The second chapter of my Mom and Aunt Sue's autumn trip to Europe took us to London for four days. After a bit of a rushed trip to the train station (thanks French traffic and road works), we were comfortably seated aboard the high-speed Eurostar train from Paris' Gare du Nord to London's St Pancras. Even though the trip is extremely easy to make, it's only really affordable if you book well in advance (which we did), so Michael and I haven't actually done the trip yet. And it's one of those things that is so easy to do that we always assume we'll get around to it. Anyway, it took my Mom and Sue's trip as the motivating factor to get me back to London for the first time in more than 13 years. To be perfectly honest, the first time I visited London I wasn't a huge fan - my impression was that it was a big, dirty city where people lived in extremely small apartments for inordinate sums of money. Since that time, I have seen a LOT more of the world and my own perceptions of what a livable city looks and feels like have evolved. For starters, they speak English there! Big bonus compared to living in Paris as a native English speaker. It was also clear from the moment we arrived that people were generally more friendly and helpful; for example at every set of stairs, someone offered to carry my Aunt's luggage either up or down, and she was almost universally offered a seat on the tube by a younger man - the very demographic who in Paris are totally oblivious to these kinds of things. Over the course of the trip, we had the excuse of celebrating my Aunt Sue's early birthday to encourage us to indulge a bit in our dining excursions, from Shake Shack (ok, this was my choice) to pub dinners to an extremely elegant Afternoon Tea at the Oscar Wilde Bar. We also took a tour of the totally recreated Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which is a bit off the beaten path, but something I would definitely put in the not-to-miss category. If you happen to be in London during the summer months, it's worth looking into seeing a show there as well. We had just missed the window, but even just being inside the venue is still pretty spectacular for an unreformed English major. Not only did we learn a bit about Shakespeare and the theater, but my mom also found a very special "plague rat" at the gift shop, which is now in my collection as Baby Hogge's first stuffed animal. We are all very proud. The main event of the trip was Saturday evening out to see Michael Crawford in The Go Between at the Apollo in the West End. After the show, we waited with the masses for a meet and greet with the man himself. Good times had by all. On Sunday, we made a stop by the Churchill War Rooms, which is also very much worth a visit. The underground complex was the British government's command center throughout WWII, and remains pretty much in the same state it was in at the end of the war in 1945. Before heading back to Paris on Monday, our final stop was a ride on the London Eye. The weather really didn't want to cooperate, but we were lucky enough for most of the ride to have been in the sunshine. To view all of the photos of our trip to London (and Paris), visit the album.
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AuthorBecause why not get married and move to Paris to really kick off your thirties? Archives
December 2016
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