London

Brian said it best in his Facebook post "En route to London for work for a few days. Picked up a stowaway to keep me company." I hope to be the stowaway on many more of his trips across the Irish Sea.

After landing in London, first thing first, we grabbed a much needed bowl of Pho. What you can't have, is always what you want most. After the shock of finding out there is no Pho in Dublin, it was high on our list of "must do's" on this trip.

Yum! Only missing the Plum Sauce...

We had a few hours left in the day to check on some sights before Brian had to do what he came for, work.

Buckingham Palace

Guarding the Palace

Big Ben

Tube Station

London is a big city for sure. There were some familiar retail sights that you can't find in Dublin: Banana Republic, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, and Chipotle, to name a few. It's very diverse, you see people living, working and visiting from everywhere in the world.

Cool Pubs in London too

And there were some new sights to take in as well. Everything is "royal" in London, history is everywhere and there are Pubs older than our country. It's a very cool to think about how how much has happened in the the places you are standing over hundreds of years.

While Brian was off working, I was off walking. The rain held off for the day and I checked out the Tower of London, the London Bridge, Parliament and everything in between.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Tower of London from the Bridge

Another Shot of the Tower Bridge

Flooded Skate Park

Parliament

This is London, grey skies and all

The Sun finally emerged, view from the National Museum

All the Cabs are so cute

National Portrait Gallery

A lot of museums in London are free. This was a huge plus as the weather was rainy, so being able to check them out for for a few minutes at a time was a great escape from the rain.

Our last night, we had an amazing date night. We went to a delicious Lebanese dinner at Yalla Yalla and saw Les Miserables! We got fantastic tickets, just 10 rows back, in the center, from the 1/2 off TKTS booth. The show was awesome, we both loved it. Brian had seen it once before as a kid, and had really talked it up, and it lived up to all expectations for both of us.

Pre-Dinner/Theater Beers

It's true that they serve room temperature beer in London. I am not sure if I can get behind this tradition or not, I just can't imagine on a hot day, wanting a warm beer.

Happy that the sun came out

The Queen's Theater

Before our flight, we had some time to spend together again. We checked out a food market for lunch.

Then we made our way over to Harrods. Brian was excited about the Food Hall, and let me tell you, I've never heard him so eager to go back to a department store.

Inside the Harrods Food Hall

We kept saying, it's a good thing we ate before we went, or we would have spent a lot of Pounds sampling all the delicious looking food.

You can seriously get any food, from anywhere around the world. I snapped the shot above because the whole trip, Brian kept talking about wanting to try a traditional pie. Mom would love the entire hall filled with Teas, in the cutest little tins and boxes. I wanted to buy so many, but resisted.