SHATTERED

Hello from London.
Mom and I are officially cooked...overdone and ready to come home tomorrow!
We are spending the day lounging in and around our hotel today after two days in London SO JAM PACKED we can barely move today.
A quick shout out to new mom Carolyn! Congrats! I cannot wait to meet Mr. Justin.
So what have mom and I done in London? We started Friday with the Tower of London, photo opps with "beefeaters," the Crown Jewels and a bus ride around town. We saw Big Ben and Parliment. I think the Parliment Building is so lovely architecturally speaking. We used the TUBE (quite well if I may say) and just beat a massive rain shower as we headed to tea at a cute little Patisserie near our hotel. We then had an awesome Indian meal and did some shopping. We headed in early to watch "the Kumars" and get some rest for Saturday-which would prove to be make or break day.
We started early with a trip on the tube to St Paul's Cathedral. Another architecturally stunning building. However, I just needed to stop paying £8 to get into everything. So we had to chose; tour St Pauls or The Abbey---we chose the Abbey. We headed back out via tube to Westminster Abbey and qued for about 45 mins to get in. The Abbey is quite spectacular and it was neat to have an end to the Mary Queen of Scots story, seeing her tomb, as well as all the poets and other famous folk buried here. We then jetter over to the National Gallery where we saw works by Van Gogh, Monet, Seurat, VerMeer and many others. What a collection (and finally something that was free!). We then headed across the street the another church, St Martin in the Fields (also free) and spent some time in the crypt doing brass rubbings! Very cool. Next was a short taxi ride to the London Eye. The glorified ferris wheel was very slow and the lines were magnificent (even with pre bought tix)...but the views were pretty spectacular as it just so happenend to be SUNNY yesterday. At this point, we headed back to our hotel for a much needed nap, before our night at the theatre. We saw "Billy Elliot: The Musical" which was FANTASTIC! The child (one of three) who was cast as Billy was an amazing dancer. It was such a great show and one I'm sure would be very difficult to bring to the states as it is based much on social circumstances in Britain in the early 80's. So, NOW WE ARE SPENT.
We just had an English breakfast of eggs and bangers and took a walk through Hyde Park.
We head home in the morning and can't wait for some puppy loving. It will take me months to organize and compile my scrapbook of this trip. I can't believe we have been to Irelan, Scotland and Britain! London is a very interesting city: very expensive, extremely ethinically diverse and honestly, I didn't think any population could be more addicted to their mobile phones then American's but I was wrong---Europeans put us to shame!
So more tomorrow as I continue to process the trip
Knitty D