A quick trip to London

Sometimes a photo just grabs you. This is my almost empty glass on a trip to London. You can see the wonderful James Avery silver ring...it's my prized possession.  It's a solid ring, worn on my thumb, that has the Cross.  It serves as a reminder of many things.  But also to watch my p's and q's! 

Sweetheart and I visited London and France in May of this year. SO enjoyed it!  I had visited London in 1975 on my own, so it was different to visit on a Rick Steves' tour and also with my sweetheart.  He makes traveling different.  In a good way.

I have an interest in chimneys...and doors.  Not sure why other than the fact that they are all different, but serve the same purpose.

We didn't get to visit inside the buildings to see where all these chimneys led, but I enjoyed the look of them. I can't imagine building them or what is involved in doing so.  Some skills are simply beyond me.  But in most cases, there are always lots of them.  Which maybe tells me that they serve many different parts of the buildings underneath.

And on all of our trips, we bring Domo with us.  Mostly because it's fun.  Or maybe also because we can throw him into the photos and he just stands there, doing what we tell him to do.

In this case, he had wandered into a toy and game shop in London, and decided to await our pleasure underneath this old rocking horse. 










The same store had Easter eggs:

I thought the one shaped like a lady was odd enough to include.  They also had neat wooden, carved ones.

And there was something else that one doesn't see very often:

Lunch time Bible talks!  I do wonder who comes to these and what they discuss.  It would have been interesting to hear the subject matter chosen for this day, but we were not there at the right time. Glad to see that the Bible is still featured there, though.








As is chocolate:

Ooooh, this was dark and yummy!

Can't you imagine delving into these chocolate boats of flavor?!  Totally out in the open, in nice wooden bowls, ready to be sampled and purchased. Yum.

Chocolate was VERY big in London.  We saw variants everywhere.

Turned out that Domo was thirsty, so we stopped into a local drinkery....and actually, it was probably really a restaurant.  I think we maybe visited one pub on our trip.  Just not our thing to be in a group and hanging out in something like a bar....even though it's a different cultural experience over there.

Domo followed up with some food:

I don't know how often he eats like this, but apparently, he was quite hungry for serious food at this point in the trip.  Maybe it's from being stuck into pockets all day.  
We went on a foodie walk, sampling curry, and bagels and chocolate and beer and oh yeah, pork!

St John's Bread and Wine.  They use the entire pig from the snout to the tail.  Which sounds rather disgusting at first blush, but was in fact the spot for a quite wonderful (if high fat!) sandwich:

Moist, flavorful and quite delicious.  Even as it glistened with juicy fat...

And Domo appeared again

Some folks just show up in time for dessert. At least he deigned to wave to us..








And no red white and blue trucks for British mail: oh no!  They gotta have the Queen's insignia on the vehicles.

And just in case you thought only the French did the love locks thing, here's proof they are not alone:

In France, the locks made the fence of the bridges so heavy, they were in danger of falling over and into the water of the Seine.  So mostly they are seriously discouraged. Not sure if this is a new love locks area in Lonson, or if earlier ones had been cut off and people were starting again. 

As I looked at these again while planning this post, I thought of a lot of things.  Why spend money on something that will just get cut off or destroyed?  In my mind, memorialize your love by telling your sweetheart or hugging and kissing them.  But perhaps that's just me!

We did have a wonderful visit to London.  And we walked our dogs off!  Four, five, six hours each day.  Well worth it, but it did mean we didn't do any late night sightseeing or theater.  Truthfully, we aren't really theater people.  But we did enjoy our visit, very much.