Indefatigable

My little baby

2012-12-12T09:40:00.001-08:00

The bestest little girl was born Dec 12, 1994.

Happy 18th Birthday!

roadside adventures

2012-10-11T12:24:00.001-07:00

So. I was driving home from camping last month. On the way up our tire warning light had come on a couple times but every time we stopped to look at them & check air pressure, everything looked fine. It's an old van & after a while, you become a bit like Penny on TBBT & start ignoring car warning lights because the darned thing is frequently complaining about something, and you're like "Hey, I know you're old now and thought you'd get freedom 55 and get to retire but this culture of entitlement is what's wrong with this world so get back to work and start hauling. And quit asking for preventative health care & oil changes. You should be grateful you get fuel ..."

On the way back, again with the light & we stopped in Hedley, where the only gas station had a big sign saying "out of gas" & no air hose. We had to go to the Hedley Museum to use the bathrooms (which are very nice btw). We kicked the tires a few times & kept going.

And then about 10 minutes out of Hedley, kaboom. Actually it wasn't very loud & we were listening to an audio book & laughing quite hard (Three Men in a Boat) when suddenly things didn't seem quite right to me & I pulled over & yup, one of those tires was very, very flat.

That's the lovely Similkameen River beside us.

We had to unload almost everything from the van to get at the tools & the spare. So glad the dogs travelled in crates. We just pulled out the crates & placed them safely on the shoulder.

Gorgeous scenery but you can see the slope is not inconsiderable & if we had lost control, that would have been a bit of a drive down before we landed in the lovely cool water.

My mom was driving behind us. She parked a bit behind us, hazard lights on. Fortunately we were a ways from the bend in the road so traffic had time to slow down & get around us (single road, double yellow line, cliff on the other side so not loads of room)

Here's the damage. You can see, it wasn't just a simple flat.

As for the rest of the trip: there were 5 people (+ a visitor! My dad drove up & stayed in a hotel a few nights & visited with us during the day.), 3 dogs, 1 cat, 2 tents, 2 cars, reading, eating, swimming, paddling, lounging, sitting by the fire & just generally awesome relaxing. It was another great camping trip!

from the city of love!

2012-09-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

It's our anniversary today!
We got married September 29, 1991.
This is where we were in May 2012.

Hm. I don't know why it looks like it's tilting. Honestly, it's not a crappy photoshop job, we were there!

They not only light it up at night, they make it sparkle & glitter for a few minutes at the top of the hour.

Here's a video of the sparkles!

a silly puzzle: do you know what this is?

2012-09-12T13:53:00.001-07:00

Can you tell what this series of numbers represents?

98-0
99-1
00-2
01-3
02-4
03-5-k
04-6-1
05-7-2
06-8-3
07-9-4
08-10-5
09-11-6
10-12-7
11-13-8
12-14-9

I was just writing it out (again. That's a bit of a hint.) & it struck me that it looks like a weird code & I wondered how many of you would recognize it.

Obviously you can see the #'s increasing by 1 but what do they mean? Tell me in the comments if you know :)

Strawberry thief

2012-06-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have some strawberries in pots on the railings (on the railings because a. Bear pees on things & b. Daisy eats berries & tomatoes right off the plants). Look who came to help himself (herself?) And the dogs slept through it all.

Darwin's favourite toy

2012-06-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

let's play!

A London Friday - part 2

2012-06-19T14:58:00.002-07:00

Ok, so we were at Kensington Palace and we wandered out down a little lane and this is where not carrying a guide book/smart phone, and instead just walking around with a small tourist map all of a sudden seems like not such a brilliant idea.

Because we have no clue where we are; but we like it! We're in this lovely little lane with gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous houses, and Roo & I are having this long mock argument about which house is better. I'm gesticulating wildly and pointing at one with a balcony and he's shaking his head and pointing to another with tall windows on the second story.

Amelia and Hugo are snapping pictures until I actually look at a small, discreet, supremely elegant, black sign which indicates "no photography allowed" & says something about a security zone. I point out this sign to everyone and we all gawk around in confusion. WHAT is is that we're not allowed to photograph? The back of Kensington Palace? Yes, that must be it, I say. Maybe it's because it's a working palace still?

We shrug and start walking in a different direction and I realize this is a very quiet street. And some of the buildings have barricades. And flags. And big black heavy armored looking vehicles parked in front. And of course the ubiquitous CCTV cameras are on every tree and lamp-post. But they are ubiquitous and by this time I've stopped noticing them. Except now I notice them again. I blame low blood sugar for how long it took me to realize that we were right in the middle of a bunch of embassies and probably in the scopes of sharpshooters on all the roofs.

"I want to attack THAT embassy!" they imagined me saying when I was extolling the virtues of the adorable little balconies and waving my arms.

"Nepal? What have you got against them? How about the Russians though?" they imagined Roo saying.

It's the Israeli Embassy that gives it away. Between the flag, the closed off sidewalk and the barricades, even I figured out it.

So I'm not posting any pictures from that street because I figure we tried their patience enough already & I'm not sure what the penalties actually are for photographing secure zones.

We eventually scurried away from there and wandered down another street which also had lots of embassies & high commissions but of nations which apparently don't fear terrorist attacks quite so much. Or maybe there were no photography signs here too & I just missed them......

