Greenwich

Chris (Hi Chris) has up and moved to Greenwich. In celebration of this fact, Mark and I strapped on our watches and headed eastward this past Saturday.

Greenwich is located in southeast London. The quickest way to get there is by overground train, which leave from various stations in the city center. For some reason they run from Cannon Street on the middle of a Saturday, despite the fact that Cannon Street Station is located in the City of London, where everything is closed on Saturdays and there are no people around. Anyways, Greenwich station is about 10 minutes from Cannon Street, so tis a short little journey!

To get to Chris's new pad, we walked through the main bit of Greenwich. It was a warm sunny Saturday and the place was admittedly a bit of a zoo. The main attractions of the area, in addition to general cuteness, are the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory (the clock place, I think). These two attractions are in close proximity to each other within the larger compounds of Greenwich Park, which is really big. Greenwich is on the river, and the area near the Thames is flat and hosts the Maritime Museum in majestically large spread out buildings connected by covered walkways. Behind this a massive hill emerges (it's really no wonder it's a park, it would have been very difficult to put much else up there!), on top of which is the observatory. The main bit of the town is between the park and the station and is made up of shops and restaurants.

So we didn't go to the museum or the observatory, but we did grab Chris and stop by Tesco to get some grab and ate al fresco in the park. This was followed by a jaunt through the main bit of town before returning to Chris's.

It was the first time in Greenwich for both of us and in general we were quite impressed. While I suppose if you are a big boat or clock person the appeal would be obvious, the views of London from the park in and of itself should also serve as a draw for visitors. I took some photos of this view but Mark has possession of my camera at 'the cricket' today so you'll have to do your best to visualize! In general, Greenwich is what I would term a second tier tourist attraction, but likely worth a visit if the weather is nice!

St John's Wood

There's a neighborhood in London that's lucky enough to have not one, but two(!) defining characteristics. This little hood is called St John's Wood and it manages to not only be the local Beatles fanbase, but it also has the distinction of being London's 'American' neighborhood. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the Beatles are crossing Abbey Road to get from the Abbey Road Studios to the American School in London, located about a block and a half away.

As far as I can tell, you can blame the American neighborhood aspect on the decision of the school to be located in the area. We've been doing a small piece of work for the school so I have had the very hard to come by privilege of visiting the school. Essentially, it's a K-12 school that teaches by an American curriculum. It's attended mainly by American kids who's parents have been relocated to work in London (and whose employers are willing to buck up the private school fees!). Being the only school of this type in London, Americans with school-age children seemingly flock here.

So today, after observing the morning arrivals at the school, I dragged my patient coworker that block and a half down the street so we could walk back and forth across Abbey Road. You wouldn't guess it by the 35 year old Beatles photo, but Abbey Road is quite the busy road and my attempted photos of my coworker were spoiled when a bus stopped in between us. Sad times. However, traffic died down a bit and I was able to get a few photos in. So yes, that photo is indeed of me on The Crossing, this morning.

As an extra bit of excitement, it appeared as if the walls outside Abbey Road studios had been heavily graffitied. The orange cones you see in the background have been put up by the graffiti squad, who were painting over the 'art'. There was also a noticeable stream of musicians heading to the studio from the station. However, instead of being cool rocker types, they were for the most part carrying 'classical' stringed instruments. Sad!

Cycling to work

Over the past week and a half, I've commuted to work and back on my bike! I know, I didn't really see it coming either. But before I dive into that inspiring topic, I must first discuss bike lingo. For some reason, the terminologies for bicycle related activities is very different in the UK to the US. As I work in 'sustainable travel', I discuss and write in the UK terminology basically every day, and having not discussed these things very frequently in the US, I tend to use the UK terminology even when I'm not at work. As I will no doubt write the rest of this entry using UK terminology (go ahead, judge me, that's fine!), I think I should first give a run down on these differences.

US: 'Bike ride'
UK: 'Cycle ride'

US: 'Bike riding'
UK: 'Cycling'

US: 'I rode my bike to work'
UK: 'I cycled to work'

I think that just about sums things up, so bear with me! I shall try to refrain from using any additional anglicisms.

So, after Mark and I had a few weekend 'cycle rides', we decided that we would try 'cycling to work'. Our first attempts were thwarted by torrential rains on the Friday before last, but the forecast for last week was remarkably warm and sunny and we decided to give it a whirl. So last Monday we dressed up like complete idiots (but no lyrca people!) and hit the road.

While I did eventually make it to work, I must admit I did get a bit lost. Our plan was to stick to the main roads to our workplaces, many of which were 'cycle routes'. For me this meant leaving the house, 'cycling' up a side street, through a park and some residential streets (essentially a traffic-free short-cut to Fulham Road), then up Fulham Road into Chelsea. As a good 'cyclist', I try my best to obey traffic laws, including stopping at red lights and not proceeding through them until the light turns green (although you get started on the 'red & amber' phase). When I was stopped at one of these red lights on Fulham Road, I was joined by 7 (!) other 'cyclists' before the light turned green again. This seemed like an impressive number to me.

On day 1 I missed my turn off of Fulham Road, which would have led me through a residential bit of South Kensington then up through Hyde Park alongside Kensington Palace and then an undetermined route from there to my work. So having missed this turn, I took one just after and ended up sort of winding through South Ken (not a bad area to be lost, in general) and ended up going up Queens Gate, then through, um the Queens Gate into Hyde Park, then alongside the road through the park and I managed to find my work through the other end. While this was entirely accidental my first day (I resorted to following other 'cyclists' who seemed to know where they were going), I have gone up and down Queens Gate every day since (on purpose). Might I add, that this route takes me past the Natural History Museum, the Albert Memorial, Royal Albert Hall, and I noticed yesterday on my way home that I could see a bit of the Princess Diana Memorial in the park. Again, not a bad bid of scenery for a commute.

So how do I feel about this route? Fulham Road tends to be a bit busy with traffic and I have to pass several buses. However, it's a 'cycle route' and there are always lots of other 'cyclists' around so you feel like there is an awareness of 'cyclists'. Queens Gate is a massive, massive road, but instead of being busy, it's just really wide. Basically there's sort of one lane of traffic in the space for two lanes, so cars don't come anywhere near you and there's plenty of room to pass other 'cyclists' without danger. That being said, my bike is not meant for speed, so I am generally the one being passed by those guys on road bikes wearing lycra, but I do pass the occasional old lady! The route through Hyde Park is quite nice as there are 'cycle lanes' along the sidewalk of the main route, so you are essentially lumped in with pedestrians instead of cars. There are 'cycle lanes' along both sides of the road so you don't have to deal with a lot of people coming at you either. The sketchiest bit of my commute is on my way in when I have to go along the very busy road along the north side of Hyde Park for a couple blocks, crossing two lanes of traffic so I can turn up to work. However, I have found that it's quite easy if I just go a bit slow and let every pass me, waiting for a gap in traffic to duck over.

