Pip, Pip, Cheerio

My friend Diana informed me that this morning an English visitor to their office asked my friend Ellen (aka "my friend Ellen from work") if she had been "on holiday", which made me smile and reminded me of a similar incident...

When my family first went to "on holiday" England in the summer of 2000, we did a lot of sightseeing together. But by the third or fourth day, we were ready to explore different parts of the city. So my sister K and I split up from our parents and Sister B, who went to St. Paul’s Cathedral, while Sister K and I visited Westminster Abbey, walked along St. James’ Park to Buckingham Palace, and then walked to Picadilly Circus.


map borrowed from Lonely Planet

While walking the last leg, we stopped at a Starbucks for some coffees. As we were coming out of the shop, we were stopped by a man asking for directions to a local destination that we didn't know. When we told him that we couldn’t help, he said, “that’s all right, luv.” As he walked away, the two of us looked at each other and squeed, “He called us ‘luv’.” He totally heard us, but we didn’t care. A real English person called us “luv”. Hoorah!