Armed & Dangerous

Thursday, August 5th

Here Matt is blowing kisses.
He sure loves his mummy.

This morning, the first thing on my agenda was to pack as we had to leave jolly olde London and head to the eternal city of Rome. Of course, packing was easy because I have become obsessed with packing organizers (cubes, folders, envelopes, etc.). A week before we left, I told Mike that I needed to head to Hillmer's Luggage to exchange a blue Eagle Creek 20 Packing Folder for a green one. He said, 'Who cares what color it is?' Silly boy! I then informed him that Matt had chosen the blue packing cubes and that I was using the raspberry packing cubes, so he was left with green...and, since the packing folder was for him...it needed to be green. He looked at me like I was crazy and simply said, 'You're weird...but I love you.' Weird...that's me in a nutshell

All packed up and ready to go, we went to Shakespeare's Head for breakfast. This time I had porridge and loved it! Then we walked to the British Museum. We had a lot of fun there, as you can see by the photos.

Mike and I on the steps of the
British Museum.

Matt knuckle bumps an Egyptian king.

After seeing the history of the world, we did some souvenir shopping and then went back to the room to relax before checking out at 2pm. We had a 3pm bus to catch out to Stansted Airport, so we grabbed a taxi to the coach station. We owed the driver 12 pounds, so Mike gave him a 20 pound note and asked for 6 back. The driver asked if we had anything smaller, Mike said he only had a 10. He just said to give him that. Mike protested that it wasn't enough and he wouldn't have a tip. The driver said, 'Welcome to London!' Wasn't that sweet!

Walk like an Egyptian.

Our bus was half an hour late, which started freaking Mike out...you know, the 'I'd rather be half an hour early than five minutes late' guy. Fortunately, we had another amazing driver who took a different route and got us there on time.

As we were going thru security, they pulled my carry-on off the conveyer belt and asked me to come with them. My bag had tested positive for explosives! They had to take every single item out and check it. Of course, it was obviously a false positive...can you imagine the headline...the wife a bomb detection officer found with explosives! We barely made it onto the flight!

We flew Ryanair and I won't comment too much on that experience except to say that it was one sales pitch after another...I actually felt sorry for those flight attendants.

We arrived in Rome and were waiting for our luggage when Mike found a group of police officers to talk to...needless to say, Matt and I handled the luggage on our own. Mike traded patches and baseball cards and received a pencil holder and calendar...he's ending up with some really cool souvenirs!

Exhausted, we finally made it to our B & B by 11:30 pm. I jumped in the shower and then laid in bed and checked my email, facebook, etc. The view out my window of St. Peter's Dome seriously got me a little verklempt. And with that, buona notte.