We Take Ourselves With Us

I mentioned we decided to stay in a flat in London.  It was a great decision!  We were able to set up base in a real neighborhood, which let us pretend we were living in London for a week: going to the shops, having favorite stops, watching the neighbors in the morning while making breakfast, sitting at our little dining table watching tv, even doing some laundry.  The location in Kensington was amazing, and it was about a quarter less than we would have spent in a hotel.  We loved it :)  Here's my kitchen window view. On our last day in London, we left our flat for Hogwarts, grabbing provisions for the short train ride to Watford Junction. Seriously, can you imagine that the train station for Harry Potter Studios in an American city would look like this?  Or that you'd be directed to a public bus shelter to wait for the "cash only" bus from this glamorous depot to the studio that held every single Harry Potter movie prop ever?  Uh, no.

Today, we ventured out in our new boots (and rose print thermal tights for me!) to get as Britty as we could. We hopped the Tube to Tottenham Court Road ... for the British Museum! There, we sought to follow Tennyson's advice to wear out our feet in search of knowledge and stuff.  (Cut me some slack, I was an Early Modernist, not a Victorian.) As Penn noted, the museum is both overwhelming and awesome, which meant we had to refuel.  The big restaurant is closed for refurbishment and reimagining, leaving us with the pop-up No. 63.  It offered crazy good holiday themed turkey BLTs (with stuffing and cranberry sauce) and wickedly rich roasted tomato soup with some oregano infused oil.  And, wonderfully crusty bread.  Yay--we were ready to throw ourselves back into the depths of history. I'm a smart person and a pretty decent writer, but words are inadequate to express what it's like to share thousands of years of history with o