London calling!

So we Rothvidsons are coming off a whirlwind week that included a splash in the Princess Diana memorial fountain, two hours and forty-five minutes of post-apocalyptic Queen songs, a rooftop swim at the Thermae Spa, and a morning dodging cowpies. Where do we start?

Well, Jeff had a meeting in London on Friday, so we decided to cash in some Starwood points (Meridien Piccadilly, will be even more fabulous once the renovations are complete!) for a night in the big city. Josie and I took the train (easy trip!) to Paddington Station, and after a quick walk across Hyde Park, reunited with our beloved Swedish babysitter Josefin at the Princess Diana Memorial Playground. Whilst defending our soggy (sigh, Paris...) baguette sandwiches from incredibly ballsy pigeons, we managed to catch up – Josefin, who was studying landscape architecture in Paris when she began sitting for Josie, is now writing her thesis and looking for internships in London. Lucky us! She led us across Kensington Gardens to see the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain as well – designed by Swedish-American architect Kathryn Gustafson, it was not at all what I expected. When you hear "princess" and "fountain" in the same phrase you expect something fantastical, ornate, plucked from Cinderella, but this fountain is anything but.

Oh, wait - sorry. You're scrunching your eyebrows and looking somewhat quizzically at the screen, thinking "what's with all this Princess Diana nonsense?" Well, you're only saying that if you haven't known me since I was ten years old; huddling in my basement with my best friend Anna, carefully cutting out and pasting articles about Diana, Charles, Wills and Harry, Princess Anne, Viscount Linley (whoever the heck he is, I don't remember, the name just came from somewhere), into multi-volumed scrapbooks; watching that ridiculous made-for-TV movie with Catherine Oxenberg and Stewart Granger about 273 times. I memorized the names of Diana's bridesmaids; I collected the paper dolls, regular dolls, and dozens of books; I stood in line, heartbroken, with E for about 3 hours to sign the condolence book in 1997; and of course, I named my daughter Josie Diana.

While my lifelong Diana obsession has become a joke among my family and friends, the truth is I'm still very sad about her untimely death; I believe from the bottom of my heart that Diana had the potential - like absolutely no one before or since - to make important contributions to children, to charity, to whatever she set her mind to. It's an incredible loss that I still feel - as, clearly, do many Britons. I had one of those classic parent moments when, upon leaving the Princess Diana playground Josie said, "Wait... I want to see Princess Diana!" Josefin and I looked at each other and I thought fast. Not wanting to lecture a two-year-old about rebellious dating, in-law tensions or drunk driving, nor indulge her in conspiracy theories, I settled on the idea that we can't see Princess Diana, just like we can't see Ariel, or Sleeping Beauty, or Belle. We can only think about what a lovely princess she was. While not completely satisfied, Josie seemed to buy it – for now.

Right. So, the fountain is, as you can see, a wide, flat, oval: something between stream and waterslide. One side is relatively smooth, and the other is filled with ridges and bumps, poignantly illustrating the ups and downs in the late princess' life. She was, as you might have heard, the people's princess, and thus the fountain was designed to reflect her openness, the idea that she wouldn't want the precious, curlicued, overdesigned fantasy fountain I described above, but a moving, living, splashing experience that everyone, from children to the elderly, could share. Indeed when we visited children skipped, shoeless, through the shallow pools, young couples sat on the monument's three bridges and dangled their toes, and older people stopped to cool their tired feet in the bubbling water. To see so many people enjoying this memorial on a warm, sunny day was actually quite moving.

That's right, now I tell everyone, "I'm Josie Diana. I'm a Princess."

