While we had a lovely stay in Northern Spain and hope to publish a few of the photos in a magazine we are waiting to publish them here. Please bear with us for the release of these two special places at Playa de Cathedrales and San Juan de Gaztelugatxe.  Let’s just say that seven days of rain in Spain was not part of our original plan.

Moving on to London, it was nice to hear English again. Since they speak a different dialect in Northern Spain all my study of Spanish was rendered useless.  But, London is a massive city and I am not generally fond of a huge urban metropolis.  Arriving in the sun, softened the blow and the naturally friendly, chipper outlook of the people is something I had forgotten.   I think it is fair to say that Jeff has been anticipating this part of the trip far more than myself.  In part, because he has some work to do here documenting the women and men’s race walk events at the IAAF World Championships, but more due to our appointment with Madame Trousseau’s of London (please help us by voting for your favorites at the end of this post).  When we visited her cousin in Australia, they let us in for free and we had a smashing good time running around an empty museum an hour prior to opening.  Here, we were given permission to shoot but only during the normal ticketed hours which we would have to buy.  Prepared to deal with swarms of people, I was naturally less excited about this shoot.

Jeff’s enthusiasm however, could not be contained due one exhibit that is here that was not in Australia- Star Wars.  Yes, Jeff’s dream and my worst fear were about to come true.  We smartly payed the extra two quid for the ‘earlier’ entrance, hauled our still battered bodies (my leg hasn’t healed from Portugal and Jeff has a bout of kidney stones) out of the hotel at 8 am to arrive to five different lines queued up.  In the smallest of small print on our receipt we found that we were line five.  Our early entrance did not beat out the VIP line who paid more than double.  Once inside we worked quickly to get the characters we most excited about.

 

We got to the hall of presidents ready to move to Star Wars and were told it was not open yet…Damn VIP group.

We took our shot with Obama and then had thirty minutes to watch what happened at the largely avoided oval office.  The people who posed with him mostly did disparaging things demonstrating their discontent.  We felt it was better left undocumented for our One Dress project, but did snap a shot of the least offensive gesture.  “Do or do not there is no try,” so we chose to stay away from the dark side.  As the crowd grew waiting for the exhibit to open we were preparing for battle to get access to our coveted Star Wars heroes.

I admit, the contagion washed over me as well and I was moving as quickly as Jeff when they released us to head to the exhibit.  But first, there was a taxi cab ride to transport us with a history lesson of Great Britain along the way.  And then, we had a brief stop in Sherlock Holmes’ world where again we were told to wait until Star Wars was open.  Next, onto the Marvel superhero exhibit complete with Spiderman hanging out upside down and a 4D experience movie.  We frantically blew by it all in an effort to accomplish our mission.  We arrived to the theater and were handed 4D glasses for the next show.  Jeff politely asked the nice usher if we might bypass the film and head to Star Wars.  He sized up the dress and whisked us off to a closed door giving us a good fifteen minutes without any other people!  It was just what we needed.  As was true in Australia, we ended up with many greater, fun photos than expected.  We leave it to you to let us know which your favorites are.  Jeff and I are headed to the cantina to celebrate with a drink!

Jeff made me do double duty and play photographer, taking photos of Jeff with his childhood “obsessions.”