Stranded in a strange land where people pronounce words in a strangely straight forward and entirely unsophisticated way and where you can get much more ice cream for less money

So we are now sitting in the cheese steak airport next to ol' Benny.  We will be here a while longer due to terrorist actions which have caused our plane to encounter mechanical issues.  This is after our flight was already delayed. In fact, our flight from London was delayed an hour and half.  This one was first delayed a half hour.........and now they've added on another hour-ish time period.  How the terrorists have been busy today!

So here we are again reliving last week's experience in a reverse fashion.  Since nothing that eventful has happened today.......perhaps we will just post some pictures that didn't make the cut.  That would be more interesting then the ramblings of a demented blogger, yes?

These first few pictures are from Hyde Park, which is right by Royal Albert Hall.  So we explored a little bit of it before watching Mahler's 8th, but we got no where near exploring all of it's 800 acres in the period of less then an hour.

So now some random shots.........  yes nice bridge.  They just don't do them like this back home.......how darn'd inconvenient.

Ah yes.......a goofy looking guy standing next to a stunningly dressed guard!

And here we go folks!  If you wondered what the British government does with it's tax payer's dollars.........this kinda the generally thing........make really big things that make people feel better about the place.....  Hence: the Eye of London!  A big mother of a ferris wheel.  Each of those little seating areas can hold somewhere around 10 people.  It's quite a sight. 

Hey remember when America had these?  Wasn't that long ago..... 

The last day of the trip

Today....thinking......what happened to today? Scott wha'td we do? Oh right!!! St Paul's Cathedral!!! Yes! Quite the place. What can I say? Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Unfortunately, twas quite forbidden to take pictures of the inside, so there will be none to post. But I can say we climbed all the way to the top. There were 528 stairs to climb. It was a great experience. Nice little work out on our little limbs. Scott decided to be all manly and wear a backpack while doing the climb. KUDOS to him! You can give a good game butt slap when we get back. He might make me take that last sentence out.....we shall see. So here's a shot from the top of the cathedral.

From there we went to the Tower of London. This place ….is there much to say? It's big.....has lots of jewels..........and more than a few areas of torture that were put to good use. Every guys dream palace right? Shots of the jewels were forbidden

Westminster Abbey. Big, beautiful...............and a terrible place to be during the zombie apocalypse! There were plenty of dead people contained there. So many people are buried in crypts, coffins, under the floor..........everywhere we stepped we were standing on graves and had plenty more above ground to see. Pictures of the inside were forbidden.

And Big Ben...........yeah.... just as big as ever.

After Westminster, we were quite worn out. So we decided to go no further in any exploration in order to save our feet and joints. So we found an Italian place to eat and then went to the Queen's Theater to watch Les Miserables. So this was an absolutely incredible production! Almost every single actor/singer did a beyond phenomenal performance. We were both awe struck by the actor/singer who played as Val Jean. He had one of the most incredible voices live I have ever heard. He had the largest range too. He could easily hit notes that a bass would normally sing and also easily hit the highest parts that a first tenor would sing. Anyways, we were geeking out for a while.

So tomorrow we fly back home. We will be having a short lay over in Philly again, so we might sneak in a blog post there.

BTW, we both are really craving ice cream. We haven't had any here, because it's been around four or five pounds and they give you less than an American kiddy size. So yeah.........were getting some in Philly..........and then we'll be pigging out at home too. K ta ta

The Last Days . . . . . . in London or Daniel's version: the end is nigh! Repent!

Well, it's been a while since we've been able to post. Sorry about that. We did not have free wi-fi in our rooms, so we had to wait until tonight to buy some time to do everything all at once! Oh, and this is Scott, btw. Not Daniel. At least, not yet.

Yesterday, Sunday, was a long day. Actually they've all been busy, really. I think I'll need a vacation from my vacation. Anyway, we started out by going to Camden town. It was stinkin' huge!!! It was like, five Hawthornes all together outside, and you'll get half the size of this market. It was absolutely stinkin' busy! And I really mean stinkin'. There were some interesting pungencies drifting around down there.

