There's no place like London!

Thursday evening we got all dolled up (Amy even wore some make-up! :) and headed to London's West End. It was raining big fat drops, but that didn't dampen our excitement to see Chicago at the Cambridge theater. We did get a bit of a late start and so after picking up our tickets at will-call, we searched around a bit for a place to grab a quick dinner. We happened upon a tiny little cafe on a back street near the theater called "Candy Cakes." They had a nice bistro-type menu, so we got some food and then finished with a wunderbar cupcake that looked like it belonged in the Candyland game. I think that meal was a London highlight--sitting at a sidewalk cafe under an awning, watching people walk by in the rain, enjoying a lovely meal and anticipating Chicago!

The show was amazing. We had second row seats near the center and we could see every facial expression and detail of costume. What a fun experience! The leads were all great (though I'm afraid no "Mama" will ever compare to Queen Latifah) and I love the music of that show so it was hard to not sing along :)

Yma really enjoyed our dinner...she's taken to drinking Perrier in an effort to appear European and she loved the Lemon-White Chocolate-Meringue muffin that the girl at Candy Cakes recommended...it was bigger than she is!

We've perfected fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigation. We wanted to eat breakfast in Kensington Gardens on Friday, so we took an Underground stop that sounded like it was familiar and headed in what we thought was the general direction of the park and we found it! :) We walked down embassy row, found Kensington Palace and then spent the next 3 or 4 hours wandering the length of Kensington and Hyde Parks. It was so beautiful, so green, so peaceful. We played our favorite London game: Mom or Nanny? in the park. :) And we found the Princess Diana memorial fountain which was under construction last time I was there and it was a beautiful and unique fountain...a big circle of granite on a grassy slope.

In the afternoon we went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We paid 5 pounds (about $10) to be "groundlings"...uncovered standing-room tickets in the yard of the theater. It was a great way to experience that theater because the actors used the yard quite a bit for entrances and exits and play off the crowd a lot. We stayed for a couple of acts before we headed back to our hotel to heft our packs onto our backs to head to the airport....