So there are supposed to be many benefits of 'cycling' to work that we spew off in the world of travel planning. Now I shall debunk them.

Time savings: if I just walked to my desk from my bike it might be quicker to cycle, but having to get changed sort of makes it a push. If I was in a rush in the morning I could probably get in a bit quicker, but I don't want to get sweaty so it's not worth it. However, I made excellent time 'cycling' home yesterday when I wasn't so worried about such things! Oh, and my trip in to work is slightly uphill, so the trip home is slightly down. This makes the trip in a little more tricky!

Energy: we like to claim that people show up at work awake and ready to face the day when they 'cycle' in. However, I just seem to be a bit sleepier than usual! Perhaps this only applies if you would otherwise drive to work?

Hair: not really something you talk about in travel planning, but a concern for female cyclists, especially. I put my hair in a French braid if I'm going to be wearing the helmet as I don't get helmet hair. When I get in to work my hair is a bit weird from having been braided straight after drying, but I generally have been putting it into a pony. It's not ideal, but I'm not that worried about impressing my colleagues by having fabulous hair (as, let's be honest, it's never fabulous).

So that's a brief wrap-up of my cycling to work ways. I took the tube in today. I'm pooped!

Liverpool - Chelsea

It's unfortunately that time of year again where all the random 'football' competitions are nearing the end and, um, emotions run high. One of these competitions is the Champions League, which is um, either finishing up the quarter-finals or about to head into the quarter-finals. You can't expect me to keep close tabs on these things as in general I don't really care. What I do know is that the Champions League is a competition that runs across Europe and is not restricted to certain leagues as a result. Oh, and it's a tournament style competition. If you want more details on the premise, you'll have to ask Mark. Teams play each other twice, once at each home field, and the scores are added together to determine the winner. In the case of a tie, away goals count more than home goals.

As part of this competition, Liverpool and Chelsea have been matched up in one of these near-the-end rounds. This meant that last week Chelsea played at Liverpool, and last night (lucky me!), Liverpool played at Chelsea. I have decided that both of these teams have weird and over-zealous fans who in general need to take a chill-pill, get over themselves, and find another hobby. As the game was blessedly on a work-day, I had to 'deal' with the gathering fans in order to get home. Luckily starting my journey at the second station on the line assured that I got a seat for the entire journey. The very large group of 8 or so Liverpool fans who got on the same station sadly had to stand. However, you get better lung capacity when you are standing.

On Chelsea home game days, the trains get very very crowded between Earls Court and Fulham Broadway, which is luckily only two stops, but it's a difficult two stops for people who have to stand. Yesterday these two stops were made even worse when that group of Liverpool fans decided it was best to start singing and jumping up and down. Sadly, there was no wall for me to bang my head against. After the fans got off at Fulham Broadway, a middle-aged woman sat down with tears in her eyes, traumatized from being stuck in the middle of the singing-bouncing fans.

As a side note, Chelsea won. Well, the game ended in a tie, but Chelsea won the game in Liverpool last week so they had the higher cumulative score and will therefore advance to the next round. They will be playing their first game against Barcelona in two weeks, and a week after this I'm eagerly anticipating sharing my commute with a large group of singing Barcelona fans. Yay!

Richmond Park

It's been a four day weekend here in the UK. While otherwise generally stingy with the whole public holiday thing, we are somewhat holiday rich this time of year! For Easter, we get off both Good Friday and Easter Monday, and then a Monday bank holiday both the first and last weekends in May. It's not a bad deal. However, it is a bad deal between New Years and Easter, between the last May bank holiday and the August bank holiday, and then between the August bank holiday and Christmas, during which we get nothing. Oh wait, I guess we still have those 5 weeks of annual leave we can use...

Anyways, the weather this past long weekend was a bit lacking. It was essentially raining all day Friday and Saturday before being just grey on Sunday, then we finally got a bit of sun yesterday afternoon. To compensate, we spent Friday painting our bathroom (it's seafoamy now), Saturday running errands and going to the mall, then finally on Sunday we snuck out for a little bike ride and yesterday we went for a long bike ride. Sunday we did a loop along the river through Putney and Hammersmith, and yesterday we went down to Richmond Park via Putney and Barnes.

First, some background. Richmond Park, according to my AA pub, walk and cycle guide (thanks for that, Chris!) (Hi Chris!), I've learned that Richmond Park was originally set aside as a park by Charles I, who took his court there to go hunting/escape the plague (talk about killing two birds with one stone!). Numerous hunting excursions/plague outbreaks have ensured that the park has remained since the 1600s, and today it is apparently the largest urban walled park in Europe. I think the word 'walled' is of key importance there, but at the same time I assure you it is indeed very, very big. The outlined bike ride essentially around the perimeter of the park was 7 miles long. Most of the park is sort of open grassland with several 'glens' of trees and some carefully placed massive hills. The hills allow for some very nice views, as well as some opportunities to hop off ones bike to push it up the hill. In general, the park is quite pretty and features a very nice car-free rail for cycling. Although that being said, we somehow managed to get lost and ended up at a dead end, pushed our bikes up a very big hill only to find we couldn't take our bikes through the gate at the top, and then had to walk around until we found the trail we were supposed to be on.

Secondly, the National Cycle Network. The powers that be have set aside several 'cycle routes' connecting a lot of random places. Yesterday, despite a small detour on the way there when we got lost, we followed cycle route 4 from essentially our house to the park. The routes are sometimes along main roads, such as Kings Road and Putney Bridge, and sometimes along segregated paths, such as a bit along the Thames in Putney and through the wetlands in Barnes. They are remarkably well-signed, if you keep an eye out for them, and they include directional signposts with destinations and the distance in miles. So yesterday we knew we were finally almost there when we saw 'Richmond Park 1/4 mile' on one of these signs. In addition to the national cycle network, London has a number of cycle routes and produces special maps for riding through certain areas showing both exact routes but also things such as 'quieter roads recommended by cyclists'. The maps are available for free from Transport for London and I'm sure very useful if you actually look at them, can then remember all the names of the streets you're supposed to turn down and then find those streets while you are out and about. All easier said than done, of course.

G20

London was lucky enough to host the G20 summit last week. I know, we completely lucked out on that one! Thanks, Gordon Brown, for volunteering!

I won't bother going through what actually was achieved at the summit, mainly as I have no idea, but will instead discuss what impact it has on my day to day life. The summit itself was held at the Excel Centre, in very far east London. The protesters who manifested themselves overnight decided to concentrate their efforts around the US embassy, the Bank of England and the rest of the City and Canary Wharf. Lucky for me, I spend just about all of my time in west London, far from all these sites. So basically, the G20 summit has no impact on myself whatsoever. A bit sad, I know, but true.

