Tuesday, March 25th

So sorry, I didn't get to blogging yesterday. But really, if you know me at all, then you know that I am not likely to achieve much on a Friday evening, much less on a Friday evening when I am still feeling jetlagged. I did manage to run a few errands after supper which I thought was quite an accomplishment, but I suppose we should get back to pretending that it is really last Tuesday.

We all decided to go to Hampton Court Tuesday morning (actually, 3 out of 4 of us decided and the 4th went along with it). First, we had to go to Waterloo Station as they offered a 4 go for the price of 2 deal on train tickets to Hampton Court. We dealt with a delightful ticket agent (I'm not even being facetious here, he made us chuckle for awhile), got a booklet full of 2 for 1s for other attractions which came in very handy, and had just enough time for Becky to buy pastries for our train journey southwest of The City (central London). It was about a 30 minute train trip and then a less than 5 minute walk to the former palace of Henry VIII as well as other British monarchs.

You may notice that all these pictures at Hampton Court are taken outside. We did go into the castle (not that it was any warmer, in fact it may have been colder in than out, but I'll discuss that in a bit) but picture taking was not permitted. Interestingly enough, this had nothing to do with keeping artwork and tapestries preserved against flashes, etc, but everything to do with copyright. Every piece of art and furniture belongs to the royal family and apparently it becomes a copyright issue when just anyone is allowed to take a picture of it. I may have taken a picture or two inside before I honestly knew we weren't allowed, but I won't post any here lest the House of Windsor decides to come after me.

The gardens were beautiful, and quite expansive. Don't let these flowers fool you though, it may have looked like spring, but it sure didn't feel like it. There was a definite chill in the air, and it only got colder inside as the blinds were drawn against sunlight damage to the rooms and castles aren't exactly set up for central heating. At one point I actually asked one of the people working there if it was always this cold in the castle and, if so, how they could stand it. "We all wear thermals," she replied without any trace of humour. She was happy that she was at least inside, out of the wind which always came off the river, unlike the poor blokes in period costumes out front. The only time any of us was warm at Hampton court was in the Tudor kitchens where they had a big fire going in a fireplace and after we ran through the maze in the garden.
"The Great Vine" of Hampton Court has it's own room and outside there is a patch of earth which remains unplanted because the vines extend underneath it. They still get quite a load of grapes off this thing every year and it's in the Guinness Book of Records.
See- proof!
One of the inner courtyards of the palace. It's a mishmash of architectural styles as new parts were added on by one monarch after another and they all had different tastes.

The back side of the palace. Apparently I didn't take a picture of the front.
Self taken photo from the back of the catle in the gardens. Yes, we were travelling with other people who would have gladly taken our photo. No, I don't know why we still took our own.
Another courtyard. The sun is starting to peek out, but it won't last long.
Grant, Keith and Hercules. You figure out who's who.

Coming to the end of our time at Hampton court the boys start to get a little goofy. I'm not posting the next two poses they tried. Use your imagination. Or don't. :) The train ride back allowed us to thaw out a little and be entertained by Grant and Keith being silly. This is a rare moment when both their mouths were closed.

Arriving back at Waterloo Station, we stayed in the South Bank area to go to the Brahma Tea Museum. It was small and clearly a labour of love for Mr. Brahma, but the best part was that we could drink hot tea and eat warm scones and/or crumpets. Delicious. From there we walked towards the Thames and then along the bank to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
There were no performances happening at the Globe while we were in London (sigh), but we did at least get a chance to go in and look around a bit, and buy nerdy teacher-type things like pencils, posters and "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" (Macbeth, Act 5, scene 2) erasers. We walked from there past the Tate Modern (which was about as close as any of us wanted to get to it), and then across the Millenium Bridge and up to St. Paul's to catch the tube.
Looking off the Millenium Bridge towards Tower Bridge (I think). There will be a picture of Millenium Bridge later that we took from the top of St. Paul's.

We still had a bit of energy left to go over to Harrod's (not pictured) before it closed to take a look around and then to Piccadilly Square (pictured above) to find a place that was still open to serve us supper (it was about 8:30pm and the pregnant ladies were getting close to violence). We found a tasty meal at an Italian restaurant and Keith had time to run back to a store he'd seen on our way to buy a couple warmer shirts as he was quite done with shivering. It was a full day, and I hope I've made up for not posting yesterday with all of these photos!

Monday, March 24th

Since riding the tube doesn't really help to orient a person to the above ground topography, we decided that Monday morning would be a good time to go up the London Eye. Despite the SNOW that was falling, the cloud cover was high enough to give us a view of London from this giant bike-wheel looking structure. The next morning we read about the Eye having technical difficulties and people being instructed to open up the emergency supplies while they waited for it to get fixed. They were only stuck for about 30 minutes, but I imagine it was a little nerve wracking for long enough.

