Weekend at Disney, and a ROW80 Update

Only a little more than a week in, and I'm already failing at my goal of writing everyday. Last Thursday I left for a weekend in Orlando to take care of wedding business and spend some time at the Disney parks, and I didn't write anything during those four days. I did do a lot of thinking about my WIPs, though--seven hours in a car by yourself will do that to you. Awhile back I wrote about getting seduced by a Sexy New Idea (SNI) and temporarily abandoning the YA novel I was working on, but I'm pleased to say that thanks to those two ridiculously long car rides, the novel and I are back on very good terms. I was able to think through a couple of scenes I was stuck on, and it feels good to be working on it again. I did manage to write the past two days, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself for not writing over the weekend.

The weekend at Disney was a nice break from work, and I'm getting really excited about the wedding. I know a lot of people probably think T and I are crazy for getting married at Disney World, but I'm feeling really good about the decision after meeting with our wedding planner. Basically, we wanted a destination wedding that we could have in December and that wouldn't be too far for our family and friends to travel to, and we wanted someone else to do most of the work for us, and Disney is definitely meeting all of those objectives. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a "princessy" girl, so this isn't going to be some Cinderella's coach, fairy tale-styled wedding. We're aiming for simple and elegant, with lots of fun surprises for our guests, and after our planning session I'm finally feeling like we just might pull it off.

On Friday we spent the day with our wedding planner, Michelle, and meeting with the florists and chef, and we accomplished so much in just one day. I was a bit nervous about how the day would go, but everyone was so friendly, accommodating, and professional that I felt perfectly at ease. We got to sample cakes and build a custom cake from the bottom up, play with floral designs, and tour the Wedding Pavilion and Narcoossee's, where we are having the reception. They are both right on the Seven Seas Lagoon and surrounded by windows, so everywhere you look you see light and water. Airy, beautiful, and exactly what I wanted. We also got to go back into the kitchen at the Grand Floridian for a special menu tasting, which was fun and exciting. On the marquee that had "Welcome Lacy and Thomas," and they had a formal dining room table set up right in the middle of the kitchen with our custom menus lying on the plates. Chef Corey prepared each of our dishes and talked with us about different ways he could adjust them to our palates, but they were all so wonderful we didn't need anything changed. At the end as a thank you gift he gave us each a block of Himalayan sea salt, which I'm really excited about trying in recipes.

That evening we went to Epcot to look at some of the places we are getting photos taken (primarily in France, Italy, Morocco, and the UK), and to see the space where we are having our dessert party (UK Lochside). We watched Illuminations from there, and it truly is a spectacular spot. I can't wait to share it with our guests, especially the ones who haven't been to Epcot before (like my grandmother). On Saturday we went to Animal Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom, and we got to end the day with Wishes, which is always the perfect end to a vacation. The whole weekend reminded me of why I love Disney and what fun it will be to experience it with my closest friends and family. Despite how overwhelmed I've been at work this week (and expect to be for the next two weeks), I'm feeling really good about life right now and really looking forward to the future.

The Wedding Pavilion, where we are having our ceremony

In the Grand Floridian kitchen, our names on the marquee

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A slow but solid start

I almost forgot today was a ROW80 update, but thankfully I wrote it down in my planner, which I just pulled out for the first time today. (It's been one of those days.) So far I'm meeting my goal of writing everyday, although I must admit that I haven't written that much. Yesterday I added a paragraph to my WIP--only a couple hundred words, but still...it's a start. Considering I hadn't even opened the file in a couple of weeks, a new paragraph feels pretty amazing right now.

In part, I have to thank the Fourth of July for inspiring that paragraph. Because I'm so overwhelmed with work right now, at the last minute Monday evening I decided not to go to my town's Fourth of July celebration. Instead, I decided I would work until 9:00 p.m. and then treat myself to the fireworks display and the newest episode of Weeds. The fireworks were shot off from the ball fields just down the street from my house, so when I heard the first explosion at 9:00, I paused Weeds and went outside and sat on my front steps. Up and down my street, people abandoned backyard barbecues and house parties to gather with their friends and families and watch the twenty minute spectacle. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who was watching the fireworks alone, which may sound depressing, but was actually a blessing in disguise. The fireworks were absolutely amazing, probably the best show I've seen outside of the Magic Kingdom, colorful and creative and perfectly choreographed. And it was exactly the inspiration I needed to write that paragraph yesterday.

