Note: I’m actually writing this about 4 months later during our visit to China. Just catching up. 
Note #2: as mentioned here, I’m only posting this about 4 years later w/ minimal clean up edits.
Like last summer (which I didn’t write about), Libby and Emerson flew to the UK for a “long weekend” in July to spend time with me during a two week work visit for me. This year it was actually a bit longer, as they left home on a Thursday and returned home on a Wednesday. Given my work schedule, they had to self-amuse a bit on the weekdays, but we still found time to enjoy time together over the weekend and in the evenings.
Here are a few of the highlights (in no particular order):
Libby finally got to tour Buckingham Palace, which is only open to visitors for a few weeks in the late summer and thus usually didn’t work out well with her schedule around the start of school.
We enjoyed a delightful and new walk along the Regent’s Canal from the Paddington Basin to Camden Lock (where we enjoyed lunch at the market) before carrying on to King’s Cross.
We finally saw the hit musical Hamilton, where we had very good seats at a reasonable price! I can’t say that it was my favorite musical ever (though I really enjoyed it), but I appreciated the creativity and novelty associated with it. Emerson was a big fan! I’m willing to speculate that it’ll be an important milestone in the history of the art form.
We ate all kinds of great food at some established favorite spots, as well as some new places too. Highlights included another trip to Red Farm (which the gals enjoyed more in this visit), the Bun House (the salted duck egg custard bun was revelatory), Vagabond (a fun wine bar near Paddington Station), Taqueria (my favorite taco spot in London), the Michelin-started Yawatcha (good not not wildly better than Duck & Rice, which is owned by the same restauranteur), a hipster BBQ place in Shoreditch which I thought was more “alright” than “spectacular” (name lost in the mist of time), and Farm Girl in Notting Hill (which always seems to be wildly popular based on the lines, but we thought was more “okay” than “awesome”).
All in all, this was a fun interlude, and one of the benefits of my current international job — it gives us the airline miles and reason to travel overseas just a bit more than usual.