A Weekend in London

A Weekend in London
February 2004

Carmella asked me what we were gong to do to celebrate her 60^th birthday.

“You mean what are we goingt o do that your husband isn’t interested in doing”, I asked her with a sligh condisending tone.

“Yes, what are we going to do that Tom doesn’t want to do?” she responded without any damage to my tone.

I thought for a moment and then responded, “We are going to London for a weekend.”  I felt pretty smug with this great response.

“London!!” she responded with great, great delight.

And so it was that we went to London for a long weekend in February.  Tom picked me up at 4PM from work and drove the two of us to the airport.  I think he was just as happy to be left behind, as we were to be going to London for a long weekend. We had a 730 PM flight and arrived in Heathrow around 730 in the morning.  We made our way to our hotel and we were allowed to check in early.  We slept until noon and the headed out to Harrods’s for lunch.  From there we found our way to the half price ticket kiosk and picked up tickets to see the evening show of The Lion King.  Prior to the show, we found a hotel to have afternoon High Tea.  After the show, we found a local pub, had a quick pint of ale and then called it a night.

On Saturday, we started with a big English breakfast.  The bacon and grisly sausage were hard to eat but I reminded myself that they were no more vulgar than our bacon and scrapple.  After breakfast, we ran over to the Thames River and took a leisurely boat tour. Then it was off to the half price ticket booth again for tickets to a matinee and an evening show.  We picked two shows that were strictly British.  In between shows, we went for high tea yet again. And after the final show, we found another pub to finish off the night.

On Sunday, we had yet another English breakfast with stewed tomatoes and blood pudding and thick sausages and running eggs. We popped into the Victoria and Albert Museum for the better part of the morning.  Then we hopped on the tube and made our way to the airport.  We were home in Philadelhia by 10:00PM and I was back at work the next mornig, bragging about my adventurous weekend.