London 2018

2018 was a hard year. And I am not even talking politically. Doreen spent many hours recovering her momma's house from the effects of Hurricane Harvey. (That in and of itself deserves a long and thorough discussion. But perhaps for another day.) And we did much more work on our house than we intended (cascading work - not so much "money pit" as "well, we've had this much done, so let's do that, too") starting with electrical, moving to plumbing, painting, foundation, porches, roof, HVAC, more painting, and well, I think you get the picture. And not to mention, I took a job.

So we decided to slip away for Christmas and Doreen's birthday, and make New Year's Eve a small (three dish) affair for when we returned. So we bought tickets to London, Eurostar to Paris, then home in only slightly over a week.

As always, the hardest thing to leave was The Dog (aka Lulu) but I think we miss her more than she misses us:

We hopped on a plane:

and made it to London in time to have lunch at a place called "Mother Mash" which serves, as you may have guessed, mashed potatoes. (pick the mash, pick your sausage or pie, pick your gravy)

All delicious.

I got sausage:

 Doreen got pie:

Then before the show (Company, by Stephen Sondheim, a birthday treat for Doreen) where Bobby is Bobbie and played by a woman. I can tell you this - society, even today, looks at an unmarried 25 year old woman differently than it looks at a 35 year old man. Think about that.

London Christmas decorations:

Before the show we had dinner at a restaurant we have walked by many times, Quo Vadis. It was much better than we had anticipated. Get the smoked eel sandwich if you go.

And that was all the same day we landed!

The next day we walked to the Tate London museum to see both the Burns-Jones exhibit and the Turner prize. On the way we stopped by the Empty Plinth and saw this:

 Moving.

Doreen has studied Burn-Jones in college. One of the pre-Raphaelites, you know.

Great stuff. Here is Andromeda being saved by Perseus:

 and here is a mermaid dragging a hapless sailor to his watery death:

The less said of the Turner prize this year the better. You can look it up yourself if you want.

We had lunch at Nopi, one of our favorite places in London, and tea with one of my old friends from the PGS board. 

The next morning, Christmas Eve, we took the Eurostar to Paris.

Security and Immigration were painful but we made it.

And then we were in Paris!