Chim chiminey chim chiminey...

Chim chim cher-ee
A sweep is as lucky
As lucky can be...

We LOVED London.  I feel like I say that about every place we go, but again, we had a really great trip.  We went with Kika and Greg, some good friends from the squadron.  Greg and Taylor have been good friends for a few months since Greg got here in February.  Kika finally arrived in June and we've had so much fun :) 

We left on Saturday morning, bright and early and took a Ryan Air flight from Treviso to Stansted Airport.  Ryan Air is a discount airlines with incredibly cheap flights through out Europe.  We had heard some horror stories about charging a ton of extra money for overweight (22lbs) bags and ensuring they are exact dimensions for carry on luggage, including purses in your carry on bag, tiny little seats, and crazy lines.  We got a good tip from someone to pay an extra 4 Euros to have Priority boarding.  And boy was it worth it!  We were in a small group of about 15 people to board first and we were able to sit in the emergency exit rows which had more leg space then any flight I've ever been on, including my flights to Italy and Korea!  (Can you tell I've never flown first class!!??)  So besides the flight attendants selling everything from bus passes to cigarettes and lottery tickets on the flight, (a no smoking flight...ironic, huh?) it was actually GREAT!

How British can we get...on the train ride from the airport to downtown London, there was an English man reading Harry Potter aloud to a little boy next to him.  I seriously considered sitting right next to him to have Harry Potter read to me as well!  I loved it.  When we got into the train station, Kika and I were looking for Platform 9 and 3/4...we were in the wrong station though!

Once in London we checked into our hotel and started wandering.  We were told we should do a "hop on, hop off" Big City Tour Bus.  They were all over London and stopped at all the main tourist attractions and had a bus running every 10-15 minutes.  We purchased a two day pass and learned quite a bit of information from the tour guides with running commentary along the routes.

For example...there were some streets with extremely wide doorways.  Story is, back in the day when the roads were full of dust and mud, those members of "high society" would be carried out of their homes on a chair type contraption with 2-4 people carrying them so as not to dirty their dresses.  Those carrying the chairs would yell, "chair, ho" (or something that sounded like that...) as they entered the street...hence giving us the very British saying of "Cheer-io"

We passed by the hotel where Elizabeth Taylor has spent FOUR of her honeymoons...FOUR.  That just seems like bad luck.  I'm sure it was all the hotel...

We passed by Baker Street...highly famous for a fictional character.  The home of Sherlock Holmes.  The actual address still recieves letters to this day to help solve mysteries.

We did all of the touristy things such as...Buckingham Palace, changing of the guard, the Tower of London, which is actually a palace/castle (I was not aware...you may be more informed than me), Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Westminister Abbey, the original Hard Rock, among many other things!

Okay, it was at this point I was planning to include the pictures.  I've been trying to open the files and I can't get them open right now.  Also as I type this and watch Chelsea Lately on tv, my AFN stopped working.  It now says Technical Difficulties have Interrupted our Programming.  Please Stand By.  So I will say the same to you.  Please Stand By, I will have pictures posted soon.  Later.

I'll tell you why it's not working, because I just took Taylor to the airport today for his deployment.  I swear, my AC is going to break, my fridge will go out and I'll probably have some car trouble now that he's out of town!  No, but really, he's on a flight up to Ramstein.  He'll be spending about 2 days in Germany and then he will head over to Kyrgyzstan until hopefully only middle of January (6 months).  I was a bit sad, only a few tears before he left.  He told me I couldn't cry at the airport :)  I did a pretty good job. 

Rosario told Taylor he was going to take care of me, not to worry!  We went over to visit for a few minutes today so Taylor could say goodbye to him, and Rosario started crying as we were leaving!  He's so sweet, he said "oh, you're good friends, good friends!"  Although, I think he's confused and thinks Taylor is going to Afghanistan because he kept talking about the Al Qaida and living in the sides of mountains.  But either way, no worries, I'm in good hands :) 

Alright, pictures will come soon, when my computer begins following instructions!