London Post

We stayed in a great one bedroom apartment in the suburbs of SE London last week, but the internet connection was very poor. So here is London in one long post.

Monday, July 28
Our first full day in London, we headed into the city for a little sight seeing. We went to the Tate Modern Art Museum. Afterward, we walked along the Thames River and across the Millennium Bridge for pedestrians. The locals call it the wobbly bridge. Well, we’re wondering if the maximum time a 4 year old can tolerate an extended vacation is four weeks. Today Sydney’s mantra was, “I want to go to Oregon”

Tuesday, July 29

Sydney threw up last night. This makes me hope that she will last a bit longer on the extended vacation. I think she was just homesick because she was feeling under the weather yesterday, and we didn’t know it. So, Kevin went to Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s code breaking efforts during WWII. He got to see lots of stuff about Alan Turing and the deciphering of Germany’s Enigma code along with a working reproduction of the world’s first computer – the Colossus.

I stayed home to do several loads of bed linens and clothes in a tiny washer and no dryer. Luckily the sun came out to dry the sheets before night time. After Kevin returned, I took my turn to walk a few blocks to the movie theater to see The Dark Knight. Did you know they have reserved seating at the movie theaters in London?

Wednesday, July 30

I’m always up to see a new cathedral, usually impressive inside and out and short enough that the girls don’t get too bored. Today we went to Westminster Abbey which is huge and full of history and burial sites of all sorts of historical and famous people. Who knew? Not me, I’m not so good with the history stuff. So not only do you have all of the kings and queens of England, there is also a poet’s corner and a section for scientists. Here are a few names you may recognize: Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Shakespeare, Lawrence Olivier, Chaucer, Darwin, and Newton. So we spent quite a lot of time at the Abbey, which made us feel better about the high entrance fees. Next we walked around St. James Park and saw Buckingham Palace, and continued on to Trafalger Square, the girls had a great time trying to climb up the huge Lion statues. Sydney however, was devastated (read, threw a fit) that I would not let go of her feet in order for her to climb all the way onto the Lion’s back. Oh, by the way, Sydney seems to be good as new - healthwise.

It always takes longer than you think to get home on the trains, especially when you have to get off the stop after you just got on because Kyla had to go to the bathroom. The train stations seem to have no bathrooms and no trash bins here. We ended up having to carry the girls home since they fell asleep on the train. Thankfully our apartment was only about 2 blocks from the station.

Thursday, July 31

No one felt like doing much today. Kevin cooked lunch, went to the grocery store and took his turn at the movies. I took the girls to the local park and pool. The shallow pool was being repaired and the big one was cold, but we stayed in for over an hour. Sydney’s suit is barely hanging in there and we didn’t pack her floatie, but she still loves to go swimming. Going to the park made us all a bit homesick, missing our friends and playmates. Kyla and Sydney decided that they both miss school.

Friday, August 01, 2008

We have been abroad for one month today, wow! That means we're about half way through the vacation part of our trip. It was nice to have a little down time in London this week, but now we're feeling the pressure to get some sights in before we leave on Sunday. Today we went to the British Museum. So much to see, so little time. This place was awesome – you could spend days there. The girls were thoroughly bored. They were somewhat impressed by seeing their first real mummy. We also saw a naturally preserved body from about 3000 BC. Sydney seems to be getting carried more and more. I saw a heading labeled “Buggies” on the museum brochure. Unfortunately it was advertising parking, not rental. Please send a stroller! I guess it would have been a real pain when going up and down and the stairs and escalators on the underground trains though.

Saturday, August 2
Today was our last full day in London. We went to Greenwich, home of the Royal Maritime Museum which has a great “all hands” area for kids and the Royal Observatory (prime meridian). Of course we have pics of us standing one foot in each hemisphere. Actually now they use GPS technology from the center of the earth to figure out exactly where the zero point is and the famous red line of the prime meridian is 332 feet off the mark. (shhh, don’t tell the kids). This video is of Sydney at the park in Greenwich - she cracks me up. Kevin too, you can hear him laughing in the video.

Click here to see pics of London.

Not so Premier Inn

July 27

So long not so Premier Inn with your hallway stench, mildewy bathroom with the ineffective fan, and to the cute little rat scurrying outside the window at midnight. That's it, our travel agent is fired. At least the staff at the hotel was polite and I do believe that the rats were not a problem until the nearby construction started. So I won't post the video I took of the rat or send it to their manager. You know they have this good night sleep gaurantee and I wonder how many people actually get their money back at this hotel. Hmmmmm.

College & Whine

July 26

We just got one day of sightseeing at Oxford, but after staying in the night before Kevin and I were both looking forward to seeing the town. We knew Sydney was a little under the weather with a cold, but she didn’t seem to feel too bad. Well, I think the girls are getting burned out - I'm going to skip the part where I complain about the non-stop whining heard from both girls today. I hate to say it, but the best part of going to Oxford was the hour long bus ride. The girls were busy with their iPods (we’ve given up on trying to get them to enjoy the new scenery – to them it all looks the same) and Kevin and I shared my headphones while we took turns playing songs for each other – kind of romantic. We started off with the very appropriate song by Ben Lee called “We’re all in this together”. Once we got to Oxford we got see some of Christ Church College, but the cathedral was closed because there was a wedding. It’s the most touristy (my grammar check just told be to replace that with touristiest, that can’t be right) place we’ve been so far – it was really crowded on a Saturday afternoon.
Here is a street that is closed to traffic - check out all the people.



