My feet hurt... a LOT.

.. But it's totally worth it!

My goodness, the days are already starting to melt together and we're having a hard time keeping it all separated! The last two days have been sort of epic and Thomas and I have about a gazillion pictures we want to share with you, but the wifi situation is seriously frustrating. So for now, text only (Read: this is a test to see which of you are our really good friends and who's really just in it for the pictures! ;)).

So Monday was our first real full day visiting the museums since most were closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We started off Monday by having one of the best breakfasts I've ever eaten at a place called The Riding House café (http://www.ridinghousecafe.co.uk/). Hands down, the best buttermilk pancakes I've ever had. I ordered the "full English breakfast" and it kept me full until mid-afternoon easily. I wasn't brave enough to try the "black pudding" (a wedge of dark black, hard-brownie looking thing), but everything else was delicious. The mocha Thomas ordered was also amazing.

After breakfast, we hopped over to the British Library and spent some time with the original sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, the hand written lyrics of the Beatles, the Gutenberg Bible and the Magna Carta. You know, the usual. We walked back towards the underground station where I was appallingly straight up ignored by a Red Cross worker with a clipboard who was very obviously soliciting for charity donations! Apparently I'm not as readily British-identifiable as I'd like to think I am. Made me sad. :(

So after that, we decided to hop over to Harrod's for a bit. For those of you who aren't familiar with Harrod's, it's London's biggest and probably most well known department store. Think Macy's in New York city, but BIGGER. It was ridiculously busy. Even I wasn't brave enough to wander in there for very long to fight the crowds, but we were in there long enough to slip through their "Pet Kingdom" in which you can buy any expensive-over-priced-thing you want for any pooch of your choosing. Not only that, but they had a pet salon. Like, get your pet groomed in style. It was crazy. I have pictures.

We hightailed it out of there rather quickly, and ended up back at the British Museum where Thomas was in absolute heaven. Now when I go to museums, I sort of have an attention span limit. I'll read most of the little placards for the first say, 30 minutes or so, then I just start looking at cool things and skimming through the verbage. Thomas wants to. Read. EVERYTHING. Literally. Luckily (for me), we only had about 1.5-2 hours before they closed, so we ended up not staying too long. I think if he had more time, Thomas would quite literally spend an entire day there and read every single word about every single thing they had.

After the museum we headed home to recoup (aka Thomas passed out for a solid hour), then we wandered the streets for a place to eat. We ended up at this quirky, but authentic looking Italian place where the owner greeted us at the door in  Italian and shook our hands and made plenty of recommendations. It was the kind of place where he brought us our food, asked if we'd like pepper on our pasta, I said no, Thomas said no, but he decided Thomas' dish should have pepper anyway and asking was basically just a courtesy not intended to actually be adhered to. LOL. Thomas' face was priceless.

Oh, and did I mention that it's been raining and super windy the last two days? It was positively miserable!

Luckily yesterday was a bit better with the exception of one part. So for Tuesday, Christmas Eve, we had a big day planned. We started off having breakfast at another little bakery/café I had found, called the Fleet River Café. Super tasty and in our neighbourhood which was great. Afterwards, we hopped over to Trafalgar Square where the tree sent from Norway is held, and there's also a rather large fountain, the National Gallery, and most of the theaters. We were seeing the Nutcracker at the Coliseum, so we had some time to kill before our show at 1 pm.

Well, Thomas and I decided to pick up our tickets at will call, then wandered all the way down to Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings and Westminster Abbey, which was fantastic, until it started POURING on us on the way back. (My mind rewound to the earlier part of the morning when I asked him "Hey, do you think we'll need our umbrella today?" His answer: "Nah, we should be fine." Sigh. I should know better.) Anyway, we ended up going to a lovely production of the Nutcracker positively drenched.

After the show we grabbed a quick snack at a wonderful pub called The White Swan (literally every pub I've seen is some color of animal, or "ye olde...." pub, and is claiming to have the oldest brewed beer in casks or what have you). I had an amazing chicken pot pie I won't be likely to forget anytime soon and a Blue Moon (I just needed something that tasted of home). After that we wandered around Covent Garden and the markets for a few minutes, then went back to the hotel room for a 45 minute break before heading out to dinner.

I had reserved a Christmas Eve dinner at a little restaurant that had gotten great reviews online called the Corner Room. It was a bit far from our hotel, but seemed innovative and interesting, and it was inside a hotel. Well. The entire dinning room was about the size of Thomas' classroom. I shit you not. LOL. He was like... that's it?  Anyway, 5 courses later, I'm not sure exactly what  I ate, and I'm pretty sure the food was more sophisticated than I am. It was good, but we probably wouldn't go back again.

After that, we took the underground over to Westminster Abbey where we stood in the rain for nearly an hour for the 11:45 pm Christmas Eve service. This was absolutely outstanding. If ANY of you ever have the change to do this, GO! Westminster Abbey is beautiful enough as it was, but to actually be there for a Christmas eve service (which by the way, was broadcasted on the BBC), was absolutely incredible. So memorable. Yes it was late. Yes the entire place smelled of incense. And yes, we were pretty wet and miserable waiting, but all in all, definitely worth it. Not to mention that it was just amazing to be sharing such a wonderful experience surrounded by Aussies, Italians, Brits, everyone. Truly a one-of-a-kind experience.

Anyway, after that, we had to walk home. Did I mention there is no tube service on Christmas Day? Since the service ended around 1 am, we walked home and got in our hotel around 2 or so. I think we finally passed out around 3:30 am or so. Such an epic day! (which also accounts for why we slept in until 10 am this morning!)

Whew!  I'm exhausted just recounting all of this again. I do hope all of you are having a wonderful Christmas! I'll write another post later about what we did today, but it was also amazing and luckily the weather has been lovely. :)

Merry Christmas to you all, we miss you guys!

Cathy