New Year's Day in London

We headed out early for our first day in London and did a lot of walking around. Several big attractions are in the same neighborhood, so that made it convenient.  What is NOT convenient is that, being New Year's Day, they were setting up for a big parade, so there were barriers set up all over the place, making it difficult to cross the street where you wanted.

Westminster Abbey looked beautiful on the outside.  We would have liked to see the inside, but it cost 20 pounds per person, which is roughly $30 USD.  That would have been $120 USD for the 4 of us, and knowing (or even worse, not really knowing) how much we'd already spent in Paris, we opted to save our pence.

  

This is Big Ben.  There was a fireworks show over Big Ben the night before, but there were signs up, saying you had to have tickets to come view them.  Tickets had been sold out weeks before, not that we were keen on staying up until midnight anyway.

This exercise was happening in front of the Cavalry Museum.  They might have been getting set up for the parade. We didn't stick around for the parade, though--it was getting way too crowded.

The iconic red phone booths are still everywhere, even though no one uses them.  I tried to get my family members to all squish into one booth for a photo, but no one would humor me.

A lot of smaller businesses are closed for New Year's, many of which have signs posted, saying they won't reopen until Monday.  But Harrod's, the huge department store, was definitely open.  The bottom floor had big sales and billions of people.  The upper floors, though, were almost empty.  Maybe that's because the items on the upper floors cost billions of dollars.  It was amazing to walk through, though, and see all the separate sections for the big name designers, like Balmain (Kim Kardashian's fave), Stella McCartney, Givenchy, etc.

There's even a section called "Millionaire Gallery", filled with sports and music memorabilia and high-end techie gadgets, for rich guys to adorn their man caves.  These French bulldogs are actually wireless speakers, with bone-shaped remote controls.  At 1300 pounds (or $1900 USD), they cost more than an actual living French bulldog!

Speaking of dogs, back home, Cabana has been sick with vomiting and diarrhea. She has resisted going for walks and wouldn't even eat for a couple meals, a huge sign for concern when it comes to food-obsessed Cabana.  Jody took her to the vet, where they gave her fluids, adminstered a shot to stop the vomiting, and did some blood tests.  Today, Jody emailed that Cabana is doing much better. Thank goodness!  Being halfway around the world from your poor sick dog is a big bummer.