London Day Two - click on title for slideshow of pictures

This morning we were up bright and early ready to be picked up for a Grayline tour into the Cotswolds countryside and a visit to Blenheim Palace. We had to leave before the hotel opened up breakfast, so we grabbed a quickie breakfast from the convenience store a block away and walked to Russell Square to eat it. Although it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day, the air was still chilly so we only lasted a few minutes while we ate breakfast on a park bench, then meandered over to the hotel where we were to be picked up. It was called the Russell Hotel and had all the opulence of the Ritz. Beautiful marble, tile mosaic floors, marble columns on which sat beautiful flowers, luxurious velvet drapery, gilded mirrors and plush chairs. It was just a meeting place, but I had to take pictures of the inside. Blenheim Palace was an hour away and I enjoyed getting out of the city to see some countryside. England has lush, rolling hills squared off by stone fences and prickly hedges. Our first view of Blenheim Palace was breathtaking. After winding through a small town, we turned a corner and a beautiful scene met our eyes. Grassy rolling fields were before us dotted with English oaks and a serene lake nestled in a small valley. A river emptied into the lake that gently meandered through a stone bridge that straddled Blenheim Palace on one side and the Marlborough Monument on the other. White swans were dotted here and there on the lake. We could hear the whole busload take a breath of wonderment. Historians have labeled this view as the ‘best of the country’ and I didn’t doubt it. The palace itself was imposing as a palace should be, an example of English Baroque architecture. It really wasn’t even a palace; the land was given to the 1st Duke of Marlborough for a decisive victory of his in Bavaria, and Queen Anne also gave monies to get a place built. Only dukes lived here, but it pretty much looked and smelled like a palace. This was famous for being the birthplace of Winston Churchill. We only had a short time to explore here, and ended up getting in the wrong line wasting precious time. Once we got in THAT tour of a multi-media presentation upstairs about the palace’s occupants, we rushed through it and tried to get in the downstairs tour of the ground floor. That also had a line and we knew we wouldn’t make it out to the bus on time if we waited around, so we turned around and somehow went underneath some ropes and ended up in the middle of that particular route and hurried through half of that as well. The grounds were spectacular I’m sure…we just didn’t have time to do them any justice. We saw one tiered garden off the café side and walked to the front gates that looked out to the bridge and monument. By that time we had to rush back to the bus, or else we would have explored more in depth. The map of the grounds looked very promising and beautiful. After the palace, we drove deep into the Cotswolds, the traditional English countryside where quaint thatched roof cottages were the norm. We stopped at three such towns, Bourton on the Water, Stow-on-the-Wold and Burford, where we stopped at an English pub and had lunch. We both had Steak & Ale pie, with “spotted dick” for dessert. The tour bus kind of chuckled when our guide announced the menu, but he had a deadpan face on and said, ‘No kidding.’ I guess ‘spotted dick’ is whatever they are serving for dessert, in our case being apple pie with cream. The Bourton on the Water village was the most beautiful with a lazy and wide stream meandering through Main Street. There were stone walking bridges over the river to conveniently get you over to the shopping, complete with waddling ducks here and there. The structures were really, really old in these towns and the roofs looked like they couldn’t keep water out if they tried. But after questioning this with my guide, he said that actually these roofs were pretty much a lifetime deal. Some looked like thatch, but on a closer examination, they were actually stone slabs overlapping each other. He said the roofs were so heavy that they had to brace up the walls to hold it up! And to have a thatched roof was kind of a two-edged sword. They were beautiful to look at, but they were also protected by English law. If you ever needed to replace your roof, you HAD to re-do it in thatch….and it was quite pricey, upwards of $50,000. It’s all done by hand. The weather this day was spectacular, chilly enough to throw our light jackets on, but beautiful, clear blue skies with fluffy white clouds. That night we took the Tube over to Waterloo station to see some distinguished graffiti in a nearby alley that was listed as a “must-see”. I saw some pictures of it on the net and it looked interesting, but there wasn’t much left of what I saw when we finally got there. The city gave full license to anyone to get as creative as they wanted down there as long as their art wasn’t graphic, racial, demeaning, etc. I took some pictures anyway, but it was mostly pictures of words. Wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Read more!

