UK

And now for something completely different.

One highlight of our trip was the lack of complaining from our kids about the weather.  If we had come from L.A. where it is sunny and warm it would have been a problem, but since the weather in London is dark and damp like Denmark, the kids took it in stride.

Another highlight of the trip was our hostel.  We were able to get a family room, which meant two sets of bunk beds and our own bathroom.  Wii was available in the main lobby any time no one was watching a rugby match, so at 7 a.m. Arlo was entertained allowing Robin to sleep or read.  The kitchen was clean and fully stocked (minus an oven, which we learned after buying a pizza at a grocery store a few blocks away).  The staff answered our endless stream of questions and even sorted through their change to help add to Arlo's growing coin collection, including the Shield of Royal Arms set.

It was great to visit London without the jet lag.  We arrived, took our stuff to the hostel, and headed over to the London Eye.  With discount tickets from the hostel we were able to skip the queue, but we did see the 4-D movie (was the fourth dimension time since it took a while to watch it?  or should we assume it was the wind, the bubbles, and fog?).  When we finally made it onto the Eye the sun was just setting, which was great.  We were able to enjoy the view in the daylight initially and also evening views with all the lights later.  We even saw some fireworks, which were for delayed Guy Fawkes Night celebrations.

We enjoyed time with friends and visited the Tate Britain and Tate Modern and took the boat between the two.  We spent an entire day with a friend at the Science Museum followed by a fantastic dinner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant.  By now we were getting our fill of museums, but we did have a little time in the British Museum.  Arlo was excited to hold a coin from 400 B.C. and we all saw the Rosetta Stone, which is the same shape as our computer language program's icon.  The bad news was that we got lost leaving the museum, but the good news was that we found the Oxfam used book store and a place to buy fish and chips, minus the fish.

We had a received a tip to take the bus instead of the Underground, but were skeptical.  We gave it a try and were completely won over.  We saw many places we weren't going to visit this time and got to see the lights above Regent Street.  If we hadn't taken the bus we would never had known there was an Apple store (THE same one mentioned by Steve Jobs in his recent talk) near the seven-storey toy store.  Visiting Hamleys and the Apple store made us feel like we were on vacation, especially when Robin got to be among the first to try the new Xbox Kinect.

We wrapped up our trip with a visit to Trafalgar Square (no more pigeons!!) and a production of The Lion King.  It was sad and scary, but not like anything we had seen before.

I'll confess that one my favorite parts of the trip was being able to read the headlines on papers as we walked by a store.  We had little conversations with random people and we could understand everything people said to us. But it is good to be home, too.

p.s.  If you are interested in more pictures let me know and I'll send you a link.