Equally moving was the joyous reunion between Josie and her beloved "Nonny" – at the moment they saw each other they ran and clung to each other while an imagined aria played, and were basically joined at the hip the entire trip. Josie quickly recalled the Swedish songs Josefin taught her, they read and played together and really made it possible for Jeff and me to have a fun, stress-free trip. We headed out on Friday night first to a Frommer's-recommended seafood-and-champagne joint called Randall & Aubin for a quick pre-theater dinner. The mixed grill we shared was fresh and delicious and the vibe - it was previously a butcher shop, and the designers kept many of the shop's decor, like meat hooks and lighting - was cool. We then attended the significantly less cool play "We Will Rock You," a musical featuring the (always excellent) tunes of Queen, set in a murky post-apocalyptic world, with a Matrix-meets-Xanadu plot and a script surely penned by the writers of those Saturday morning pre-teen shows quite popular in the 90s (aka "Cool Guys," "Breaker High"). The singing and dancing were both actually quite good, but sadly undermined by the painful script and tiresome overacting.

Spending time in London makes me long to read A Tale of Two Cities (in fact, I've already purchased a copy, and will dive in as soon as I finish Parenting Your Strong-willed Child) as, after our 20 months in Paris I still can't quite get my head 'round how very different the two cities are – and Saturday was so illustrative of that difference. On a typical Saturday night in Paris, we'd have a lovely 8pmish dinner and often, either because the desserts looked inadequate or we wanted to give the babysitter more time on the clock, we'd search fruitlessly for a restaurant or cafe to have coffee/after-dinner drink and dessert. Cafes all close by 8pm, so forget that. Most bars would be too crowded, most restaurants too popular to seat us just for dessert. So we'd usually end up trekking home through the dark, misty, Cormac McCarthyesque terrain between the Seine and Boulevard Raspail, sweet teeth still aching.

On the trek between the theater and Piccadilly Circus, by comparison, we saw it all – bachelorettes and their entourages, drunk teenagers inhaling pizza, and many, many men making good use of the public urinoirs. The energy is just palpably different here - louder, brighter, younger, more vibrant. In Paris the kids sit around smoking cigarettes, discussing Moliere and the fate of the banlieus and in London they're kids! They drink, they carouse, they boot in the alleys, they go dancing, and well, they seem to have a lot more fun, if they look considerably less glamorous doing it. At the end of the night even Josie looked like Keith Richards after playing Stadthalle:

I've never had a problem with bedtime. I've had problems with babysitters.

Not glamorous, vibrant or by any stretch young, we just headed home to get some shut-eye before again turning Josie over to the capable Josefin so we could explore Notting Hill. Though we devoted four hours to this escapade, by the time we got there, fought the crowds out of the subway and made it to Portobello Road, we really could only skim the shops, skipping most of the terrific-looking dealers and stalls (advice: devote no fewer than six hours if you really want to shop AND have a relaxing lunch). We capped the short but successful shopping jaunt with our first real gastropub meal at the delicious Bumpkin (another Frommer's rec, that guy never steers us wrong!), located, as it turns out, just a couple blocks from Hugh Grant's blue-doored flat.

God, fast forward – this post is interminable – Father's Day yesterday, we had a lovely day, starting with heart-shaped French Toast (Josie as capable sous-chef), followed by an impromptu visit to another National Trust estate, Dyrham Park. The park still houses herds of cattle - luckily Midwestern-bred mummy can spot a cowpie at fifty paces - as well as dozens of deer (those we didn't need to inspect too closely as we had our own pack in Nyack), gorgeous gardens and lovely grounds. We had a light lunch - I enjoyed my first scone with clotted cream and ginger jam - at the estate's lovely outdoor cafe, but I must ask my British comrades WHY as we were leaving we spotted so many families lounging, picnicking, sunning themselves... in the car park? Most, literally right next to their cars? If you're paying to enjoy the crisp air and bright foliage of a National Trust site why gobble sandwiches and sip cider in the midst of exhaust fumes, whingeing children and squabbling spouses? By this we were once again truly confuddled.

Finished the day with a soak, steam and light dinner at the Thermae Bath Spa right here in Bath – their "Twilight Package" includes three hours in the spa and baths and a "spa meal" (read: we dashed off for ice cream sundaes as soon as we broke free from the spa). The rooftop pool was lovely and we can imagine in the fall or winter the view quite dramatic (in June it is still fairly bright and sunny at 8:00 pm, but if it were dark the glow from the abbey and Gothic buildings would be lovely, I imagine!). It was nice to relax and float.

I like to float, mes copains. Just float.