First and foremost, Happy Birthday Mom! Hope you have a great day.

Also, Happy Birthday Doug! (who probably isn't even reading this.)

Today brought the nonstop drizzle and dreary weather for which London is so well known. However, it isn't cold, so I'm not going to complain.

I started the day at the Tower of London and did a tour with a Beefeater, which was fun. A bunch of gory stories, but it was neat to see something 900 years old. After that I went to St. Paul's Cathedral...home of Charles and Di's wedding! Yes, I am not a big fan of weddings, but royal weddings are a whole different matter. Growing up, there was a girl who lived a street over from us, and she had a movie on the story of Charles and Diana that we watched over and over. Of course this was the early 80's; the story ended with the fairy tale wedding. Anyway, it was a beautiful church and I climbed about 400 steps to get the pictures of the London skyline.

The most exciting part of the day is yet to come; I have a ticket to Les Miserables tonight, which is probably my favorite. It is a crappy seat for which I had to pay full price, but I don't care. I'm seeing Les Mis on the West End. Can you hear the people sing?

Housekeeping note: I've had an empty bud vase in my room since I arrived, and I came back to flowers! More important, today's housekeeper took away two of the three remote controls for the TV, including the one I had been using. Turns out, I have high def TV! This being the first vacation without Mark, I find myself noticing how things are different without him. Mark would have never allowed 3 remoted to exist without knowng what each did. Once I knew the first one I picked up could turn on the TV and flip through the channels, I was good.

Plan for tomorrow: Westminster Abbey (home of Will and Kate's wedding!) and the Churchill War Rooms (very excited about this; I've always had a thing for Churchill). That may be it, along with laundry and packing. I have 5:40am train to France on Wednesday monrning.