Wee Britain

First post from Europe! And I've only been here a week, not bad. Figured I'd start with a mostly photo-based post documenting my trip to London with my mom that began my great European adventure. I'm currently in Holland and already have WAY too much to say about the Dutch to include in this post as well, so you can all look forward to some ranting in the very near future.

So yes, my first stop was sunny Londontown with my mom. We stayed in a super gross B&B in Chelsea:

Ok so that last one I took at the Ritz Hotel but still it was really, really nice. Owned by some charming Brits and their next door neighbour was some famous tennis player whose name I've of course forgotten. But still, be impressed.

My mom and I did lots of fun mother and daughter things:

Eating fish and chips!

And chicken tikka masala! (not spicy at all, lame)

Visiting cemeteries! Which I guess is only normal for certain mothers and daughters...

Afternoon tea at Brown's hotel!

And a Shakespeare play at The Globe Theatre!

My mom loves all things British and imperial and generally stuffy and pompous, so when she decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum I thought it would be best to go and check out something at least a little non-English...

Like dinosaurs! RAWR!!! The Natural History Museum in London is a bit of a trip as it's in this really gorgeous old building and all the specimens in there are from like 1820 when it was still ok to shoot and stuff animals for the amusement of jerks like me.

I brought along my own stuffed animal in the form of a pig dressed as a crab named CrabPig who is from the Chinatown night market in Vancouver and I have decided should accompany me on my adventures.

CrabPig in the grand gallery.

CrabPig makes friends.

British demonstration of what a cell is? Apparently?

A knife-weidling maniac reminds us that memory is our most precious asset.

An actual Dodo! Albeit a really ratty one..

CrabPig learns about its ancestry.

I was going to take more pictures of CrabPig at the Globe, the Tate Modern, and such, but it actually gets fairly embarrassing sticking a plush pig/crab to glass surfaces and taking pictures of it out in public. I've decided my strategy if anyone asks about it is to say that it belongs to my little sister, who is a small tiny child rather than a 24-year old, and she asked me to take pictures of it at all the different places I visit. That could make me seem pseudo-respectable, right?

Overall it was a really nice trip and great spending time with my mom, though Thomas Cook travel lost her luggage for about 5 of her 7 days of vacation which was super annoying. I found British people and service slightly cold and impersonal, but at that point I had yet to try to get anything done in Holland, and I would currently give anything to encounter some of that fun, friendly and outgoing British hospitality. But more on that later.