However, there was much talk of the G20 and the impact it would have on the folks who worked in the banking sector. Apparently the banks were telling their employees that they should 'dress down' last week when the protesters were about, as if for some reason the fact that they are walking into the RBS building at 9am doesn't imply that they are a banker so much as the fact that they might be walking down the street wearing a suit. In the end, I did not hear any reports about pulverized bankers. Thanks goodness they were able to go incognito!

As seems to be the rule with things like this these days, the peaceful types with things to say were over-shadowed by people who used the whole thing as an excuse to steal computers out of high street banks. In front of lots of police and cameras. When will these people ever learn!

The Boat Race

Not 'a' boat race, 'THE' boat race.

Every year, for the past 160 years, Cambridge and Oxford have a crew race. I'm not sure if the location has changed over time, but these days it takes place down the River Thames, free for all of London to see. Specifically, the race starts at Putney Bridge then heads west around some very sharp turns and ends in, um, let's say Chiswick. The main point being that it does not go through central London and conveniently starts a mile away from my house.

The race this year was on Sunday afternoon. Being free and all, about a gazillion people headed down to the river to see what they could see. I'm not sure how many of these people actually went to Oxford or Cambridge, but we were seemingly the only people not drinking vast quantities of alcohol. But this was no tailgater - the people in front of us (who had come by bike) popped a bottle of champagne.

We were in Bishop's Park, which while just down from the bridge, has a long length of river frontage and a big square in the middle where they'd set up a big screen so you could watch the race once it had disappeared from view. We got to the park about 45 minutes before 'The' race, any about 15 minutes before the 'juniors' race, which I took to mean 'the B team' race. 'The' race garnered two hours of tv time, despite being less than 15 minutes long, thus allowing us to learn all sorts of things (as did that morning's paper). For example, there were 18 people involved - 16 rowers and 2 cox people. There were just as many Americans (5) as British people (5), and there were a fair number of 2008 Olympians involved. The tallest guy was 6'9", and they tended to be around 25 and post-grads. Oxford were the favorites, and to give away the end, they did end up winning.

HOWEVER, the race was quite exciting, mainly in that Cambridge was able to take the lead, it was announced that 80% of people ahead at that point won the race, at which point Oxford roared back to take the lead (with some minor oar clashing). I assure you, times are tough for the losing side, they're just allowed to sit there and skulk while the winners get given a trophy and the winning team's cox guessed tossed into the river.

I took some pictures, but at present we are experiencing virus issues and aren't allowed to plug devices into our computers, so I fear an alarm going off if I make such an attempt...

Spring!

Spring arrived yesterday in London, catching many of us off-guard. After spending some of my Saturday walking around the neighbourhood bundled up and wearing a scarf, you can imagine my surprise when I walked outside yesterday and was confronted with the beer garden at the White Horse being backed by coat-less revellers, the barbecue seemingly going at full blast. While I'm not sure of the temperature, it was indeed a beautiful sunny day, and it has been followed up with another temperate, although hazy, day today. So perhaps this is in fact evidence of a seasonal change and not just a blip on the radar of what has seemingly been an endless winter. It's mid-March, so I guess it had to happen sooner or later.

I must admit this sudden seasonal-change has caught me somewhat unprepared. For example, I've been meaning to get a bike (I work in sustainable travel, I might get ridiculed if folks find out I don't have one!) and most certainly don't have one yet. I had spotted one I liked at a nearby cycle shop the weekend before, so we popped in again yesterday to discover they were now all of out that bike and I didn't particularly care for the alternatives. It seemed I had been beaten to the bunch by those forward seeing folks who knew that spring was about to pop around the corner!

On the other hand, we have totally been on the outdoor ball for a good week now! We hauled ourselves down to the garden center the weekend before and picked up some soil and some seeds for Mark to plant in his 'earth box' on the balcony, which he finally got around to planting yesterday. We shall be expecting some leafy arrivals, well, hopefully at some point. We are also considering additional balcony plant options, but admittedly the allure of many plants are sort limited when confronted with the prospect of having to walk home with them. To be honest, it was miracle enough we were able to get the potting soil home without any major back injuries.

So at some point we will get some more plants for the balcony, perhaps a couple chairs to sit on to watch the sunset (and of course the District line!), and we now have a mini-barbecue on the way. I've found another bike online that I like (it comes with a wicker basket!), but it's currently out of stock until Easter, so perhaps I'll make that leap sometime soon as well. And given the change in weather, I also feel like now I can start returning to Bishop's Park for general outdoor activity and river-viewing!

Red Nose Day

Today is red nose day. No, that does not mean you have to spend the day drinking until your nose turns red. Instead it means that it's Comic Relief's big fundraising day, and if you care about others you will have by now gone to your local Sainsbury's and spent £1 on buying this year's nose. And wearing last year's nose does not count.

Comic Relief is essentially a charity that raises money for the needy in both Africa and the UK. It's essentially hard to disagree with and so a lot of hoop-lah goes into their big fundraising events every year. A group of somewhat random UK celebrities (aka, no one in the US has ever heard of them) climbed Kilimanjaro last week, there are random celebrity dancing shows now raising money for the charity, and last but not least, at Mark's work you have to pay £1 if you wore red today - and £2 if you didn't. Basically, there's no way to avoid this thing, and you will inevitably feel guilty if you don't donate a bit of money.

Personally I prefer to give money to charities that I support, not just to ones that make me feel guilty if I don't. Luckily my work is not squeezing money out of me today, and I will tactfully avoid any telethons that may or may not be taking place that involve celebrities dressing up in silly outfits and making fools of themselves with intermittent messages telling me what good work the charity does. It might make me seem like a bit of a scrooge, but it just sort of irks me the way they roll the whole thing out!

Treble

I have recently noted a few more signs of obstinacy amongst the English. Number one: they use the word 'treble' instead of 'triple'. There is absolutely no reason for this, as far as I can see. If one of the two options actually resembled the word 'three' it would have upper hand, but as both exclude the 'h', I don't really see how either one could be better than the other. However, as Americans use the word triple, we should win as there are more of us. I'm not sure if anyone in these parts has yet been tempted to use the term 'three-peat'.

My next sign of obstinacy is the use of the word 'fixture'. Sports teams do not have 'schedules' they have 'fixtures'. Up until I learned this little trick I found it next to impossible to find out when Chelsea would be playing at home (and I can therefore make plans to avoid game traffic), as when you look up 'Chelsea schedule' you don't really find anything of use. However, as I discovered the other day, if you look up 'Chelsea fixtures' you are immediately lead to a schedule of games. So another thing to keep in mind - my gym has a class schedule, Chelsea has a list of fixtures.

Let's say you want to arrange a meeting of some kind. The Anglo you are aiming to meet with will again not check their schedule or their calendar, they will check their diary. Mind you, I have no idea what they record their personal thoughts and feelings in if their diary is just a list of dates. Of course, a wall calendar is still called a wall calendar, just to be annoying.

