Sitting in the Park with Friends

This post features a smattering of fun events, visitors, and so on which have occurred over the past month or so...

Julie Williams, a friend from Spearfish, and Laura in Trafalgar Square. This giant ship, a replica of the HMS Victory--the ship with which Admiral Nelson won the famous Battle of Trafalgar--was created by an African artist with the goal of reconciling the imperial/colonial past. No one can figure out how he got the ship into the bottle! Anyway, Julie was in town for a few days with a study abroad program, so we had dinner and showed her around town a little bit!

Our next "friends in the park" refers to our good friends Ben Harper and Eddie Vedder, who played a nice quiet, quaint concert just for us. OK, we are very generous people and allowed about 30,000 other "friends" to join us. It was Laura's first Pearl Jam concert (and her first mosh pit, though it was a pretty tame one!), and they rocked. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any pictures, as we had stupidly forgotten our camera.

The next day, our good friends Jessie and Dennis came into town on their way to Sweden & Italy, so we went out for an amazing dinner at our favorite Indian food restaurant and enjoyed each other's company. The next day, we spent some time wandering around London before the next concert!

Posing in front of the statue in front of Buckingham Palace. You can't tell from this picture, but it was BLOODY hot!!!

Jess and Den in front of Buckingham Palace.

This is what Crosby, Stills, and Nash look like from a very great distance. We're pretty sure that's really them. They were awesome.

[Commence screaming]

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!

Paul McCartney!!!

The concert was unbelievable. McCartney was just radiant, and incredibly energetic. He switched instruments nearly every song, playing some of his own tunes and many of the Beatles classics (Day Tripper, Paperback Writer, Hey Jude, and so on and so on.) He even brought out the ukelele for Something in a tribute to George Harrison--Laura's favorite Beatles song, and a fantastic version it is. We were so glad to share the concert with Jess and Den, too!

Just a little "teaser" with some of Paul's theatrics.

Unfortunately, Dennis had to leave the next day for his business trip to Sweden. But Jess was able to stay a few more days, and we had a lovely time doing all sorts of things: exploring the city, shopping for wedding dresses (no luck there, yet), and getting duped into free theatre tickets!

So, the story there is that we noticed a show called "Prisoner of Second Avenue," a Neil Simon comedy starring Jeff Goldblum, on the Old Vic Theatre website. It was very difficult to understand the woman on the phone as I bought the tickets, but I knew (so I thought) that the tickets were for that night. So, we enjoyed a fun day seeing some of the sights before going to the Old Vic Theatre to see the show. After about 5 minutes of conversing with the box office staff, who were nearly freaking out because they could not find our tickets anywhere in the system, I realized we were at the wrong theatre...with about 3.5 minutes to Curtain. But then we were informed that "Prisoner of Second Avenue" didn't start until the next night. I was obviously embarrassed; then the guy turns around and asks "So, do you guys have plans tonight? Obviously not. So here you go, head upstairs and see a free show and sort out your tickets for tomorrow in the morning." So that's how we got free tickets to "As You Like It" at the Old Vic Theatre, which was absolutely fantastic. We're going to start doing that more often.

These pianos were all over London as part of a summer arts festival, available for anyone to stop and play. This is in St. Paul's Cathedral churchyard.

Sister-Friends on the Millennium Bridge; behind us Tower Bridge spans the Thames.

Jess snapped a nice photo of Derek and I in front of the Tower of London.

Looking across the Thames at Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. It was SO wonderful having Jess and Dennis with us--we're hoping that they can return soon for a longer trip. It was like having a little taste of home here for a few days, and great to enjoy this amazing city with our dear friends. Jess headed off to Italy to meet Dennis and enjoy the Italian lake country...and informs us we'll have to go ourselves someday!