Paddington and Chocolate Moose

Spent the weekend in London with John- he was working and I was playing. We both went in on Thursday night, and then on Friday I cultivated some monster blisters by walking around the city for hours in shoes that I hadn't worn in about 8 months. Clever girl. It was funny...I could have been in any major city in the world...there were tourists EVERYWHERE.

I met up with John and Michelle for dinner...we went to the Dim Sum restaurant that my family used to go to when we were seeing plays in London. The food was SO good (although not quite NYC Chinatown). My only real memory of how to find the restaurant was that it was around a corner in Chinatown, off the main drag, and that the restaurant had a big section downstairs. So when I was wandering around during the afternoon, I stumbled upon Chinatown, went to where I thought the restaurant had been, and POOF! there it was. I'm so cool.

One of the first times that we went there when I was a kid, my brother was making stabs at his food with the chopsticks, trying to skewer the dumplings so he could eat them. A little old Chinese man shuffled over, and pointed to Edward (who was about 6 at the time, and looked very scared). "Chopsticks. I shall teach you." Our own Yoda, I guess. Anyway, he very gently shaped Edward's little hands around the chopsticks, showed him how to move them up and down, and went back to his table. The result: no more dumpling-skewers. I remember being really jealous that he hadn't shown ME the real way to use chopsticks (I was bumbling along just fine, though).

Anyway, Saturday I went out to Slough (The Office, anyone?) to visit Alison. She actually lives in Windsor, but I had to switch trains at Slough and messed up my connection. So I ended up having a FUN 20 minutes at the Slough train station before Alison rescued me.

Sunday I met up with Michelle and John and we went to Hamleys and bought a Paddington bear for Freda and a Chocolate Moose for ourselves. Couldn't resist. Needed someone to keep Emily the Transgender Puppy company when John's at work and I'm at Ickworth.

We trooped over to the British Museum, which is REALLY cool. Finally got to see the Horus that John is always talking about. It's a small hawk-looking bird, missing an eye (kind of like a well loved teddy bear, but in stone). John maintains that the Horus knows ALL and will one day take over the world. (Nod and smile, guys!)

We also got to see the Rosetta Stone (SO cool), and then some miscellaneous things in the "Enlightenment Collection." Basically, some eccentric people during the enlightenment had collected all sorts of things and then the museum set them up with a vague order and put them in a big room. Randomness.

And then: HARRY POTTER!! Not sure yet if I liked it or not...more on that later.