So to sum things up, if you want to jot down on your calendar that there are three soccer games on Saturday, you would write that there is a treble bill of football fixtures in your diary.

Don't say I never taught you anything useful!

Euro Transit

So I've been to my fair share of European cities now, and feel like I can make a stab at judging their levels of transit provision. I take a lot of digs at the London underground so I suppose it's really only fair I do a bit of compare and contrast!

In the last few years I've ridden underground systems in London, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris. Amsterdam and Dublin do not have underground systems, instead relying on overground tram networks. Here are a few pluses and minuses on all of these:

Paris - an extensive combination of small trains running on tires and massive trains that run into the suburbs. The underground trains stop approximately every one minute, convenient if you're lazy, otherwise a bit overkill. Not the cleanest or the newest but the same could be said for Paris in general. The French have other priorities. Ticketing system is relaitvely straightforward and stations have ticket machines with an English option. Recommend only using when travelling great distances.

Barcelona - my most recent experience, system covers the city center quite comprehensively but doesn't run very far outside of the center. Stations relatively far apart, ticketing was easy (English option again) and all of the trains were relatively modern, some of them extremely so, with all of the carriages being open ended like you were traveling around inside of a speedy worm. It was also, in general, quite clean. Recommend for frequent use, beyond reason. Was also very cheap.

Madrid - again quite comprehensive and easy to follow. A little more dodge than the one in Barcelona and a little more confusing regarding ticketing (you needed an extra little ticket to get to and from the airport, although I might be confusing it with Munich!). But again modern and got me where I needed to go. Recommend for longer distances and travel to the airport.

Munich - most complicated ticketing system I've ever come across, although I would probably think that about London if I didn't use it every day. Also a combination of city only and regional trains. We got lost in stations on multiple occassions and often opted to walk, even though it was beyond freezing outside. Recommend for leaving the town centre, but walk around in town.

London - by far the most comprehensive system in regard to reaching beyond the city center. Ticketing is somewhat confusing, especially when you add Oyster cards into the mix. Within the heart of London it can be easier to walk, but anything beyond and you'd be a bit silly to pass it up. However, extreme crowding is an issue. Also the only city where I've seen live screens detailing the current level of service on each line. Not sure if the other cities just don't frequently distribute this information or if they don't have problems with delays.

So there you have it, a very quick comparison of underground systems in a small smattering of European cities. In general terms, when visiting a city I think it's best to do as much walking as possible to see bits of the city you would otherwise miss, but it's also worth doing a little research about these systems as I foresee things being quite troubling if you choose to forego them altogether!

Barcelona Day 3

Our flight on Tuesday wasn't until almost 10 pm, so we essentially had the whole day to play with. We started the day by checking out and leaving our bags at that steal of a hotel. Determined that we could do 'better' than the day before, we walked most of the way to the Sagrada Familia before popping into an adorable little bakery for some coffee and croissants. Both were excellent. We then hopped on the underground and whizzed to the end of the line, which was near the bottom of the massive park/hill to the west of town. We were intending to take a funicular up the hill and then have a look at some of the features within, such as the Olympic stadium and some ruins or the botanic garden. Alas, we couldn't find the funicular, despite having numerous maps that told us where it should be. So instead we ended up weaving and climbing up this steep hill.

From the edge of the park, way up on the hill, there is an amazing view of the city. You can basically see everything, including the sea. After briefly considering trying to find the stuff within the rest of the park, we instead decided to hop on the really, really big funicular that takes you from this park on the top of a great big hill to a tower near the aquarium and then to another tower near the beaches. After great confusion with the little ticket man, we determined that the final station was closed so we could only go to the aquarium tower. That was fine with us, and off we went.

Now, looking back on this, I'm not quite sure what drug I had taken that convinced me that this was a good idea. I'm using the word funicular as that was the technical term used on the maps and books, but really it was a pre-historic cousin of Portland's aerial tram. It appeared as if some person (likely on a dare) had strung up some wire really, really high up in the air and attached a slightly over-sized tin can to it to casually fling unsuspecting tourists to their death. While the view was breath-taking, I couldn't help but feel the end was near every second I was in that thing. Mark loved it. As demonstrated in the photo, the only time I got a genuine Mark smile in a photo was after we got off of that thing! I was just immensely relieved the second station was closed and that we had only gotten a one-way ticket.

Next on our list of all important things to do was to go to the food market off La Rambla. It was sort of like Pike Place Market, but you have to take out the fish counters and put in meat counters. And take out the flower stalls and put in meat counters. And take out everything else that isn't food and replace it with meat counters. Oh, and of course there were fruit and veggies and such, and olives. And maybe some candy? Anyways, my favorite was the long row of pig legs (hoof attached!) for you to take home and cut up for your own 'jamon'.

We planned on going to the concert hall next to hop on a tour to see the crazy moderniste interior, but all of the English tours were booked up until the next day. Alas, so instead we continued to the medieval quarter, stopping off at Starbucks on the way for lunch/restroom. We sat in the little mezzanine area, basically underneath a very low beam. In another sad moment, when Mark stood up for his turn to use the restroom, he did so quite quickly and ended up hitting his head quite forcefully on the beam. In a good/bad twist of fate, his sunglasses were on top of his head and took the brunt of the force. One of the frames broke and one of the lenses fell to the floor (but aside from a scratch was undamaged). Aside from the sadness of breaking his sunglasses and a small head wound (with minimal bleeding), Mark was okay. He was also somewhat cheered when we happened across a sunglass shop after leaving SB and he was able to explore new sunglass possibilities. For the rest of the day Mark just made do wearing sunglasses with a broken frame (I'm sure not that many people noticed, to be honest).

So off we went to do some shopping, hitting a couple of pottery stores along the way and getting a fabulous spoon rest that matched our olive dish purchase of a few days earlier. I have discovered that I have a weakness for Iberian pottery! Once it started to near 4 pm we decided we best have some dinner. Some places were closed for siesta but we did happen to come across a very nice looking place that had reasonable prices and other customers. The food was absolutely delicious! We were very pleased. We were saddened however, that by the time we finished it was time to start the long slow trek back to the hotel to pick up our bags. Mind you, we stopped in plenty of shops along the way so that lessened the blow a bit. Oh, and we stopped off for a last glass of wine at our favorite little wine bar.

Things have stretched on for long enough so I'll wrap things up! The journey home wasn't too bad save a train that didn't show up. We finally got home at 2am and were very sleepy the next day! We are now planning on making regular tapa/cava trips!

Barcelona: Day 2

After a very long non-stop first day in Barcelona, we both were a bit tired and both had very sore calves. This, in my mind, is a recipe for a slower pace day. We started by stopping off at a sort of sketchy cafe near our hotel to get some cafe con leche. It was almost more of a diner and seemed to contain mainly local workmen. Smoking is still allowed inside of bars and restaurants in Spain and the place smelled quite smoky. But the cafe con leche was good enough and we were shortly on our way.

