Hail Britannia: Introduction

So, as many of you know, my husband and I spent most of last week in London. To make the requisite travel blog easier to bear, I’ve split our trip into several topic areas so you don’t have to read the whole thing. First, we explore the reasons why we went in the first place.

I’ve wanted to go to England since I was a little girl. However, when I say that, I get a lot of blank stares. Don’t little girls like England? Well, I did. I blame my mother, and my maternal grandmother.

My mom started reading The Hobbit to me when I was in first or second grade. She reached into the depths of her teenage Beatle fandom to give the characters various British accents. The Trolls were cockney, as I recall. Anyway, by this point in my life, I had been reading for about two or three years, and I got impatient with listening. So I started reading it on my own, despite the fact that I was seven and only knew about every other word. Of course, I loved it, I cried my eyes out when Thorin Oakenshield died, and my fate was sealed. Soon after I got my first box set of Narnia, and started in with Roald Dahl (my favorite was Danny the Champion of the World). It got to the point where I thought the correct spelling of a mix of black and white was grey, and insisted on showing it in print to my long-suffering teacher so I could get the extra two points on my spelling quiz. Yes, I was a little know-it-all bastard. Don’t tell me you are surprised.

The seeds had been sown. But they didn’t sprout until a few years later, the summer before 7^th grade. We moved that summer, and there was a lag between the old place and the new place. So we spent a few months in the apartment in my grandparent’s house. I only had a few boxes of books and whatnot, and my other grandmother (my mom’s mom) felt bad and gave me a shopping bag full of her old Agatha Christie paperbacks. (This also explains why I watch awful mystery movies on the Biography channel.) When we moved in to our new place, I spent the rest of the summer watching old reruns of Monty Python playing on MTV or PBS, which I had never seen before.

So, when I turned 30 this year, I wanted to do something really special. I thought about taking the trip, but it felt too selfish to go. Little did I know the wily Dan was planning a trip to London in secret. This is why he is the best husband ever.

Anyway, now you know the background. Next stop: the sights!