Saturday through Thursday

Awww, look how cute we are in the rain! Saturday found us enjoying our first really rainy day in London. We have been so lucky with the weather. Even though it was hot and humid for a while, the rain can really get in the way. We spent the morning at Portobello Road (cue the song from Bedknobs and Broomsticks...) which is fun if you have extra money to spend and don't mind huge crowds and lots of smoking. We are poor and I felt sick from all the second-hand smoke. Can I tell you how much I appreciate that most major cities have banned smoking in public places!
In the afternoon we saw Wicked. Wicked is a really amazing show if you like musicals and/or are age 12-20. I do not fit into either of those categories. But it was a good show. The costumes are amazing, the music is good, the lead actresses had amazing voices... So I didn't love it, sue me.

Sunday morning we went to church with the Hyde Park ward. Since we had enjoyed cathedral experiences I thought we should also go to sacrament meeting. I had to drag Scott.

After church we wandered around Hyde Park and through Speakers Corner. We were disappointed by the lack of weirdos. There were only a few.

Hyde Park

Sunday afternoon we saw King Lear at the Globe. This was a great show to end our London experience. It was amazing. I mean, any show where you get to see a man's eyeballs pulled out on stage is a winner in my book... No really, it was such a great show. The man playing Lear was just amazing. And at the end of the show the cast came out singing a haunting melody for the curtain call that just gave me goose bumps all over.

Sigh. Farewell London...


Hello Scotland!

Our street in Edinburgh. It's okay if you have to hate me a little more.

A typical street in "old town". The nicknames come from when "new town" was built in the 1700's. New. Funny huh? I love Edinburgh.

The Sir Walter Scott Memorial

Climbing the spiral staircase to the top of the memorial

And a view of the Edinburgh Castle from the top. Did I mention that I love this city?

Tuesday morning was a quick tech. rehearsal and great performance then in the afternoon we spent some time (in the rain) advertising for the show we were doing. When I say we, I mean everyone but me. I ran the lights and bought props. I am not an actor.

Scott, Jaclyn and Joe

Tuesday night we saw a super funny opera called The Two Widows. And then we went to a silly bar called Frankenstein and had chips (fries) and coke for a late night snack.

Wednesday after the show (yay, they did a great job) we went to lunch with Scott's friend Joey. He lives in England and arranged for his monthly business trip to Scotland to be this week so he could see Scott perform.

Scott, Joey and I in front of the castle

A view of the Firth of Fourth from the castle. Seriously, I am in love with Scotland.

Our final show was the Military Tattoo. This is a huge marching band extravaganza with the castle as a backdrop. I know that sounds less than amazing but when all of the marching bands have bagpipes and come streaming out of the castle in formation it's pretty cool. Except the American band which had no bagpipes, a baton twirler (so 1980's), and drill team girls with nylons on that made their legs look like hot dogs. Thanks for making us look dorky.

Thursday we got up and headed to the airport to fly home. Boo hoo. I love Europe. Well, I love England and Scotland and kind of like France. Maybe France isn't so yucky outside of Paris... So because we can't have an uneventful trip home, I had a Get Smart moment with a barf bag on the plane from Scotland to NY. Then at JFK (which has RATS in the customs area. No really!) our plane got switched 30 min. before we were supposed to take off. So they had to move all the luggage and the food which wouldn't fit in the new plane because it was set up differently so then they had to order new food which took FOREVER! So by the time the plane is ready to go (2 hours after we were supposed to leave) we look out the window and see this:

Yeah, you guessed it, a thunderstorm. So between the delay and the weather we sat on that plane for 5 hours before we even took off. By the time we got home we had been traveling for 24 hours. I will never fly through JFK again.

But I don't want to end on a bad note. I loved this trip. It was amazing. Stay tuned for blogs of my favorite pictures and favorite places. (Scott took over 3,700 pictures so it may take a while to sift through them...) And don't forget Scott has been blogging about all of this too! His blog is here.