Our first destination for the day was the aquarium. The second largest in Europe (don't ask me where the largest is!), the aquarium is located on a really big pier extending into the sea. While this sounds like a description of the Seattle aquarium as well, I can assure you it is really quite different! It was quite expensive, but after not paying any money to go in anywhere the day before, we were willing to up the cash to get in. The aquarium consists of a variety of smaller tanks full of all kinds of funky looking fish (including some very unattractive Moray eels!) and one very very large tank that you pass under first along a partial tunnel on a moving walkway, and then in more of a full-tunnel on a moving walkway. While I found the walkway situation a bit weird, this was a very cool part of the aquarium. The tank contained a lot of smaller fish, as well as some sharks and sunfish, which for some reason I find very entertaining. A few sharks swam over the tops of the tunnels and I can assure you that those teeth look very frightening from that angle! This was followed up by some sort of learning bits (where we watched some string rays get fed, which I assure you was a strange thing to watch) and then paid an extortionate price in the cafeteria for some bottled water. The things we do when desperate!

After this we started to head over to the beach. To get there we had to walk down a big sort of promenade and then weave through sort of a sketchy neighborhood. We stopped in a random little shop walking through said neighborhood to buy some sandwiches, then sat on a bench along the beach to eat them. Luckily the sandwiches were quite tasty (and cheap!). It was a nice and sunny day but not exactly warm, but that didn't stop some locals from playing 'football' on the beach, one of whom was sporting a speedo. Ah, Europe. After enjoying some sitting time, we moved to another bench (this time armed with Magnum ice cream bars and diet coke) and had some more sitting time.

Our next stop was the Parc Guell, way across town (thanks Barcelona underground!) and up a hill. It's a park that was designed by Gaudi and originally intended to be an upper class housing development. Alas, only one house was eventually built but there's a very nice big park there now. It's home to some frequently photographed Barcelona landmarks, including the mosaic gecko and the curving mosaic benches (as seen above). Needless to say, we made use of these benches for a bit of sitting time. Oh, I might also add that the park is high up on a hill above the city, and you do have to walk up a good portion of that hill from the station, so we though the sitting was earned! We then walked around to the quieter bits of the park and found another bench for some extended sitting time while we decided what to do next. It was by this time a little after 4 and we decided we should return to the hotel by foot and then have a bit of a respite until it was dinner time. Ah yes, our second day in Spain and we were already diving headlong into the siesta concept!

Instead of heading again into the medieval quarter for dinner, we went to the Passeig de Garcia (or whatever it's called!), one of the main north-south boulevards in town that terminates at the Placa d'Espanya, where La Rambla then takes over and leads down to the water. The street is home to a lot of fancy stores, some moderniste architecture, and as we discovered, a very cool wine bar! We stopped off there for a pre-dinner glass and some fine Spanish olives. We then went to a random little casual tapas place as recommended in the guide book a few blocks down, and then returned to the wine bar for some more fine Catalonian wine and a cheese plate! There was quite an uptown-downtown contrast between the two places, but both had their charms! Thanks to the siesta, we were again able to stay out until a respectable hour (the Spanish would probably judge us for going to sleep so early, but we were pleased).

Barcelona! Day Uno

Yay for mini-break! Mark and I have just returned from 3 days in Barcelona. Let's start from the beginning:

About a week and a half ago I got an email from Mark declaring that he had snagged a hotel room in Barcelona for £10 a night for two nights. Deciding this made it worthwhile to go on an impulse trip, we booked some EasyJet flights and on Sunday morning, away we went! That is to say, at least, that we got up at 4am on Sunday morning, took the first bus of the day from Fulham to Victoria, got a train at 5:47 with a few random people going to the airport and a bunch of really weird people clearly going home after a night out. After a very smooth EasyJet flight we landed in Barcelona and checked into our hotel around noon, freshened up a bit and then hit the ground running.

Our hotel was about half a mile from the Sagrada Familia, which was handily the first stop on my Day One tour in my Frommer's book. We first ate some gas station sandwiches in the park and then decided we would up the cash and go in. We got a little confused and ended up going into the service entrance (there was a church service starting in 15 minutes). This allowed us to go into a little corner of the cathedral for free, whilst going into th rest of us would cost us €8. We decided the little corner was enough! For a little background, the Sagrada Familia was designed by Gaudi and construction started in the late 1800s. Due to the intricacy of the design of the building (and the fact that Gaudi had the audacity to get hit by a tram and die before it was completed and didn't leave any plans), construction on the cathedral is still on-going. The inside is relatively sparse, but the walls are white-washed and there were some beautiful stained glass windows (interior shot shown above!). To put it lightly, the outside is insane. It's ridiculously complex. Anyways, moving on!

We did a bit more walking and enjoyed the fine exteriors of some additional 'moderniste' designs before heading into the medieval part of the city, where streets where extremely narrow. By this time it was mid-afternoon, and especially being a Sunday, many things were either shut for the day or shut for 'siesta'. We sat for a while outside the old cathedral, hit Starbucks and did a little neighbourhood walk. Finally the cathedral opened up again and we were able to walk through (free entry people! but I donated some change) both the cathedral itself and go into the courtyard area. The courtyard is and always has been home to a gaggle of geese. Apparently they make good guards (seriously). Anyways, it was a very peaceful setting.

Being by this time around 6 we decided it was a somewhat acceptable hour to go get some tapas and try some cava, which is the local sparking wine. We went to a place recommended in the guide book within the medieval quarter. The food (and rose cava) were very good. Our first bit of bad luck hit us when we were leaving through those winding streets (at 7:30 pm, mind you), when a couple of local teenager types started to talk at us in Spanish and were trying to hand us some little fliers. Not wanting anything or understanding what they were saying, I walked ahead of Mark to get through them single file and quickly turned the corner. They then blocked Mark's path and sort of pinned him against the wall (luckily it was a metal door cover thing so I heard it and turned back around the corner) and essentially tried to pick his pocket. Mark being a savvy city type immediately put his hand over his pocket to keep them away, sensing that was what they were after. They then walked away and Mark and I continued on our way. Although I must admit I was tempted to go after them and beat them with my purse. So a bit shaken but otherwise in tact, we walked around for a while longer before deciding it was best to venture into another establishment before heading back to our hotel (we didn't want to be too uncool!).

That wraps up the first day in Barcelona! I've got plenty of pictures but haven't had a chance to put them on Picasa quite yet!

Pizza Express

Pizza Express is the name of a very prevalent restaurant chain in the UK. Despite what the name might imply, it's a somewhat classy sit-down restaurant with slightly dimmed lighting. It is certainly a lot classier than Pizza Hut, with no buffets or stuffed crust in sight. They serve a wide-range of Italian-style thin-crust pizzas, as well as a limited number of salads and pastas. In addition to being located on approximately every other street corner in the country, a limited number of their pizzas are available at the grocery store for home consumption (as is their 'dough balls' appetizer and for some reason, their salad dressing).