These are apparently some of the most expensive streets in London. Hell, most streets in London are expensive from what I can make out. It's like Vancouver in that respect....

This wisteria against the white plaster is stunning. It's paved right up to the edge of the plant; amazing it's living and growing like that.

We kept on walking & even walked right by TS Eliot's house.

By now it was 5'ish and we still had lots of plans for the rest of the day so we took a break to eat at a small restaurant a few blocks away from the Natural History Museum which was our next stop.

See you in A London Friday - part 3 soon!

A London Friday - part 1

2012-06-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Our Friday in London was amazingly full of activities.

First off, we went to the British Museum and spent several very happy hours there. Roo & I were just saying recently that it would be easy to go to London in the winter & just spend the entire time hiding from the weather in the amazing (& free!) museums.

Here's a slide show of some of the highlights for us. You'll notice a heavy Egyptian slant - because we all really like Egyptian art and antiquities. It was pretty much all we saw in the BM and we spent about 4 h there!

Then, after a bit of shopping at the gift store & a quick snack, we were off. We had to switch trains at the Baker Street Station so we quickly hopped out for a photo with a statue of Sherlock Holmes.

There is a museum at 221 B Baker Street but we didn't go in. Instead, we headed out to Hyde Park.

We weren't quite at the park yet when we saw some horses and just followed them.

More horses at the park, and :( missing dog signs.

We saw lots of running loose dogs in the park, including this beautiful husky.

Oh Look! It's raining again! We're in the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park.

Raining really hard now!

We perservered in our stroll through the park & ended up at the Albert Memorial.

Obviously Queen Victoria missed Albert very much but we all think she got carried away with the memorial.
It's like she kept adding stuff on to the design plans. Can there be gold? And pillars? And a cross? And bobbles? And towers? And native Americans? And elephants?

Some hapless official just had to keep nodding and saying Of course, Your Majesty.

I think Queen Vicky would have loved the bedazzler.

By now the sun was shining again & we headed off towards Kensington Palace.


I TOLD you to ask for directions. No way this is Toronto.

Tada! Sunshine & Kensington Palace & Queen Victoria. Oh & my pretty girl too!

Here's my Bazinga dude at the gates by Kensington Palace.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of London Friday!

Trip Report - Medical Log

2012-06-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Remember when you're travelling in a group, odds are someone will get sick at some point, and even minor things will require a bit of time out of the schedule to sort out, and subsequent rearranging of timetables. You have just roll with it. We were lucky because nobody got very ill - just a few minor things (which I will talk about at great length to fill up this post)

Mild self limiting upper respiratory infection - Amelia, Hugo & Roo. I kept joking that the freezing temps, rain & wind in London were going to give everyone pneumonia but it really was just a mild cold which gently rolled through 3 of us & lasted all the way to Italy so I got to say "Do you have kleenex please? Quickly before they sneeze & snot all over your kiosk" in Italian. I also, on numerous occasions in Italy, attempted to buy the equivalent of Contact C or Tylenol Cold daytime. Italian pharmacists inevitably nodded & whipped out Reactine & announced proudly 'antihistamine'. Um, yeah.no. Reactine & Claritin etc are pretty much useless for colds IMO. Pseudoephedrine please? Or phenylephrine hydrochloride? Nope. I never figured out whether they don't have it just don't sell it OTC. I should have gone to a pharmacy in Paris because I read on several forums that peeps got the most awesome cold meds in France.

Allergies - me! And boy was I happy to be popping Aerius on essentially the entire trip. Because you know what it means? It's not my dogs, cat, or Amelia's rats! It's the evil poplar or alder or some other North hemisphere pollen thing & so no allergist can even begin to suggest that I should craigslist my furries (as if I would anyway!). My allergies are much better by the way. It's weird to be seeing all the cottonwood floating around now and not being really affected by it. It's whatever pollinates before the cottonwood that gets me....

Blisters - Hugo had a few small proto-blisters which we proactively wrapped & taped before they could progress to anything really terrible. They were unusual in that they were on the bottom of his toes so it was hard to blame shoes. The shoes fit fine. I've since googled and learned that it's not an unheard of problem among long distance hikers. Some people's toes are just funny this way. Oh & moleskin IS available in Italy though not at every Farmacia. Several didn't have it & then one of the Florence ones did, and he had it two thicknesses even!

"women's problems" - self limiting - once the prescription drugs kicked in so we were only slowed down a couple hours. Yes, do you hear that? We had a late start one day because of someone's illness!

It was something like this:

Because uteruses are nasty bitches. Don't believe me?

Big Ben's Revenge/Eiffel Enema/Venice Canal Water Cure.... um I'm running out of ideas for amusing synonyms for gastritis so I'll end here - Roo! Self limiting, over within 24h & needing only the bottle of PeptoBismol tablets which I had packed. I was pretty pleased with my forethought in packing them, and the truth is that I was not a little smug because ahem, Roo was the only one who got sick - after a meal in a restaurant where three of us had a nice vegetarian falafel and SOMEONE ELSE had not just an animal, but a BABY animal. Yes, it was Lamb's Revenge actually.

How COULD you?

