One would think that a weekend starting off on a Friday the 13th would be one to be wary of.
As it turns out, the weekend was very nice. The 2004 Athens Olympics started off with a bang and we were able to watch it in real-time (Athens is 1 hour ahead of us).
I worked about 12 hours on Saturday and another 4 hours on Sunday. However, we made a family outing on Sunday afternoon to London Bridge area and did sightseeing roughly between the Tube stops of ‘London Bridge’, ‘Monument’, ‘Tower Gateway’ and ‘Bermoundsey’ in about 2.5 hours. Not bad. The family is getting stronger. I’ll ask the kids to write up a report on what they saw.
Then we topped off the evening with a visit to a local Chili’s restaurant in Canary Wharf. I guess the waiter knew by our accents we are American because he put ice in the soda glasses without us asking him to do so. It was a nice affordable meal for 5 and I gave a standard American tip. The waiter came back to thank me on my way out, so that was very nice.
I pray that we are being good ambassadors for our country and family. On a person-to-person interaction, I see no ill-will towards us from the USA. However, in printed material there is definitely a strong sneering slant against the American way of life. That’s too bad, because the American way of life is more than paper-wrapped burgers and gunlust. It’s like the equivalent of saying that life in the UK is a cross between Mary Poppins and the Austin Powers movies. Not fair and certainly not accurate.