"Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament!"

Quick update first - we finished our 2nd week of work at Polaroid. Our project is tough, but we are working hard and still managing to have fun.

Today (Friday), I am off to Brussels for the weekend. My good friend, Ryan lives and works there. He has graciously allowed me to stay and to be my tour guide for the weekend. I have not seen him for several years, so this will be a fun weekend trip! Ryan, here I come, mon ami!

OK - here are some more London pics. Sorry, I have been dragging this out, but it is the only way to keep you people coming back to read this blog!


Any good tourist knows you have to see London's most famous symbol - Big Ben. He is pretty massive. But did you know that "Big Ben" does not refer to the whole clock tower, but to the huge 13 ton bell that strikes the hour. This bell is 9 feet in diameter and 7 feet 6 inches high. So, I cannot show you a pic of him, only the house he lives in:


To the left, you will see the giant ferris wheel. This ferris wheel is called the "London Eye".

The London Eye is the world's tallest observation wheel at 135m high. Located on the banks of the River Thames, you can see fantastic views over London. It takes 1 hour to make 1 revolution - that was too long for us, so we skipped it.

Parliament!

This is where I leave you. I have a plane to catch. The life of a jet setter is rough!
I hope you all are well.
I miss you all!

Bank Holiday Weekend

This weekend we had a 3 day weekend as well. But they call it bank holiday weekend. We think they declare it a holiday because of Memorial Day in the US. Copy cats. But we got the day off, so who cares!

We decided to take advantage of the 3 days to do some exploring around England. We wanted to do day trips by car, even though gas is terribly expensive. So we settled upon two locations: Stratford Upon Avon (Shakespeare's home) and Stonehenge.

Stratford Upon Avon was a neat little town - 2 hour drive away. Part of it was very modern, with restaurants and stores, but there was one street that was like going back in time.



Even the street performer painted silver and standing like a statue added to the ambiance.


We went to Shakespeare's home, where he grew up. He grew up in a wealthy family, his father was a glover (he made gloves...). We could not take pictures inside, but I have some of the outside and the gardens.
His house:


Apparently, this was typical of a house that any wealthy merchants lived in. It was quite spacious on the inside. The best part was the section where William's father ran his business. Since he made gloves from leather, there was a large hall where horse and carts could pull in and dump all the dead animals, in various stages of decomposition. I thought it was very nice for the tour guide to give us such a graphic description of the glove business. Moving on...

The gardens were my favorite. They were small, but so many types of flowers!


Silly tourists....


As you can see, the weekend was gloomy. It rained the majority of the time and the temp was about 40 degrees. Brrr, why didn't I bring my winter coat?? Oh yeah, I remember, because IT IS MAY!!!!

On to Stonehenge, a quick 1.5 hour drive via the motorways.... We drive due west of London and after a series of roundabouts and small highways, we pop over a hill and there it is! Just like you see in books!!

It was really neat, but you could not actually walk up to the stones. We had to stay outside a perimeter chain. But we could walk all around it. So we did.


Surrounding land. Look! Sheep! Baaaaaa


Mandy and I freezing our butts off.


Very cool trip. It was worth the 3 hour drive in the rain. The forecast said it was not raining at Stonehenge and about 2 miles outside of this site - it stopped raining! I will never understand this weather....

Driving - check your brain at the door

YES, driving here is an interesting adventure! But the good news is, you do get somewhat accustomed to it. Besides the fact that you are on the other side of the car, the roads are narrower, there are no stoplights - only roundabouts, drivers will merge INTO you and road signs (if they exist) are cleverly hidden. The first driving experience does feel weird. You have to disregard many years of driving instincts and re-learn it.

Let's talk about some highlights, shall we??

First, let's talk about the cars.... here is our car. It is a Vauxhall something or other.

Here is me, in the driver's seat...

Then, there is the interior. Nice, except everything just looks all wrong.

Now, we move on to general driving. The roads here are narrow. I can't even exaggerate here, the picture speaks for itself.

