Here Is London…
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
…Giddy London, home of the brash, outrageous and free…This is just one of many songs by Morrissey or The Smiths that mention places in or around London, places that I kept seeing or hearing throughout our stay. A few more examples:…all around Sloane Square…3am Northside Clapham Common…Train heave on to Euston…the Piccadilly palare was just silly slang…Turns out, all of these places are real places, not just song lyrics. I found this out as I finally got a chance to actually tour London, where our hotel and home base had been for the past week. Read the rest of this entry »
You might say that Friday, April 2, 2010, was a full day. A bus tour around parts of England, a play in London’s West End Theatre district, two celebrity encounters, an ultra-famous grave, and a Hard Rock Cafe. And once again, this was accomplished on virtually no sleep. I barely had time to grab a croissant before catching our 8am bus out of the hotel that morning. So by the time we made our first stop at a Welcome Break rest station, I was famished. 
I knew that it would behoove me to bring along a large wad of cash to the Hollywood Show held at the Burbank Mariott Hotel and Convention Center on Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25, 2010. The collector and celebrity show in Burbank must certainly be one of the largest in the country. The one on this date was the fifth one I’ve attended over the past five years (seventh total) and I must say that it was the best show I’ve seen to date. I usually pontificate on the greediness of the some of the celebrities, but I’m going to spare you that this time. After all, no matter if there were a few putzes in the mix, I came away happy…albeit much poorer. 
I hadn’t planned to take the side trip excursion to Paris, France during my weeklong visit to England, mostly because I had already been there before. This may sound silly, but if I had intended to go, the number one reason would be to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. So I nearly almost passed up the trip even when circumstances (namely a couple who had signed up for the trip never made it to England) allowed me to go for free, because I knew there wouldn’t be an opportunity to get to the Hard Rock during our brief guided tour of the city. But there was one specific thing that I had not accomplished the