Lamb's Revenge is not only that you get stuck in a hotel bathroom (in considerable discomfort) while your family goes off without you, but that your wife then blogs about it.

turning out the lights

2012-06-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hitting our stride

2012-06-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

By Friday we were pretty set in our routine: alarm clocks set for 7 (except a few travel days where we had to get up earlier), washed & breakfasted & ready to go - plans made, itineraries and maps checked, day bags packed - by 8:30 or 9 am. Then go, go, go, go! Come back to the hotel between 9 & 10 pm. Check email, download photos, charge camera batteries, talk about the day, confirm plans for next day, wash up & crash into bed at 11. Repeat until it's time to return to Canada!

Amelia & I were sharing a room in London. It was the only hotel where we had two double rooms instead of a quad and so it was that it fell to me to keep Amelia from wandering off.

I can’t remember now whether it was the first or second night there that I woke up in the middle of the night to the rattle of the hotel door & found Amelia ineffectually pawing at it. It turned out to be a fortunate thing that the hotel lock was a weird gizmo and required a fair bit of strength & dexterity to open.

“What are you doing?” I sleepily inquired.

To which she cheerfully replied “I thought I’d just go get some moisturizer.”

Uh-uh.

My kids sleepwalk. They sleeptalk. So does Roo. He likes to sit up in bed and make announcements in complete declarative sentences. I can’t be bothered with such activities. The only thing I do in my sleep is grind my teeth.

But the kids are more energetic. They also both had episodes of night terrors during early childhood and that is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Trying to soothe a child who keeps staring through you and shrieking in panic as if a monster is standing right behind you is more than a bit unnerving.

Since this didn't involve screaming or freaking me out by making me think somebrainsuckingthingwithbigteeth was sneaking up on me, I was feeling pretty mellow. “How about you go to the bathroom instead and then go back to sleep?”

“Ok,” she readily agreed.

I'm not even sure that I stayed up long enough to wait for her to return to bed. All I know is that in the morning she was there.

And of course, she remembered none of this.

Paddington Tales

2012-06-03T16:49:00.001-07:00

Inside Paddington Station is a statue of Paddington Bear. Right in front of a donut shop actually, which strikes me as a great place for a Bear.

Here he is with his suitcase.


Closer look at his tag: Please look after this Bear. Thank You.

the plaque explaining it all

Paddington Station also sniffer dogs.

view to the outside from the station

view from the outside. Here are H & I coming out.

Agatha Christie fans will recognize this title

I just had to check the schedule:

Yup, there still is a 4.50 from Paddington!

There is also a Paddington Bear Kiosk in the station & I thought I had a photo of it but I can't find it. So you'll have to imagine it. You won't have to imagine this though:


This is a real Paddington Bear, bought at the Paddington Kiosk, in Paddington Station. Here he is on Amelia's bed in the London Hotel.

In the Paris hotel room.

Looking out the Venice hotel room window. Where the paving ends, that's one of the small canals.

Florence hotel.

No, he never was allowed out of the hotel rooms & can you blame Amelia? This is after all a Bear who came from deepest, darkest Peru & thinks nothing of hopping on boats & trains and just taking off. It was much safer to keep him in the room.

Eye spy

2012-05-31T10:04:00.002-07:00

Here we are, still moored at a pier near Tower Bridge.

This is the HMS Belfast which is moored in the middle of the river & is a museum. It was closed to the public for reno during our stay.

The bridge showing off. I mean seriously? How pretty is that?

This lady took out her little Paddington Bear & was photographing him against all the sights. Amelia & I giggled until Roo made us admit that we were just jealous that we hadn't thought of it. Then I did the next best thing & snapped this photo.

We're finally off. Beside the Tower Bridge is the Tower of London - aka Her Majesty's Royal Palace & Fortress. It's a castle dating back to 1066 & the Norman conquest of England.

I love this little Tudor window.

We're sailing away now & can see the Entrance to Traitor's Gate.

See? There it is. We'd go back to visit the Tower another day.

Meanwhile we sailed under London Bridge.

Past Shakespeare's Globe Theater.

Under the Millenium Bridge which is a pedestrian bridge. Our tour guide said it's good luck to get people to wave at you from the bridge so the boat captain honked the horn & we waved like mad & people did wave back. This bridge had to close soon after it opened because apparently it had a strong wobble & it took a couple years to repair it. The dome in background is St Paul's.

Blackfriars Bridge.

neat buildings

Colonial Swag: Cleopatra's Needle. It's an ancient Egyptian obelisk but apparently had nothing to do with Cleopatra.

Golden Jubilee Bridge

Our guide told us this is known in London as the Eyesore

And here we are, coming up to Westminster Square again.

This is our guide. He was very fun and delivered a sarcastic black humor commentary. He accepted tips saying that after they finish the tour, he & and the other tour guides spend hours - many hours sometimes - visiting shoreline pubs and gathering information for future tours and gratefully accepted any donations to offset their sometimes considerable costs.

the windswept passengers

London is serious about rabies. This is a sign on Westminster Pier.

This is how I looked most of the trip. Now you know why I have so many photos. Also why I prefer a small camera - the arms would get tired otherwise!

If you peer closely at Big Ben you'll see it's coming up to 6 pm.
We got off the boat, headed over the bridge & checked out the line ups for the London Eye. It turned out that at that time of day the line ups were very reasonable: maybe 15 minutes at the ticket office & another 5 at the Eye. We had our 2for1 passes from British Rail & that made the somewhat steep price more tolerable.

And here we go!

