April 14th-16th, 2010

Lori's account of London:

Our exciting trip to Europe began on April 14th, 2010.  We flew out of Little Rock to Chicago and from Chicago to Heathrow airport in London.  We landed at about 10:30 and splurged on a taxi to our room, which cost us about 70 dollars.  Later on we were much more familiar with the 'Tube' and buses and would have been smarter to have taken a shuttle to our room, but it was late at night and we were tired.

In our effort to adjust to the time change, we would go to bed at 2 in the morning (with an ambien of course), and sleep till 10.  Our first morning there, we turned on the news and discovered the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland (pronounced here ), had erupted just hours before and had grounded all air traffic in northern Europe.  If our flight had left just hours later, no telling where we would have ended up!  We felt very blessed to have arrived safe and sound. 

Our hotel room in London was very nice, they even upgraded us to a corner suite. We had a gorgeous view of the city from two different perspectives.  We would've really liked to have gotten out of the city and seen some of my mission areas but our time in London was very limited, so we spent all of it in the city.  We saw the changing of the guard, Buckingham palace, Westminster Abbey, and found the fish and chips and Cornish pasties that I have been craving for years,  (29 years to be exact!)

We toured the city on the double decker bus.  We ate English pasties for lunch and took the red bus tour.  We stopped at Hamley's, Europe's largest toy store.  Dad bought magic tricks there to impress his grandkids.  We got off the bus at Picadilly Circus and after leaving Hamley's we ran to the theater, barely making it in time to catch Oliver.  We did a lot of walking, crossing the river Thames on Waterloo bridge and even ate delicious biscuits (cookies) for snacks!

We banked at Barclay's and at Westminster Abbey, Dad was a little put off by the fact that we were walking on top of the corpses of their kings, poets, and statesmen, buried beneath the church. As foreigners, we weren't allowed into the Parliament building, but we went to the Harrod's department store where I fell in love with the food displays.  Dad couldn't get me away from them! In most bathrooms in Europe, you have to pay to use them.  One lady came out, astonished, declaring "50 p....to wee!"