Wicked

August 28th--This morning when I woke up, I started looking at the Musicals here in town. I quickly noticed that Wicked was part of the Kids Week Shows and that Kids Week ended today. Kids Week means that with the purchase of an adult ticket a child can get in free. I knew we needed to take advantage of this so I wanted to get tickets for tonight's show of Wicked for Abby and I to go. Instead of buying them on the internet, we decided just to go by the Wicked Box Office. We all got dressed and left the apartment around 10:00. Luckily our bus takes us right to Victoria Station which is where the Wicked theater is located. The Box Office informed us that they had no more tickets available, but to go through Ticketmaster. So, Mike called Ticketmaster and got us tickets for tonight's show. Abby and I were so excited. From here, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. This is the location where it all started back in 1971. Before going into the restaurant, we walked through the Rock Shop and then went into the Vault. This was such a fun experience to enter the vault and see many famous guitars and other priceless items. The most expensive "priceless" guitar is Jimmy Hendrix's guitar which is insured for more than 3 million pounds! After eating lunch, we went to the Tower of London. Inside the Tower of London, we enjoyed the wall walk where we got a great view of the Tower Bridge. From here, we were going to watch a sword fight out in the grass, but the rain stopped that from happening. So, we took cover inside the restaurant for a snack and hot chocolate. Today, the weather has been cooler and rainy off and on. After the rain stopped, we went inside to view the crown jewels and talk to some of the employees about England's history and royalty. It was about 4:00 when we made our way out of the Tower of London and across the Tower Bridge. The bridge is one of the most famous symbols of London. From here, we took the bus to Liverpool Street. My mom had shipped Abby's homeschool stuff to the cousin of a good friend of ours. It took us a little bit to locate Angel's office, but we finally did and she was waiting on us outside. It was so good to meet her and to finally put a face with a name. After visiting with Angel for a little bit and retrieving the box, we headed out to get on the bus back to our apartment. It took us about an hour to arrive back at our apartment. So, by the time we got there it was 6:00. Abby and I quickly grabbed our stuff and headed out the door for Wicked. Mike had made Abby a sandwich which she ate on the bus. We had to pick up our tickets at Will Call so we wanted to get there early. Well, we got there with plenty of time and the line was pretty short. We had to wait about 45 minutes before the show started. Abby was very patient though. She entertained herself by flipping through the program several times. Wicked was absolutely wonderful! I had warned Abby that there might be some scary parts, but she never got scared at all. She kept waiting for the scary part that never came. At one point and time during the show she leaned over to me and said "Mommy, I'm so glad I came with you." It was so cute. We had a great Mommy/Daughter night. We arrived back at the apartment around 11:00 all wired from the show. Mike was still awake so we spent a good while telling him all about the show and he told us that he and Austin had a good night hanging out. It was about midnight before we winded down and went to bed.

Westminster Abbey

August 27th--We had an appointment at 10:00 this morning to apply for our Chinese Visas. So, we left the apartment around 8:45 to take the train and subway to arrive at our destination. It took us right at an hour to get to the Chinese Visa office and we were immediately given a number. We probably waited about 5 minutes before our number was called and then it took about 5 minutes to give the lady our information. She told us to come back on Wednesday to pick up the Visas. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy and quick that process was so we stood on the streets of London not really knowing what to do from here. We finally decided to head to Westminster Abbey. This was a fun experience for all of us. Mike was here back in summer of 1996 doing a 6 week study abroad program with Baylor. He showed us the dorms where he lived and where they had class at Westminster School, adjacent to Westminster Abby. After that, we entered into Westminster Abbey. Not only was the history fun to learn, but they gave the kids a Children's Trail pamphlet. They were to walk around the church answering the many questions. Abby got real into this. So, she and I spent a couple of hours touring the church while answering all the questions. I would read her the question, she would answer it and then I would help her write them out herself. By the time we finished up, I told Mike that was without a doubt her homeschooling for the day. The kids were able to show their questions at the end and received a chocolate Abbey coin. From the Abbey, we took the bus to the close by Texas Embassy restaurant. This was one of Mike's hangouts when he was her before. He was excited to go back and eat here. The food was definitely not La Hacienda or Babe's, but it was good and the atmosphere made us feel like we were at home. There was Baylor and Texas stuff on the walls. After lunch, we took a bus over to the Kensington area to get our last travel book from the Waterstone's there. Once we drug the kids out of the bookstore, we decided to take the bus back to the apartment. Unfortunately, when our bus reached the end of the line, we quickly realized that we got on the right bus, but going the wrong direction. Oh well, we just got on the other bus going the right direction. When we arrived back by the apartment, we took the kids to the park close by. We spent a good hour here before dinner time.