Sydney got a lot of shoulder rides from dad.
Here is a college picture, not sure which one. Check out those walls and that lawn - even the girls were impressed. Needless to say, there was a sign that said, "Keep off the grass". When we first arrived we were sad the last bus was so early, leaving at 6:30. It was really sad that we were happy to catch 5:30 bus home after buying supplies to eat PB&J on the way home. The best part was getting to see the pub, Eagle and Child (aka Bird and Baby), where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis used to hang out on Tuesday nights as part of the “Inkwells” writing club.

Vacation from our vacation

July 25
We bought our train tickets to Oxford today, but when we checked with the hotel to find out the best way to there we realized that our hotel was not that close to Oxford. So we will bus there tomorrow. Luckily I called to hotel as we were changing trains and we never boarded the second one. It seems the best way to reach the hotel is to drive. I think we must be the only people here without a car. We actually had to convince the bus driver that his route would take us the right way. Nobody knew where the hotel was, but they did know the McDonald's across the street. And we have a lovely view of several nuclear cooling towers in the distance. Sydney seems to have a little cold and we all needed a rest so we are just hanging out at the hotel for the rest of the day. I'm way behind on my blogging, but I have internet for the rest of the day so I'll do some catching up. I had about 15 minutes to post from Bristol two days ago and blogger wasn’t working – oh well. Since leaving Scotland we have stayed two nights in Cardiff, Wales and three in Bristol, England. I know most of you wouldn’t mind if I skipped a few days on the blog, but I’m afraid if I do, then I won’t remember what we did that last day in such and such city. So now for a little back- blogging. Be sure to scroll down to catch up on the last week.

Barf, Bath, and Beyond

Well, not necessarily in that order, depending on who you’re talking about. When it was just Kevin I wasn’t going to mention it or just title it “The Bristol Blahs”. Now that I have joined the fun, I couldn’t resist. So far it’s doesn’t seem to be food poisoning or anything serious, just a little something that makes you queasy. It feels like morning sickness – queasiness that comes and goes, makes you lose your appetite and feel really bad if you think about what you already ate or might have to eat at your next meal. The choices are limited when every meal of the week is at restaurant or something ready to eat from the grocery store. I’ll spare you the details, but thank goodness I saved the plastic bag from our Mr. D’s take out. Maybe it was just motion sickness from the hot and jostling bus ride. Of course it didn’t help that I kept looking out the window to see fast food and pasty (rhymes with nasty) shops. Oh don’t get me wrong, pasties can be great if you’re in a hurry, really hungry and need something inexpensive that stick to you ribs. They are these deep fried hot pocket things with meat and potatoes. I’m sure looking forward to having an apartment in London and maybe doing some cooking.

We went to the town of Bath, named for the Roman baths there. First stop was the bath Abbey, which is right next to the baths. There were musicians playing in the courtyard, including a guys dressed as a fawn, complete with horns and everything. There was a long audio tour at bath, which included some commentary by author Bill Bryson, who is always entertaining. They even had a separate commentary for kids, which really kept the girls entertained. It’s amazing to think that the bath and stones there are 2000 years old, in fact the drains that the Romans built are still functional today.

The girls were so tired of walking but we promised them there would be a park at the end and what a park it was! The biggest one yet. I love it how when you take your kids to the park (even if they get to stay for 90 min) that when they have to leave they whine and cry that they didn’t get to try the digging thing (mini dirt mover) in the sand box and they want to stay longer. What about saying, “Thanks mom & dad, that was really fun!” Click here for pics of Bath.

Summertime in England

The title of this post shares a name with a Van Morrison (one of Kevin’s favorite artists) song. It was so nice to have some warm weather and we actually got to wear shorts for the first time in over two weeks. Today’s quest was finding the laudromat. You finally have to give up some sightseeing when there are no clean undies left. Kyla wanted to stay in the hotel all day, which technically would be possible since it has a Beefeater Restaurant attached to it. It’s hard to schedule a day to relax when there is so much you want to see and limited time to do it. With the clothes clean and folded back at the hotel we decided there was still time for a bit of sight seeing around the city. More than one local recommended the Bristol suspension bridge as the sight to see, so we set off on the bus. Well, it’s hard to be impressed by a bridge when you live right next to the best looking bridge there is, but it did cross a big gorge and the view from the bridge was good. The girls found a park nearby, which always seems to make the day for them. On the way home we stopped by Bristol University. I guess Kevin was missing the campus scene. Sydney ate her take away pizza dinner, while Kyla and I took pictures on campus. Kyla asked for a quick photography lesson, so I’ll try to include some of her pics in the album for Bristol.