After our excursion to Camden Town, we journeyed to the British Library. I know, I know. Some of you can't appreciate that, but hey, I like libraries. Aside from being an awesome and enormous building with tons and tons of books, it has a special section devoted to extremely old and valuable original documents. Some of these included the full score of Handel's original Messiah, Shakespeare's Henry IV, and the original Gutenberg Bible! It was pretty awesome and inspiring. To see these works in front of my very eyes was overwhelming. Whew . . .

After we picked our jaws up off the floor of the British Library, we trekked over to Baker Street. If you have to ask why, you better not speak to me again. Seriously! Why would anyone go to Baker Street except to see the real 221B Baker Street?!?! It was also near Madame Tussaud's -- which we have a picture of because it was way too expensive to go in!

So then we went to Harrod's.  This is a place I just had to see (this is Daniel now btw, Scott was writing a book full of info....so I decided to actually do some talking).  This place is one giant rip off for the filthy rich.  Quite literally.  Side note....Scott is eating peanut butter by the spoon full out of the jar.......straight.........is that nasty or what?  I mean really!!!  Ok back to Harrod's.  I'll just give a few examples.  The average pair of jeans cost is about two hundred pounds.  Sound ridiculous?  Just wait......remember that the dollar to pound ratio is ridiculous.  Multiply the 200 by 1.62 to get the dollar amount.  Then add on the 3% exchange rate and you get the price in dollars.  So you basically pay about $330 for a pair of jeans.  Now that was the average price.  There were plenty of more expensive than that.  These weren't even nice jeans.  I could get the same for about $30 or cheaper back home.  Yeah and don't get me started on their jackets.  We'll just say you'd be paying around $1,000 for paper thin jackets.  Anyways, this place was super awesome like that.  I actually had a great time.  They had cool stuff and cool designed store to keep it in.  Anyways awesome place.....they even have a high class food court.....even included a crispy creams!

From there, we went to Royal Albert Hall to watch Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand.  We filmed a little video to share our thoughts on that.  This video's volume is not that great, so make sure your not just using laptop speakers.

Here's the outside of Royal Albert Hall.

Here's the performers.  Those people on either side of the organ are not actually audience members.  Those groups are the choir.  Yeah......alot of people.

This was part of a huge monument.........think to that Albert dude.  Yeah.....this thing was huge.  This is only a small part of it.....and the detail was absolutely incredible.

New place; new and strangely familiar

So yesterday we officially came to the second part of our journey.  We are in London.  It really doesn't feel too different.  It feels like NYC or DC, but with some really old architecture.  So we checked into the hotel that we reserved, only to find out, that even though it was advertised as a hotel, it's not.  Most definitely not.  It is a Hostel.  Which is fine, but did come at a bit of a shock, especially when we were looking for specific signs.  So anyways not too bad, except that the wi-fi there is charged by the hour.  So we couldn't update you all on yesterday's events until now.  Currently we are in the British library, but that's for the next blog post.  Yesterday, as soon as we checked into our "hotel," we set off for the British museum.  This place is bloody HUGE!  We managed to go through just about all of it and got some cool pics, a few of which I've included if your interested.

After the museum, we went Trafalgar square.  Me and Scott decided that Portland would do well to have there own Trafalgar Square.  Pioneer square is lame in comparison. 

So here's one of the best parts.  We ate dinner inside a crypt!  A literal Crypt!  This restaurant's claim to fame is that you get to eat on top of people's graves.  Tis quite awesome like that.  Food was alright, and the place was very crowded.  I will say though, there hot cocoa was very very flavorless.  But I guess you can't have it all.

Well, gotta go, cuz were out of time.  Need to go back to the room and prepare for going to Royal Albert Hall.