Because it wasn't very busy, they didn't load up the cars fully. I think we had less than 10 people in ours.

One neat thing that I didn't realize is that the Eye doesn't stop for people to get on & off. It's kind of like a ski lift - you have to get on while it's moving.
It moves very slowly though & there are attendants to make sure you get on safely (it is over the water after all) and if you have mobility issues there are apparently special provisions (so maybe they do stop it then? I don't know but there were signs saying you just needed to let them know you needed the extra assistance.)

After a while neighbouring capsules draw up alongside & you can wave to the other people.
The entire ride is about 30 minutes & it goes by quickly - there is a lot to look at!
It is very smooth & not scary at all though it goes up to 135 meters. There is no lurching though we did feel a bit of a sway as it was a very windy evening.
Ok, no more commentary because now it's just views from the Eye.

After you get off the London Eye, there's a 4D experience you can visit. It's just a couple minutes in a movie theater and is essentially an advertisement for the attraction you just visited. I guess it's to make you feel even better about spending the money on it. You can also buy a souvenir photo - on the way down, there's a spot where if you stand an automatic camera takes your photo with Big Ben in the background. And that's the end of the London Eye experience.
We were pretty tired by then and headed back.

By the time we got back to our neighbourhood it was night time. This is a street near our hotel.

And that's (finally) the end of our Thursday in London :)

Thames River Cruise

2012-05-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Does this require commentary? I don't think so. We're on a boat. Neat buildings line the banks of the Thames.

First glimpses of Tower Bridge. The tall pointy thing on the left is The Shard - the tallest building in the EU.

The Tower Bridge has been cleaned and freshly painted.

I have an awful lot of pictures of the bridge because our boat stopped here for an unusually long time. Its sister boat was experiencing some sort of problem and we were waiting for it to arrive so that the passengers could hop on our boat to continue their journey.

We were content. It was windy but not unbearably cold and there was lots of to look at.

See how much fun some of us are having?

But not this man. I just had to snap a pic of him. He posed several times for photos and in all of them he assumed the same stern expression. Come on Kim Jong-il lookalike - crack a smile!

ETA: Ok, I don't know why Picasa & Blogger are doing this to me but my photos are not getting bigger when you click them. I'll try to figure it out but in the meantime, I've recropped my friend so you can see his serious expression. Perhaps he's on a business trip and trying to justify the expense?

I am not having any fun. No fun at all.

London - Greenwich

2012-05-29T21:27:00.001-07:00

So I left you last time at the Greenwich Visitor's Center & let me assure you that's a lovely place to be abandoned. It's all sparkly and new and more than just a visitor's center, it's a little mini museum about Greenwich & its royal history. Henry VIII was born in Greenwich & it was apparently his favourite place to live. His old palace is no longer standing - the Old Naval College sits on the grounds where it used to be. This summer Greenwich will be hosting Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian and Olympic Modern Pentathlon events so the area was all in a tizzy of cleaning, painting and getting ready for visitors.

Here's Amelia with a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Hugo & Roo checking out a cannon.

And then we walked a few blocks down to the actual museum. Greenwich is very quaint and has a little bit of a village feel to it. It was a nice change from the busy loud streets of central London.

the museum

This is the Royal Coat of Arms at the entrance.

This is the stern gallery of the HMS Implacable which was originally a French ship and was in the Battle of Trafalgar on the French side. She was subsequently captured & then fought the rest of the Napoleonic Wars on the British side. And can I just say that Implacable is a great domain name? If I ever get bored of Indefatigable, you'll know where to find me.

This is a royal barge that was used on the Thames.

This was a ship simulator. Hugo had a go.

Back outside, a really large ship in a large bottle.

And then we climbed the hill to the Greenwich Observatory. You can see here the spectator areas that are being prepared for the Olympics.

TaDa! Greenwich Meridian. There is actually a paid version somewhere above that balcony railing. You can pay a few pounds to go have your picture taken there but of course, the line continues, & down here is what I called the peasants' meridian : free.

We did all take turns straddling it.

Because that's what you do there.

You also admire the views.

And consider that navigation hinges on measurements of time & distance.

Then on to the observatory where there is also a small astronomy museum.

Here I am with a bit of Canadian History: James Wolfe - he who defeated Montcalm & won Quebec in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Both Wolfe & Montcalm died in the battle.This was all part of the Seven Years War. Britain's subsequent assault & win on Montreal forced the French out of North America except for Louisiana & the islands of St Pierre & Miquelon.

enough history - look, dogs! Even a spotted white dog! I think it was a springer spaniel ... It is clearly a favourite place for local dog owners as we saw many dogs running up and down the slopes.

Meanwhile we headed back down the hill and past the scenic Trafalgar Tavern

Outside the tavern is this statue of Nelson & we all posed with him.

And now here we are on the river cruise boat! The masts of the Cutty Sark are behind us & it's time to travel down the river back to Westminster.

One last look at Greenwich.

Ahead we get to see a more modern skyline.

There's a reason there's nobody else on the outside deck with us. Oh sure it's sunny but see the sailboats knocked down.

Windy.

London - you trickster!

2012-05-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

A few days after arriving on the continent (isn't that an obnoxious phrase? The continent. Oh yes, I've been away. I was on the continent you see...If you read old English novels, it crops up a lot.) & thawing out from the cold of London, Amelia & I were chatting and I said "We should have just gone shopping right away and bought warm sweaters and scarves. It would have made everything so much more pleasant. Why didn't we?"

