Bit of break from the Peregrination Channel, but will try to post a few pics and paragraphs to get caught up before it gets too late. Thursday we did the London extravaganza, a little differently from the way the GT went at things--I did schedule a boat ride because that was so successful in Paris, there were some rumblings about the trip because so much time was spent in transit and going down to Greenwich. I have to say it's always a trade-off: do I give people lots of time off to manage on their own, or do I schedule events and group outings for the people who can't or won't schedule them themselves. In the end I ended up doing a weird hybrid thing where I took several events in the original inherited schedule that might have been lock-step group things, and made them into schedule-it-yourself parts of the London trip: a fixed amount to cover their own transport down, the boat pass, and a Harry Potter VII ticket. If some of them figured out cheaper ways to do various items, then more power to them.
We did luck out with the weather, and I actually had a decent time with the kids--and only a pair of them made it late-ish to the 11 AM rendezvous at Westminster Pier for the boat. I should point out that this student is one of the smartest in the class, and I totally forgive her for checking on her iPad in front of the Houses of Parliament.
The family time began with a certain amount of drama, as I discovered when I called the hotel that they had overbooked for the first night, and overflowed us into what on paper was an upgrade a few blocks away but was in fact a ghastly Ibis across the street from the Earls Court Exhibit Hall, sort of London's answer to the Moscone Center. Yikes. But with no way to warn Amelie, who was going to the original hotel after Tube-ing in from Heathrow after a layover night in New York. This meant schleppage for them and a frisson of frustration for me, compounded when we found that the breakfast that had been included in the original hotel was an extra £9.50 in the new, but we were welcome to walk back over between 7:30 and 9 and get our oh so delicious not quite British second B of the B & B. Rather than create a big stink we went with it OK, and it all turned out satisfactorily. By the time I arrived Alex was zonko and Ams was off foraging for cell phone SIM cards. Ams got to visit her old haunts in Holland Park, we had a nice but expensive dinner for which we were woefully underdressed, and got a decent night's sleep.
Next day after transferring to the other older hotel (typical warren--and the bathroom has the most spectacular plaster stalactite ceiling, with drips adorning the soap dispenser) and dumping bags we did our own Greenwich excursion, this time with more museum-ing along with an hour in a cafe by me marking blue books, and then it was back up the river to the London Eye. 
London was absolutely jammed, as we were joining what seemed like hundreds of thousands of tourists who also thought the Elgin Marbles and other attractions were a good idea (it was compounded by the rain on our British Museum day--felt like the Vatican, but the guards were less pushy). In previous visits I had not bothered to drop £18 and wait in line, but the Eye was kind of cool, I have to say. Maybe not £18 cool, but I wasn't that disappointed in the end. In amongst spending money on touristic stuff we had some jet lag or blood sugar or teen angst, but overall no major meltdowns. I am vaguely concerned about how obsessive I have to be on these gigs, and worry about whether I am neglecting my family, but so far we are managing all right. I'm sure in two weeks when it is all over it will seem worth it.Now I just have to survive tomorrow--the bus trip to Bath and Salisbury and Stonehenge, sure to provoke vomit noises from the cognoscenti. I have a set of papers to mark, and have to compose an e-mail firming up the schedule of due dates; this week we have been bumped from the classroom we had the first two weeks, and I ended up in a side-by-side seminar room with 20 chairs and 30 people, plus A & A arriving late. But we squished and things worked out. A lot of this is about Keeping A Positive Attitude so the kids thmeselves don't get psyched or skittish...
