Sunday, November 14, 2010

It's London, Baby!

London has been at the top of my travel list for such a long time and I have to say it did not disappoint! This was a complete vacation. Chris had no meetings, conferences, or business calls. We started our day off by eating a fantastic burger with fries and all the ketchup we wanted. No paying for packets here! Then we headed to Westminster Abbey for an amazing tour.
The Abbey was incredible. I had no idea how many people were interred there.



We took a long river walk from St. Peter's to Tower Bridge/Tower of London. The only bad weather we had!




The next morning we headed back to Tower of London and had a great tour by a "Beefeater". My favorite was seeing the crown jewels. We were the first ones in the building so we kept riding the moving sidewalk back and forth in front of the jewel cases. No pictures allowed, of course.

Chris's highlight of the trip has to be the International Rugby Match we went to at Twickenham. England played the New Zealand All Blacks. We took a train to the stadium, bought some scalped tickets and had an amazing time.


Since Chris played Rugby in high school and college, this has been a dream to see one of these matches. The stadium hold 82,000+ and was a sell out match.



Great view!


I love this game. Can you see the guy that is about to get punched in the kidney?





Okay, you might ask why would I took a picture of a guy behind us that is sleeping. Between the halves, this gentleman decided he had a little too much to drink and puked all over. Luckily his friend was with him and took him for "a walk". He came back and sat right behind Chris and we joked a little with him and he even pretended to use Chris's hood to vomit in. He passed out shortly after that and all was quiet until 5 minutes before the game was over. Two mistakes were made: one, that his friend handed him a half empty beer cup which induced him into vomiting and two, that his friend was holding the cup for him. So not only did drunk old guy barf on himself, but on his poor friend too! We actually sat with the guy that sold us the tickets and all his friends. Great way to enjoy the environment and camaraderie. Beer was spilled, fried foods were eaten, T-shirts were shot into the crowd inducing riots, and there was singing in unison. The final score was England 16-26 New Zealand.
You can't go to London and not have curry (at least in Chris's mind that's true) so after the game we went to an Indian restaurant and had some lip-burning, eye-watering curries.


Our last day in London we went to Buckingham Palace and just happened to be there for changing of the guard. We had a great walk in St. James Park and then around Parliament Then because Chris made me eat curry I got to go to Harrods for some shopping!
I can't wait to get back there. Three days was just not enough time!