From the Eye, we tubed it over to Victoria Station which is a place to see in itself. It was eerily quiet since it was still a bank holiday, but everything was open and we looked in vain for a few toques for our windblown selves. We knew that we wanted to see the musical "Wicked" and that it was playing across the street from Victoria Station, so we went directly to the theatre box office to inquire about tickets for later in the week before walking towards Buckingham Palace. On the way, we stopped in at Westminster Cathedral, the largest Catholic church in London I believe. The mosaics in there are beautiful, and many are quite recent and still in bright colours. We also found a pub on our way to eat lunch at, "The Bag of Nails". Excellent fish and chips, but , alas, they were out of mushy peas.

Once we got there, we took quite a few pictures in front of Buckingham Palace, Canada Gate and down the Mall through St. James' Park. The weather cleared up a bit, but there was still a nasty bit of wind to chill us. By the time we had walked to Trafalgar Square, my search for a toque was getting a bit desperate, and thankfully I found a cheap one so I could let Keith have his back (he had bought one at the Chelsea game the day before). We posed with the lions at the base of the Nelson Monument (they are higher up than they look!) before spending a bit of time in the National Gallery and then heading to supper.

Our evening was spent at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church listening to Handel's Messiah being performed. It as an excellent concert, though I would have preferred an alto to a contra tenor. Seeing a grown man sing with a woman's voice coming out just didn't do it for me. This church has been an still is undergoing major restorations, but at least this trip we were able to get in to it.

The pictures above seem to be loading in the reverse order that I choose them in. I'll see what I can do about it in tomorrow's post!

Better Late Than Never

As you may have noticed, we didn't do much blogging from England this time. I actually didn't go online all week as I was just too tired at the end of the day to go traipsing over to the internet cafe in the cold and wet. I didn't even manage to write in my journal most days! My plan is to post about one day from last week every day this week. Follow me? Mostly I am just trying to stay awake in my post-supper sleepiness until it's an acceptable time to go to bed.

Keith has already described most of Sunday, March 23rd, his birthday. I will just add that Madame Taussaud's is absolutely not worth going to on a Sunday afternoon with an incomparable amount of other people. In the end, Becky and I literally escaped out of a fire exit door! It was only 4pm and we knew the guys would be watching soccer somewhere, so we passed the time by picking up drinks and treats from the French patisserie down the street from our hotel and wandering around the neighbourhood a bit. We scouted out a few places for supper and then waited in the lobby for the menfolk. They came about the time we expected, grinning from ear to ear and going on and on about the match. We managed to turn them around and out the door to find supper where we shared stories of our respective afternoons (although I expect they didn't hear much of ours as it couldn't possibly be as interesting as the game). We retired for the evening fairly early for a London night, but very late in Alberta time.

Celebrating My Birthday in Style

First of all let me apologize for not posting anything earlier. Our hotel this time does not have free internet access the way our one last summer does, and the computer is really blooming slow. This is the first time I have managed to get to the internet cafe down the street and the machines are faster and cheaper.

So far the weather has been quite a mixed bag from wet to cold to beautiful today. The grass is green and the dafodils are blooming however so I'm still not complaining.

We arrived Sunday morning at 7.00 am after a very comfortable (and on time ?????!!!!!) Air Canada flight from Calgary through Toronto. It was raining as we walked from the Tube station to our hotel where we left our bags in the hotel office, got cleaned up in a bathroom, and took off immediately to St. Paul's Cathedral for Easter morning services. The service was beautiful once again with the church packed. The music was glorious of course. Say what you like about the Church of England, no one does liturgy quite like they do.

After that we had lunch in the Cafe in the Crypt before heading off to Hyde Park and Speakers' Corner. It was not nearly as busy or interesting as last summer. Too cold for the Muslims.

It was at this point that Jenn and Rebecca left for Madame Tussaud's and Grant and I took the Underground to Fulham Broadway station and joined the mass of humanity heading down the street for Stamford Bridge Stadium, home of the Chelsea Blues of the English Premier League.

Not having tickets, we really didn't expect to be able to see the game anywhere but a pub with TV as Chelsea were playing Arsenal. Team 1 versus team 3 in the top league in the country had sold out weeks back. I have never seen so many police in my life! Police in cars, on foot, on horseback. It was incredible.

We spoke to a number of different people gathering information on how to purchase tickets from certain sources that are, shall we say, not completely sanctioned. After turning down offers and gathering enough info we managed to hook up with a middle-aged bloke who had a kid living and working in Canada. He sold us two tickets at nearly 3x the price but less than what the going rate from the established resale ticket outlets were advertising. It was also more than a few of the other "sellers" were offering. One always has to be careful not to get scammed. As a guarentee he walked us to our gate until we got in. I couldn't believe it! I have always wanted to watch a live football (soccer) game in Europe and have never been there during the season until now.

