London- Monday/Tuesday

I know you've been patiently waiting for the London updates to begin.

A few ground rules:
1. I'll do my best to say everything- but I'll try to be somewhat short.
2. I'll post selected relevant pictures in the post
3. I'll post the link to all (150 or so) pics in another post.
4. Enjoy!

Monday: Rena and I left for the airport at noon. Once we checked in we had a celebratory lunch at the Kosher McDonalds while waiting to board the plane. Interesting facts: flying on Erev Sukkot means that the only secular Israelis will be on your plane. Two, M&Ms have started selling a "mixed bag" of plain, peanut and crispy m&ms. Yummm. the flight was 5 hours and we arrived at Heathrow Airport in London around 10pm. After getting our backpacks and exchanging our money (going from 4.58 shekels to the USD to 1.88 USD to the pound- OUCH) we got on the tube and made our way to the hostel.

Tuesday- First full day in London:
Woke up early to take advantage of the "free hostel breakfast"- which consisted of white bread toast with butter and jelly or cornflakes with sugar and whole milk. Don't worry, there was coffee and tea too. All you could eat and drink. We started early because Rena had made reservations to take a DUCK tour of London. In short, the DUCK is a vehicle used in WWII that can drive on land and is a boat too!- DUCK is an acronym for something I don't remember. Anyway, the 75 minute tour of London took us all over the city and in the Thames River too! It was a great intro to the city and we did a lot of planning as we saw things from afar that we wanted to see up close (Westminster Abby, Big Ben etc). Interesting fact: London is COLD- we were wearing coats, gloves, hats, etc. Burrrrr.

After the tour we stood in line in Leicester Square to get cheap tickets for a West End Show (It's like Broadway in London). I really wanted to see Mary Poppins, and well, Rena indulged me. The tix ended up being not so "cheap", but they were good seats for a musical thats only been open for 10 months.

After getting the tickets we took the tube to Harrods. For those who don't know, Harrods is a department store/gourmet food store/mall- It's pretty unbelievable. First of all, it's HUGE- 6 floors or something, and sells everything you could ever want- assuming that you have the $$$. They sell major designers and super-high quality versions of everything- clothing, bedding, food, entertainment etc. They also have a pretty extensive Christmas section- which was pretty busy considering that it was only October 20th.

We were told over and over again that one of the "must dos" in London was to have a "proper English High Tea." So we did just that. For a mere 20 pounds, we indulged in finger sandwiches, fancy desserts, scones and jelly and lots and lots and lots of real British Tea. Good food, great tea and amazing atmosphere. We felt underdressed in our sneakers and jeans as we watched buisnessmen and women having tea in fancy suits and high heals. Oh Well. We finished tea in time to get back to Leicester Square for the show.

The show was wonderful- and Mary Poppins isn't an easy show to do. Between the flying nannies, animated penguins and dancing chimney sweeps- not to mention that it's become a movie classic- pretty tough to try and imitate on stage. But it was great- the actors who played Mary and Bert were especially fabulous. Some of the details were changed slightly, but it was the same classic story. For the rest of the week we were humming one of the new songs, "Practically Perfect" It's hard to be practically perfect, but we make it look easy. Right?

We were exausted by the time we returned to the hostel and tried to get some sleep despite our new roommate- an Australian guy whose snoring kept us awake into the morning hours!

All for now...More to Come...Love to all who are reading!