Well, first of all because the schedule didn't call for shopping - not that kind of shopping and not that early on in our stay. Secondly, because I detest shopping and try to avoid it if at all possible. Thirdly, because I kept thinking that the weather would improve, and by the time it was obviously not improving we were almost ready to leave and it seemed silly to buy sweaters to go to... the continent.

But the other reason is that London toyed with us. Oh yes, it teased us with promises of good weather, and it let the sun peek out at just regular enough intervals to keep us plodding along with the occasional shiver and sniffle.

Day Two is a good example. This day included:

Guided Royal Walk tour to see the changing of the guard

Trip out to Greenwich
-Cutty Sark
-Naval Museum
-Greenwich Observatory

Thames Boat Cruise back to Westminster

London Eye

And you'll see from the pictures that the weather could not make up its mind what to do. Except blow. The wind was constant.

The guided Royal Walk Tour AND the Thames Boat Cruise were both part of our 48h Big Bus Tour ticket and I think that was SO worth it!

Back we are again at Trafalgar Square which was the meeting point for the guided tour. Look at the weird sky with huge dark clouds & the giant bright sun trying to break through.

Admiralty Arch from the Trafalgar Square side. Look, blue sky above it, and the arch itself is partly sunlit.

Now we've walked through the arch & we're on The Mall, which is the road between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. If you look closely you'll see the road is red - it's like that on purpose to look like the red carpet rolled out for royalty. The building in the background is part of the Admiralty buildings.

I've turned around to look back the way we just came.

Sun reflecting off my forehead.

Duke of York's Column. He was commander in chief of the British Army during the French Revolutionary Wars. Apparently when he died the entire army voted to forego one day's wages in order to donate to a monument in his honor.

Further down The Mall are these statues. If you've seen The King's Speech, that's him & his wife, who was known later as the Queen Mum.

These are mounted municipal police, beginning to clear traffic off The Mall in anticipation for the changing of the guard ceremonies. Our guide stopped to chat with several and they gave him information about what was happening & how the schedule was looking.
See how nice & sunny it appears? The guide explained to us that if it rains, they don't do a regular change and everyone was looking with concern at the sky because half the sky was brilliantly clear, and the other half was ominously black.

We walked a bit further up and saw the guards at Stable Yard Road. This is the entrance to Clarence House - current residence of the Prince of Wales & previous home to a variety of royals, including the Queen Mum.

It's started raining now but we hear some clip clopping & yes....

the horse guards come riding out! They're not going slowly either. It suddenly started to downpour and they came along at a fast clip, even before the cars were all cleared off the road.

Meanwhile, our guide had taken us to St James's Palace. This is actually the official residence of the sovereign (though none have lived there for many years), and it's the administrative headquarters of the royal family. Foreign ambassadors get credentials to the Court of St James. That balcony above the arches? THAT's where the announcements are made about a monarch dying and a new monarch ascending the throne, and that is also where the new monarch makes their first public appearance.

And there, under the arches, is the band that's supposed to come out & play and do a bunch of pomp and circumstance stuff for the changing of the guard.
Except as you can see, by now it's raining hard. And they don't come out if it's raining.

Here's our guide explaining it all to us & admitting that it's pretty silly that in a country where it rains a lot, they cancel this when it rains, but that's how it is & please don't blame him. And then he went on to explain that if they don't the full change, they still do something called a 'wet change' & so we'd see something.

So we stood in front of St James's Palace & waited.

Then the police came by & called down to guide: "Wet Change", and we were off.

The guide took us at a brisk trot to Buckingham Palace, and specifically to Australia Gate.

Blue sky. But see, the umbrellas are still up? That's not crazy people. It's actually still raining.

Then it stopped raining. Now it's just windy.

We wait. I wish I'd brought my sunglasses.

Now something is happening!

The police halting any pedestrians who might have tried to cross...

And here come the guards. No band & they're just marching briskly but there they go.

Notice how clear the sky appears to be. It changes a few moments later to a downpour as the horse guards come back to Buckingham. Check out the video below:

Having seen as much of guards marching and trotting as we could that day, and having had enough of the crowds in front of Buckingham Palace, we quickly moved away and walked down Buckingham Gate which is a neat little narrow street. On one side are these quaint buildings.

See the brass sails on the ship decoration under the bay window?

On the other side of the street are the bleak bare walls of the Wellington Barracks. (those of you who watched the slideshow of H's photos in my last post will have seen what they looked like from the tour bus)

A little further down Buckingham Gate.

And then we headed below to the underground, kept left as instructed, and took a train to Greenwich.

This is the Cutty Sark.
In its time, it was the fastest tea clipper on the seas.
The ship had been badly damaged in a fire a few years ago and had been in restoration. In fact, the day we came was the first day it was open to the public and there were still signs of the official reopening ceremonies that had clearly been held that morning.

The glassed in part all around the ship is a museum and we had considered going in but in the end decided to just stroll quickly to the Naval Museum instead.

But first we checked out the Greenwich Visitors Center.

Where you can get dressed up as a Tudor knight.

And examine some other artifacts from Britains naval history.

... more to come in a separate post!

yes, why?

2012-05-24T10:51:00.002-07:00

We have to speed this up!

