parks and parks and parks

Well, after rest and illness yesterday, we moved into high speed tourist mode today. We took the tube to Westminster where there were SCADS (good British word) of people. Jim forced me to have my picture taken in front of Big Ben (For some reasons, I'm not able to add pictures to the blog right now) and then we got out of there as soon as possible and took a less crowded walk around St. James Park, where we saw ducks, Canada Geese, Black Swans, and also some seagulls. Even England has seagulls and even people in England feed them. Sigh.

We headed through St. James park and marveled at the number of people who thought it was a good idea to stop in the middle of narrow footbridge, blocking all people coming and going, for a picture. Eventually we ended up in front of Buckingham Palace (more huge groups of people taking pictures not with the guards, but with the policemen, who were cheerful about it) and cut across to Hyde Park. The parks in London are plentiful and beautiful. There were people running and biking and playing soccer...and also an obese child selling hotdogs, which gave me hope that I will get a job here in London (sad, but true).

After Hyde Park we hit Oxford Street, which was the most crowded place of all. There are lots of department stores and shops (H&M!) There are so many different kinds of people here. The women wear tight jeans with boots over them or very short mini skirts with boots--always boots. Most of the men have some sort of spiked up hairdo and pointy shoes. We got off of Oxford Street and met up with....Dan and Meg!!!!

Sadly, we were so excited to see Dan and Meg that we forgot to take pictures, but we did have some pints, rode in a black London taxi to Hampstead, where they live, met their cat Jack and then headed out for the most expensive Indian (Curry, they call it here) dinner that we have ever had. It was delicious, though, and it was great to see our good friends, although we were unable to rally enough to go out again after dinner.

Now we are back at our temporary flat, where Jim is trying to convince me that it is a good idea to call the hostess of this incredibly annoying game show, Make Your Play. The goal of the game is to call in and guess a phrase, part of which they give you. Every time you call in, you get charged a pound. If you guess a correct phrase, you win 20,000 pounds, 50,000 pounds, etc. They play suspensful music and hardly anyone wins, but this woman chats you up on the TV, and tries to seduce poor, defenseless people ( I suspect that most of them are old) into calling over and over again until they get through and can guess. It's completely moronic, but somehow Jim is drawn to it. British TV is a hoot!

Still haven't taken pictures of the flat, but we'll do that soon. Tomorrow we head out to the Blackheath Farmer's Market, where we'll by farm fresh local produce.