A bit of London along the Thames 07-12-08

I'm not sure what bridge was in the background of these photos, but the last bridge is London Bridge, which is where we took the photos of the first bridge from (except for the last photo of the first bridge). =D

Isn't Andy sweet and wonderful and absolutely marvelous for carrying my bag even though it's girly?

These are some ships. I forgot what the big one was called... They're British though! =/

These are some buildings we liked. Aren't they neat? =D The latter one is my favorite, and Andy wanted to take a picture of the second one. I liked the first one, but I don't know what Andy's opinion on the matter is.

St. Paul's was AMAZING. It might be Anglican*, but holy cow it's AMAZING. Especially on the inside - the outside looks more like a seat of government than anything. There aren't any photos of the inside, because they're not permitted. We did sit through most of the end of choral Vespers which was lovely, though not as lovely as the choir at Mass on Sunday, but I'll tell you about that later.

Oddly enough we forgot to go by Westminster Abbey even though we went to Mass at Westminster Cathedral on Sunday. Go figure.

Crosswalk signals from London just for my mama. =D

*The Anglicans and high church Episcopalians (from what I understand) actually have a habit of having beautiful churches. If only some Catholics** would pick up on that habit...

**I don't frequent this blog, so I can't say anything for it's typical content, I just saw these photos on another blog a while back, but couldn't remember which one.

London Town

So in case anybody's been wondering what we've been up to for the last week besides making minor modifications to the blog's layout (better, but still not satisfying), we were in England for three and a half days!

Andy came to the Netherlands to work with a guy who moved to Cambridge a year after the grant came through (we had actually planned to be here last summer), so Andy went to Cambridge for a few days while I pretended to be a Trappist (no talking). I met him on Saturday and we left on Tuesday. We had a good bit of fun, and we spent too much money, which I'm not going to count (the pound is something like twice the dollar).

There are a few photos from Cambridge that I'll let Andy post about (though if he wants to do the rest of them too, that's fine!). I'm not sure where the Cambridge line ends and London begins (even though I was there for the London photos, sad isn't it?), so I'm going to postpone revealing them all.

The British have a reputation for serving bland, boring food. I've heard they have wonderful Indian food, but I don't like Indian food (I know, there's something wrong with me). I was a bit fearful of eating strictly British food, so we opted for other fare, starting with burgers that were overpriced but not too bad, Pizza Hut pizza (I don't know) served by an exceedingly friendly waitress and ending with some bland, boring, overpriced pasta. After that I decided I should try the pubs (Andy had already been to two in Cambridge). Success! The British DO serve good food, it just happens that the only thing they serve that's good is pub food, so it's more like home cooked food than restaurant food, which is fine by me. =)

If you're ever in London, get a pasty, but don't think you're going to eat it in the train station, take it somewhere, cut it open and let it cool - a bit, NOT completely - before you're not able to eat for a week, go to the pubs and enjoy some Guinness because you shouldn't drink anything that resembles bodily fluids*. If you like the pasty, get a meat pie, they're tasty and a lot like chicken pot pie, and if you didn't, try the sea salt and cracked pepper fish bite things. Very good. If you're into the most famous British food of all (as far as I know), get some fish and chips. Just remember to get the beer too!

Before we start posting photos, I do want to warn you, there are a LOT of photos of light posts. I'll try to put these in one corner so if you get tired of them, you can ignore them, but my mom (who requested them) can see them.

*This is my rule, Andy likes that stuff...

Casey Karbowski

A friend of mine just started a new blog to get his photography biz going. Check out Casey Karbowski Photographer (extraordinaire). I told him today (and I really do quote - it was over IM), "Some of these are so cool. They look like a real photographer took them and not just one of my friends." So, yeah, he actually does good stuff (if he didn't, I probably just wouldn't mention it).

Banner Photo

I found this photo (as in the one in the header) in Tim Berga's collection over at stock.xchng. It's pretty sweet!

Also, I'm still playing with the design, so stay tuned for new and exciting design upgrades!

Last Sunday (7/10/08)

Evidently Americans aren't the only ones who drive too fast! I think the smile/frown system is definitely something the US should adopt. Speeders are very clearly reprimanded and non-speeders are very clearly rewarded. It shows just how happy or unhappy Ma-Government is with you, which then makes you want to be a good boy or girl.

Oostport. Or maybe it's Oostpoort. Anyways, it's the only old gate to the city that's still around, and it means East Gate. Or Eastern Gate. Whatever. And in case you're wondering, yes, those rails and that modern looking drawbridge type thing are all originals...

Can anyone tell me what part is the gate part? Is the problem with my imagination that there aren't any walls or that the canals are different or what?

Below there's a canal to the left, me to the right of that [You can't tell, but that mound of flowers behind me is a triangle planter. They have them in a number of places. Much preferred to the all too frequent, "Yeah, we put some ugly shrubs here with a couple pretty flowers nearby and just left the shrubs to be overgrown and ugly while we periodically tend the flowers."], and two photos of the least crowded part of the market we could find so that we could take pictures on Sunday afternoon.

Packing Light???

I was trying to figure out what we can have on our persons when getting on the plane to go to London and ran across a packing list for traveling to Europe.

You can probably skip the first few bits and go almost halfway down to the "Other Options for Personal Care" section, which is where things get really interesting. My biggest question is, "How in the world are you supposed to pack light if you pack his 'two dozen little things'?"

A couple snatches:

On Colds: Use it to knock out a cold better than any cold medicine on the market. In the evening, down a pint of vodka or brandy, bundle up with more on than you would wear in an Arctic howl, and sweat it out. You might still be drunk in the morning, but voila! — no cold. Use a good quality (triple distilled) product to avoid a hangover and a headache the next morning. My preference is Hennessy cognac, with or without fresh squeezed lemon juice. I call it my Dr. Hennessy.

On Mouthwash: Casual reading of the labels of some of those green and blue bottles in the drugstores reveals the fact that they are full of many ingredients, including alcohol at a concentration of up to 26%. Some of the ingredients are poisons so you won't want to drink the stuff. There is another form of alcohol which will kill most of those germs causing bad breath, but won't kill you unless you really try. It will just make you feel warm and comfortable. It's called vodka, normally about 40% alcohol. I sometimes use vodka as mouthwash before bed. It has other uses as described in the next section of this chapter, "Traveler's Supplies."

Definitely check out the many uses for vinegar as well!

New Design

As most of you can see, I redesigned the blog a bit. I don't really like it very much, but it looks "better" than it did before. Unfortunately, it's still not very Dutch looking. I had a different background for about 10 minutes that was very Delftware colored, but it made reading the blog too difficult, so I threw in the sage, and in so doing threw out the Dutch. I'll get it eventually... *You can see the other backgrounds I tried over at Design-Err.