DS2 were there. We flew in from Chicago. And, DD was there along with Chris. They both live in London. She is in her last year of university there. The picture is of DS1 and Liz.

The ceremony was fun. The officials even let people cheer for the graduates. (Though, it sounded to me as if the word was graduants.) -- We just politely clapped for our DS1.

We arrived in London on Thursday and left on Sunday. But, we packed a lot into the trip. The graduation ceremony was Friday morning. In the evening we went to Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall. DS1 had to spend a lot of time on line and on the telephone to get us tickets at the last minute. In the end, we had some wonderful tickets. The performance was wonderful, as well. I had never seen anything like it before.

(I also took some time that afternoon to get a bit of yarn at John Lewis.)

The following evening we went to a play, "The Sound of Music". We were wondering how we'd like it and how it would compare to the movie. It was like the movie but different. There were a few songs in the play that weren't in the movie. The play was, of course, done quite well. It was, after all, the West End.

Saturday morning, DD, DS2, and I went to the British Museum. The rest of the crew were out doing other things. I was worried that I might not get to see it this visit. So, I'm glad that I was able to fit it in. This visit we spent most of the time admiring the Elgin Marbles. The statue in the picture is near the entrance to the Marbles. It was on loan.

Saturday afternoon, DS1 and Liz went to see Arsenal. She's a big Arsenal fan. They had bought the tickets way ahead of time and had really good seats.

The rest of us (except Chris, who had to work) decided to go to a Wycombe Wanderer's game. We used to go there often when my DH worked near there (on the same street as the stadium). Here is a picture of the stadium from the parking lot as we waited to leave. We just barely made it back to London in time for the play.

The only thing bad about the trip was trying to get on an American Airlines flight back to the States. We had to wait at the check-in desk for a long time while the clerk there, her supervisor, and finally someone else (either security or her supervisor's supervisor) try to sort out why the names on our passports were different from the names on the computer screen. After what must have been at least a quarter hour, they finally discovered that the screen truncated last names to 10 letters. (Our last name has more than 10 letters in it.) The supervisor said that that was the second time that had happened that morning. You'd think they'd catch on after the first time. But, the flight crew was nice and apologized for the check-in desk.

The trip to London was sort of like a trip to a tropical destination for us (now living in Chicago). The temperature when we left Chicago was 10F, and the temperature when we arrived in London was 10C.