My novel opens with the protagonist on a beach by herself watching a similar display, one also representative of independence and freedom, so watching the fireworks Monday night really put me in the right frame of mind to rewrite that scene. In fact, I was rewriting it in my head the entire time I was sitting outside watching the fireworks, and afterwards I went inside and sketched out the basics of the scene. (Okay, I watched Weeds first--but it did get written, so that's all that matters.)

So I'm two for two so far this week. The rest of this week will be a bit trickier because I'm going to Orlando for the weekend, but I'm taking my pocket-sized notebook with me so I can scribble lines and phrases while I'm waiting in line to ride Space Mountain or something. And I plan on seeing fireworks at least twice this weekend, so maybe I'll even work on the opening scene some more. (And have much more to say during Sunday's update!)

Hope you're all having a productive writing week as well!

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ROW80: I promise to do better this time

My first attempt at ROW80 was, if not a total failure, pretty close to it. I struggled to reach my goals for the first month or so, and then, in the midst of finals and with my London sojourn looming on the horizon, I just gave up entirely. I'm not proud of this, but I also don't regret it. I don't think I would have enjoyed myself nearly as much in London if I'd been constantly worried about meeting word counts and checking off a to-do list, and I really needed that month to regroup and heal my dysfunctional relationship with my dissertation. Now the dissertation and I are very much in love again, I've come to terms with the fact that I cannot afford to  run away and live in London forever, and I've learned that my ROW80 goals last time were a little ridiculous, at least for my first time.

This time around I've promised myself that I will Do Better, that I will make it all the way to the end, so I've set a single, more manageable goal:
I will write everyday. 

That's right. Starting Monday, July 4, for the next 80 days I will write every single day. Here's the great thing, though, and the reason I might actually accomplish this goal: I'm not giving myself a target word or page limit. I'm not restricting what kind of writing I do everyday. Whether I write four pages on my dissertation, twelve words on my novel, or a two-paragraph blog post, it all counts. As long as I get into the habit of writing everyday, I've decided it doesn't matter what kind of writing I'm doing.

I've got some help this time around as well. I've got several Very Important writing deadlines coming up that have been established by the powers that be (i.e. the dissertation director and the editor publishing one of my articles). For those days I'm feeling blocked, I can exercise my writing muscles in Julianna Baggott's virtual boot camp, which sounds both fun and super productive. And I'm moving to Pennsylvania and won't be teaching for awhile, which should give me more writing time.

So no excuses. I can do this, and you can, too. If you want to join the coolest writing challenge out there, the only one that lets you set the goals, then you should sign up for ROW80, too.

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A Day at Flannery O'Connor's House

Tomorrow is the first day of my summer class, so I thought I'd better squeeze in one more blog post before the craziness ensues. This is the first time I've taught a five-week mini-semester, so it is going to be a challenge to cram a 15-week class into 5 weeks. The class meets five days a week for an hour and a half, so that's going to present its own challenges. I haven't taught five days a week since I taught middle/high school, and I've never taught classes that were that long. Despite my reservations about this teaching schedule, though, I'm looking forward to this class. I'm teaching World Lit II for the first time in a year and a half, so I'm actually getting to teach writers and texts I'm somewhat knowledgeable about!

Because of the abbreviated nature of the term, I decided to teach a class devoted entirely to the short story, and I'm really excited about my syllabus. Over the next five weeks I'll get to share (and rediscover) my love for Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Mansfield, Jorge Luis Borges, Kate Chopin, and Edwidge Danticat, among others. Because this is a "world" literature class, I couldn't include all of the Anglo-American writers I wanted (including Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, and Jhumpa Lahiri), but I am getting to teach a wide variety of international authors I've never taught before-- Hanan Al-Shaykh, Can Xue, Bessie Head, and Ben Okri, just to name a few.  I'm also having my students do group projects on current trends in short fiction, and they will be presenting on topics like microfiction, flash fiction, and online journals. My ideas for the project are still developing, so if you have any topics you think I should include, please let me know!

