So I had a meeting in London on Friday, and I was due to stay down in this neck of the woods (a long way from where I live) for mothers day on Sunday. But look who I met up with in London…

The wonderful world of the Xanga blogging community introduced me to Rachel and Tiffany whom I would never have known if it wasn’t for those funny connections one can make online. I’ve had some interesting discussions with Rachel in the past, but before Friday I had never met either of them.

The meeting was, of course, no accident. However, despite seeing a couple of pictures of Rachel (enough to make a comment in the past) I really wasn’t sure if I would recognize her in London. I was also interested in meeting this girl who calls herself a conservative and guards herself carefully online. Would we actually like one another when we met?

Prior to meeting them Rachel told me that they were going to Canterbury Cathedral and the white cliffs of Dover on Friday before meeting up with me in the afternoon. Such statements are not uncommon for Americans who are inexperienced at visiting this little island. I explained that this desire was somewhat ambitious, but she assured me it would be no problem.

Of course, in terms of miles Canterbury and Dover aren’t that far away from London if you think of the distance in American terms. But this isn’t America, and like many American tourists before her, Rachel soon realized that we’ve packed a lot of distance into our British miles. So Friday’s plans to go to Canterbury and Dover were set aside to stay in London.

We met at the Tower of London, one of the most historic icons of the city, and somewhere neither girls had seen or heard of before. Due mainly to time constraints we didn’t actually visit the Tower itself, but instead walked around it peering over the moat and high walls to the place where the Queen keeps her jewels.

It was actually really cool just to be walking around historic London with them. After the Tower of London we walked across Tower Bridge then along the banks of the river Thames chatting and laughing with one another. We passed the Globe Theatre which Tiffany was particularly interested in, looked up at the towering Tate Modern gallery, then crossed the Millennium Bridge over to St Paul’s Cathedral.

We then grabbed a drink in a nearby restaurant before I had to zoom off for another engagement in North London, but truly I didn’t want to go because we were having such fun. Both Rachel and Tiffany are charming fun people who really were a pleasure to meet in the real world.