2012-05-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Oh jeez, I've been home over a week & I haven't got past first full day of the trip yet!

The sheer volume of pictures to sort through is overwhelming and I'm going to have to rethink my strategies here because for one thing, I'm maxing my upload limits on photo storage sites!

So from now own it will be leaner, faster, trimmer - RUN to a place, look, look, look, gobble some food, RUN to another place, look, look, look, grab ice cream/coffee/ RUN to another place....

Just kidding!

Though Hugo's Day 1/2 photos are set to play on FAST LOL. They are mostly covering the same ground since you know, we were actually all together! With the space requirements (& also the requirement to not put the audience into a boredom coma induced by watching thousands of photos, mostly of the same things), there will be changes but the reports are going to keep on coming so don't worry Mom!

In home life, things are settling down. We're back at schoolwork & this time it's not just the teens, but me too! I have to recertify my IBCLC credential this summer. Hard to believe it's been 10 years! (the 5 year mark we can recertify with continuing ed credits but the 10 year mark is an exam). I'm not working in the field right now & I wasn't sure I wanted to recertify but in the end, I decided that it would be a shame to let it lapse so now I've got three fat new textbooks & I have to make up a cramming schedule. Of course anatomy and physiology doesn't change (though our understanding of some functions does change) and I do actually remember many things, but evidence based practice regarding many aspects of lactation changes with ongoing research so I have to bring myself back up to speed!

The dogs are all well and I've resubscribed to several of my favourite dog training email lists & am making some training plans too.

HoHo

2012-05-24T09:52:00.001-07:00

HoHo hornblower!, a photo by hmsindefatigable on Flickr.

Here I am on the HoHo bus in London wearing the most popular tourist apparel: the plastic tour group poncho!

HoHo by the way stands for Hop On Hop Off. You buy a ticket for a set period of time & you can ride as much as you like. Some of the buses have live commentary and others have taped (which is great for non English speakers as it's available in a bunch of other languages as you can see from the little flag symbols on the chairs).

techie travel

2012-05-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

We brought the touchpad & the laptop with us. The laptop so that I could check mail, & mostly, so I could download each day's photos off the three cameras. I didn't wipe the cards (until I finally had to wipe Hugo's because he filled his & we didn't have time to shop for another one) so that we had two sets of photos. If we lost a camera, we had the ones on the laptop. If the laptop got stolen/broken/fell in a canal in Venice, we had the pix on the camera cards. (Yup, paranoid much?)

One thing we did not do with our touchpad is take it around & use it as a camera. Like this:

(h's camera - Big Bus London tour April 25 Palace of Westminster & man with Ipad)

I mean, does that look convenient or comfortable at all? I don't think so. Mind you, I'm a bit biased because my firesale HP touchpad doesn't have G3 so it's kinda useless unless you spend your entire time sitting in wifi hotspots. It was handy in the hotels for checking mail & checking the weather online, especially since there were 4 of us, & half the time the laptop was chugging away downloading photos. We did take it out sightseeing with us once, after loading it with a pdf visitor's guide of that particular day's destination & it was useful for that.

But as a camera? I used it once I think to tweet the view out of our Venice hotel but really, it looks silly to point this giant brick at things.

I can definitely see the appeal of taking a smartphone traveling though, if you can survive the trial by fire of figuring out the best deals on local sims & roaming plans. I never did. (Also, I don't actually have a smartphone now LOL...)

Triple the fun of just 1 camera!

2012-05-22T10:10:00.001-07:00

Four people, three cameras - we took a lot of photos!

Thousands & thousands of photos meant that I had to leave my desktop on all past week so the carbonite back up could finish.

I plan to rip off the kids' photos liberally, especially when they took a particularly decent picture of me! Roo was the only one without a camera in hand, disdaining such modern contrivances & preferring to instead, 'just experience the moment'. Or something like that.

I'm experimenting a bit with how I'll do this so it might change as I go but today - tada: slideshow of Amelia's first day shots. I'm not sure if the captions will show here or only if you go to flickr so I might need to tinker with it later....

Update: Instructions (mostly for my mom LOL): OK, to see the photos in all their glory & the captions, click play & then click the strange little button with 4 arrows pointing in all directions on the bottom right of the slideshow box. That will make the slideshow fill up your screen. Then on the top right of the slideshow there is an option to "Show Info". Click that & you'll see the very brief labels I put on the photos so you know what you're looking at. Pause button is on the bottom left. You can also change the speed of the show to slow by clicking "options" in the top right.

More - much more! - to come very soon!

Packing & London 1st full day

2012-05-19T14:05:00.001-07:00

We traveled pretty light: one 21" rolling suitcase each for me & the kids while Roo had a 24" & he took all our toiletries/meds.

What I'm glad I packed: my pillow!
If you look at the photo I posted a couple entries back where I'm on the skytrain clutching a lululemon bag, that's my pillow inside it. I sleep on one of those orthopedic foam pillows and it has done so much good for my neck. Without it, I get terrible neck strain & headaches (due to a whiplash injury in a car accident long ago). Even with it I still ocassionally need to take muscle relaxants. I'm so glad I brought my pillow!

What I didn't need to have packed: second pair of runners.
I wore my pair of new Nike Air Max+ 2009 (they re-released them this spring) every.single.day. And I had no problems with my feet, ankles, knees - LOVE these shoes.

