London, Part 1

When I woke up this morning (which was at 4:30, by the way), I almost stayed in bed to weep all day, now that my life is bereft of joy. I knew there wouldn't be any sausages waiting for me at breakfast and no doormen in top hats and coats would wish me a good morning. If you can't start your morning in exactly that way, you should really just stay in bed.

I got back from my tour to London last night. My group, sponsored by the Utah Shakespearean Festival, was part of a larger tour run by Break-Away Tours. The tour was wonderful--all of our guides were excellent, we saw fantastic shows, we had plenty of free time, I enjoyed all of the people I spent time with (except that one guy who I considered stabbing with a fork every time he spoke), we were centrally located in a very nice hotel, and Michael Sharon was so gracious to all of us.

I know you're burning up to know all kinds of things about the trip, like how I came to be the hero of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, what happens when you tell women over the age of 60 about imaginary boyfriends, and which treasure from the Victoria and Albert Museum I would like someone to steal for me for my 30th birthday. I'll get to all of that next week, but today you just get photos and my favorite conversation from the trip.

This is Christ Church. It was only a few blocks away from our hotel. If I had time in the mornings, I ran over here and sat in the church's gardens for a little while.

These are the mews on the way to Christ Church.


Westminster Abbey is quite possibly my favorite place in all of London. I went to Evensong here on Sunday and returned with a small group tour later in the week.

Houses of Parliament from the park just behind the buildings. I thought that I got some good pictures of Parliament at night from across the Thames, but none of them turned out well.

This is not a good picture of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, but you can see the Christmas tree. Christmas decorations were still up all over the city, because it's bad luck to take them down before Epiphany on January 6.

Windsor Castle is too big to get a single good picture. This is just a small section of it. You can see the guards between the gate spikes on the right. We watched a changing of the guard in a different area of the castle, complete with brass band. Strangely enough, one of the selections the band played was the theme from Star Wars. Eleventh century architecture and Star Wars don't naturally go together in my mind, but it's their country, so they can do whatever they want.

And, my favorite conversation from the trip:

Around 2:00 am on New Year's Eve, the fire alarm went off in our hotel, so I got up and checked with our neighbors in the hall to make sure it was a false alarm. (It was; someone set her coat on a lamp and burned it.) The next day I was having dinner with my roommate (age 65) and several other people, and someone mentioned the fire alarm.

Roommate: Oh, that was the fire alarm?

Me: Yes. It didn't ring for very long because it was a false alarm.

Roommate: I thought it was your alarm clock. (pause) So, when you went into the hall, you were just checking on the situation?

Me: Yes.

Roommate: Hmmm. I thought you had gone out into the hall to have a little tryst.

That would have been much more fun. I'll try to arrange for that next time.