A pizza from Pizza Express will in general terms cost you £7-£9, the dough balls around £3 and a bottle of wine anywhere from around £12. In total, a meal for two will set you back around £35. While the food is always quite yummy and the atmosphere of most outlets is quite pleasant, I can't help but feel that the whole enterprise isn't quite worth £35. And clearly I'm not the only person who thinks so.

Back in the day, say mid-2008, it was a newsworthy event when Pizza Express printed two-for-one coupons in one of the Sunday papers, and I'm pretty sure restaurant patronage increased dramatically after these coupons were issued.

As times have gotten, let's say, 'worse', a lot of restaurants have suffered and some have had to close down. But I'm pretty sure Pizza Express is doing as well, if not better, than ever. You see, over the past few months these two-for-one coupons have become so prevalent that it almost silly to dine anywhere else. It really started with a streak of counterfeit online coupons that everyone latched on to readily, and some stores decided it was easier to accept them. These fake coupons seem to have done wonders for business, and now regular legitimate coupons are available on pizzaexpressoffers.com. We have also recently discovered that coupons are printed on the backs of movie tickets at our local theater. And for that matter, on the back of your card receipts from the movie theater. Basically, you go see one movie and can end up with 6 or so Pizza Express coupons - half two-for-one and the others for £10 off a £30 bill. In addition, they have recently started a two-for-one Wednesday promotion in conjunction with two-for-one Wednesday movie offers. As a result, the Pizza Express at Fulham Broadway has had massive lines out the door the last few weeks.

So it seems Pizza Express is currently winning in the battle of the fittest. While it will indeed be a sad day when these coupons start to dry up, it will almost certainly be a sign that the economy is improving, and so I like to think I'll be able to take it in stride.

Signal failure

I've been commuting on the London Underground for 17 months now, and I have never seen it fail as much as it has in the last two weeks. It's gotten to the point where I consider it a minor miracle if I'm able to get in or out of work without there being major or minor delays or some kind of line suspension. I've practically forgotten what it's like to have two such commutes in a day!

The following is a list of stations that have managed to have signal failures since the 'snow day' (last Monday) that have resulted in some sort of delays or partial suspensions of the district line:
Putney Bridge
Earls Court
High St Kensington
Notting Hill Gate
Baker Street
Moorgate
Aldgate
Barking
South Kensington

That's nine stations in essentially 7 working days (there wasn't one this morning!), although to be fair last Monday wasn't really a working day as the lines were just down due to 'adverse weather conditions'. So really that's 9 signal failures in 6 working days, or 9 out of 12 commutes. Some have just been minor, such as the ones at Moorgate and Aldgate and such, but others have resulted in complete nightmares. For example, yesterday morning I spent 10 minutes standing in a Circle line train at High St Ken that didn't have any power, and it then took 15 minutes to get to the next station once power to the lines was restored. One day last week I had to travel to work via Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is, I assure you, nowhere near my work or my house.

In addition to signal failures and 'adverse weather conditions', we've had some other great excuses for delays in the last few weeks: an earlier 'trespasser' on the line (to be fair this was for the central line), 'equipment' failure, a person taken seriously ill on a train, and my personal favorite was when we had delays coming home Monday evening because trains couldn't stop at Fulham Broadway because of an unsafe structure. This involved everyone peering out the window as we passed the station to try and figure out what was going on. Aside from some water from the ongoing downpour, nothing appeared to be out of order and there were no workmen on the scene.

I've been told that all these shortcomings meant that there would be 'no trains for the foreseeable future'. The general party line from the driver is 'we hope to be on our way shortly', although I've recently determined that they literally are just hoping and in reality have no idea. I've been 'advised' a multitude of times to do things I don't really want to do, such as 'seek alternate routes' and that my 'tickets will be accepted on local bus routes'.

Needless to say, I find the whole situation unacceptable. If they don't get the whole things sorted out soon, well, I guess there's not much I can do about that...

Billy Elliot

Lat night Margo got us tickets to see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre at Victoria (for those that know the geography of London!).

Now the last couple of shows i've been to in the West End havn't in my opinion been that good! Especially seeing as they have just had a record breaking year in terms of profits/people numbers!

Now Billy Elliot has put my faith back into the system! The show was excellent and provoked all of the emotions! It including ballet dancing, tap dancing and what i'd term as modern free dance! The boy playing Billy was all action and was clearly loving every minute of it!

I guess the best thing about living and working in London is the fact that you can go to these things...jump on the tube and be home in under 30 minutes. When we saw Wicked when we lived in Southampton we had to walk through a deserted town centre at 2am after the journey home on the slow train!

Anyways i'm sure Margo will add more but if anybody is in town i'd highly recommend...likewise i think its recently opened in New York - though i'm not certain?

Snow day!

It's apparently made the news in those parts, but in case you haven't heard, it snowed! In London! And stuck! It's been very cold here for the last week or so and last night it started to snow. It snowed all night, sticking everywhere. 

Being next to the District Line, I was pretty sure it wasn't running this morning when I woke up. Well, not only was the district line not running (in these parts, at least) but almost no tube lines were running, a lot of the overground services were shut down, the airports were closed, and for the first time ever, all buses were cancelled. So Mark and I didn't make it to work today, but we both managed to get some work done from home (taking turns on the computer, I really must get that laptop fixed!). Quite frankly, it's been a bit of a boring day! I haven't actually left the house! 

There's still plenty of snow on the ground and its quite cold outside. More of the train lines are running, but thinks are still a bit of a mess out there. There has been talk that more snow might appear overnight. I'm actually scheduled to work from home tomorrow morning to wait in for a delivery, but at this point I think it's a) possible that I would have to work from home again if the Edgware Road line of the district line still hasn't opened and b) that if I do wait in, the delivery folks won't be venturing out to bring me my table and chairs! Hopefully it will all go smoothly...

Anyways, having not left the house, I don't think I can really add much more. However, I can relay second hand information! Mark did make an attempt to go to work this morning. Again, being next to the tracks, we could see that some trains were running towards the city (his branch of the district line), so he put on his massive waterproof boots and walked to the station to discover that a bunch of people had walked up from Putney to try and catch a train, and that while a few trains were going by, they were unable to stop at the station (it's outdoors and uncovered, so I image they literally couldn't stop), but everyone could feel free to walk one stop up in 5 inches of snow to Fulham Broadway where they were stopping. Mark didn't believe them (nor did anyone else) and instead threw in the towel and came back home. It's for the best, I think. The powers that be seemed to be discouraging people from traveling as there was more snow in the forecast for the afternoon (and we did get a bit more!). So alas, I think we're hoping for an improvement tomorrow just to relieve the boredom!

Minding the electricals

The UK is of course strange in many, many ways, but today I want to focus on things they plug in. And how they plug them in.

