I’ve wanted to be anywhere but here for months now, but it’s risen to an all time high with the arrival of a beautiful gold invitation.  We have been cordially invited to a black tie event in honor of a fabulous woman who has been like a second mother to my husband.  It’s the kind of event that we both feel we should be at, and that we would love to be at.

The problem is that it’s tomorrow night, at the rooftop bar and terrace of a five star hotel, overlooking St. Paul’s cathedral in London.

I really shouldn’t have googled the location… even in a photograph the view is amazing.  And it made it that much harder to admit there’s no way we’re going to be there.  If it was any other weekend, we’d be getting on a plane right now.  We didn’t even talk about the cost… we would have found a way to make it work.  But this  weekend?  We have a trial Monday, we leave for the competition in DC on Tuesday… and even if it wasn’t completely ludicrous to fly across the ocean on Friday just to fly back on Sunday, we knew we’d never pull of next week without the weekend to prepare.  Plus I wouldn’t get on the plane to come back.

London holds a special place in my heart.  It was the first place my husband I traveled to together.  We spent a little over a month there after our first year of law school, living out of the beautiful Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.  And so I keep thinking of all the things we could be doing there… Having dinner at our favorite little Italian restaurant across the street, getting Ben’s Cookies when we get off the Underground, taking walks past our favorite neighbors at Kensington palace, seeing fabulous shows, walking through Piccadilly…

And now that I’ve throughly tortured myself, it’s time to get back to work.  We’re sending our love to London while we stay here and fight through perhaps the busiest weekend of the year.  And if we survive the trial, we’re off to DC for the rest of next week.  Praying for everything to go smoothly, so that when I return, I can say the worst is behind me.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

St. Paul’s Cathedral

Hyde Park

Hyde Park

Big Ben