It was the most incredible sporting experience in my life. The deep throated singing of 10's of thousands of fans rumbled through the streets of Chelsea as we walked to our gate and, once inside, rose to a deafening roar as we made it just in time for the opening kickoff. Our seats were pretty high up in the Bridge, but we had an unimpeded view of the pitch and also of the Shed where visitor club fans have only been allowed to sit for decades. The energy in the building was indescribable and it only got more so as the game wore on with Chelsea down 1-nil until about the 70th minute when Didier Drogba scored to tie it. The noise was deafening until only 9 minutes later when he scored again as Chelsea took the lead 2-1. The game ended that way as well. I sang, chanted, ridiculed Arsenal fans down below with all the locals. It was a birthday I will not forget for quite some time.

I told Jenn over dinner she doesn't need to buy me a birthday present for several years now as a) nothing can top this one, and b) after what I paid for a ticket, we can't afford it.

We will most likely be adding more tomorrow, hopefully with some pictures. We shall see. Time is flying and we have a pretty full day again tomorrow. I have worn a pedometer the last three days and on Tuesday we walked 14.91 km, 13.45 on Wednesday, and so far today have clocked 13.47 km more. Maybe Jenn will write tomorrow as well. Until then, I am going to sleep.

Home from Ottawa

Here are a few pictures to sum up my time in Ottawa. Sorry about the doubles; I came home very tired.

It was a very rewarding week. I met some amazing young people from around the country (you adults were great too!) and had the opportunity to learn quite a bit.

A Longer Than Expected Day

So I flew out of Lethbridge yesterday and eventually made it to our fine national capital. The plane out of Lethbridge was an 18 seater- two small rows of 9. It was windy yesterday when we took off, and beginning to snow in Calgary so it was a rough ride. The view was neat, but I felt bad for the guy next to me who must have been quite certain I would retch on him during the landing; I'll admit I almost had to use my little paper bag. I was hoping for a less eventful flight from Calgary to Ottawa, and once we actually got it the air I guess it was just a run of the mill flight. I watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age and the beginning of Micheal Clayton. The new movie system is great- each person has their own touch screen and chooses not only what to watch, but when. I could pause, rewind, or whatever to my movie selection which was very convenient (no bathrom rush at the end of a movie because we all began at differnt times). Also good, the seat Historica booked my was one of the ones at the very front of the economy cabin, so I had oodles of leg room; I had to stretch to get my toe in first class. The only downside was not being able to store my carry on the floor in front of me for easy access.

Now for the trouble spots, soon after we first boarded the plane they revealed to us that they were having technical difficulties and would need to "reboot the plane like a home computer". Well, the turning off worked, but not so much the turning back on. We had no heat so they blew hot air on the plane with big hoses which helped somewhat, but eventually they admitted defeat and said, "sorry folks, this plane isn't going to work and we don't have the spare bit we need, so get off and hopefully we'll get you a different one." So we got off, and waited, and they ruslted up a new plane, and we waited, and finally we re-boarded and took off 2 hours later than originally planned.

Ottawa is quite a bit colder than Lethbridge was when I left- a plus four to minus fifteen drop; but I hear Lethbridge is back in the cold today. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I am pleases to announce that tomorrow's schedule has "skating on the Rideau" for one of the evening options so I am very excited about that!

Five Weeks To Go

Short post this morning to update everyone on our trip's progress. We're still trying to decide if we will buy the London Pass. It's difficult with city tourist passes to figure out if they are worth the money or not. The downside to them is that it makes you pretty well have to stick to the sites on the pass or else it's not worth the money. Still thinking. We shall see.

On the upside, this morning I called the box office at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields which is an historic church on Trafalgar square. The concert tickets I purchased are for a full performance of Handel's Messiah on Easter Monday. It is being performed by the Bolton Ensemble of London and the English Chamber Choir. The tickets we purchased give us seats three rows from the front with tickets on the aisle. These are awesome seats! I can't wait. Last night I found out that The Royal Ballet is performing Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden while we are there. Jenn is quite up on that. Tickets begin at only 7 pounds so that's not bad. Other than that, I am still trying to score tickets to an English Premier League match. I just may have to call Chelsea's box office too. It seems to be the easiest way to get information. It does make for some early morning phone calls however.

And one final note. On Sunday the 30th our friends are flying home while we are leaving the next day. Jenn and I have decided we are going to leave London that morning and go to Windsor. We have booked a beautiful Bed and Breakfast in Windsor town only five minutes walk from the Castle. We are looking forward to that.

And so on that note, back to dreaming.