LONDON, UK — This is just a quick post to say that we arrived in London safe and sound early this morning. (I still can’t believe we’re really here!) Today the weather was surprisingly pleasant and perfect for sightseeing, so once we got into town we spent the morning walking around and taking in a few of the iconic sights, like Buckingham Palace.

I’ll be uploading photos to my London set on Flickr whenever I get the chance. For now, it’s almost 1 a.m. here, and time to rest up for more sightseeing and a couple of West End musicals tomorrow!

Our London trip is upon us! Up until about last weekend, the trip seemed so far away, but now it’s like, “Ohmygod, it’s here! Do we have everything?” In a few hours we take a short flight from Washington (National) to Newark – for a two-hour layover, but we know all too well how that seemingly gaping time window can crunch down due to delays – and then we’re off to our transatlantic flight to London (Gatwick), which gets us there tomorrow morning (flight map). Everyone, pray to the weather gods!

We’ll have internet access at the hotel, so I’ll try to post some entries and photos while we’re there. (I was doing an image search on the web for London guides, and I found one of This is London, from the series of children’s books on different world cities by Miroslav Sasek; I totally remember checking them out of the library when I was a kid.)

Speaking of travel, when we get back home next week, we’ll be back up in the skies before too long, headed to the Bay Area for a few days. Thom has a job interview in San Francisco that Friday, a follow-up on a phone interview he had last week; the process is going really well, so fingers crossed! I’ll fly out to join him that evening, and then we’ll spend the weekend with my parents in Daly City. I should start a blog feature, “Where in the world are Jeff and Thom?” (Or appropriately, “Où est mon maître le prince rebelle?”)

In anticipation of our upcoming trip to London (we leave in four days!) and also in celebration of the Queen’s 80th birthday today, I’ve raised the Union Jack over Rebel Prince land. (Photo uploaded by bitrot on Flickr.) God save the Queen!

In other queenly news, beginning this Saturday, HBO will air a two-part miniseries on Elizabeth I, played by Helen Mirren. She will also appear later this year as Elizabeth II, with James Cromwell as Prince Philip, in a movie directed by Stephen Frears entitled The Queen.

Early Sunday morning, I was channel surfing, and More Tales of the City happened to be on Logo; I’ve seen the original Tales, but not the entirety of the subsequent two series, so I stopped and watched some of it. It was the episode where Michael (“Mouse”) is hospitalized for Guillain-Barré syndrome. He receives a letter from his mother, which includes some Anita Bryant-fueled statements against gays, and from his hospital bed Michael dictates a coming-out letter in reply.

At some point in high school, long before I had come out to anyone, I read a reprint of this letter (it originally appeared as part of Armistead Maupin’s serialized story in the Chronicle), and it captured so many of the things I wanted to say to my own parents that I thought about giving them a copy. (I never did; incidentally I didn’t come out to them until a few years later, when I was in college.) So while I was familiar with this letter, I’d never seen or heard it read aloud. Watching it on TV I was so moved that by the end I was bawling, and later when I told Thom about it, I got all misty-eyed again.

Here it is, reprinted from literarybent.com:

Dear Mama,

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. Every time I try to write to you and Papa I realize I’m not saying the things that are in my heart. That would be O.K., if I loved you any less than I do, but you are still my parents and I am still your child.

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Yesterday Thom and I had brunch at one of our favorite restaurants, David Greggory, whose Easter buffet has become sort of a tradition for us, three years running. It was a great meal (three kinds of bacon!), and they had the polenta that Thom loves so much. Mimosa? Don’t mind if I do! This is a photo of some of the desserts. Mmm, crème brûlée.

Afterwards we headed towards the National Gallery, and on the short walk from our parking spot, we noticed a building on Indiana Ave. (between 6th and 7th Sts.) that had stonework on three of the façades, but trompe l’oeil on the side that faced an alley. Neat. I did some web searching, and apparently the building was built in 1889, and the trompe l’oeil mural was painted in 1990 for what was at the time a branch of Riggs Bank. (Of course we stopped to take pictures.)

At the National Gallery we took a look at a number of exhibits: “Photographic Discoveries” (early photos from the 1840s to the 1940s), “Cezanne in Provence,” and “Dada.” One of the pieces in the latter exhibit is a re-creation of George Antheil’s eccentric score for the 1924 film Le Ballet mécanique; it calls for several player pianos and other mechanical devices. It has only recently been fully realized thanks to digital technology, which controls all the instruments. A portion of the score is played live twice each weekday, and once on Saturdays and Sundays, through May 9.

I liked a number of pieces in the exhibit. One of the motifs in Dadaism is the use of everyday things, and it makes me want to create some collages, maybe with all the theater and concert ticket stubs I’ve collected over the years or the Express papers I pick up every day.

Before finishing the day at the National Gallery sculpture garden (and Starbucks for a much-needed Frappucino), we stopped outside, in front of Marcel Duchamp’s mustachioed Mona Lisa, L.H.O.O.Q. As noted in the comments, we’re all goateed!

In all, a grand day out. Thom’s and my photos from the day are up on Flickr.