The final reason that I'm excited about this class is that it will be my last one for awhile. That's right, you heard it here first! (Or maybe not, if you talk to me in person regularly....) I finally broke the Big News to my dissertation director this week: I will not be returning to Auburn in the fall. I'm not dropping out of school; I've just decided to "dissertate" from afar. So at the beginning of August I'm moving to Pennsylvania, where my fiance lives, and the plan is to take at least a year off from teaching.

This is a break that I really need. The past few semesters I feel like I've just been skating by, doing the bare minimum, and at times I've resented how much time I've had to dedicate to prepping and grading over doing my own research or writing. This is mostly my fault (there were semesters when I was teaching four or five classes split between two institutions), but it's also in part because I've spent the past year teaching only World Lit I, a class I tried to enjoy but got over really quickly. I was talking with another instructor the only day and was shocked to hear that during annual review he told the program coordinator that he refused to add any more women to his syllabus because that would require teaching works he had not studied before, and he could not devote the time to researching and prepping new texts. This shocked me especially because when I first taught World Lit I, I was teaching nothing BUT texts I'd never been taught or even read before: The Ramayana, Egyptian love poetry, Wu Chengen's Monkey, Lysistrata, Dante's Inferno, etc.

Every semester this is what I do. I teach almost entirely new texts, in part because I see teaching as an excuse to read things I otherwise might never push myself to read. But I know I'm also burning myself out with all the extra prepping and researching. I don't ever want to become the kind of teacher who refuses to teach new texts, so I think I need this time to reevaluate who I am as a teacher, who I want to be, and how I can sanely be that person when I have so many other obligations to meet. I also think I need the time to miss teaching, something I have done in the past but haven't done in a looooong time.

On a happier note, since today is officially the last day of summer for me, my brother and I decided to take one last little trip this weekend--we drove to Milledgeville, Georgia, to see Flannery O'Connor's house and grave. We are both big O'Connor fans, so it was nice to share the experience with someone else who has read most of her stories and novels.

O'Connor lived at Andalusia, her family's farm, for the last thirteen years of her short (39 year) life, and she wrote many of her most famous stories while living there. We were the only two visitors there, and we had free-reign to walk around the house (the unrestricted areas, at least) and the grounds. The house itself is fairly unassuming. It isn't some grand plantation house, but a modest white two-story with a screened-in front porch. The grounds surrounding it, including the pond, barn, and several out buildings, are not particularly impressive or memorable. I think the most inspiring part of the house was how uninspiring it was. Being at Andalusia really helped me to see that if you have a rich imagination, you don't need to live in Paris or New York or some other inspiring place to write honest, creative stories. Although O'Connor spent a few years in Iowa attending the Iowa Writer's Workshop, as well as time at Yaddo and in New York and Connecticut, the majority of her life was spent in the town of Milledgeville and living on that farm. Despite this "limitation," she used her background and experiences in the rural South to create stories and characters that have long out-lived her.

I've always been reluctant to write about the South, about the people and places where I grew up, but I think it's time I start digging into them a bit deeper, mining my memories and experiences for their story potential. I think, in many ways, that's what my stories have been missing, that moment of truth and authenticity that can only come from sharing a lived experience. Maybe it's time I start "writing what I know," as opposed to "writing what I've learned."

Me on the famous front steps of the O'Connor house

Flannery O'Connor's bedroom at Andalusia

O'Connor dining room

One of the peacocks on the farm. There were around 50 of them when Flannery lived here.

Barn and Milk House at Andalusia

O'Connor's grave at Memory Hill Cemetary

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Learning to Live

I've been back from my Great London Adventure for a few days now, and it's amazing how quickly things return to normal. Within hours after arriving back in the States, I was already feeling as if I'd never left, just as within hours after arriving in London, I felt as if I'd never lived (or belonged) anywhere else. Today I'm working on my summer syllabus, proofreading the latest issue of The Scriblerian, and reviewing a fellow contributor's essay for a collection on travel/tourism coming out next year. Tomorrow I have a list of wedding-related errands to run (including picking up my dress, which came in three months early!) and paperwork to complete. In other words, things here are just as I left them at the beginning of May. Part of me might even be tempted to believe the whole trip was a dream if it weren't for the little mementos I come across throughout the day: my British Library reader card tucked into a pocket of my backpack; a receipt from Sainbury's folded in my wallet; a Bath train ticket being used as a bookmark; an open bag of Haribo Hari gummies in my purse; the last two lemon macaroons chilling in the fridge. Despite these reminders, it is still hard for me to believe that a week ago I was at Versailles, fighting the palace crowds; wandering through the endless gardens; lying in the grass by the Grand Canal, eating tomato pizza and scoops of pistachio and mango gelato; and peeking through the dust-coated windows of Marie Antoinette's Hamlet.