Because the roads are so narrow, people have no choice but to park on the sidewalks. When there is not enough room on the sidewalk, cars will hang out into the street. It is the drivers job not to hit the parked cars, while also avoiding oncoming drivers.....

Here are a few pictures of cars suffering from "narrow road syndrome".

Yes, the 2nd picture is our car.

Highway driving is better, because all the lanes are going the same way. But still, it is weird to look up and see the car in front of you, with no one in what should be the drivers seat.

Let's talk about the roundabout.
The roundabout is very prevalent here, used instead of stoplights. You must be on the lookout for cars coming at you from basically everywhere. It is insane! Give me a good ol' stoplight. At least there is a definitive sign: GO or STOP.

Now, a "normal" roundabout looks and works like this:

But - just when you think you got the hang of the roundabout, you run into "The Magic".

This is the result of some road engineer having too much to drink and taking some grudge out on the public. There are only 2 or 3 that exist in the world, and lucky me, one is right here in the town of Hemel. Here is a depiction of the "Magic roundabout":

Here, there is one large roundabout surrounded by 6 smaller roundabouts. What???? Cars are literally going in all directions. Somehow, when we drove on this, we survived. We got off on the wrong exit, but we were alive :) We now avoid this intersection if at all possible.

So there you have it. This has really messed me up. I hope I do not go through this again when I get back in the states!!

A few observations about the English people...

• They are much friendlier than the french
• The say "cheers!" in place of "thank you"
• You "let a flat", not "rent an apartment"
• When driving, they rarely honk or flip the bird
• Motorcycles are allowed to drive between cars, scaring you to death!
• A trunk is a "boot"
• A truck is a "lorry"...no jokes!
• A cell phone is a mobile (pronounced mow-bile)
• If something tastes good, it is "lovely"
• Their showers have no shower curtains nor shower doors - there is just a partial glass shield
• They have MUCH more vacation than we do in the states (something like 5 - 6 weeks is standard!)
• They like to take holiday (vacation) in Florida (who knows??)
• They know how expensive everything is....for example it costs $8 to rent a movie -or- put 1 gallon of gas in your car!!! Yikes!

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Here are a few pictures from our touristy adventures in London!

This is the marching band that precedes the rest of the millions of other soldiers, some on foot and some on horseback. This band was very good and it was cool to see them so close.

This is a big park just south of Buckingham Palace. Of course we used this as a photo op.

I think someone important was in this coach..but we were across the park when we heard them coming. So here go 2 Americans, camera in hands running across the park, trying to get to the street. We got there, but not in time to see who was in the coach...although I am not sure I would have been able to recognize them.

But she must be important....look at all the guards on horseback!!

More photos to come! Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge.....

ps - Thanks for all the comments. I like to read what you all have to say, especially you, Dad!

My New Job!

Guy left on Saturday, despite my begging and clinging to his legs as his train approached. He made it safely back to Cincy and now he is back to work..... It is weird knowing that I will not see him for 4 weeks! It will be rough, I will need your support to keep me from getting homesick!

Mandy and I spent the rest of the weekend getting acclimated with the town and the surrounding area. There are a lot of walking paths with many families out and about. Also, lots of people walking dogs! It is fun to visit with everyone, they are all so friendly and love to hear us talk. That is a switch!!

We reported for work bright and early Monday morning at Polaroid's headquarters. OK - so bright and early was 9:15 am because we got lost a few times and there was a ton of construction...but we really did try to get there early.....

We were welcomed by their entire staff....all 8 of them. We have our own desks and Internet connections. The bad news - the office is in a small town. The town of Luton (which is about 20 miles North of London) was voted the #1 "Crap town" in the UK. Yeah! We asked the locals why and they said there was no soul there. It is all new construction, no green space, no arts, no sports, no life. Also, there are NO restaurants around here. No cafeterias either. On our first day, one of our co-workers took us to lunch. Guess where?? She took us to the local grocery store so we could pick out our own food! And then we went through the check out line to pay for it. That was by far the most unique 1st day of work lunch I have ever had!

