Spending Big Money

Robin found this great deal to go to Las Vegas, but while we were deciding, the deal disappeared. So then he was just playing around and found a great deal in London. So we will be taking a trip to London this October.

Since London is expensive, I'd always thought that if I visited England, I would stay elsewhere and maybe make a few day trips into London. But now we feel we should take advantage of our good deal and spend the whole week in London. I've become a big fan of making only very short trips from a home base during this sort of vacation, so we don't spend the whole time traveling.

So, I'm trying to decide what to do. The more I read, the more I get overwhelmed by how much stuff is there. Also, the more I read, the more I wonder how great this place can really be. I mean it's just a city, right? This isn't some place I've always dreamed about or anything, so I'm not quite sure where to start.

Still, I think we've got enough good ideas to get us through. Here is my current list of things I'd like to do.

• Visit a pub.
• Visit at least one garden. Since I seem to like "English gardens," maybe I should visit some gardens in England?
• Eat fish and chips.
• Eat Indian food (but not chicken vindaloo which I learned from "Red Dwarf" is probably too spicy for me)
• Walk around pretty areas, such as up and down the Thames. Try to remember not to accidentally call it the Seine or any other exotic-sounding, not-pronounced-how-it-looks river-through-a-big-foreign-city name.
• Visit a grocery store. See what's cheap there but expensive here and get some of that. Try interesting new things. (In Germany we found chocolate eggs with snap-together toys inside. In Switzerland we found chocolate mousse in a spray-can (tastes like chocolate whipped cream) and chocolate-chip granola breakfast cereal. Mmm.)
• Buy a dictionary. Yes, I do speak English. But I keep reading books written in England and watching movies made in England, and they keep using words in ways I don't understand. So, I know that England will have British-English dictionaries.
• Visit a thrift store.
• Look at umbrellas, raincoats, shoes, and wool things.
• Go to at least one park. (I think we'll be walking through Hyde Park several times, because our hotel is on the NE corner of that park.)
• Go to at least one museum. Robin has about five museums he wants to go to. We won't have time for everything. We won't even have time for say, just going to The British Museum, even if we went there every day we were in London. Robin tells me it's bigger than the Louvre. Unimaginable.
• Check out several museum shops. Apparently London is like Las Vegas (huh?) in that the museum gift shops are really, really nice. (Except that in Las Vegas we just skipped the tiny, expensive museums and hung out in the gift shops; in London, there are huge, free museums.)
• Visit the Globe Theatre (replica).
• See at least one play. There are supposed to be all kinds of plays, often very good, and often very affordable (compared to New York, probably).
• Eat at a sandwich shop.
• Visit a bakery. Having high tea used to be on my list, but I found out it's expensive, and I might not have fancy enough clothes. But I still want to taste some of those sugary goodies. Mmm, biscuits that are really cookies.
• Look at Buckingham Palace and some of the cool bridges and other famous old buildings. (Don't pay to go in; don't try to catch the changing of the guard.)
• I really, really want to try to meet some people. Maybe it's just that I want to talk to people who have cool accents. I'm not so great at taking initiative. I've heard that in some places (pubs?), you have to sit with strangers because the tables are big and the places are crowded. That sounds like good fun.
• Hang around with Robin. I suppose that means doing things Robin wants to do. So I'm guessing I may visit Harrods and other big department stores. I may go into a lot of bookshops. I may go into more museums than I otherwise would. I'll probably be riding a red double-decker bus. I will look at The Eye and contemplate riding in it.

That's way too many things to do. Which is good. In Las Vegas, we started to run out of good things to do.

This trip was the last straw--I went out and bought a very fancy new digital camera. I hate dealing with security with film, begging people to not put the film through the machines, and waiting around for them to peer into each and every film canister. I paid extra for zoom, like always, because I use zoom on almost everything. But this time I also paid extra for quick picture taking (rare on a digital camera). And I also paid extra for the ability to make up to a 30-second sound recording attached to a picture. Taking notes! So you don't forget what it's a picture of! (Actually, because I will forget.) Added bonuses are that you can take pictures rapid-fire--good for action shots. And it has a really good lens and screen, and above-average automatic processing. And you can rotate the lens so you can aim the camera at things higher than your head (or at your head) and still see to frame them. And it's tiny--you don't have to be a giant to fit this in your pocket.

Well, the trip and the camera pretty much take up my big spending money for the year. Awesome though.