A chilly day in Londontown

It's pretty nippy here today. The air temperature isn't so bad, but the wind is whipping out of the North Sea and freezing our ears off.

We didn't start off the day on a very good foot. Well, I didn't anyway. About 15 minutes before our alarm went off, something got blown off the bathroom window sill. It was a great calamity. But, not enough to get either of us out of bed.

Fifteen minutes later, I got up to take a shower. Lo and behold there was my make-up bag sunk in the toilet. Now, I realize I was charmed by the Scottish rain. Not so much about English toilet water. From here on out, you'll just have to get used to me in photos with my baby-fresh face.

But my morning significantly improved while I was watching London's version of the Today show. A story came on about a woman who "was saved by a giant pair of knickers." Intrigued, I sat down to watch. Apparently, a woman was cooking when her frying pan caught on fire. Grabbing whatever laundry she had nearby, she smothered the fire. Not much of a story, right? Wrong. The reporter said the woman was save by her "huge size 20 knickers." And on the screen flashes the woman, semi-toothless, holding her smoke-stained panties up for all of London to see.

My jaw was on the floor. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry for the woman. Here's the reporter, in her kitchen exclaiming at the GIGANTIC SIZE OF HER KNICKERS. And there she is glowing in her 15 minutes of fame. How this qualifies as news--"Woman puts out fire with her Jockey's"--I have no idea. But it made me laugh.

When we finally made it out, we headed right for the British Museum and walked through about 2,000 years of history. We saw:

A colossal image of Rameses II (Moses' arch-enemy, a man mummified in the dessert sands about 5,400 years ago. His name is Ginger. No joke.

We also saw the sculpture from the Parthenon. Yes, THE Parthenon. It truly is amazing what you see when you travel. Our Scottish tour guide in the Highlands said Chinese people take pictures of sheep, Europeans take pictures of cows, but Americans take pictures of anything old. Anything at all. ANd I'm sure it's because we really don't have anything old in our country.

The rest of today was spent looking for the London branch of Tim's Mecca: Cadenhead's Whisky Shop. After leaving Edinburgh, he decided he wanted a sample of whisky from each Cadenhead's we find. So, away we went. After that, we stopped in at Twining's tea shoppe again for a little more retail therapy.

Twining's is in the neighborhood of Temple Church of The DaVinci Code fame. Man, that church is fickle. We can't catch it open at all. We might be able to try again tomorrow, but we'll see.

Well, we're off to Harrod's now. And then the Ceremony of the Keys tonight. The ceremony is the way the guards have been locking up the Tower of London for more than 700 years.

Tomorrow, Portobello Road, Imperial College and the Tower of London (for the Crown Jewels) is in the plan. The sun is out right now, so we best enjoy it while we can.