The people in our office are great. They are fun and really nice. They have outlined our project and it looks to be tough, but we feel pretty confident we can meet their expectations! We have 4 weeks to accomplish what it would take a "real" consultant 6 months to do. But we are SUPER MBA's!!!!

I still have some pics from our trip into London. So I will scatter them over the next several posts....

There is no London Bridge

Now I can feel free to talk about London. It is hard to catch up when you get behind!

We have a 2 bedroom apartment overlooking a marina. It is pretty neat to look out at these odd boats. Some people actually live on them - I think that would drive me crazy.

Here is our apartment:

Our view

We explored the area and the marina leads out to a small channel. It is neat because they have manual locks and dams to move their boats through. Here is Guy and I standing next to one:

Here is the channel:

On Friday we did some rapid sight-seeing. We only had that day, since Guy was leaving bright and early on Saturday. So we did all the touristy stuff.

We went to Buckingham Palace. We were about 30 minutes early for the changing of the guards, but it was crowded. We could not even get up to the date. So we walked around to get a few pics.

As you can tell, the English cannot take pictures. I told this person I wanted the whole palace in the picture......not quite.

I took this one - much better

My next post will have more on our sights, but for now, I am freezing and hungry, so I am signing off!

A little more Paris

OK - Backtrack a little to Paris. Sorry for the run-around, but we had fun our last 2 days in Paris. On day 3, we went to Versailles. It was a short train ride and a quick walk through the surrounding town.
When I say this place is huge - that is an understatement. Take a look at this place!

There are 2 places to go: the gardens and the palace. We decided to go to the gardens first. I have never seen anything so big and so manicured! The gardens are 247 acres, most of which is open to the public. They have bikes or gold carts you can rent, but we tackled it on foot. Here are some of the sights:

We got some great landscaping ideas. Mom - I think you should try this when you are finished with your sun garden....

Here is the back of the palace:

I took a ton more pictures, but it takes so long to upload, especially here in London, that I have to curtail them.

I will post my favorite pics from the inside of Versailles. We took an audio guided tour with headsets, which was a nice way to get the history and details, but if it was boring, you could shut it off and go on the the next room. That is hard to do with a person as your tour guide - you have to listen to their who spiel.

Talk about opulence! Versailles can sleep 20,000 people! Some walls were covered in velvet and there were the most unbelievable paintings - on the walls AND ceilings!

Wallpaper:

Insanely gorgeous paintings...

Kings bedroom - I wonder if he had a hard time finding his bed if he ever had a little too much to drink!

OK - I posted the rest of Versailles pictures here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=5jaky3r.69nlswr7&Uy=2ty2j3&Ux=1

Later that night, we were determined to make it to the top tier of le Tour Eiffel. We had gone to the tower every day to check the line. If it was long, we did not go. But this night, we were definitely going. We decided to do it at night since we had done other day trips to high lookouts. So we went at 10:00 pm. The long was short, but the third tier was closed! Drat! But we went anyway.

It is pretty cool how they lug you up there. It is s 2 story elevator (of sorts) and it goes diagonally from one of the legs. Then it stops and heads straight up. We get to the 2nd tier (pretty high up for me) and get blasted with gale force winds! I thought I would be blown off the structure! It was absolutely gorgeous! This night pics did not do so well. All of the pics are blurry, but we did get some good ones. I will try to post some later..

Interesting fact (you may already know it, but I had no clue). The Eiffel Tower lights up every night about 9:00. Starting at 10:00, the blinking lights come on, making it look like it is sparkling. This goes on for only 10 minutes, then it is back to just still lighting. At 11:00, the sparkling comes on again for 10 minutes, the off for the rest of the hour. At midnight, the sparkling comes on again for the last time, then stays lit for the rest of the night.