London May 2009 -- Day One

I decided to break down my London trip into separate entries. So today is Day One. If you click on the title, it will go directly to a Flickr slideshow for pictures. On some of the pictures I put titles on them, but they will only show if you click the "Show Info" button on the top right. I will eventually have the slideshows listed on the bottom right, with my others, but can't remember how to do that again. And help WAS NOT just a click away. My journal entry is as follows: Day One Our energy for our first day came completely from adrenaline. We left Salt Lake at 4:00 on a Friday and arrived in London at 12:30 the next day. Rikki brought ear plugs – which was ingenious – because on our transcontinental flight were two newborn twins, both wailing at decent intervals. I watched one movie and somehow fell asleep for about 5 hours. It was intermittent, but it was still some kind of sleep. We arrived in the hustle and bustle of Heathrow Airport, retrieved our luggage and began our first adventure. Trying to travel on a shoestring, we needed to go first to Paddington Station to pick up our Travelcards in order to take advantage of some 2 for 1 discounts to several attractions. I had explicit directions from TripAdvisor on how to get there, and we commenced ‘popping’ all over the subway system, called The Tube. We had to change several lines, and that entailed long hallways, very tall escalators and several sets of stairs. The laughable thing was that every time we encountered stairs, we had to unhook our compact luggage sculptures in order to get them in hand to lift. Then we’d descend…or ascend…..put our luggage back together just in time to turn a corner and find another looming staircase. It took us several hours to get to Paddington, find the correct ticket counter and then make our way to Russell Square to our hotel. Our very last ‘straw’ happened on our very own Tube stop. We had just barely squeezed into our train, trailing 10 days of clothes and toiletries, separated a door apart to make sure we both got on. We were crammed against our door with dozens of other Tube riders that just wanted to go home. I actually had one Londoner turn around and apologize to ME that her back was being skewered by MY suitcase! We only had to hold our breath for a minute as we had only one stop to go, and as luck would have it the door slid open on the opposite side of the coach when the train pulled into our stop. Pushing and squeezing, and I’m sure I accidentally rolled over a couple pairs of feet, I lunged out the other side of the subway, yanked all my luggage out after me and looked up as Rikki emerged in the same condition one doorway down. We looked at each other and then doubled over with laughter. We had arrived….somewhat laboriously, but we had arrived. I thought finding our hotel would be easy since the address was “Russell Square.” I just assumed everything facing that square would have that address. What we soon learned however was that Russell Square contained several perpendicular streets that also had the same address. Luckily there was a sidewalk salesman right outside the Tube stop who got us pointed in the right direction, after first declaring how good of quality his products were – handbags, luggage and scarves. He eased off gently after noticing that we didn’t quite need another handbag or piece of luggage at this time. We stayed at the President Hotel, very conveniently placed around the corner of the Russell Square tube station. The outside looked like a 1960’s architect’s experiment, but the inside was very nicely done in dark wood and red carpet. We checked in and made our way to Room 449. Our key was the old-fashioned kind that Cinderella’s stepmother protectively kept in her pocket, attached to a foot long piece of steel tube. I don’t think we were going to lose this masterpiece, but just in case, we had to drop it off at the front desk every time we left the hotel. It looked like it could open just about any other room in the hotel, but we never tried. Our room was small – just like the internet said it would be – but that was just fine for 2 girls. We only needed it to sleep in. The bathroom was more updated than I had anticipated, which was a bonus, and our shower head was a DREAM. My hair was completely rinsed in 2 seconds flat. Rikki wondered if putting conditioner on was doing any good since the water pressure barely left your strands of hair connected to your head, let alone leaving anything on them to keep them moisturized. We changed quickly and headed out to explore the city first by jumping on The Original London Sightseeing Tour. Getting to the office to validate our tickets was a small chore since getting directions proved to be difficult. We ended up asking 3 separate people as we slowly got closer and closer to our destination. It was kind of like playing the Hot and Cold game; they couldn’t give us start to finish directions, it was more like telling us we were getting warmer. This specific tour was the double-decker bus tours that give you a nice taste of what there is to see. Believe me, we had already done our research on what there was to see, but we couldn’t travel over 5,000 miles and not get on a double-decker bus. You could opt to jump off-jump on, but we just stayed for the hour-long loop since we already had a plan in place. The highlights we drove by on the yellow route were: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament, #10 Downing Street, Horse Guards Parade grounds, Shakespeare’s Globe theater, the London Eye, Scotland Yard and the Sherlock Holmes Pub, Nelson’s Column, Covent Garden, Fleet Street, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, Marble Arch, Hyde Park, London Dungeon and we crossed the Thames on 7 bridges. Phew!! Lots to see. Our last stop was Piccadilly Square where we found a place to eat. The Square was packed with people, with a bunch sitting at the base of a statue….just sitting and watching the world go around. We noticed this happens a lot. During the lunch hours, the parks and piazzas were packed with business men and women enjoying a lunch outside. We enjoyed fabulous weather during our stay, and it took me a few days to realize that if I lived in London, I too would be taking advantage of a beautiful day to sit outside and eat. We knew about the constant overcast skies and drizzle that England is famous for, but were blessed to have plenty of sunshine while we stayed. We must have brought it from the States!! I even got a little sun burned that first afternoon. Riding the tube during our stay gave us plenty of opportunity to people watch. The first thing I noticed though, I noticed with my ears. All around us several different languages were being spoken all the time. London was definitely a melting pot of the world. Although the Caucasian skin color dominated, the darker Eastern races were certainly making their presence. The clothes choices were all over the board. I loved seeing the traditional business man with dark suit, bowler hat and cane. That was ‘cute,’ if I can use that term to describe a professional. Rikki described the clothes trend as ‘anything goes.’ And it certainly DID. There were a lot of minis with tights and boots. We even saw a young man in tights and a short tunic that made us do a double take to make sure he really was a young man. Scarves were all the rage, no matter how warm the weather and the young men also participated. It was common to see a young man in jeans and T-shirt with a scarf thrown around his neck. Scarves were EVERYWHERE! If they weren’t being worn than they were being vended right and left. ALL tourist shops were selling scarves right alongside the typical touristy stuff. The people were also generally kind and genuine; not snobbish like we’d read about. I’m sure they were perturbed if we weren’t standing on the right side of the escalator, but overall they were okay. We were both offered a hand when it came to hauling our suitcases up sets of stairs and I also saw other people given the same treatment. We had our first English dinner in the Pie House over the Crown Pub…same establishment, but I guess they wanted to distinguish their sit down restaurant from the bar. Rikki had a fish pie (prawns & scallops?) that came with a slice of crusty bread and a leaf of lettuce that was advertised as a ‘salad.’ I had a chicken and leek pie that came with creamy garlic mashed potatoes and some broccoli and cauliflower. We both ordered homemade lemonade, and agreed that we liked the American version better. We soon learned that the English do not season their foods like we do at home, and although it was fun to try new things, most things were pretty bland……lemonade included. After dinner we made our way to Harrod’s. The department store was built like a palace on the outside, and looked very beautifully lit. We only had a few minutes before closing time to walk through a few departments, eyeing handbags with price tags of 200 pounds and rhinestone headbands priced at 125 pounds. Yeow!! We somehow meandered into the chocolate and candy department – that was the size of my house! – and splurged on a treat. I bought a mini cupcake for 1.10 pounds and Rikki got a slice of carrot cake for 3.85 pounds. It was unfortunate that the salesgirl was a little overwhelmed at the end of the day and gave Rikki the wrong box, so she ended up with something else. Read more!