Basics first, for those of you who are unfamiliar, the plugs used in the UK are roughly the size of your fist. They are three-pronged, with all three being rectangle-shaped, the two on the 'bottom' (when plugged in) are horizontal, and the top one is vertical. The plastic bit to which these metal things are affixed (if that makes any sense), is generally six-sided, with the bottom half being rectangular, then the two sides tilting in so the top is narrower than the bottom. All in all, the plug is about two inches by two inches. AKA, massive. The Anglos like to think this makes them sturdy, I just think it takes away the grace of all Apple plugs.

Next step: the outlets. Wall outlets again usually come in sets of two, only instead of one being stacked on top of the other, they are side by side. The key difference is that you can turn an outlet on and off with a handy adjacent switch. I think the idea behind this is that you don't have electricity surging through an outlet that isn't in use, but not having grown up with the option of turning outlets off, I generally just leave them on all the time. These days this is enough to get you labeled as unfriendly to the environment, but really it just doesn't occur to me to do so.

The one room where you never find these sorts of outlets is the bathroom. As far as I can tell, this is to ensure you have to dry your hair in odd locations such as the hallway. What you instead find in the bathroom is a European style outlet with two parallel rounds things. They will be paired with a little sign saying they are for electric shavers only. I imagine this is based on the idea that people are stupid and will no doubt electrocute themselves while making toast in the bathtub, but in my mind it's a case of the government taking things a bit too far.

Aside from those darn electric kettles, the appliances here cover the same range. Only there are some slight variations in how you might turn things on and off. When I turn off the tv with the remote, it goes by default into stand-by mode. If I actually want to turn the tv off, I have to get up and press the button on the actual tv. The Wii is on stand-by by default whenever you're not using it, unless you cut off the source of power by turning off the outlet. Needless to say, there's a lot of work involved, and these days a lot of guilt forced on you by the media and other green folk if you don't do these things. Plus your electrical bill will be considerably higher if you leave things on all the time!

Obama-rama

I know it's nearly week old news by this point, but I still feel obliged to provide a bit of insight into how the whole inauguration thing went down on this side of the pond. To sum things up in one word, it's safe to say that the inauguration was BIG.

Last Tuesday, from the moment I arrived at work, there was much chatter and excitement about Obama and the day's events. Some efforts were made to arrange watching the events unfold here at work, but despite having several new flatscreen televisions, no one could figure out how to make them actually show tv with sound. So I didn't get to watch anything live, but if I had, I would have had plenty of options. There was two hours of live coverage on BBC 1 as well as extended coverage on BBC News and Sky News (a Rupert Murdoch situation, so you can envision what went on there). People in many other workplaces (coverage from from 4:30 to 5:30 local time) managed to sneak away to watch. I also received word of a number of gathering of Americans taking place around town. There was front page coverage in all the newspapers and it was the leading story in the news for days. Half of what I saw on BBC news at the gym last Thursday was all stuff taking place in the US.

Needless to say, I find this very intriguing. First of all, people here aren't directly impacted by the US president in the same way as Americans. Even Americans living here aren't impacted in the same way as people in the US (unless of course he drastically cuts the amount of money you can live abroad without having to pay US taxes...). Secondly, I find it somewhat interesting that people are so intrigued by the process of a president being inaugurated. There seems to be a small bit of jealousy, but that only seems normal in a land where they have an unelected monarchy and the prime minister isn't directly elected either.

To summarize sentiments, the people over here seem quite pleased with our choice. It will be interesting to see if overall sentiment towards Americans changes over the next few months!

Tea in the NEW workplace

As I have mentioned before, I moved work groups in October. At as I've spent considerable time dwelling on the anglo-tea love situation, I feel obliged to report what goes on in this new territory.

The people in these new parts LOVE tea. They all seem to drink it by the gallon. But this is not the interesting part! What I find intriguing is that whenever someone gets up to get themselves some tea, they walk around asking if anybody else wants some. This sometimes results in someone having to make 10 cups of tea, about half of them in identical company mugs.

To make things extra tricky, everyone has their own unique way they like their tea. Okay, there are really only two different varieties offered: one sugar or no sugar. The milk, of course, comes standard and I haven't come across anyone asking for it to be withheld. The only really complicated orders come when someone asks for coffee and they have the choice of instant or the stuff from the coffee machine. How someone takes their tea is rarely asked when the mug collection process is going on, so basically everyone around me has a mental inventory of how everyone likes their tea. The system does break down once a day or so, and someone gets given a 'cuppa' with sugar when they prefer it without, resulting in the person giving the tea making faces and the person who made it apologizing profusely.

Much like with buying rounds in the pub, if you accept tea from others you do have to volunteer to make tea for others. This applies to everyone regardless of their seniority level - the director sometimes walks by asking you if you want a hot drink. Personally, I chose not to involve myself in the whole situation as I don't know how these people make tea (how much milk do you even put in? how long do you leave the tea bag in?). Plus I could never manage to keep tabs on who likes sugar and who doesn't, nor do I trust myself with the task of carrying more than one hot beverage at a time. Carrying my cup of coffee at home every morning requires all of my concentration as it is, without random people wandering all about and coming out of nowhere around the corner. That being said: I have not seen anyone spill yet.

The tea drinking is not just a first thing in the morning thing, or an all morning thing: it's an all day thing. People make rounds of tea at 5 pm. While the number of cups people have varies considerably, I imagine some people have at least 5 cups a day. I don't know how they get any sleep!

Done with the move!

As the title suggests, I am now officially moved out of the old place! Mark kindly volunteered to take yesterday off of work to facilitate the final stages and from the sound of it, he spent the entire day running around like a chicken with its head cut off. He oversaw the cleaner at the old place, aided in the delivery of a fridge/freezer and a washing machine up three flights of stairs at the new place, moved some remaining items from the old place, managed the Sky installation and even managed to pick up our new coffee grinder from the delivery office. Basically I think he deserves a round of applause!

After dinner last night we went back to the old place for a last visit (and to gather the last couple things). I must say it looked impressively clean. Which is sort of bad because then you realize that you live in comparative filth, but it should be okay for inspection. This was capped off by my putting the keys through the very aggressive letterbox (it tried to rip my fingers off!) at the estate agents. So no more Radipole Road!

However, the new place currently looks as if a bomb has gone off in it. It's an absolute mess of items randomly strewn about in the moving effort. While we hpoe to address this situation over the weekend, I also fully intend to spend a good many hours sitting on the couch watching televeision and doing very little thinking.

My Never Ending Move

Believe it or not, but I still haven't moved yet. Mind you, I have moved lots of things, but I myself am still living at my old residence. We had hoped to have moved in this past weekend, but fate (and the elevator) is clearly against us.

