Misc events in the past few weeks

I've put in updates on our trips, but between the trips and the last update, we've had lots of fun and have seen lots of cool places.  Some highlights:


Matilda: Our family went to Matilda with our great friends (both Amanda and me and they have two kids who are friends with our kids).  (Here's one of the songs from it ...)  I like musicals, and Matilda is easily one of the best I've ever seen.  The theatre was pretty cool too ...

Some other photos with our friends and/or kids with their friends (at tower of London, Windsor Castle, and Hampton Court Palace):

I went on two sports facility tours with our students: Wimbledon (just me) and Lord's Cricket (family came along).  Both were quite informative and fun.

Above was Wimbledon, below is Lord's Cricket

Shakespeare's Globe:  Our group got a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.  The guide was good and entertaining, and it was a beautiful and untypical 75 degrees for our tour, which never hurts:

Banqueting House

We got a membership to “Historic Royal Palaces”.  The annual membership was pretty inexpensive – cheaper than two trips to the Tower of London, in fact.  For this, we can get in free to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace, and the Banqueting House.  We decided to go into the Banqueting House, which seemed to us like the “throw-in” attraction to get it to 5 places, but still, we could get in free and it is where Charles I was executed.  Kings in England don’t get their heads chopped off often, so we figured this was worth a look. 

It was one room.  A big room, but still, only one room.  It was worth seeing, I suppose, but we were expecting a bit more.  Still, the kids got the handsets, and afterwards we walked through Covent Garden where we saw a cool street performer get out of a straight-jacket in 3 minutes.  That was pretty awesome  (Although we think he actually did dislocate his shoulder to do it - that part was a bit disgusting.) 

Oxford and Mini-Cooper:


We had a great tour of Mini-Cooper.  The guides were enthusiastic and the seemed to be genuinely happy to be doing what they were doing.  (They were semi-retired from mini-Cooper and had created this tour.)  Good tour.  We got to see the Austin Power's Mini-Cooper, too!

A couple pictures of places from the Harry Potter movies at the University of Oxford - can you recall what two scenes?

Favorite Pub (name) we've been to:  

We left the Tower of London and were looking for a restaurant when we stumbled into the this gem.

Fuller's is a chain - so the menu was one I'd seen before (and was perfectly good).  But the interior was great.  One portrait of Henry VIII, and the rest of people who were executed under his orders.  Pretty cool.