The last week of vacation

Today Neil had to wake up at 6am-ish and go to work again. We have had a very nice time together since I have arrived, and I have had him all to myself, but now the fun is over and we get into the routine of things. We did make the most of our time, and on Friday we went to London to visit the O2. This was something that I had anticipated for some time, as I had heard so much about the 02 while it was in construction and I was very curious to see what it looked like in real life. The dome has loads of restaurants, a ski slope, a cinema, arenas, and the body worlds show, which we did.

[the outside of the o2 and the slopes inside]

[wall of appreciation to the o2 team]

I considered posting some pics from the bodyworlds website, but I do not think that everyone would appreciate them. They are real bodies, and I admit I had a few woozie moments throughout the tour. Still, it is absolutely amazing, and I would recommend it to everyone. It was overwhelming though...but no overly since we did go straight to lunch afterwards!

http://www.visitlondon.com/bodyworlds/images_video/index

On Saturday we went to the gardening center and bought soil for the heather and some seeds and a starter tray that holds 80 plants. We bought mini corn, brussel sprouts (yes, we actually like them), tomato, zuchinni, beets (ew, but they were free), sweet peas, peppers and garlic. This is a good time to start seeds indoors, and I recommend if you have not grown vegetables before and would like to give it a try, to do some tomato, zuchinni, peppers and garlic, which are all fairly easy, and tomatos the most gratifying as they taste MUCH better homegrown. Only one or two tomato plants will make the summer memorable...

Friday evening I had plans to go to a pub with a new friend, so I went up to take a bath around 5:30 and enjoyed basking dispite the foul smell that emanates from somewhere in the walls when a bath is run. We figured that it was mold on the pipes--it is a very odd smell--and had plans to call for service today to figure out what it was...but it seems it could not wait til Monday, for soon, there was smoke billowing in the kitchen from between the refrigerator and boiler, so we called the fire department and it ends up the awful smell was the laminant and wood burning on the side of the refrigerator casing. So my new friend showed up to find the fire department wandering around the house, and I really needed a drink so off to the pub we went.

[the fire that almost was]

On Sunday we went for a pub lunch with Laura, Paul and Charlotte, at Flight ??? (I forgot the name of the place!), which was breaded mushrooms, roast beef, yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, roast potatos and gravy and I had apple pie, Neil had chocolate cake. Charlotte, who is 3, had a wonderful time collecting condiments.