Monday Miscellany - there's no place like home.

We arrived home from England to a relatively quick hop through the airport, pleasant weather, and a hot Easter meal courtesy of my sister-in-law. Michael had stayed with them while we were away and so when we went to pick him up, we were ushered in to a lovely meal and our beautiful son, niece, and nephew.

I have a lot to blog about the trip, but I may go in reverse chronological order.  We spent our last 24 hours in London, ensconced in the Hilton London Metrople near Paddington Station.  The area is something of a "little Beirut" as my Beiruti husband called it.  Edgeware Road is lined with Middle Eastern restaurants, cafes, cellphone unlockers, groceries, shisha joints, and travel agencies.  The hotel concierge recommended a couple of restaurants and we had a lovely lunch at Al Araz, and I made use of their free wifi to catch up on some email.  

We headed out to Leicster Square to try to score some theatre tickets for the evening, but neither of our two choices (Wicked or The Children's Hour) had anything of interest.  The latter was SRO and the former only had very poor seats at a low discount.  So we wandered around, and ended up walking back to our hotel along Oxford Circle, doing a little window shopping among the absolute throngs of people. We picked up fixings for a light dinner (and by light, I mean grapes, plain yogurt, chocolate covered Hobnobs, and apple cider.  We also had the remainder of a bottle of port that we'd purchased in Hailsham.) We both had books we wanted to finish and had a relatively early start the next morning, so we settled in for a lazy last night in England.

Yesterday morning, we hopped on the Heathrow Express train and after checking our bags, retired to the lounge for coffee and a Canadian paper. The flight was uneventful... I watched my first celebratory movie post-Lent (Owning Mahoney, a true story about a Canadian bank fraudster, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and a blonde Minnie Driver) and listened to my audiobook.

More later.  Off to do laundry, grocery shopping, and get started on our taxes.