Castle Day

So we spent the day at a couple places.  One of which was Shakespeare's little corner of the world.  I'm a pretty big fan of the Spear Shaker man, and Scott likes some of his stuff too, so this was cool.  We walked outside Ann Hathaway's place.  Your reaction here shows just how big or little a fan of Spear Shaker you are.  I'm referring to the real Ann Hathaway, not the impostor we have in Hollywood right now.  The real Ann Hathaway was Spear man's wife.  Anyways, we didn't really take any pictures there.  We did one better.  The place we got pictures was called Shakespeare's church.  He was baptized there, likely married there, preached there, and buried there.  Speaking of his burial, check out the copy of the inscription he had made.  He left a nice warning and curse for people who move his remains.

On a side note: this just in: Samuel L. Jackson was found dead and buried in Shakespeare's church graveyard.

Most of the day was spent at an awesome castle.  This was Warwick Castle, the only castle in Briton to have never been breached.  It's a pretty cool place.  Lots of people dressed in lovely clothing.

In the castle, there were some beautiful birds of prey.  The trainer also had a nice British dry wit.  Twas enjoyable.  I tried to get pictures of his owl, but it moved around too much.  These birds were quite extraordinary and were so good at praying that they could tell several hundred feet away when the trainer put out any food.  One of the eagles had an eight foot wing span and weighed seventeen pounds.  This one flew all the way up around the castle and to the top of the highest tower.  Quite and achievement for such a huge bird.

Trebuchet.  Anybody heard of such a thing?  Really?  Are you saying yes just cause you don't want sound ignorant?  That's what I thought.  Well, actually I'm sure all the guys know what such a beautiful thing it is.  This is it followed by a nice little video of it being used.  If you listen real close, you can hear me express frustration that I lost sight of the flaming projectile for a split second.

So some of you may know that years ago Scott attempted to be a modern day King Arthur.  Well, we gave him another chance.  Let's see how it turned out.

 

 Well, give him an applause for trying.  He just isn't the chosen one.

 Oh, here's another big boy toy we found.

 I leave you with this.........if you ever get your picture taken in the stock when the sun is shining on you, and you have light,thin, and short hair like me and Scott, you look rather bald. BE WARNED!!

Day of walking

So we spent a great deal of time walking today.  We went to a cool museum that had things from all sorts of different cultures (Roman, Greek, Chinese, Japanese....etc).  Had some cool stuff.  Took pictures of some nice old instruments.

We ate a park behind another museum.  Had a cool little river that we ate by.  Some ducks came over and were begging for some scraps.  We gave them NUTTING!!!

After that, we went to the museum we were by which had quite an assortment of "prehistoric" animals as well as plenty of exotic animals from around the world.  Saw many nice little bits with astronomical numbers for age.......but hey what do you expect?

 

 I like the art they have here.  Instead of random shapes of metal, paint, wire and such, they just put an uprooted tree in the front lawn.  Portland could take a lesson from these English.

Our last event of the day we ate a little pub called the Eagle and the Child.  Now some of you nerds may have heard of this.  It's claim to fame is not that of amazing food.  In fact, our gracious hosts vehemently suggested that we stick to fish and chips.  Back to the point.  What is it's claim to fame?  For about thirty years, there was a specific group of authors that would meet there every week to discuss books.  They called themselves "The Inklings."  This group included both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  We actually ate at the same table as them!  The aura was so thick that I stabbed at it with my fork and it stuck there momentarily!  So here are a couple few pictures of the table and plaques and us standing here all studly out front.

In one of the museums there was a weapons exhibit.  Scott had never seen little hand canons like this.  They had several barrels.  Twas quite impressive and he wanted to show people that they really do exist outside of the movies.

This was a cool stained glass window in a chapel within one of the colleges.

I leave you with your greedy capitalism and your rude American manners and your right way of driving and your lack of accent and your affordable prices and your big houses and your need for nonconformity ........Scott says I need to stop.  By the way, this is yesterday's

bye