What I wish I had packed: silk longjohns, cashmere turtleneck, down parka, toque, scarf, mittens......

Yeah, London whipped my goosebumpy ass. It was cold. The kind of wet miserable cold that all Vancouverites are familiar with: <10C with rain & wind. You know that dreary chilled down to the bones feeling you get if you're not properly bundled up in that sort of weather? I had it.

Amelia had it too. Here she is in the red (lovely coat but nowhere near warm enough for what London served up). This is our first full day in London.

We had started the day off by dropping into the National Railway Office at the Paddington Station to get our 1 week unlimited downtown travel passes. You can also get these passes from the Underground Office &/or just load a week onto an Oyster card, but the advantage of buying through the Railway Office is that THOSE week passes entitle you access the London2for1 Deals. So we followed exactly the advice someone on TripAdvisor forums gave us, went to the right office (even brought a photo of Hugo so he could get the discounted youth pass) and very promptly we were in possession of our underground passes.

Then we hopped on the Big Bus double decker tour, which conveniently stopped less than a block away from our hotel. I had booked a 48h ticket online & took advantage of the discount they offer. Above you can just see the bus driving away that we've hopped off. Since as you can see, it's pouring rain, we had been sitting down on the inside & frankly, that kinda sucked. You do still get the tour (recorded in the case of this one; some of the routes have live guides) but it's really hard to see much from the fogged in/rain smeared windows. We stayed on for a bit but our plan for the day was the National Gallery.

So after a quick, very quick jog around Trafalgar Square & a peek at the Olympic countdown clock (Amelia was so cold & cranky that she has NO photos on her camera at all of this), we headed into the dryness of the National Gallery. No photos in the gallery allowed but hey - it's FREE! It wasn't particularly crowded, we didn't have a line up to get in & you can get really close to the paintings! It was great & I think we spent about 4 hours there.

This was our first experience with galleries & museums on this trip & we discovered very early on that when you travel as a quad, it slows you down. People all want to see different things, various people stop or slow down (or sit down. Ahem. Roo was a champion sitter.) at things that you might have just walked on by. No matter, the rain was falling & we were warm and dry and content.

I especially liked seeing Gainsborough's Mr & Mrs Andrews. This is a painting about which Sister Wendy said: thank goodness the dog loves him because his wife doesn't. We also checked out the Cezannes and the Monet which was a nice complement to the ones we saw later in Paris. Roo creeped himself out with The Arnolfini Portrait which he finds bizzarely spooky.

I also admired Turner's Fighting Temeraire & Botticelli's Venus & Mars. Roo checked out Van Gogh's Sunflowers. With all of these it was amazingly easy to see the paintings from up close or stroll away for a look from a distance. There were a fair number of people about but never a huge crowd. The paintings are not behind glass and the little rope keeping you back is really very close to the artwork. Bonus for me is that there are LOADS of dogs in British art. I wish I had stopped at their gift shop to see if they had any post cards of some of the paintings with dogs which I had admired. Great gallery & definitely on my list for a return visit.

Satiated with art, we stuck our noses out and started strolling, in no particular direction when we found ourselves in front of....

Hello - this looks interesting. I wonder where we are?

Oh duh. We're at Downing Street!

Red phone booth! And umbrellas :( Rain is back.

Stopped off for a snack & actually headed back to the hotel for quick wash up & to put on more layers of clothes.

So here we are at Paddington again, Amelia is layered like a little onion underneath that coat & we're off again.

Hey look! I see blue sky over Westminster!

Here's our first somewhat close look at the London Eye. I loved the mooring rings held by the lion heads on this wharf.

This is Westminster Bridge looking towards to bank opposite the London Eye. Does she look warm? Not really, eh.

But since it actually was not raining and there were large patches of blue sky showing, we hopped back on the Big Bus, got our plastic ponchos & this time parked ourselves upstairs. It's SO much nicer upstairs!

Here's Buckingham Palace (kind of from the rear. Or side?) But anyway - see the flag?

That means SHE is home.

Loads of blue sky now & we're enjoying ourselves though it is kind of chilly up there.

This is Hyde Park, specifically the Lion & the Unicorn Gate aka Queen Elizabeth Gate which was installed in 1993 by Her Majesty in honor of the Queen Mum's 93rd Birthday.

It's the Ritz! But sigh, it's raining. AGAIN.

Fortunately by now we had secured the PRIZE seats on the tour bus: upstairs the first few rows have a roof. Great views, the wind is blocked so you're warmer and of course you stay dry.

London tries to make it up for the crap weather by giving us a sunsetty rainbow!

And THAT was pretty much the end of our first full day in London. We rolled off the bus just before it shut down for the evening, crawled home & crashed into bed in our mercifully warm hotel room.

Though first we had to climb up 76 stairs to get to it...... :)

today's shopping list

2012-05-17T21:24:00.001-07:00

roma tomatoes
fresh basil
fancy organic evoo
ciabatta baguette

Yes, I'm already missing the fabulous bruschetta we had in Italy & trying to hang on to that holiday feeling for a few more days. The results of my efforts were not quite the same - for one thing, I had to actually chop & toss & make things myself, instead of sitting at an outdoor table laughing at all the awful footwear going by, while someone else made it & brought it out to me. Also, I suspect I will never find the right evoo. It will never taste the same as the one I tasted at a little Rome restaurant on insalata verde - an olive oil so sweet & light & diving that I might have moaned. I definitely was wiping up the bowl with a scrap of bread to get the last drippy yumminess.