The Queen's Hamlet has always been my favorite place at Versailles, and one of my favorite places in the Paris region.  I've often heard it spoken of snidely, as the place where Marie Antoinette went to play farm girl, to pretend peasantry when palace life got to be too much for her--an idyllic charade that made the French populace even angrier and more resentful of the royals during the Revolutionary period.  But when I'm at the Hamlet, I tend to see it the way I think good ole Marie did--as a perfect escape, a breath of fresh air when the rest of the world gets to be too imposing, chaotic...noisy.

The first time I visited the Hamlet was in 2005.  I'd spent the previous seven days running around Paris, dragging my friends through museum after museum, hopping from Metro line to Metro line, climbing staircase after staircase to take in wide, sweeping views of cityscape--concrete, plaster, asphalt, and brick stretching all the way to the horizon. Yes, there were occasional patches of green, and every once in awhile we'd stop to rest our feet by the fountain pool in Luxumbourg Gardens or bask in the sunlight on the Sacre Coeur steps, but even then, the city was always breathing, panting all around us.  There was nowhere we could go to escape the sounds of city life: the car horns, squealing bus brakes, non-stop chatter in more languages than I could recognize.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a city girl at heart. I love the speed and energy of city life, the constant movement, the surge of adrenaline I feel every time I run to catch a train or cross a busy intersection or fight my way through a crowded plaza. I need the chaos in order to, occasionally, appreciate the calm, the quiet, the peace of green spaces. And that's exactly what I found at the Queen's Hamlet--calm, quiet, peace--all things I didn't know I missed or was looking for until I had them. And then I never wanted to leave.

Visiting the Queen's Hamlet is now the thing I look forward to most at Versailles--it's the perfect escape after fighting the palace hoards to see the thrones or Marie Antoinette's bed chamber or the Hall of Mirrors.  It feels so remote, tucked away in its little corner of the estate, acres of fields and pastures and streams and lake. It's still a working farm, with donkeys, sheep, goats, cows, and the fattest rabbits I've ever seen.  And even though I had to share the experience with a much larger crowd of people than I had previously (everywhere I went this trip felt more crowded than before), I still felt a sense of calmness descend over me when my eyes first swept over the hills and saw the moulin.  It's the same feeling I get every time I see one of Monet's Nympheas, the feeling that compels me whenever I'm in New York/Paris/London/San Francisco, and feeling stressed or tired or overwhelmed, to go to the Met/l'Orangerie/Tate Modern/Legion of Honor and sit in front of one of Monet's numerous water lily paintings, focusing only on the swirling pools of blue, green, and purple oil and tuning out everything else. In those moments, the city is silenced, the chaos stilled, and nothing exists for me except Monet's thick, broad strokes and the soothing colors of his palette. This is the feeling I get when I return to the Hamlet.

Having so many other tourists around this time had an interesting effect, though. It actually pushed me closer to the buildings, forced me off the approved paths and into the little nooks and hideaways Marie Antoinette once sought. All of the main buildings at Versailles are open to the public--the palace, Petit Trianon, Grand Trianon--except those at the Hamlet. These are all closed up, emptied of their furniture and decorations, of any sign that someone once lived in them. And yet, they feel more alive than any other royal residence. Although all of the other buildings are full of original furnishings, artwork, drapes, and even table settings, it is difficult for me to imagine people (namely, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI) actually eating at those tables or sleeping in those beds or sitting in those salons, entertaining company. The furniture looks too perfect, too staged, too much like what I've seen in a dozen other museums.

