England 2015

The Marriott County Hall has a really fantastic breakfast room set up in what looks like a library, complete with old books on the shelves and a spectacular view across the Thames to Parliament and Big Ben.

We get our breakfast and select a prime table with a great view.

We’re talking about the day’s plans when I notice the breakfast hostess walking slowly across the room, looking at tables.

She looks towards ours, lights up, and briskly walks up, says “Excuse me, ma’am, I need to take this back.”

Yup. Kathy took the cheeseknife.

That would become a running joke throughout the trip. 🙂

After that, it’s off for our double-decker bus tour of London!

A slow start in traffic winds us around the Thames and Parliament/Westminster Abbey.

We get off at Buckingham Palace to see the Queen. And, in a lucky bit of timing, we’re there at exactly the right time to get a good spot on the ropes for the Changing of the Guard ceremony!

Very cool to see (and hear!) all of the pomp and circumstance, but one of the nicest treats was the charming British gentleman we met.

Mr. Maginnis, a British Army WWII veteran, explained a lot of the movements, the different uniforms, and even the individual badges on each saddle as the horses were led in for the outgoing Officers to ride back to their barracks.

I gave Mr. Maginnis a University of Texas bottle-opener/keychain – he was thrilled!

Back onto the bus and we’re off!

By the time we get to Marble Arch, we’re hungry, so we hop off and head over to Pret for a great lunch.

After that, a lovely afternoon walk across Hyde Park led us past some neat sights.

The girls had made a specific request to stop into Harrod’s of London for some (really high-priced!) shopping. Fortunately for all of us, they recognized that this was more of a “I’ve been there” event and not so much an “I’ve bought a lot of stuff there” event. 🙂

A few chocolates in a bag later (yummy!), we walk down towards the Natural History Museum.

It’s really cool, but it turns out to not have been the museum that LeAnn was actually wanting (that would’ve been The British Museum), so we think we have enough time to still make that before our evening plans.

A rainy walk to the bus stop (yay umbrellas!!), and an unfortunately too long wait on the bus, keep us from making that museum. The rest of the ride, though, was pleasant and a great way to see large chunks of London without walking!

A stroll through Trafalgar Square and a quick “bio stop” at the fanciest McDonald’s *ever*, and we’re off towards our evening plans!

We all like Indian food, and England has a reputation for excellent Indian cuisine, so after a few web searches and review readings, I had arranged for our dinner to be right around the corner from our theatre target for the evening. The restaurant, Sitar (which has since been closed and reopened under a new name/same place: Shapur), was well worth the effort – and the waiter was very accommodating with suggestions.

LeAnn won the night’s selection, though, with her main course. It was a prawn dish with coconut, but it was served in the *whole* coconut itself! We both had “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” flashbacks when it was presented, but fortunately no monkey brains! Just yummy yummy prawns!

A successful dinner behind us, it’s time to walk over to The Duchess Theatre to see “The Play That Goes Wrong”. I’m SO GLAD we selected this one, as we were laughing the entire time. The best review described it as if “The Mousetrap had been taken over by Monty Python”. SO MUCH FUN!

The evening weather was perfect, so we decided the short walk back to the hotel would give us some nice night views of the Thames, too, and we were *not* disappointed! Lots of great photos.

It was so tempting, that I made sure the girls made it back to the room, and I went back out to take some more!