On the road again: London

Hello! this is Jessica. We're back on the road. The Jubilee is back in full effect.

We've been in England about 48 hours, and so far have seen many red buses, many red phone booths, many brick row houses, heard many different languages and been rather wet, cold and wind blown.

We also have had some delicious vegan treats at cafes, and we found a movie theater where we could see Infinity War before too much time passed. We did that on our first night and it exhausted us so that we slept fairly well in our new time zone. I'm passing the post to WM now:

...[Well hello all of you beautiful other people! Yes, you heard me, OTHER PEOPLE. This is WM. On this trip we have managed to snag some of our friends with our amazing Thebus/O'Donnell snagging skills. We are not alone anymore! Hahahahaahahahha. Sorry, honestly I'm just happy that I can be with some other forms of life that I know personally besides these two forms of life.

In London, we spent the day with our close friends Rebecca and Sam, who are living there at the moment. We walked around the city and they showed us important stuff. Mostly though, we hung out and drank tea with them. That was the best-- Ok, my parents are bragging about their stupid matching tattoos right at the moment and there's nothing I can do except keep on listening to my weird music playlist and ignore them. I suppose that I could get a tattoo as well but I'm not allowed to until I'm 40 (I'm kidding. No tattoos. I swear) Oops, now my mom is snapping at us again. I think she might be suffering from other people withdrawal since we're alone for a bit now. Oh well, I guess I'll just hunker down and pretend that I don't exist.

Just to be clear, I love these guys so much. I'm not only pissed off at them. They're the best. Talk to you all soon! - WM]...

Thanks so much for that perspective, WM! This is Jessica again. True, I woke up irritable. I am in a time warp. It's fun/weird to be back in London after 30 years. Somehow 30 years seem to have passed since I was last here, although we came fairly often when I was a kid. The tube is still remarkably easy to use, but there are many new things. My childhood memories (also Nana's) are Hampstead Heath, Harrods, and Mme Tussauds wax museum. We'll see if we get there in our 3 short London stops on this leg of the journey.

I will add in the OTHER PEOPLE category that we also saw the remarkable Katy Janda who came all the way down from Oxford to see us in town. We began the process of luring her to come to Greece . . . And thanks to Martha Cotton, we had a beer in the Anchor Pub.

We finished up LONDON 1 by seeing Hamlet at Shakespeare's Globe, the title role played by Michelle Terry, a woman, and the new artistic director. She was excellent, the whole show was excellent, and getting to see what it may have felt like to sit in the Globe in Shakespeare's time was extremely exciting. It was both large and cozy, both formal and casual, both ornate and direct. Very moving start to the theater pilgrimage.

Also, it was cold and we were wearing 3 coats each and socks on our hands.

Next post--Stratford Upon Avon.