London

Our adventure started very early December 3rd. I was sitting in the car as Mom realized that our tickets were laying on the table, along with all our maps and tickets to the plays. What a disaster that could have been. We arrived at the airport at 5:30 in the morning. The flight from Germany to London was only an hour.

When we arrived we hit the ground running. We were so excited, we ran all the way up approximately 100 steps with our suit case (it was really heavy). The more the story gets told the higher the steps will be. To be completely honest, we slowed way down about 3/4 of the way up we were laughing so hard. A wise women told me, if you have a good laugh you add 7 years to your life. We added a lot of years during this trip. The first day was about 21 hours for us. We went on a red bus tour, hopped off, and saw the Tower of London with the crown jewels. The red bus was to slow for us so, the"tube" was the way we went. This was much faster and we are really good at it. Mom was nice enough to let me eat at the Hard Rock. The nice thing about Hard Rock is no matter were you are in the world they still have the same American style food. I did a little shopping there and we were off to Mom's first professional musical - Les Miserables. She absolutely loved it. It was my second time seeing it and it was still so amazing it brought a tear to my eye. We finally hit the bed around 11:00. Mom said, "a $2 bed would have looked just as good as a $200 bed."

Friday was just as busy as Thursday. We had a nice breakfast and then made our way to St.Paul's Cathedral. This cathedral was originally a protestant church. They modeled some of the work after St. Peter's in Rome. After touring around the bottom and envisioning myself walking up the main aisle marrying a Prince, we climbed all the way up to the top of the bell tower. It was a clear day so we/I could see for miles. Mom on the other hand, could only see the wall because she was to afraid to look out, but she did make it up and I'm proud of her. We also saw the Westminster Abbey Friday. This is where some of the early Kings and Queens are buried, where coronation's and famous funerals are held. I would say this a center piece of London. Our evening again was topped off with American food and a musical. We ate at the Texas Embassy - Mexican food. Our play that night was Wicked. I now can appreciate how much my good friend Aven loves it. The costumes, lighting, singing, acting - just everything. I can't wait to take my kids to it.

Our trip ended Saturday with the changing of the guard and a tour of Churchill's museum. I would recommend seeing this museum also. It was very interesting how things worked in war time. The thing that stays with me the most is that the secretaries couldn't tell their families where they were working. Some of Churchill's own secretaries would work up to 18 plus hours a day with him. I could go on but I hope you get the idea. We arrived home around 1am Sunday morning. We wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the trip. I really enjoyed my trip with my Mom. Thanks for going with me Mom. I love you and hope you had a happy birthday.