Here's the story of our trip so far--

Arrived in London on Saturday morning, exhausted, legs aching, flights 'over the pond' suck.

Checked in at our hotel, thank god they had a room available early. Went upstairs and upstairs and through doors and through doors (they take fire doors and fire safety very seriously here--that whole Fire of London thing, I think). Tried to sleep but the fan to the hotel's restaurant was in the air shaft just outside our window, noisy.

The room was hot and smelled like fried food. We laid down to try to sleep and Greg said--I can't do this. He went down to the desk and we got a much, much better room--their handicapped room in fact, which was not overly warm, twice as large, and had a huge bathroom. Yay!

We slept for a couple of hours, then visited the Museum of London and Piccadilly Circus. They say if you sit at Piccadilly Circus long enough, the whole world will pass by. I have no trouble believing it.

The next morning, we did our Grayline tour to Oxford, the Cotswolds (completely stereotypical beautiful English countryside) and Stratford-Upon-Avon for a 'cream tea.' The only bad part was that Greg and I were most interested in the Shakespeare sites and those were rushed because they were last. We did finish before the pouring rain, however.

The next morning, refreshed, we visited the Tower of London for about four hours (it's pretty cool), then St. Paul's Cathedral, then tried to go to Westminster Abbey (too late) and saw Big Ben and the London Eye and Parliament, then Buckingham Palace, then to Harrod's (where we ate chicken at a counter in the Meat Hall for $70).

On Tuesday morning, we took the Eurostar train to Paris, which I would highly recommend. We were cheated out of about $20 by an oh-so-helpful man at the automated ticket machine for the Metro when we arrived (we should have known better). And that was our first contact with a Parisian, isn't that nice.

We saw Notre Dame and I almost killed myself climbing the stairs. Seriously, we've walked so much on this trip that I think we're both in better shape than we've been for awhile, but my chest hurt from these stairs. 411 steps, all winding counterclockwise, with only one place to rest on the way. The chest thing went away as soon as I got my breath, but then I kept coughing and I thought I was going to throw up.

On Wednesday, fully recovered, we went to the Louvre (oh, our aching feet), the Eiffel Tower (fun but very, very high, Greg would say), did a boat cruise on the Seine, visited the Place du Concorde, walked back to our hotel through the Tulleries Gardens, and called it a night.

On Thursday, we traveled to Versailles via suburban train, where we stayed for hours, and where it got very hot and very sunny (91 degrees, the London paper said today). We ate at McDonald's at Versailles (thank you, Gregory, for letting me eat American food), then returned to Paris.

We tried to visit the Catacombs of Paris (closed for renovation, gotta clean up the bones, I guess), visited the Arc du Triomphe and Champs Elysses, then called it an early night--so wonderful to just rest.

This morning, we took the Eurostar back to London, then dumped our bags at our new hotel (thank you, God, they have free internet access and we could get into our room early).

We headed off to Westminster Abbey, which is really like a big cemetery because there are so many dang dead people everywhere. I wonder what you had to pay to get buried inside, because it seems people from 1200 onwards have been put everywhere in this place.

We liked our boat tour in Paris so much that we did one for London, which was a good idea because we've spent so much time traveling underground that we didn't see a bunch of neat things along the Thames.

We saw Tower Bridge again, then traveled to Trafalger Square briefly before heading back to our 'neighborhood.'

All we definitely want to do tomorrow is go to Wimbledon, which should take up a good part of the day since it's a ways out of town.

I could write on about blowing the black stuff out of our noses every night and the weird times we've been eating meals and the incredible sums of money we've been spending, but I'll leave that for another time.

For now, know that we miss you all, especially our girls. We take out their pictures every day, at least once per day, and we look at the pictures of them that Greg has stored on the digital camera. We talk about how we know they'll have seemed to grow and how we hope Julia doesn't cry when she sees us or refuses to come to us.

According to Marcia, Allie isn't quite ready to go home yet, but I think we've about had our fill of Europe for this trip. We're not looking forward to the horrible, even-longer flight home (I asked Greg if they could just drug me for it), but we're looking forward to getting back to our corner of the world.

Happy Birthday, Pam!!! See you all soon.

Debbie in London