May.

7

London

Every year my girlfriends and I vacation together, we leave the kids and pets with our husbands, and we travel to a destination of our choice for fun and relaxation. Last summer we traveled to London and here’s a quick photo tour of our adventures there.

Our hotel was in Mayfair, so after we settled in we decided to walk to “Little America”, so named during World War II, and home to our American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. At one point, we thought we were lost, so we asked a cute security guard if he could direct us to the American Embassy. I guess our accents, or lack thereof, gave us away because he said, “Please don’t tell me you all are Americans, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” We laughed and asked why, then he said, “Look up, don’t you see the eagle and the flag?” There they were right over our heads. We just needed to look up!

There was a beautiful park nearby and we walked through on our way to lunch at the cutest little pub, The Running Horse, also in Mayfair. We had a delicious lunch and then we were off to Westminster Abbey. We’ve all seen The Abbey many times on television, most memorably as the site of Princess Diana’s funeral, but it has been the site for every royal coronation since 1066 and is also the resting place for seventeen monarchs. Television doesn’t do this grand church any justice, it is truly much more regal and spectacular in person.

One of the things you realize early on is that there are many memorials to famous Americans throughout London proper. For instance, there is a bust of George Washington in St. Paul’s Cathedral. As an American, it was such an honor to see our first President remembered in that way. Here is a photo of St. Paul’s cathedral dome as it sits between two modern buildings. This photo was taken while walking backwards towards the Millennium Bridge on our way to the Tate Modern museum.

After viewing an exhibit at the Tate, we took a boat ride down the river Thames. This photo was taken of the Hungerford suspension bridge and the London Eye near Waterloo station just as we were riding under the bridge. For fun, see if you can spot the aircraft in the photo.

Also from the river, a view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which I’m sure will be a hive of commotion for the next week or so until the political parties can decide just who will run the UK government.

The next day we went to Buckingham Palace for an exhibit in the Queen’s Gallery, where again our accents gave us away. After listening to us chat in the souvenir shop, an American professor teaching in Scotland introduced herself and joined our discussion. So much fun! Afterwards we saw crowds gathering, so of course we stopped to see what all of the fuss was about and it was the ritual changing of the guard.

The guard passed right alongside our cab as we headed to lunch at The Wolseley in Piccadilly.

I snapped this photo outside The Ritz hotel while we were hailing a cab, hoping that the rain would let up. We saw four older women looking as chic as ever, think Sex and the City 20 years from now, when to our surprise they told us they were having their very own girlfriend getaway as well! Too funny!

The rain did let up, so we decided to walk back towards St. James Park and along the way I snapped this street sign. I miss Princess Diana, don’t you?

These beautiful lion statues are part of the Queen Victoria Memorial at Buckingham Palace at the end of The Mall. The last two days we spent shopping all over London at hotspots like Brown’s, Dover Street Market, Harrod’s, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges. We also spent a rainy afternoon at the V& A Museum viewing the fashion and jewelry exhibits, which we loved and highly recommend. And we always cap off the weekend with a blowout dinner and in London we chose Locanda Locatelli. The food was flawlessly prepared and presented and the service was impeccable. Girlfriend getaway weekends are a great way to reconnect, unwind, and recharge and London proved to be one of our most favorite destinations yet.