Technical Difficulties

I'm learning. At least that's better than being stagnant. I just learned how to edit my 'html code' so I can have expandable post in this blog. What this means is that now I can have a couple of beginning sentences to each entry, and then there will be a 'read more' link if you want to continue reading. And of course you do want to continue reading, because why else would you be on my blog? So when I made the changes -- and they only apply to the main page, they don't extend into the archives -- it changed all the main page posts to have the 'read more' link at the bottom of each post. This is incorrect! There is nothing to 'read more' before this post. And apparently it will always read this way -- I cannot choose when to have it and when not to. Frustrating, but that's as far as my technology knowledge goes. So I apologize up front when you click 'read more' and nothing more appears. Sorry! Read more!

Adam's Tango-Cha Cha Performance

Here's Adam's 1st dance number at his ballroom showcase in April/May. The waltz was his second. Please disregard the video job. I was having trouble getting used to the new camera's functions, plus people kept standing up in front of me, plus the added annoyance of Bill right next to me trying to tell me what to do and I kept losing sight of Adam on stage. So.... I had to make a lot of cuts. He starts the number on the very front left and ends the number on the back left. Click on the title to go directly to youtube.com, and it will start playing automatically. Read more!

Junior Prom

Adam had a great time at his school's Junior Prom. This year he went all out and rented a limo with his buddies. Since I didn't fund anything, I didn't ask how much the limo was. I really don't want to know. But I have to question why a limo can be afforded, and professional pictures cannot???

Read more!

Awards for Kyra

At the end of the school year, Kyra was invited to an awards evening where she was given academic and citizenship awards. She's been very conscientious this year, achieving 4.0's the whole year and perfect citizenship.

She was also invited to another special awards breakfast where she was given a Citizenship/Leadership award. Each term the school chooses one girl and one boy from each grade to be presented this award. It was quite an honor, but better than the plaque, was reading all the emails that teachers and previous teachers over her 3 years at Farmington Jr. High had written about Kyra, why she deserved this award. A very, very proud moment for Mom.

Read more!

End of the Soccer Season for Jake

Here are a few pictures of Jacob finishing up his soccer season. Thanks to a great coach who stopped his whining in its tracks, he was given numerous opportunities this spring to get 'into the game' and run and sweat and kick the ball. He showed more aggressiveness than I've ever seen. We're proud of you, Jake, for such a great finish. The final picture is of Kyra on-the-job. She referee'd a game of Jake's and our neighbor said he was disappointed that she didn't show any favoritism. Way to be partial, Kyra. She enjoys this part-time job and is looking forward to the fall to start up again as a seasoned referee.

Read more!