Now is the time of the impending trip when we realize just how many articles we foolishly signed up to write, to edit, and to assign before we go and we panic a little and start frantically setting up our phone interviews and then we give up and blog instead.
Let’s stop focusing on the wide world of dog news for a moment and focus instead on all the cool stuff Gene and I are hoping to do in London. Please chime in if you have further suggestions.
Stuff:
I’m sure it’s cheesy, but I’d kind of like to visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum. We’re reading Holmes for Finer Things this month, so it’s fresh in my mind.
Last time I really wanted to see the Museum of Childhood, but it was closed. This time we’re going! This is part of the excellent Victoria & Albert Museum and I hope will have miniatures and old toys and stuff.
We are staying a few minutes from Paddington Station, and we are so going to see the Paddington Bear statue. Finer Things forever!
I’d love to hear evensong at St. Paul’s again.
I am drooling to see some of the collections at the British Library, including the Treasures Gallery and one on evolution.
We’re staying very near Hyde Park, so we’ll take some walks through that and go look at the Princess Diana fountain again, because it was so neat. I wonder if the water will be frozen?
I cannot wait to take a trip to Warwick Castle. I went here with my folks on a day tour when I was 15 and I loved it; my first castle and it looked exactly like a castle should. Instead of taking a tour this time, we can take the train. Looks like there’s some neat Christmas stuff happening then as well — ice sculptures, giant Christmas tree, etc.
I hope we’ll also take a trip to Bath. It’s an hour and a half on the train. I went with the girls in ’97 and loved it; all the buildings are gold-yellow stone and it’s so beautiful. I expect to love it more now that I know a bit more about Jane Austen. (Jane Austen actually hated Bath, but she’s associated with it anyway. If I become famous, will I, too, be associated with the hateful places my family dragged me to on vacation? Mostly they dragged me to awesome, fun places. But maybe I’ll become associated with Tacoma or something.)
We’ll visit the Tower of London, and maybe see the crown jewels, because I like shiny things.
We’ll see the Peter Pan statue again at Kensington Gardens.
We will eat kebab. Every day. All day long. Kebab.
There are some nifty-looking exhibits at the British Museum, including “Clocks and watches,” “The Islamic World,” and “Living and Dying.”
We both love the Natural History Museum in New York, so we’d better check out the one in London.
We might ride the London Eye if we are brave enough and the weather stays dry enough. We could even take a mulled wine flight, if the combination of super high heights and disgusting mulled wine wasn’t likely to make me throw up a little.
I’d really like to see The Thief of Baghdad but I expect I will be doing this on my own. That’s okay though. I’ll go watch pretty dancers and the others can have boy time.
We might also try ice skating, although we’ll have to plan a lot of non-walking events for the next day, in consideration of my bruises.
And even though zoos hurt my heart, I still love seeing animals, so we might visit the London Zoo.