England, Or Something Like It

Now that that nasty business is out of the way, how about we bump it down with the much more pleasant news I had been writing before being interrupted?  All righty then:

Last weekend we finally had our official two-year anniversary weekend celebration.  It was just splendid and so nice to get away from everything for a couple of days.  I tried to keep as much of it as possible a surprise from Julie, and it was a real delight to see her reactions to all the unexpected elements as the weekend went by.

We started on Friday night by recreating as best we could our one-year anniversary excursion to the Lake District in England.  The Great Salt Lake is hardly Lake Windermere, but we worked with what we had!  (In fact, there were several lesser substitutions throughout the weekend, but it was fun to see how we could replicate our favorite London activities somehow at least.)  This started with, after a quick stop at IKEA (which is rather European, right?), grabbing some Indian take-away and taking it to The Anniversary Inn.  We've been wanting to visit this lovely location for a while now, and when I saw the rooms they had available, I knew exactly which one we needed:

Roses on the bed and rose petals scattered all over the room!

A delightful dining nook on the other side of the fireplace.

Imagine her surpreeze!  We stayed up late watching About a Boy and eating the nice treats the hotel provided, as well as a couple of really big surprises for The Wife (acquired by me):

Pumpkin Juice!  Straight from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!  She was just amazed to see it appear in the ice bucket!  Thank you, online Universal Store!

The next morning we slept in and had our delightful breakfast in bed, provided by the hotel as well (I don't know why I didn't expect a fairly fancy Bed & Breakfast to actually include breakfast in the deal, but anyway, that was a great surprise).

Ham and cheese croissant and bagel with cream cheese! 'Twere delish.

Um, good morning, bed head.  It was such a wonderful arrangement that we felt it just had to be documented.

After we checked out we took a nice long while touring the other rooms in the place during their open house hours, and it's just amazing. I had to dub it the Disneyland of hotels (not to be confused with The Disneyland Hotel, though The Anniversary Inn actually had some cooler theming in some of its rooms than I've seen in certain Disney resorts).  We even took advantage of their great bounce-back deal, good for any room, any night, and it never expires.  Maybe we'll use it for our 20th anniversary.  Or maybe we'll use it like in January or something.

I think it's so interesting that this great old building used to be a jail.

For the rest of the day we did our best to do as close to London-ish things we could find in Utah.  We went to the British shop and bought some English chocolates and souvenirs, we shared a pasty and strawberry tart for lunch, we spent a few minutes in the Cathedral of the Madeleine (it's not St. Paul's or Westminster, but hey), and we went to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (neither is this the National Gallery, but again, hey).  We had a really nice, relaxing day, and even found our beloved Chow Truck outside the museum for a snack--if you haven't found the Chow Truck yet, FIND IT.

They're moving soon!  It's a shame, this is just the perfect little shop, and such a great location.

Almost as good as the ones you buy in the Tube stations.

... Almost.

There was a Quinceañera going on there.  It was a very fancy affair.

Their foods are little, but they are delicious.

We mostly go for the root chips, though their main features really good too.

And they did have nice big bottles of clear, cool water, shown here by Beautiful Wife.

We made short work of those foods.

We sat in the shade reading and writing a little until it was time for our delicious tapas dinner at Meditrina (a place we visited when we went to see The Lion King last year, again thanks to LivingSocial), and ended up the evening by seeing Mary Poppins at Capitol Theatre.  Review in brief:  It was a really fun show, a little closer to the book, somewhat different from the movie (but with a lot of the same songs).  The cast was really good, and the spectacle was fantastic, and all in all I'm glad we caught it as it was touring here.  One more checked off on my list of Disney stage musicals!  Will I ever see Tarzan or The Little Mermaid?...  Erm, probably not.

Practically perfect in every way.  The lady in the back is probably pretty neat too.

We were really sad to have to come home that very night, but ward choir obligations loomed (though the traffic home loomed even higher--grrrr).  Hopefully, SUREly, we'll be able to visit our beloved London again, but in the meantime, it's nice to know we can relive some of the memories wherever we are, especially since the best part of being in London was being in London together.  Toodle pip!