The most surprising part is that this is totally out of character. People - I am definitely not a foodie.I don't like to cook, am insanely picky about what I eat, & mostly am concerned more about health than anything else (though my sweet tooth is a whole other issue; maybe I'm just a dessert foodie...) & don't really get the fuss about something that will, you know, mostly just end up as poop. Really expensive meals REALLY don't make sense to me; that is really expensive poop is my predominant thought when people prattle about their $250+ per person meals (not counting the wine, of course) at some schmancy Paris restaurant.

But you know, that olive oil was really good......

The TRIP!

2012-05-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

Just over three weeks ago the hornblower clan took a trip to Europe. Prepare yourself for pictures and rambling stories of how it all went. I expect to milk this experience for blog content for months ;)

The details of it all were as follows:

April 23 evening: flight to London Heathrow's awful Terminal 5*; arrive (late) afternoon of April 24
April 30 am - Eurostar to Paris
May 3 pm - overnight train to Venice
May 7 noon - train to Florence
May 11 am - train to Rome
May 14 - fly to London, (get groped by security at Heathrow), fly to Vancouver

I'm just a teensy bit excited here.
We took the Skytrain/Canada Line to the airport - simple & a good training ground for managing metro's with luggage.

Still grinning, having been shoehorned into this supposed seat. BA cattle class is really cramped!
But the 3 of us are enjoying our vegetarian meal (curry in that case). Bonus part of ordering special meals on flights is that you get fed first, ahead of everyone else. Notice H is glued to screen. He stayed up almost all night watching movies.

Some of us are looking a bit worse for wear by morning. Mercifully nobody caught a pic of me as it would have been very scary. I fly drugged out of my mind on anti nausea meds & by the time I arrive, I'm a drooling mess.

First sight of land! England!!!

London fly over.

We've arrived at the hotel!!!!

*This however, requires a bit more comment because the time from landing to the time of arriving at the hotel was brutally long. Insanely long. You may have heard that BA's boss had a HUGE hissy fit at the UK gov't about it.

We can certainly assert that we waited for at least 2 hours - maybe more? - to clear Immigration. I don't wear a watch so I'm vague on this but it was long enough for Roo to drain the touchpad battery playing Angry Birds in the line. Long enough that some airport staff arrived & started handing out bottles of free water because it was hot, stuffy, and people were looking like fainting was imminent. Amelia was certainly considering it if it would mean a bump to the head of the line (Amelia is a fainter anyway so she wouldn't really be faking it...)

We were in a HUGE line with at least 2 other large plane loads of people - a flight from South America & I'm guessing a flight from Israel (based solely on appearances, cause I'm shallow that way). If the planes were 767 size, that's probably ~300 people per flight & it surely felt like there were way over 500 people in that line up... Roo, who is tall enough to see over most people (especially in Europe where he found most of the locals quaintly little) was able to see over the crowds and see that at times there were only 2 border officials working our line. Then it went up to 3, then back down to 2.... & then he entered the meditative zone of Angry Birds. All things pass &so did this line up but when I read about huge row about Heathrow not being Olympics ready, I definitely was nodding my head.

I got a kick out of a very dapper US businessman (suit, tie, briefcase, gleaming wingtip shoes - the whole uniform) about 10 people ahead of us who spent large chunks of time on his cell phone bawling out his English hosts. "I'll tell you where I am! I'm in your goddamned airport!" while we all nodded our heads in silent support.

Anyway, we finally got through & then, after a pretty simple ride on a train, there we were at our hotel near near Paddington, & managed to pop out for a quick stroll before finding a snack and crashing into bed.

OMG, squeal! It's a red double decker!

First dog I saw but I was so slow at getting the camera that I only caught it from the back. It was the first of many cavaliers I'd see in Europe.

Oh look! A dog thing! (Hyde Park)

we're coming, right?

2012-04-20T11:57:00.001-07:00

I was cleaning out some files on the computer and found these snow pics.

Hey, yeah, Europe! I'm going to Europe!

I'm going to show off my dorky Alaskan Malamute mutt moves!

Darwin: What do you mean you're going, Daisy?
I'm an English Setter!
Who else should go visit England than an English Setter?
I'm going to visit my ancestral homeland!!!

Darwin: And I'm going to show off MY moves!
Daisy: You're scaring me.
And what do they need to look at you for?
They've seen tons of setters. But me? I'm unique!

Daisy: Anyway, my moves are better. Get a load of my butt in the air!
Darwin: Hey mom, I've shaken out my lovely ears & I'm ready to go to Europe now!

Ok, we'll both go!

Bear: Excuse me? I think I should be going to Europe.

Who is the quintessential Canadian dog?

Me, of course!

Born & bred in an aboriginal village, named Bear, look like a Bear, and mostly Newfoundland.

SEE? Those are all Canadian things. (unlike Alaskan mumble mumble and English mumble mumble)

I'm definitely going.

Darwin: Is he? Mom? He isn't, is he? You picked me, right?

Pweeease?

They've got a wonderful dogsitter who will be staying with them in our house and they'll be getting lots of love and attention. I'm going to miss my doggies though!