No place like London - Parent visit part 1

Very quickly after the Munich trip, my parents came to visit.  It was crazy - I had just moved into my apartment about 3 days before, barely received my stuff from the NL.  Luckily I had 2 air mattresses (but little else) for them.  I planned out a good portion of what they needed to see a long time ago, so they came with itinerary in hand and a sense of adventure (which is a must in the London survival toolkit).

During the week, I sent them to Westminster Abbey, parliament, the National Gallery, the British museum, etc.  They did such an amazing job navigating the tubes by themselves - very impressive body of travel work.  We also went to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in the first week, which was their first West End show.  It was really funny and a great way to get into the London theatre scene.

On the first weekend, we went to the Tower of London on Saturday, which was building the poppies display leading up to Remembrance day in November.  It was quite the display, probably my favourite art exhibit I have ever seen.  Very moving and powerful.

The Tower is always a fun tour - the Beefeaters give a very comical 1 hour romp through 600 years of tower history.  The best part is seeing where Anne Boleyn is buried and the stories about the missing princes in the tower.  The jewels are also a must see...the conveyor belt they put you on to see them is pretty comical, but without it, there's no way all those tourists would see them.  After that, it's a lot of armory and other war memorabilia which is not my favourite, but interesting.  

That Saturday was filled with a bit of travel nightmares...I learned that when they close the District line on the weekend for planned engineering works and the NFL is in town on the same weekend, it's almost impossible to get any where.  It took us about 2 hours to get to the Tower through a random assortment of tubes and then another 2 hours on the way back to get to Oxford Circus for some quality shopping at Liberty.  Lesson learned - check tfl.gov.uk - might be easier and worth the money for a taxi.