In the past, I've also had a difficult time imagining M.A. (it's okay if I call her that, right?) at the Hamlet, but this time--peeking through the unwashed windowpanes of her house into empty rooms, seeing the late afternoon sunlight slanting across the unswept black-and-white-tiled floor--for the first time, I could see her there. I looked straight through the house (there are windows on the front and back, and it's only one room wide) and saw what she saw--the tranquil oasis she had built. The grassy hills and grazing cows and blooming waterlilies on the pond. The open verandas and giant flowerpots and vines of flowers creeping up outdoor staircases. The way the light refracted off the green water. Unlike all of the amply furnished palace rooms I'd passed through that day, this barren room spoke to me and said, Someone lived here. Someone's skirt swept along this floor. Someone pressed her face to this glass and admired this view. Someone lived here.

Sometimes I think I get it all wrong when it comes to "living." I tend to think that if I'm not filling up my hours and days with activity, if I'm not doing something, then I'm not living. As if collecting experiences and stories as if they're Girl Scout badges is what life is all about. But maybe Marie Antoinette had it right. Sometimes in order to appreciate that kind of living, we have to take a step away, have to stop moving altogether. We have to press the pause button on our busy lives and embrace the stillness. We have to empty our minds of all thought and just feel the sun on our faces, the breeze on our skin. Breathe deep breaths of cool, honeysuckle-tinged air. Just live.

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A Typical London Sunday

It's Friday, the end of my third week here in London, and it's all coming to an end much too quickly.  I have just one more week here, and then I'll be headed back to Alabama. It's a bit difficult to even comprehend going back right now. The heat must be unbearable. (Until Wednesday, the weather here was crisp and cool, and the past few days the temperature has been hovering around the low 70s).  I have absolutely no idea what's going on back home--I haven't kept up with the news or any television programming--but I assume if anything truly important happened, Facebook would have let me know.  It's been so very nice to be almost completely cut off from all of that (by choice), to be fully immersed in my work and life here. I will admit that I'm beginning to feel burned out, though--just a little. I've had a frustrating few days research-wise, and that makes it hard to clear my mind and keep going. I'm also beginning to realize just how much I have left to do, and how there is no way I can get through all of it in the time I have left. I'm trying to let that go, though, and just enjoy the remaining week.

I'm not even going to try to summarize all that I've been doing since my last new post a couple of weeks ago, so instead, I will just show you how I spent last Sunday. (Pictures, except the last, are in no particular order.)

Late afternoon sunlight on St. Martin-in-the-Fields--view from the front of the National Gallery.

@ Tate Britain:  The Lady of Shalott and Ophelia on the same wall. My inner Anne of Green Gables-loving, ten-year-old self could have died of happiness.

@ Tate Britain: I just really loved the fierceness of this Leighton sculpture.  Oh, and Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose behind it. 

Springtime @ St. Paul's

Got to Harrod's after closing, so decided to take a meandering walk home, and ended up here: St. Simon Zelotes.

Sunday crowds at Buckingham Palace.

Where the Londoners go to unwind--St. James' Park on a sunny, lazy Sunday.

And I finished my day with some Indian food and Facebook, looking out over the lovely, quiet courtyard of my  OLD flat. But that's a story for another day. :-)

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Old London Posts (cont.)

Friday, 20 May 2011
The last few days have been crazy busy with research. We spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday at the National Archives. Tuesday Jamie and I took the other girls to our favorite pub, The Hourglass, which we went to after work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It’s so nice to feel like we are actually working here, not just being tourists.

Thursday and Friday were spent at the London Metropolitan Archives. We had a fabulous tour behind the scenes by Claire, and she also introduced us to Jeremy in maps and images and Tim in conservation. Really fascinating stuff. Pretty sure I should have been a conservationist or archivist, though I’m not sure how you get those jobs.

PB took us all to dinner at the Admiral Codrington last night (Thursday), which was really good. Today Jamie and I hung back to see if we could get the room situation straightened out, and the good news is that we get to move May 31st to a new flat! Then we spent the rest of the day at the LMA. I had some amazing finds there, including an 1890s photo album from a family in India. I’m trying to figure out who they are right now. I would post pictures from it (because they are awesome), but they are copyright protected so I can’t put them online. :-(

After we left the LMA, Jamie, Cassie, and I went down to Trafalgar Square, ate at the Bear and Staff, and spent the evening at the National Gallery, which doesn’t close until 9 pm on Fridays. Tomorrow is another full day of work at the British Library, which I’m actually really excited about—because I’m a nerd over here doing nerdy things. :-)

The National Archives at Kew

Stacks behind the scenes at the LMA.

