A Christmas Date on Steroids

Emily in front of the Christmas Tree
in Trafalgar Square.

Emily and I have had a tradition for several years.  Sometime around Christmas, we go on a very nice, overly elaborate date.  (I gave her tickets to the Nutcracker Ballet our first Christmas as a married couple, and the tradition stuck).  Basically, she wants a date the requires her to put a dress on and me to put on at least a sport coat.  This whole production gets me a pass on Valentine's Day.  Instead of fighting crowds of people waiting to get into any restaurant worth eating, we stay home.

This year, we moved the "Christmas Date" up a notch to a weekend away.  We left the kids in Belgium and the two of us spent the last couple of days in London.  We went to museums, looked at the Crown Jewels, looked at the most ornate graves we've every seen (also known as Westminster Abbey), and ate more varieties of cornish pasty than I care to recall.  The"dress up" date was going to see Les Miserables in the West End.  Em says this was more than one notch up from the normal.  For once, Emily listed a visit to a church (Westminster) as her favorite part.  The Rosetta Stone may have been a close second.  (She didn't realize it was in the British Museum until we walked up on it and I pointed it out).