Why do we have a bank holiday today?

Hi all! I hope you're all enjoying this nice long three-day Memorial day weekend. Annelies and I decided to stay in London this weekend to our own three-day weekend in this great city. We had an awesome weekend, but before I talk about that, I wanted to figure out why we're having a day off on Monday as well.

First of all, the British refer to their official days off as "bank holidays". Ok, fine, I can buy that. Banks keep "bankers hours" so that makes sense; when they take a day off, it's a bank holiday. Not that British banks have very good customer service and deserve to take any time off or anything (whoops, did I say that out loud?)... Anyhow, so back to my question: what are we celebrating over here today?

Since Google knows much more about bank holidays that I do, I thought I'd start there. I was feeling lucky today, and went to the first website all about British Bank Holidays. It seems that my definition of bank holiday was relatively close:

British bank holidays are statutory Public Holidays and have been recognized since 1871. The name Bank Holiday comes from the time when banks were shut and so no trading could take place.

Lo and behold, they describe each of the bank holidays as well! It seems that today is the "Spring Holiday at the end of May". Indeed, I checked a few other websites, and they all refer to the bank holidays with similar bland description. Nutz, I thought there would be some sort of meaningful bit of history associated with today, but unfortunately no! With almost 1000 years of history, Britian assigns no symbolic meaning for today...

Anyhow, enough of that. So this weekend Annelies and I had a great time bumming around London. On Saturday, we dressed smartly (dressed up, but not fancy) and headed over to London's theater district where we watched the matinee showing of Stomp. For those of you who've never heard of this musical, a bunch of fantastic tap-dancers make music and rhythms out of just about any common household items imaginable. We watched in awe as they entertained us with musical plungers, brooms, matches, plastic bags, and even trash cans. Fun stuff and I would highly recommend it to anyone else! After that we went out to a nice Malaysian restaurant. The food was excellent. I had crocodile--which tastes MUCH better than chicken--and Annelies had some sea bass; the carrot cake and coconut ice cream was a yummy desert. :) Sunday and today, the "Spring Holiday at the end of May" itself, we went to a few shopping districts: Oxford street--similar to the stores you find in an American mall but with busses and taxis driving in the middle of the street--and Camden town, which is a cross between stores of Venice/Melrose in California or a densely-packed Pearl Street in Boulder. We cooked a few nice meals and had an all around, relaxing and enjoyable weekend.

So we're getting ready for the big trip to Tanzania in a few weeks! We've received our shots and have our anti-Malarial pills. Next up, just get through a few weeks of work, charge up the camera battery, pack and we're off! We hope everyone is doing well! Send one of us a message when you get a chance, we'd love to hear from you!

Here are some pics from the weekend:
Which way to the Thames Path?













Annelies in Hyde Park.













Jason relaxing.