When it is “sparkling”, it is amazing. Still pictures do not do it justice, but we tried.

What a way to end the night!
Bon soir!

Fish n Chips, anyone?

Hello!
I made it into London, finally. It was a real hassle and it all started at the airport. We were taking a discount airline called "Easyjet" to the small town outside of London. Well, Easyjet was not so easy. First they say there are no weight restrictions on luggage and then charge me for my behemoth of a bag. ?!?!?!?! Then their slogan is "If you are late, we won't wait". Hmmmm, is that why we took off 30 minutes late after 3 people scooted on at the last minute? Argh

Anyway, the flight was short and smooth. We took a cab (this cab looks like SupperNanny's car!) and proceed to drive on the wrong (I mean left side of the road). We get to Polaroid (where I will be working) and I meet up with one of my colleagues. It was a quick visit, as all I needed was to get the car.

They give me a portable GPS unit (Polaroid, of course) and tell me my apartment has already been programmed so all we have to do is follow it. So, Guy navigates and I drive. Yes - I drove!! It was a hoot! Not nearly as bad as I thought. The roundabouts were manageable and the highway was easy, just follow the fellow in front of you. Turning onto another street was the most difficult, and I kept saying "left lane, left lane" over and over. But I did well. The bad news - the directions they programmed in were completely and hopelessly wrong!!! So here we were, in some neighborhood, lost, no cell phone and no clue. I was at my wits end! Fortunately, we found a really nice guy who lent us his cell and we called the apartments. We were not even close to where we were supposed to be. Finally, we made it, woke Mandy up (the other intern on this project - she fly in from the States today) and we got in.

The place is really nice, when I have more time I will post some pictures and talk more about it. But I really like it here! It helps that they speak the same language!!

I still have some t post on our remaining time in Paris, so stay tuned for that!

La Louvre and Sacre Couer

A brief walk took us the the Louvre, perhaps the most famous museum in the world - home of the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. I was eager to see that famous glass pyramid and I was not disappointed...






Please note the darkening skies: this is not a good sign....

After leaving the Louvre (we did not go inside - sorry Ryan!), we decided to hop a train to see Sacre Coeur. But, we did not know where the nearest train stop was and it started to rain. Again, really heavy rain. But we were fortunate again and found shelter under one of the arches of the Louvre (this place is huge).

We wait about 10 minutes until it stops and then we are off! Fortunately Guy's navigation skills are spot-on and we found the train!

Sacre Coeur is located atop the highest hill in Paris - so that means lots of walking up hill.

Along the way, we were able to enjoy the many small shops that lined the streets.

The odd thing about vendors here is that they do not seem to care if you buy from them or not. The same with the restaurants - they take your order, bring the food, then you do not see them again. They come when you are finished and take your plates and ask if you want coffee or dessert. When you say no, they disappear again. A few hours later (ok - maybe not that long), they bring the bill. They never ask if the meal was OK - I don't think they care. All the food we have had so far was really good, but the experience has definitely been different.

Sacre Coeur - it is huge! And it kind of creeps up on you. You walk and walk and all of a sudden, there it is!

No pictures were allowed inside, but it was beautiful. Taking a tip from some friends, we climbed the 4,456,234 steps to the top of the tower - or "the dome". I may be exaggerating on the number of steps, but after climbing them, I can stretch truth a little.

The spiral staircase seemingly went on forever. It was well lit, but very narrow and low:

We finally got to the top of those steps and guess what?? MORE STEPS!!

We get to the top and man! What a view!

Oh! Wait! Not that one! Here is a better view:

What do we hear?? English! Hey, take our picture!! Together!!

We walked down the 2,245,234 steps (it was much shorter going down) and went down into the crypt. There were several chapels as well as artifacts and sculptures.

This is what I have been waiting to see the whole time. This picture sums up France for me. This is at the train station closest to our hotel. As we were leaving the station, I happen to look across the track and saw a woman holding a loaf of bread. No wrapper, no bag, just bread. Why not?