Journey to Paolo

Slow going this morning, Jenny's last day here and the girls are totally bummed. They've already invited themselves to stay at her house .. But for P it's conditional she wanted to know what Jen had to eat at her house.

We hopped the train into the City and stopped up to Leicester square; they have a half price ticket booth. The whole place was jam packed with people lined up for the Harry Potter movie. The stars are walking the red carpet tonight less than a mile away from where we were. There have been people camping out for 10 days.


We sent this picture to my brother and told him the show was great; they're huge Potter fans- tee hee.

Half Price tickets were a bust, so we walked up Regent street passed Hamley's toy shop, a store over 250 years old. On the big bus they said they had a whole floor devoted to Harry Potter, well, I'm not sure a 5' aisle counts but it wasn't quite what we were expecting. 7 floors of toys not quite FAO but some interesting stuff. O purchased marbles and P fiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnaaaaaaalllllly settled on a puppet after I put the Kabosh on yet Another stuffed animal.

So onward up to 221b Baker street.. Here's a clue to who lived there



That's right, Sherlock Holmes museum. If it's kitchy, you'll find us there.


Lots of fun poking around, I haven't read enough of Conan Doyle to be considered a fan but O- the fan of mysteries- was thrilled. P was more interested in the old potty and the creepy mannequins.

From there to Regents Park, P chased pigeons and O tried to catch a heron. Wandered the park to the playground


They have beautiful parks here, we've had great luck with them not being too crowded. This was one of three different play spaces all fenced in. It was lovely and peaceful until 3 school boys came in and started exchanging insults about their mothers. Wish I had had a bar of soap.

We raced up to Mile End station to meet Paolo, we were only an hour early, so twist our arms, we hit the pub. Finally it was time and we waited a half hour outside the tube station only 1/2 mile from where he was waiting. Found him eventually, and off we went for bangers and mash at the Coburn pub.


The flower pot is actually an ashtray.. one of the random facts I can supply.

Traveled back to the house, home by 9:30.. Ouch. Long day, thank goodness for sticker books otherwise I don't think the girls would be halfway as well behaved as they have been.

Mom and Jen have a 6am flight to Milan. They're out the door at 4am; Dennis called and he'll be coming home a bit early, he's been missed. We leave for Utrecht early Saturday morning and Mom will join us on Tuesday. Cannot wait, I get to see Arja! She and i were in Turkey together as exchange students, we haven't seen each other since she visited San Francisco with Alan (too) many many years ago.

I'm exhausted and hope I'm still making sense, if not I'll make corrections tomorrow, I have grand plans of sleeping in.

~Sarah