London Slide Show

Hi! I'm back! I returned from our trip to London late last night. What a whirlwind!! I've never had 4 days fly by so fast in my whole life. I am not sure where to start, to tell you about my trip. I can first start by saying, we had a wonderful time. Nancy and I are a real team and she's the best person to travel with. Even though she ended up being in control of the map the whole time, she did a fabulous job getting us around the city! We didn't even end up getting lost once! I can only imagine what would have happened had I been the one in charge of navigating. We'd probably still be on the Tube somewhere trying to find our way back.

I don't want to bore you with a lot of details... here are the most important points.

1. I learned that the food in London isn't really that great and it was proven by a very grisely hamburger across the street from the St. Paul's Cathedral. ick.

2. The best food was found at a pasta place down in Covent Garden. We enjoyed some pasta dishes that were so awesome, we went back again and had the same thing again the next day.

3. London is the cleanest city I've ever been in, including the subway system. Even the tracks were clean!

4. It was extremely easy to get around. The tube is the best when it comes to traversing the city. My one small bit of advice if you ever go there, get an Oyster card for your stay- the other Travel cards never work. Just ask Nancy.

5. There is a Starbucks on every corner. Several times during our stay, we felt like we were really in NYC. The two cities are quite similar.

6. The staff at the Mercure hotel probably were relieved that we left yesterday. I was kind of a high maintenance guest with many many requests.

7. Nancy and I definitely recommend doing the Jack the Ripper walking tour while in London. What a blast! And if you can, request Chris as your tour guide, he rocked!

8. The majority of our London purchases were Ribbon, Cord, Leather, and Buttons. Also purchased Lucite beads, some glass strands, a very cool leather Madame butterfly belt, a funky ring, and a souvenir for my sister. I'll show these in the next post.

9. V.V. Rouleaux is the best place to buy trimmings in London, as long as you can stand the grumpy clerk that works there. Hrumph.

10. There are barely any large bookstores in all of London, since their large Borders closed down. We walked for miles looking for some magazines, and never found a single british beading magazine in our seaching.

11. There is a lot of development going on in London right now and many many large cranes that were used in building up new skyscrapers along the Thames River. This made for difficult picture taking.

12. They don't believe in air conditioning on the subway. This makes things awkward when a really really hot guy on the train is trying to help 2 girls get from point A to B when there is a lot of stinky sweaty smells in the air, and we are crammed into a car like sardines and face to face with said hot guy. Yes. very awkward indeed. just ask nancy.

Well, that's it for now. I'll post more about my trip tomorrow.