Well, we slept too long and didn’t get out until 6:30. Still, we took the tube to St. Paul’s and walked from there to the Thames, then along the river to the Clock Tower (aka Big Ben to most folks, although that’s actually the name of the bell inside the Clock Tower), Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, the Mall, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus. Had good (not great) indian food - looking forward to having better later this week (any suggestions?), and finished up with a walk through Soho/Chinatown, then back to Leytenstone. Rush took tons of pictures, and we really had a good time. Looking forward to tomorrow - not sure what we’ll do yet, but we’ve got tickets to Les Miserables tomorrow night!

Made it to Heathrow this morning just before lunch. Nashville to Charlotte to Houston to Chicago to London. Taking the long route saved us enough (based on our initial ticket searches) to nearly pay for one of the tickets! Quick jaunt through immigration and customs, 1.5 hours on the tube and a 20 minute walk got us ‘home’. Thanks H &K for your hospitality. We certainly owe you one (or two).

I’m sitting in a lovely row house in east London, looking out on a quaint English garden - small, but with very green grass and lots of flowers. Rush is catching up on the sleep he lost on the plane, but we’re headed out towards Picadilly Circus in 20 minutes.

Thrilled to share some exciting news!

I’m at the tail end of plans for a trip to England for my son and me, and it’s wearing me out.  My oldest, Rush, turned 18 in April and graduated from high school in May.  Since he was very little, LaNita and I have promised him that we would take him on a trip when he graduated.  And oh, what a trip this trip is becoming…

Interesting to predict how this/these increases affect companies like Netflix.  Read Anthony’s comments - “Did I not hear the Post Office complaining about how e-mail and instant messaging has decreased their business? Well, DVD mail from Netfix and Blockbuster has increased their business substantially. DVD renting via mail did not really exist until Netflix introduced a paradigm shift of how to rent movies. Netflix business model brought tons of lost business back to the Postal system. Now the Post Office wants to claim that processing the extra business it gets is costing them extra money and they need a increase of 7 percent?…Maybe the Post Office has outlived its usefulness since it can’t adapt to new technology. The world is changing and they need to change or become extinct like the dinosaur.”

Word.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/06/news/economy/postal_rate_increase/index.htm

Does anyone else see the cleverly-hidden trend here?  “The price of first-class stamps has increased six times since 2001, when they cost 34 cents, twice as many times as it did in the 1990s.”  My prediction - the USPS will be gone in 10 years.  And don’t start with the argument that the internet is killing the mail.  The obese, bureaucratic behemoth that is the USPS is killing the mail.  Successful companies will always find ways to reinvent themselves in rapidly-changing markets.  And so, the USPS will go the way of the buffalo.

Maybe the Judd’s will keep a few employees around, so that the tourists will have something quaint to look at…