London "To Do" List

August 26th--Today was basically a "to do list" day. Mike spent most of the morning trying to figure out how to go about getting our Chinese Visas. Once he figured that out and we ate lunch at the apartment, we headed out for our first experience with the London bus system. All went smoothly as we arrived at our destination of Trafalger Square. It was at this square we were hoping to find an internet cafe to print off Visa applications and go to Waterstone's bookstore. When we got off the bus, Mike noticed a Regus which is a business center he has a membership from his "working" days. So, he went in to print off the applications while I took the kids to Waterstone's. The kids and I immediately found the Children's section. I noticed a lot of Where's Wally? books (titled Where's Waldo? in the United States) and introduced Waldo to the kids. They got the biggest kick out of trying to find him. In fact, they've almost developed an obsession over the books. Mike met us at the bookstore but couldn't fine the travel books we were looking for. However, they called and found the books at another Waterstone. This Waterstone was in Piccadilly Circus. So, we started walking to it only to get stopped in our tracks by the rain. Luckily, the National Gallery was right there to take cover. Come to find out, it is free. So, although it wasn't planned, we walked through the National Gallery waiting for the rain to stop. We were thrilled to be able to check that one off our list and continue walking toward the bookstore. We made it to Waterstone and it was the same story as before. The kids headed straight to Waldo only after we all enjoyed a snack at the cafe. By the time we purchased the travel books, it was close to 5:00 and we weren't sure how long it would take us to get back to the apartment. Surprisingly, it only took us about 30 minutes to get back. Mike cooked tacos for dinner and we finished up the evening with Big Brother. Go Jeff!!!

Farewell to the Festival

August 25th--It was a short night due to getting home so late and having to get up early to catch our train. Yes, today was a travel day for us. We left Edinburgh at 10:30 on a direct train to London. We arrived in London a little before 3:00, caught a cab and were on our way to our new apartment. We immediately realized that we were in the "big city" with all the traffic and crowded streets. It took us a little while to get to our apartment because it is outside of the city center. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Darie who quickly showed us around the apartment. Our apartment has much more room than we needed with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. We were hoping to have some visitors while here, but they had to cancel their trip at the last minute. Anyway, after getting a little settled in, we headed out the door to find the grocery store recommended by Darie. We made a wrong turn which made our walk a little longer than anticipated, but we finally arrived. I was so overwhelmed with this experience. The store was called Asda (a company owned by Wal-mart). Used to it wouldn't have phased me to be in Wal-Mart, but the size, combined with the crowd was a little much for me. Yes, we are all going to have some adjusting to do when we get back to the States. Anyway, since we had walked so far and had a lot of options, we stocked up on the groceries. That was great except that we had to carry it all back to the apartment. Mike and I were thrilled to get back to the apartment before both our arms fell off. It was dinner time by this time, but we had picked up a rotisserie chicken so it was easy to put dinner together. After dinner, it was bath and bed since no one had gotten a lot of sleep the night before.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo

August 24th--We took it pretty easy today because we knew we had a late night planned with a show at 9:00. By late morning, we all left the apartment and got on the bus. Mike and the kids got off at an earlier stop than me. They were heading to a park to burn off some energy and I was heading to the Royal Mile to do some last day shopping. My shopping trip was successful so about 2 hours later, I boarded the bus back to the apartment. The funniest thing happened though...on the way home, at one of the stops, I looked up and Mike and the kids were getting on the same bus I was on. What are the odds??? We all had a good laugh. So, we arrived back at the apartment and quickly ate a late lunch before putting the kids down for naps. We enforced naptime today due to the late night planned. After they got up from naps, we headed back to the Royal Mile to enjoy some street performers and dinner before heading to the Edinburgh Castle. A little after 8:00 p.m. we made the 1/2 mile walk to the castle. We had tickets for the 9pm Edinburgh Military Tattoo. This is a huge event and tickets sell out a year in advance. We were lucky to get tickets through the lady who rented us our apartment. We quickly found our seating after renting seat cushions first. The seats were set up bleacher style in the esplanade of the castle. We were all so excited about the show to start, but had a good 30 minutes before it would. Luckily, they filled the time with some "warm-up" groups. Once the show started, it was everything we hoped for. It was a 1 1/2 hour long show that combines the sounds of bagpipes and drums with modern aspects of the armed forces. It was a great performance by military bands from all over the world. Our favorite were seeing the Swiss Army Band and the Top Secret Drum Corps. The military aspect behind the show was very moving to us and especially made us think of our brother-in-law, Gabe, who is currently deployed in Afghanistan. The show finished up with a special tribute to the troops and some fireworks. We fought the crowd back down the Royal Mile to catch the bus back to to our apartment.

Dude, the Fringe rocks!

August 23rd -- After a full day of Fringe yesterday, we had 2 more kids shows today. It was a little rainy today, so not the best day to be out. The first show was at 10:30 and was called "Dude, Where's my Teddy Bear?". The kids were asked to bring teddy bears with them as it was an interactive show. It was a very cute show with the plot being a young boy searching for his lost teddy bear. After the show, we headed towards the Royal Mile for lunch. Luckily, it had stopped raining as we made the walk. We stopped off to watch a street performer, which turned out to be the worst one so far. I guess a rainy Sunday doesn't bring out the best. The kids then demanded Subway for lunch since there was one right on the Royal Mile. We sat outside and ate our sandwiches. We had seen a guy making balloon figures and Austin really wanted a Spiderman that he saw. So we went back and got balloons for the kids. By this time it had really started raining, so we made our way to the next show venue for our 2:30 show. We arrived about 15 minutes early, so had to sit in the lobby with everyone else who was trying to avoid the rain. We finally got into the show, Giraffe's Can't Dance. It was probably the best kids show we saw. It was highly entertaining and the kids laughed out loud. Austin was literally rolling on the floor. After the show, we came back to the apartment and had a slow relaxing afternoon, out of the rain.

A toad, 9 guys and South Africa

August 22nd -- Today we had tickets to 3 Fringe shows. Our first show was not until 12:30, so Amy and Abby made a trip this morning to the grocery store while Austin and I stayed back at the apartment. They picked up some pizza's for us to fix for lunch. After lunch, we headed out to our first show of the day, The Wind in the Willows. The show was in a large theater located in a mini-castle.`It was a great kids show and was enjoyed by all. When we came out, there was a large pavilion area set up with drinks and food. It was the first sunny day we have had in Scotland, so we enjoyed hanging out outside before our next show at 4:30. After a while, we decided to head to the Royal Mile to catch some street shows. We came upon a show just starting at Hunter's Square, right off the Royal Mile. The kids again sat down in the front row and Amy and I were standing behind them. After a little bit, Austin said he had to go to the potty. So he and Amy took off. Right after they did, the performer picked me out of the crowd to come up on stage with him. I was thinking, great....here I am and Amy and Austin have left. Luckily they came back before long and were able to watch as I and another man from France took large chains and wrapped him up like in a straight-jacket and padlocked him in. Then he proceeded to work his way out of the chains. It was pretty cool. After that, we started walking to our next show, Africaaah!. It was a performance by the African Children's Choir in St. Andrew's & St. George's Church. The choir is made up of young children from South Africa who have either lost one or both parents to HIV. It was AWESOME! They sang and danced their hearts out in a celebration of their culture. Once again, I made it up on stage when they asked for volunteers to help out with the drums. Austin was a little upset that he didn't get to play the drums. After the show, we headed across the street to Hard Rock for a quick dinner before our next show at 7:30. After dinner, we walked back across the town to see Brocante Sonore: The Mechanicians. This was by far the most "unique" show we have seen. When we walked into the theater, it looked like a junk yard on the stage. Then 9 guys came on stage and began to make music with the various items on stage. They used everything from drills to hoses to saws to chairs to make music. It was highly entertaining and again, very good. It was the perfect end to a day of Fringe shows.