I'll start this off by saying that we are all moved into our house and love it except for one small fact....we still do not have phone and internet. We have been "battling" for lack of a better word with the phone and internet companies here and still haven't gotten very far. I promise when we have internet at home I will be much better about keeping everyone posted on our adventures.
Ok...back to November....
We moved into our house on November 16th. This was a crazy day filled with lots of unpacking and cleaning. I'm a spaz and insisted that we get everything unpacked that weekend before we took off for London on the 22nd, so within a few days the house was in order and everything was put in it's place. We did a little bit of shopping and bought some rugs, lamps, etc. and it started to feel like home very quickly since we had all of our own furniture from the states. We were REALLY excited to sleep in our own bed again! I will post pictures of our house on the next post, I forgot to take some before we came over to Toni and Warren's house to use the internet. We are all ready for guests and can't wait for people to visit!
On November 22nd (Thanksgiving) we ate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our friends Ben, Stacy, Luvy and their kids. After breaking out of our food coma we drove to Frankfurt and hopped on a plane to go meet up with Toni and Warren in London for the weekend. On Friday we started the day at the London Tower and had a great tour from one of the famous Beefeaters. We also got to see the Crown Jewels that are housed at the London Tower. We then walked across the Tower bridge and went to Bourough Market for a GREAT lunch. This market is all local organic food venders and sell all different types of food from ostrich meat to traditional London meat pies. After lunch we walked down to Big Ben and Parliament and followed Rick Steeves' walking tour to see many of the major landmarks including Buckingham Palace and Trafalger square. We almost had to change our route when we got to the main road (Parliament/Whitehall street) of our walking tour when we saw police tape with the whole road blocked off. We asked the officer what was going on and she responded "don't worry, it won't be long now....the naked man on the statue has come down." Apparently no matter where you go, somebody wants their 15 seconds of fame :). We stumbled upon a beer festival at a really neat little pub in town and spent the rest of the night trying some really great beer from all over the world.
On Saturday we started the day at Westminster Abbey and did an audio tour. I really wish we could have taken pictures, this church is amazing! We walked to the Churchill war rooms from there and got to see London's "home base" or operating center during WWII. This was really interesting and I learned a lot about the war from a different perspective and about Churchill himself. It was a rainy day, but we still walked quite a bit. We split from Toni and Warren and Brandon and visited St. Pauls Cathedral and the Handel Museum (which is his old house). We got to stand in the room where the Messiah was composed....pretty awesome! There was a string quartet and a vocalist practicing in the house while we were there, so we even had some great music with our tour. We met up with Toni and Warren again at a little pub and turned in pretty early after a long day.
On Sunday Brandon and I did the city walking tour and saw the sights of the old city of London. We also went to the Queen's gallery and saw part of the changing of the guard outside of Buckingham Palace. We visited the National Gallery and called it a day.
To avoid a crazy long post I will call it a day for now. Check back in a week or so for a new post with some pictures of our house and of some Christmas markets :)
We miss everyone!!
Merry Christmas!!
