Eloneen's Family Trip to UK and France: Part 2
(We are in a lot of our best photos, so we don't have good pictures to post of everything I mention here.)
The following day was a Sunday, and I had arranged with
vlogdance to meet that morning and attend her church with her. We missed our train, but we caught the next one and it all worked out, and we met Vlog at the train station and walked to her church. I can confirm that Vlog is just as thoughtful, lovely and quick-witted in person as she is on the forum! We enjoyed the service at her church - very warm, modern and friendly, with a diverse and welcoming congregation. We felt very much at home, and thoroughly enjoyed the music and meeting members of the congregation.
According to Vlog, I am currently the only forum member to have sung live with a member of The Street Next Door band!
Afterwards, we walked around the beautiful town of Richmond and chatted away about all kinds of forum topics, did some shop art, and threw in a few French words here and there.
My husband and son both found Vlog to be quite kind and charming, of course. They tried, but they could not keep up with our conversations about the forum and ELO most of the time, and they decided to stay outside the shop while we did our shop art.
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Revolution, and exchanged gifts there. I brought Vlog an ELO 2019 Tour t shirt, and a NC dessert cookbook. Little did I know that she also had gifts for all three of us, too -- for me, a box of her famous (and delicious!) Welsh cakes, some Yorkshire tea and PG Tips tea; and some cute little llama and cactus themed school stationery items (pens, sticky notes, etc); for the young man, an autographed CD from a British jazz pianist (he's a jazz-loving pianist); for my hubby, two collections of political cartoons. We all got some Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate, too!
We walked around Richmond for a while after lunch, too, taking in the scenery and Vlog's expert information about the area.
Scenes from our stroll around Richmond
Two thumbs up for shop art!!!
Vlog changed into her new ELO t shirt right away for a fabulous forum photo-op!
Double trouble! You say you want (a) Revolution? Two thumbs up for that, too!
During lunch, I also met a forum celebrity, thanks to Vlog!
In short, we had a great day with Vlog! She walked us back to the train station and helped us resolve a problem that we had with our Oyster Cards. She's a real sweetheart!
And, needless to say, the Welsh cakes did not last long, and I've been enjoying my tea every day!
The following day, we slept in and went to the British Museum in the late morning. When we arrived and I asked about which line to use to go in (since we had no advance purchase tickets), the employee told me that we were "automatic members" and escorted us to the members only line, saving us about an hour of waiting to enter the museum.
A simple smile works wonders sometimes!
We saw the Rosetta Stone, of course, and our son especially enjoyed the ancient Egyptian mummies, and an interesting exhibit about money and ancient coins, where we were able to interact with a staff member, who told us about the history of several old coins that were selected for this close up presentation, let us hold them, and answered questions about them from kids and adults alike.
We had lunch reservations at the Great Court Restaurant and continued our visit of the museum afterwards.
Inside the British Museum:
(A not so great photo of the Rosetta Stone)
On the way to the museum and back, we chose buses that would take us past places in London that we had not seen, including Piccadilly Circus. On the way back we stopped at Trafalgar Square, walked around a bit, did some people-watching, and took a few photos, including one of the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, which we know from so many recordings of classical concerts that we hear on our local classical radio station.
What did the next day have in store for us? Heaven only knows...