Kathy’s still feeling pretty rotten, and Maggie occassionally cuts loose with some pretty awful sounding coughs, though aside from when she’s sleeping, she seems in pretty good spirits. We head for home tomorrow, leaving London at 11:00am (5:00am San Marcos time), and landing back in Texas around 6:40pm. It’s been a great trip, but we’re looking forward to being back in the land of cactus and 100° afternoons.

Kathy is still battling a sinus infection today, so we had another fairly low-key day, with only two outings, both with subsets of the family.

Outing the first: All the kids but Maggie and I hiked 20 minutes down to The Odeon, a nearby movie theater, to see Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a wonderfully quirky effort, very much in the same vein as Burton’s earlier Edward Scissorhands, a personal favorite of mine. (In fact, I was amused to see that the first time we really get a good look at Johnny Depp’s version of Wonka, he in fact has a large pair of scissors clutched in his hands.) The English movie theater experience was an interesting one as well. At the Odeon, they’ve preserved a bit of the spectacle of the old movie theaters, with impressively large theaters and a very spacious lobby — all the more striking, given what a premium space is at in central London. I was further delighted to see that among the usual candy and popcorn at the snack bar, there was also beer for sale.

Outing the Second: Abigail and I went to Harrods, a giant department store in downtown London, to purchase some tea towels Mom McMains had promised to pick up for a friend, but lacked the time before her departure. We elbowed our way through the crowds and found the towels with a minimum of difficulty. It is, by the way, a treat to talk to the various people behind the counters at London businesses, not only because they’re usually quite helpful, but also because one never quite knows what accent one will encounter. In addition to the variety of UK accents, the city boasts an enormous number of immigrants, flavoring their English with French, German, Eastern European, African, Caribbean, and Asian languages. After procuring the towels, we wandered a bit through the rest of the store, enjoying the somewhat inexplicably themed Egyptian escalators and the toy section, and then returning home via the Underground once more.

Note: I’ve added a few photos from the last week that I like.

Today was kept low key by illness. Both Kathy and Maggie were feeling pretty rotten throughout the day. Details to fill in later: Visit with the Newleyweds, Treasure Island show on the Thames.

Today was a relatively low-key day. Liam was feeling a good deal better after 12 hours of sleep and letting his fever run its course, but other family members were beginning to show signs of illness. We spent a good deal of the day pottering about the house, laying low and resting. On towards afternoon, however, I decided that we desperately needed to do something London specific, so I dragged Emily and Liam off to nearby Hampstead Heath for a hike.

Hampstead Heath is one of the larger parks in London, which means it’s huge. While there are a number of nice foot and bicycle trails through it, it’s not cultivated to the degree that some of the other parks are, giving it a nice “walk through the woods” feel. We started on the west side of the park, near the tube station, and walked generally east, mostly along the bicycle trail that bisects the green space. We passed a variety of people, the usual assortment of large and extremely friendly dogs, and a number of cyclists as we wended our way through the leafy expanse. While there are no wild cactus to speak of here in England, due presumably to the cold winters, there are a variety of other plants to be careful of — berry bushes with thorns, pointy holly leaves, and my personal nemesis, stinging nettle.

After about 30 minutes of meandering vaguely eastward, we saw a large which we decided to climb. This turned out to be Parliament Hill, the heart of the Heath, from which one is afforded a smashing panorama of the city. I was a bit baffled by the abundance of park benches that topped the hill and were scattered extremely liberally throughout the rest of the park until I noticed that each of them bore a dedication, and had apparently been sponsored by someone to whom the Heath had been meaningful — rather a nifty way to give something back to others who enjoy it.

From the top of the hill, we saw “The Writer” — a huge, orange sculpture of a table and chair that towered 60 feet or so in the air, dwarfing the people who wandered about below it. Some rain had accumulated on the tabletop during the night, and as the wind picked up as we passed, the water blew off the edge and doused a gaggle of preadolescents who were playing below, eliciting bafflement and then hilarious shrieks. From there we sauntered over to a cafe (the parks here seem rife with them), and brought our sandwiches over to the public bowling green to watch a group of six septuagenarians demonstrate the finer points of lawn bowling. After 20 minutes of munching and watching, we caught a bus and headed back to the house.

Supermarket note: One thing I find absolutely wonderful about shopping for food here is that all the produce has listed on its label not only the usual weight and price, but also what part of England it was “Grown In” and whom it was “Grown By.” Though it may not actually reflect business realities, it makes one feel much closer to the farmer and as if someone has a personal stake in the food you buy — much more so than does buying from Agrico’s Worldwide Lettuce Consortium back in the States.