The 2nd trip to London

For Mom's final days in Europe, we hopped back over to London to spend the night since she was flying out of London on Saturday, the 21st. Since we were only there for a day, we just ran around the city trying to accomplish that which we did not while there the first time. Most notably visiting Buckingham Palace. A few pictures below.

Unfortunately, on the day we arrived there was no changing of the guard so we didn't get to see that. However, we did get to see a cool horse-drawn carriage go in and out of the gates. They picked up some guy inside the gates (no one famous that we could tell) and they went for a little ride. Other than that, there's some cool gardens/grounds to see around the castle but we didn't really walk around in there. Mom really wanted to see the traditional guards who weren't there.
Thankfully, we ran into an "official" guard along the way from the palace. Mom was overjoyed.

After seeing Buckingham Palace, we headed over to Picadilly Circus where the majority of the theare in London can be found, as I mentioned before. In an effort to be rid of me for a few hours, Mom graciously purchased me a ticket to see Chicago. It was AMAZING. The Bob Fosse choreography alone was worth the time. I sat in an amazing seat since we bought the ticket from a street vendor who specialized in half price tickets. I was in the orchestra and pretty close to the stage. The women who played Velma and Roxie weren't all the spectacular but all the other actors were wonderful and very talented. I was so excited to see these numbers performed live.

After the show, I met back up with Mom who spent the afternoon wandering around being a tourist and taking pictures. We decided on a traditional pub dinner and we were served by the most British girl ever. She definitely used to be a barmaid turned server. But she was pleasant. Mom had fish and chips again with an ale and I had sausages and potatoes with an ale. It was a wonderful way to end our trip in London. Our hotel room was decent enough though it had the tiniest bathroom with a shower you have ever seen. If airplanes had showers with bathrooms inside, our hotel was the proof. Needless to say, we both banged our head and various body parts while trying to shower. It was entertaining, at least. We got a "traditional" English breakfast from our hotel as well. It was called "traditional". I would call it a hard-boiled egg, toast, tea and coffee. Oh well. Mom flew home Saturday morning and I flew back to Marseille to spend another night with Laurent and the family before finally returning home on Sunday night via the ever exciting train.

I had a wonderful time with my mom being a tourist and seeing so much more of cities I have already visited and many that I had not. I'm so grateful my mom was able to visit me and I won't forget this trip.

Here are all the pictures from this trip if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/LondonWithMomNumber2#