Chelsea Flower Show

Happy Memorial Day Weekend,

It is sadly not a holiday for us over here today, but I suppose that we are probably not in a position to complain too much about days off.  We do have 2 days off next week for the Queen's Jubilee.  As I have said, I am going to struggle going back to the US and only getting 2 or 3 weeks vacation.  We hope that you are enjoying your weekends with friends and family.  It was a beautiful weekend here in London, maybe one of the best since we have lived here.  We spent so much time outside this weekend.  To be honest, we were looking so cadaverous that we could have been mistaken for Brits:)  We would have been giving my brother-in-law, Michael a.k.a "Fish Stick" a run for the pasty prize.  The downside, however, of warm weather in London, is the fact that no one has AC here, so there are some warm nights of sleep and some terribly uncomfortable Tube commutes.  Weather is very temporary over here though as it is supposed to be in the 50s again by this weekend.

We had a couple highlights this weekend.  We were shocked on Friday night to be able to get some more Olympic tickets.  We ended up getting both the semi-final Beach V-ball matches for Men's and Women's, so really excited about that.  The other highlight was the Chelsea Flower Show.  If you have never heard about it, Chelsea hosts the one of the world's largest flower shows every year on the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital.  The first show took place in 1862.  It takes place over 6 days every May and there were over 550 exhibitors from all over the world this year displaying everything from avante-gard show gardens to almost any trade-stand imaginable.  It requires almost 6 weeks to set the entire show up.  It is amazing.  We were lucky enough to get tickets to attend on Saturday and it was fantastic.  It will definitely be something that we will remember from our time in London.

We had such a great end to the weekend too.  After a Sunday filled with activity and hours in the sun, we sat and enjoyed a beer sitting outside on the terrace of our building of flats.  It was just a great moment still soaking up the warm sun and enjoying a cold Blue Moon with Ann.  It was my first American beer in a long time too, and it was delicious.  We have just about 3.5 days of work left this week, and then we are on Holiday.  We are leaving Friday morning for 10 days in Croatia.  It is going to be a phenomenal trip and a nice combination of some adventure and sight seeing as well as Island hopping and complete relaxation.  I am sure that we will have some hilarious stories and hopefully brilliant pictures from our latest excursion.

Cheers
Kevin