Tim, a conservationist at the LMA, showing us a book that has been burned to a brick.

Trafalgar Square from the front of the National Gallery.

Sunday, 22 May 2011

The weekend is over, and tomorrow it’s back to the BL for another fun day of research. (And I’m not being sarcastic.) Yesterday was our first day at the BL, and I have to say I was extremely happy and made some great and super useful finds. It’s been awhile since I’ve been really happy about doing research, so this trip was exactly what I needed to get back in the dissertation-writing mindset.

I spent most of the day transcribing this children’s book a mother wrote for her daughter growing up in India. In the dedication she says that the British children’s books didn’t really suit her daughter because they were all about experiences and places and things she was unfamiliar with, so she thought her daughter should have a book that reflected experiences she could relate to. The BL has the only two copies of the book that have survived (and both of them are on reserve for me!) and I think only one other person in the world has written about it (albeit briefly), so I think there’s a lot of original stuff I can say about it.

My nerdiest moment had to be when I was given the BL’s three copies of Eliza Fay’s Original Letters from India, a text I’ve been working on for over a year.  The BL has two copies of the 1821 edition and the only surviving copy of the 1817 first edition left in the world—the very copy E.M. Forster used when he did the 1925 edition of Fay’s book. I *might* have gotten a bit misty eyed when I opened that cover and saw 1817 written at the bottom. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to see for so very long.

Last night Jamie and I had dinner again at our favorite local pub, The Hourglass, and then we went out for drinks with Kellye and Cassie at the Queen’s Head, another local pub that also happens to be the oldest gay bar in Chelsea -AND- it happened to be karaoke night. It had a much older clientele (we had to be the youngest people there by 20 years), but listening to old gay men sing standards, show tunes, and classic songs was certainly entertaining (and most of them could really sing!), and Kellye and Cassie also performed a rousing version of a Cher song. :-)

Today we took to the bus to Covent Garden, wandered around a bit and listened to a string quartet and an opera singer, then went to the Globe to see As You Like It—a really fantastic production, I might add. Then Kellye, Sam, Cassie, and I went to the Tate Modern for the rest of the evening. We tried to go back to The Hourglass for dinner, but they don’t serve dinner on Sundays, so we just got pre-packaged Indian food from our local Sainbury’s, and it was actually quite amazing. Tomorrow it’s back to the BL, and then we are seeing Sheridan’s School for Scandal tomorrow night.

Covent Garden

St. Paul's

The Globe

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From Blogger to Tumblr and back again

I fully intended to use Tumblr to record all of my doings while I'm here in London, but alas, it did  not work as planned. Internet access was spotty for awhile, and I found myself updating every two or three days instead of everyday, and then I realized how wonky the Tumblr formatting is if you try to upload pics AND say anything substantial about them. (How dare I.)  So I'm returning to the blog. First, in case you didn't see the few Tumblr posts I did, I'm going to repost them on here, then I'll add new posts, with exciting new pictures and reflections on my time spent in London. I'm exactly two weeks in right now, exactly half-way through my program here, which is incredibly exciting (because of how much I've learned and done) and incredibly sad (because I'm having an amazing time here and don't want to leave anytime soon--or maybe ever.  I'll say more about all of that in a little while, but, until then, here is the first of the Tumblr posts:

16 May 2011
Monday began with a tour of Guildhall Library. This is the old library; far fancier than the one in current usage. After combing through some of the library treasures, we had lunch in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral and then went on a walking tour of the Old City, including stops at Smithfield Market, St. Bartholomew’s Church, the Roman Wall ruins, Wesley Chapel, and Bunhill Fields cemetery, where Defoe is memorialized and Blake is buried.

Old Guildhall Library

After the walking tour Monday, Jamie and I had to go back to Nell Gwynn House to get some room issues straightened out. (Still not done yet, though. Grrrr.) Then, while everyone else was still holed up at the Guildhall Library, we went for a walk through Chelsea (our neighborhood) and Knightsbridge, passed Royal Albert Hall, and ended up walking through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Where we saw the Peter Pan statue. And ducks! And baby swans!!!

Royal Albert Hall

Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens

The most awesome duck ever.

Baby swans!!!

More to come...

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