A quick trip to London

Best part: The colors in the parks.

Beatles M&Ms at Leicester Square

An evening with Book of Mormon

The actual reason we were there.

Actors!

Making a monster.

The Mire.

1/2 our hotel room.  So posh.

Ian and I did a quick trip to London this weekend.  As he puts it "She came to Moscow for me, so..." because it boiled down to a trip for a Dr. Who event and you really have to love someone to go all that distance for Dr. Who. I got the better end of the deal too, as I had a great time in Moscow.

Even cooler though, this lovely lady joined us in London.

My mom!

Wednesday we arrived in beautiful sunny London and joined our former DCM in Amman at her home for a dinner.  So great to see her and bring her a little piece of Amman in the form of a hanging lamp taken from our soon-to-be-demolished Oasis restaurant.  It's actually an ugly piece of art, but sentimental value goes a long way.

Since I hand-carried the lamp there, I had room in my bag. We're now the proud owners of one of these.  Every place we stay at in London has one of some sort, and we became rather attached to a colored-light-changing version in Northern Ireland.  This one lights up, but doesn't change color that we know of.  Honestly, we knew we were going to get one, basically forgot about it when we were on the ground, passed a grocery store and remembered, and bought the only one they had:

Sainsbury's Black Illuminating Kettle
Bring on the tea!

On Thursday we didn't have any plans, but at the dinner Wednesday night, another guest mentioned the British Library and how they have an original Magna Carta.  We were sold and it was an easy walk from the hotel (the British Museum was literally around the corner from our hotel but we never made it there).  What we didn't realize is they have a little of everything (not surprising to anyone but us apparently). A Tyndale Bible.  Hand-written Beatles lyrics on the back of an envelope. Original scores from Beethoven.

We learned it actually was a cry for help.  The handwriting change says it all.

Written music, before music was written. Mass-printed documents from hundreds of years before Gutenberg. A letter from Ann Boleyn with a post script by King Henry VIII asking someone or other to hurry up with Henry's divorce.  The British Library is a working library with exhibitions and was a highlight of our trip.

Since the weather was being Londony, we continued downtown and hopped a riverboat to Greenwich where we straddled 0* longitude.  Truly there wasn't enough time do the whole place in one afternoon as we skipped over the Maritime Museum entirely and mistakenly chose to see a planetarium show rather than stick with the longitude exhibition and see the observatory. As we put it, now we have a reason to go back.

East meets West.

That night Ian and I saw "The Book of Mormon."  Enough on that :)

Friday was Dr. Who day. Not a convention, but an indoor Festival at the Excel. It was a small event, with scheduled timings to see some of the actors, the writers, the assistant directors, the artists and special effects companies, with plenty of Daleks and Tardises for photos. There was no pushing, no real crowd, and plenty of opportunity to ask questions, especially of the special effects folks.

Dinner at "The Blue Door" meant eating at the hotel.  Though we didn't have a reservation, the restaurant was largely empty by 8 p.m. but the kitchen still busy and we discovered it was due to a Mathematics gathering in the meeting room downstairs.  I guess they were hungry mathematicians.

And then Paris happened.

And we came home.