Still London

Dear Friends,

The kids and I started the day yesterday by running errands. Not terribly exciting, but a reminder of how long it can take to get a couple of things done in an enormous city. The transport system is efficient and easy to use, but the city is still incredibly big!

First, we went to hunt down some theater tickets. We landed tickets to our first choice, Wicked. John was still skeptical (it sounded dark and scary), but we wanted to see something we hadn't seen before (John wanted to see The Lion King again). More on Wicked later. Then, we went to pick up the package that contained Joe's Kindle, which he had left in the car that brought us to London. And, finally, just in time for a picnic lunch we found my most favorite London food store: Waitrose. We picked up a few items to fill out our lunch, plus a few packages of my favorite chocolate covered digestive biscuits. Yum! The Waitrose store brand are really the best.

Margaret, John and I had a little picnic in Green Park, where we were harassed by pigeons. We were quite hungry by that time, so we didn't care.

Then, it was time to meet up with Joseph at the theater (Joe had stayed at the flat to finish his column, which he is still writing for the KJ) for a matinee showing of Wicked.

Wicked was great, fabulous. We all loved it. Even John, although he spent most of the show completely confused about what was going on. But, by the end, he was exclaiming, "It all makes perfect sense! It was like a puzzle and now it all makes perfect sense!"

After the show, we ended up at Covent Garden to wander about and check out some of the street entertainment. A very lively strings group was performing and that was fun to see.

And, then, it was into the pit of despair, as we 1) tried to decide on a place to eat that all of us could agree on (how in the world did we end up with children who don't like Indian food???????), and 2) once we decided on a type of food, to find a restaurant. By this time, it was around 7:00 and many of the restaurants in the area had queues forming. Alas. But, then we were struck by the great idea to return to Notting Hill. So, we did that and went to eat at Pizza Express. Not all that exciting, but we ate at Pizza Express a number of times during the fall of 2004.

Today is our last full day in London and we will try to do as much as we can to squeeze all of the things we haven't done yet. We are hoping for a good day, as tomorrow may not be so good. We have tickets on Eurostar and, as you may know, there was a fire last week. Eurostar is running at about half of what it usually does. Trying to get information from them has been comical. Their advice is to "avoid travel." But, if travel cannot be avoided, then "just show up and we'll do the best we can." What???!!!!! After investigating the alternative (taking the train to Dover, the ferry to Calais, and then the train from Calais to Mechelen, Belgium), we have decided just to deal with Eurostar. We hope that doesn't mean sleeping at a train station!

Well, we are off for the day. We will plan on up-dating again tomorrow morning before heading for the Continent.

Cheers,
Susan

p.s. We'll post more photos soon!