London

Hey guys,

If you didn't already know, I'm on vacation in London through this coming Saturday. I thought that rather than sticking to Twitter and Facebook to let you guys know what's going on, I'd do a blog post so that those who are interested can follow the events of my travels.

Here goes...

First off, getting in here was a bit unusual in terms of flying. With the dust cloud from the volcano in Iceland (I'm not even attempting to spell the name of that thing), we actually flew farther north out of Canada than usual, passed over Greenland, a bit of Iceland, the edge of Norway, and then came into London from the east. Pretty cool, though, with being able to watch the plane's route on a small screen installed in back of the seat in front of me.

After getting through Heathrow (the airport here in London) on Sunday, we went to Hampton Court Palace (home of the Tudors long ago) and Canary Wharf which is home to the Canada Tower. We went at my request simply to see the tower. It was the tower that Dane and Tom O'Bedlam jump from in "The Invisibles", a comic book series I'm obsessed with. It therefore was the basis for the building that Neo jumps from in the film "The Matrix" which is largely derived from "The Invisibles". Pretty Cool.

Dinner Sunday night was at The Slug and Lettuce in Canary Wharf, at which I had a bacon cheeseburger and my first ever Strongbow, an English cider drink that tasted like Miller Light with a bunch of sugar stirred in.

Monday was a lot of tourist-y stuff. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, The National Gallery (which held original paintings by Michaelangelo, Raphael, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and a host of others). Also Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square (which I'm told is the Times Square equivalent in London).

We also visited the Hard Rock Cafe here in London which was the first Hard Rock Cafe ever opened. I saw memorabilia from The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Bo Diddley, Steve Vai, The Who, and the Sex Pistols, among many others. I was most impressed by a harpsichord that the Beatles actually used to record, the original piece of paper that John Lennon used to write the lyrics to "Instant Karma" on, and a guitar and trademark white-rimmed sunglasses of Kurt Cobain.

I went to a mammoth comic shop on the edge of Soho called Forbidden Planet. It was huge. My purchases were a couple of Flash trade paperbacks which I'd had trouble finding in the States that were written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. I also picked up "Batman: Gothic", another Morrsion penned tale.

Dinner tonight was another cheeseburger (can you tell I'm American?) from a Polish food joint down the road from the hotel.

I may have missed something in the events of these two pleasantly overwhelming days, as I'm typing this at the end of my day here tonight. I'm just wanting to chronicle the most memorable things (although I could never do this city justice with just a blog post) for myself and any others that might be interested. I'll try and continue to do so through the week.

Alright friends, time to jump off of here and grab some much needed rest. I'll post a link to this on Twitter/Facebook. Feel free to comment on this or anything else that I've posted on those sites or here on the Llog anytime. If I take a while to reply, I've only got internet access when I get back to the room here at night. The cell is not (easily) functional here in the UK. So anyway, if you hit me up here or on Twitter or Facebook, I'll get back to you ASAP.

Hope all is going well for all of you.

As always...

Peace...