Take that Eyjafjallajökull

Just home from London again and finally was able to meet up with my friend Amanda.  I've known her since my college days and she and her husband are living and working in the UK.  Since they moved to the UK, I haven't had London layover's that often and when I did, it seems there was a conflict with their schedules.  Rewind to April, and I had two London trips for the month.  We made plans to meet up on the second trip.  They were going to come into town and we were going to see Wicked and spend the day hanging out.  Then Mother Nature showed us her wrath and Iceland's most famous unknown volcano erupted and brought air travel to Europe to a halt.  I had things I was carrying over from some of Amanda's friends and I had some US goodies she could not get over there.  So much for plans.


Last weekend I finally was able to meet up with them!  Our friend Jenn re-mailed the package I was supposed to take over and I had Gerber Puffs for Amanda's little girl and Double Stuffed Oreo's for Amanda.  They took the train into the city and we met up at Victoria station.  Aaron, Amanda's husband, was hoping to get some pictures of England fans in pre-celebratory mode for the World Cup game against the US.

We had an enjoyable afternoon walking around London.  Although I might write a letter to the folks at London Underground to install more lifts because Amanda and Aaron had to deal with stairs going into and our of the subway with their stroller!  We stopped first at Trafalgar Square and then made our way down to Leicester Square.  It was a beautiful sunny day!  Aaron got a few photos of the rowdy Englishmen in World Cup fever.  We did see a strange group of Protesters at Picadilly Circus who were trying to bring the conspiracy surrounding Michael Jackson's death to the public.  

Our next stop was Green Park.  Their is a great statue collection of Asian Elephants all over the city.  I saw some last weekend when I was down by St. Paul's, but at Green Park they actually had a bunch of them lined up.  Each one is painted in a different style and you can purchase the statues as a way to raise money for these endangered animals.  http://www.elephantfamily.org/how-can-you-help/events/elephant-parade-london-2010/.

At this point in the late afternoon, my  5 hour Energy shot was starting to wear off (I had passed on my arrival nap and hit the ground running).  We made our way back to Gloucester Road by my hotel and had dinner at Ask, my favorite London Pizza place and then Aaron and Amanda took the District line back to Victoria Station and their train back home.  It was a fun day and great to meet up with old friends, especially when they live far away!