This past Saturday, our refrigerator and washing machine were scheduled to be delivered. This was to involve me waiting at the new flat for a four hour period while Mark went down to Brighton to partake in some festivities. Alas, when I arrived at the new flat at the start of this period, I noticed there was a note on the elevator door saying that it was indeed really, really broken and would be for a number of days. Logic would say this would impact the delivery of appliances to a fourth floor apartment, so I informed Mark who tried making contact with the delivery folk, but to no avail. He also resigned to put off his departure to Brighton until the whole situation was resolved.

Cut to 3 hours into the waiting period: I've been spending 3 hours putting together our Ikea dresser and we still haven't received word on the delivery, well, until then. We get a call saying that the delivery will likely take place in 40 minutes (depending on traffic). Mark informs them about the lift situation.

Cut to 4.5 hours into the waiting period: the delivery men finally arrive, after driving around being lost and unable to find our street for a while. They say they can 'try' to delivery the stuff, but if it breaks it's not their fault. That sounded like good motivation to let something break on the first flight of stairs, so we had to reschedule the delivery. It's now coming on Thursday. As of yesterday the elevator was still broken, and while we're hoping it will be fixed today or tomorrow, there's certainly no guarantee. And as people who generally like refrigerated items, we haven't wanted to willingly live somewhere without a fridge when we have an option that includes one.

So the move continues for now. Tonight is slated to be our last night in the old place. We've got a car booked for tomorrow evening to move over a few more bulky items, seemingly including ourselves! We have to hand back over our keys by the end of Thursday, so if the fridge doesn't come by then we'll be a bit SOL!

What's in store for 2009?

Just as important (perhaps more important) as recapping the year that was is start planning out the year to come. It's winter, it's freezing cold outside, I'm still in thet midst of a moving process that seems never ending, and here I am with no trips to look forward to. Something needs to give, and as it's unlikely to reach 70 degrees in the next few days, I've turned to the prospect of trip planning.

With the pound being such a useless currency these days, people are having to do a bit more thinking about where they might go this year. Expensive enough at the best of times, the main Euro countries are basically out of contention (France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, etc). Lucky for us, Europe happens to contain a lot of countries, and not all of them are euro-based or as frequently visited by tourists.

So in our quest to plan a trip (so we have foreign travel to look forward to), Mark and I have started looking towards Eastern Europe. Well, not too far east. Essentially, the following countries have made it onto our radar: Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Slovakia is technically a Eurozone country, but has only been so for a week now, so I feel like there's still potential. Slovenia is also a Euro country but is also relatively uncommon and therefore hopefully still packs some value for money. Hungary features Budapest, which has gained some status as a weekend city break destination. And Croatia looks really pretty!

Mind you, we are very early in any potential trip planning, but our idea of the day is to fly into Slovenia (the name of the capital is totally unpronouncable in my book, nor can I spell it) and to rent a car and go on a bit of a road trip featuring some of Slovenia and surrounding countries (it's a little one, so the neighboring countries aren't that far away). Again, we're still early in our idea stage so any opinions or suggestions are welcome!

2008 Recap!

Perhaps recap isn't the best word, but I do feel obliged to provide some sort of summary on the year that was 2008!

Number of combined work and home addresses: 5 (3 home, 2 work)
Apparently I'm a bit of a nomad. Yet I have remained faithful to the Wimbledon-Edgware Road branch of the District Line throughout!

Cultural Events: Phantom of the Opera (February), Alphabeat (October), Rainman (October), Blue Man Group (December)

Trips: Munich (February), Switzerland (March), Paris (May), Seattle (May), Edinburgh (July), Dublin (August), Portland (November), Las Vegas (December).

Is it bad that I've gone on more trips than plays/concerts? It seems I've been on a lot of trips! However, most have them have been short and I am allowed 25 days of annual leave per year. Munich gets my top personal recommendation. This could easily go to Paris, but I feel Paris is an obvious choice. Munich is comparatively under the radar and prooved to be a very good time, with a nice combo of learning culture and beer drinking culture (a balance essential on any trip).

My top London tip/find: Chelsea. I didn't really ever go to Chelsea before this year, but it has managed to become a regular weekend haunt. It's basic draw is shopping along King's Road, which is easy for me to reach (we can even walk!), as well as the fabulously delicious market on Saturdays, the Big Easy restaurant, and while I haven't been, it also has Cheney Walk nearby featuring, um, old houses or something. I'm not entirely sure. Either way, Chelsea is a nice place to go on Saturday. Just watch out for the uber-yuppies.

Best reality tv program: normally this would have to go to X Factor, but this year I'm giving the award to Strictly Come Dancing, purely because of John Seargant. Strictly is the origin of Dancing with the Stars and is a big BBC Saturday production. This year one of the participants was political correspondant John Seargant, who couldn't dance to save his life, but everyone loved him so he stayed on the show with no problems until he finally stepped down, it seems in fear of winning despite being the worst of the lot. It was a sad, sad day. Tom Chambers, who is on some sort of soap opera, eventually won. He took his professional dance partner along on his honeymoon. Oh, and Alexandra Burke won X Factor.

That's all I've got for right now! If I think of more fun thinks to recap, I'll come back with them tomorrow or the next day!

The Lift

or The Elevator


Firstly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Margo and I started to move some of the larger items over to the new place on Friday night as we had rented a "StreetVan" which gives you free petrol per day of hire of 30 miles or the quick thinking MArgo suggested over night to get 60 miles free. Plus we could start to move things slightly sooner and maybe get in a large supermarket run.

Now things were going quite well - we managed to get the van full of the larger items and get a parking space in the road directly next to the front door of the current place (old). We then drove over to the new place and started to unload by using the lift. This went fine until we moved the third load and we entered the lift and suddenly all went quiet. For the first time in our lives we pressed the alarm button to the sounds of a prerecorded message saying "your call is important to us please wait your position X in the queue" (we later found out the call went through to a vodaphone (like at&t) call centre) anyways after eventually registering our problem and then waiting for half an hour we gave them a call back as the call centre said the technician should call the lift to say his eta. The slight issue was that the lift phone had a short in it and kept cutting out and redialing every 20 seconds so the conversations with the call centre were very rushed! Another issue was that I had no mobile coverage and Margo's phone was in her bag in the flat. Anyways after 1 hour and 30 minutes we heard someone outside who asked if anyone was inside as by this point the lift alarm (which was very high pitch) had started. They then rang the lift operator who was actually very good apparently and sounded very concerned (why they out source their emergency calls to vodaphone if they have people working at 10.30 on a friday night i do not know!) and said the operator on call tonight lived in Essex (no where near Fulham) but then they (the folks who found us) said that the fire and police were currently outside the development as they had been called to a fire alarm outside the development elsewhere. the people that found us (very nice couple about 45) went to get them. Anyways after about 10 minutes of activity three massive and i mean massive guys in uniform let us out. So to get this door open involved 2 policewomen 2 neighbours, and 4 firemen (one was on the next floor) ooo and the technician who arrived 20 minutes later.

we didnt go to the supermarket....