London: Week 1

I arrived in London via the Chunnel from Brussels on Tuesday the 23rd. I made it to the Natural History Museum in just enough time to study the Gibraltar 1 (Forbes Quarry) Neandertal. After gratefully leaving all my equipment at the museum, I wandered the charming streets of Chelsea looking for the home of Mike and Debi Kirksy (Tressa's mom's bestfriend), who are kindly letting us stay with them while we're in London. On Wednesday I studied the ~300,000 year old Kabwe specimen, which is something I've been looking forwards to doing for 5 years. On Friday, Tressa arrived in London (after enjoying a week spent in Italy with her mother and sister) to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed a great meal at Ziani's, a wonderful little Italian restaurant tucked away in the back streets of Chelsea. On Saturday we walked through London taking in the major sites: Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Big Ben and Parliament, etc. On Sunday we traveled to Wembley for church, and then toured the British Museum for a few hours (enough time to see about 1 percent of this gigantic museum). Like true tourists, we headed straight for the Rosetta Stone.