The problem was that we had about 6 trips planned in our minds for the summer, and the thought of not travelling to those places was too much to bear, so we decided to go out with a bang. We decided to travel every weekend for 9 straight weekends, starting March 12th with Madrid and ending May 7th with our flight back home to the States. A pretty aggressive schedule to say the least, but there was no chance we were going to come home regretting any missed travel opportunity. So, the weekend of March 20th we planned to go to Stockholm, Sweden.
Then the British Airways flight attendant union came along and ruined everything.
Let me preface this by saying that if you don't know already, the airline industry is probably more financially burdened right now than any other save maybe the residential construction and newspaper industries. This is especially true for the big guys, who have lots of overhead and are unable to stay competitive on price with the budget airlines and still turn a profit. Let me also say that the flight attendants for British Airways are some of the highest paid in the entire industry.
So, needless to say, when we found out that they planned to go on strike the very weekend we planned to travel, we were obviously not pleased. We were furious when we found out why. By the way they talked, you would have thought there were salary cuts or massive layoffs planned, but no. They were in negotiations over a new contract, and the 2 main areas of dispute were that management wanted to freeze wage increases in the short term (something nearly every corporation did in 2009) and on long haul flights, they wanted to reduce the number of attendants by 1 in the first class cabin. That's it. Could have saved the company millions, but these greedy union members weren't having it, and as a result our flight was cancelled, and rescheduling was impossible.
So, thanks a lot British Airways flight attendant union. Because of you, we never got to see Sweden.
Now that my little rant is over, I'll move on to what we actually did get to do instead...
The Weekend
With 2 free days on our hands, we decided to hit up some our favorites in London, knowing our chances to do so were dwindling. We spent Saturday at Books for Cooks, which definitely turned out to be our favorite London lunch spot, and shopped around Portobello Road. After a short trip to the Science Museum (tons of kids and we weren't really in a "science museum" kind of mood), we went out for a nice dinner and a movie.
On Sunday after church we made our way to Spitalfield's Market, which is known as one of the more eclectic markets in London - the kind of place to find chic retro clothing and unique odds and ends. Not really for me but Jenna did enjoy it. This happened to be right by Brick Lane, which is famous for its many curry houses, so we walked up there as well, though unfortunately not at meal time so we didn't get the pleasure of partaking.
Houston in London
My roommate from college, Houston, has a life that I envy, even after we've spent this time in Europe. During school he studied abroad in Sydney, and since graduation has spent 3 months travelling through Asia, and has lived in Chicago, Argentina, Montana, LA, San Francisco, and Austin. His latest adventure allowed him to take a month and work "remotely" from a small ski resort town in the French Alps. As fortune would have it, he was able to make a stop-over in London for a few days on his way back home.
He came in late on Monday night and left Thursday morning. Jenna and I both had to work, but it really turned out to be ideal because we could send him off to do the super touristy stuff in the daytime, and then I took advantage of the lazy European work environment and met up with him mid-afternoon.We spent one night walking around town while Jenna went to see the musical "Chicago" (which by the way she loved). We saw some of the touristy areas like Piccadilly Circus, but also had dinner at a really awesome Belgian place that is hidden away in the cellar right there in the heart of all the touristy stuff (thanks Rick!!). I took him to a couple of the cooler tourist sites like the Tower of London, but the highlight for me was the Beatles Tour that we went on.
There is a guy who has pretty much devoted his life to the Beatles, and is (I think officially) known as the "Beatles Brain of Britain". He has written a book and owns the Beatles Coffee Shop that is inside the Tube station nearest to Abbey Road, and he leads Beatles tours around London a couple of times a week. We saw some pretty cool stuff, like Paul McCartney's current office, the theatre where they had their first London concert (where Beatle Mania officially began), the offices they held in London where they performed their famous rooftop concert, and of course the Abbey Road studios where they recorded most of their albums and the famous crossing (hilarious to watch people try to cross the very busy street for a photo). The best part was that almost all the sites other than Abbey Road were right in the area of town where I spent about 1/2 of my year working. About half the sites we saw were places I walked by every day between the Tube and my client's office. It was really interesting to see these places from another light and think of the historical importance of it all.
We had a lot of fun with Houston in town. I got my first sushi in ages (Jenna is very anti) and were were able to introduce him to Indian, and overall I think we just had a great time. 
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