Fish and Chips and Croissants and Pies and lots and lots of walking to make it all go away...

Soaking up culture, getting ideas for the house and generally luxuriating in the multi-cultural paradise that is London and Paris, our vacation has been an infusion of soul-feeding sights and sounds.

It has also been a reunion of sorts, meeting up with old friends from Tokyo as they visited with family and celebrated birthdays. We were glad to be able to share in some of these celebrations, which ranged from a large family and friend gathering outside of the city of London to a posh dinner party at the trendiest of restaurants and finally to a small gathering at a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris.

Some of my favorite sights....

I think they made these road signs just for me......

Arny wondered why they didn't just say "Exit", but we are in the UK and mostly we saw these "Way Out" signs. The subway and Underground are not the same thing, as we discovered as we were looking for one to take us back to the hotel and saw a "Subway" sign, only to discover that after making our way down the stairs, down the path and up the stairs on the other side, we were not at the train, but merely across the street.

I loved this - even Londoners with no back yard find space for a garden - this one happens to be in the river on a plot of floating land.


And yes, we have been doing the tourist thing - my own Holmes and Watson.

I tried to get Ariana to go to Hogwarts, telling her she could meet up with Harry and the gang, but she was having none of it.

We are off today to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood and the Spitalfields market, after a brief stop at MI6 headquarters - can you tell who wants to go where??