London Lagniappe

Purchased at the St. Pancras Station. American peanuts - Belgian chocolate - made in England? It doesn't get any better than this combination. These were indeed lekker!

Jim insisted we go in this store and it was pretty amazing. It may be hard to tell from this picture, but this entire store was full of umbrellas.

This picture is just one little corner. No wonder they've been in business since 1830.

It rains a lot there.

London is gearing up for the Olympics in 2012. Perhaps if we are still here we may try to attend an event. There will be about 10 million tickets available beginning in March 2011. The average ticket is supposed to cost around 40 pounds for which you can probably watch something like badminton. The opening ceremony ticket will cost you a symbolic 2,o12 pounds. Clever, huh? And outrageous.

Fish 'n' Chips.

'nough said.

On our first evening in London, we met Ross's friend Lauren for a drink at the Shakespeare. She has been studying in London and was actually supposed to already be back in the States. She was one of the victims of Heathrow's closure. She did get to depart the following day and, unlike some others, made it home for Christmas. Oh, and I was there. Just didn't make it into the picture :)

No doubt you've heard of this store.

It's the most famous department store on the planet.

Harrods.

The store is huge. It occupies a 5-acre site, has over a million sq. ft. and has been in business since 1824. It's also high end so there's really nothing affordable. No surprise it burned to the ground in 1883. Fire and London just seem to go together. And in December 1983, the Provisional IRA (Irish Republic Army) set off a car bomb outside the store killing 6 people. Once again in 1993, the store was targeted by the IRA with another smaller car bomb. This time there were injuries, but no deaths.

FYI - The IRA is the Irish Republic Army and although it has been declared no longer operational, it was a group dedicated to ending the Union between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Just this year, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings for 1.5 billion pounds. The previous owner was Mohamed Al-Fayed. Sound familiar? His oldest son, Dodi, died along with Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997. Oooh, that Al-Fayed.

So, yeah, we went there and we shopped, but it is the most confusing maze of a million sq. ft. I've ever seen. We split up and were to meet back in an hour. I immediately got lost and it took the remainder of the hour just to get back to our meeting place. Oh, and did I mention there were also a million other people shopping there too?

This is the first ice machine I've seen in all of Europe.

You have to make your own ice at home 'cause ice is not available by the bag at the Jiffy Mart either.

Quite a commodity here. I guess.

Ross noticed this sign amid the signs for pedestrians on a busy city street.

Guess this is for the Household Cavalry. We thought it was funny.

Piccadilly Circus is an area of London similar to Times Square in New York only much smaller.

This is one of the stations in the Underground - aka subway.

We were impressed with the Underground and took advantage of it. We would have used it exclusively to avoid taxis, but of course it was shut down for Christmas Day and naturally they had a strike the day after.

On Christmas Day we had lunch at the hotel.

The menu included herring, of course. It was actually quite good - well, all but the herring.

We all got these crackers and a little box of streamers and whistles for New Year's.

I'm sure you know that Londoners drive on the wrong side of the road so in an effort to keep people like me from getting run over, every intersection has Look Left and Look Right painted on them. EVERY intersection. And it's a good thing - it's harder than you think.

We kind of felt like the family in A Christmas Story by having Christmas dinner at the Crispy Duck. As you can see, on Christmas Day they open. We were expecting them to break out in Deck the Hars, but they didn't.

So, that's my view of London, mate. It was a jolly good experience, hope to bloody go back, and like Ross said, it almost seemed like cheating since they speak English as their first language :)

Cheerio, old chap!