i can almost taste it

I can't believe I will be in London in less than 2 months! Or at least I will be in Lincoln, about to be in London! It's funny. When Jonathan took me to Rome for our honeymoon I was not at all involved in planning our trip. I left everything up to him, having never traveled anywhere before. (Besides I know my boy loves planning.)

Anyway, I think he thought I wasn't excited about that trip, because I didn't even pick up a guidebook until we were there. But it wasn't that I wasn't excited. No way! It was just that I couldn't really believe that it would happen. That I would actually be in Rome. And it didn't feel real until the plane landed and we were actually there and everyone around us was speaking in Italian. (Or German. Or French. There were a lot of people there.)

This time, I know we are really going somewhere. It is really going to happen. And I am so excited! I bought a new coat that is water-resistant, since we will be in London during the rainy season. I bought an adaptor so I can dry my hair and iron my clothes and not look like the total slob I was schlepping around Rome. I have been studying our guide books and have written down an itinerary for each part of the city, including cheap places to eat. I told Jonathan that by the time we arrive in London, I will have memorized both books, and I will be able to say, "You hungry? I'm hungry. There's a great cafe on the next street over, or we could take the tube to Soho where there is a great sushi place on Bladdy-Blah Street serving half-price sushi for happy hour."

For all that I have always wanted to go to London, there is actually a lot of places in the guidebook that I am not that interested in seeing. The Aquarium and the Natural History Museum, for example; I've been to aquariums and I've been to the Smithsonian. It's more like a few things that I want to spend entire days seeing. I want to spend an entire day at the Tower, and at the British Museum and at the Tate Modern and a huge chunk of one whole day at Westminster Abbey. I want to see some really old, crumbly cemeteries. I want to walk along the Thames. I want to eat a picnic lunch out in the cold under a grey cloudy sky in Hyde Park.