Lately I have chosen escape in the form of Diana Gabaldon historical romance adventure novels with a time travel twist over a book about Super String Theory. All I can say is, “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” they’re good!
We had our first visitors yesterday, and we’d like to publically thank them for their gifts:
Michele and Eric: thanks for the ziploc bags and ranch dressing.
In return for gifts it was our job to show them around, but what do we know about London at this point? I suppose we could have gone to the zoo or the London Eye. OK, my point is, we haven’t done a lot of things in London yet because we’ve been too busy getting our place ready, or being some place else (like New Jersey).
So we visited Westminster Abbey, and here’s a photo to prove it:
Since we were with friends we decided not to do the audio tour or a real tour, since it’s not so easy to talk to each other then. But that can be a mistake because there is so much history in a building like that. Man! I saw names and dates which coincide with the historical fiction I am reading, having to do with the Jacobite rebellion, etc., and it was occasionally jarring to see names that were mentioned in the book. The reason it’s so jarring is that, while it appears that I am walking around in the current century and interacting with people in the here and now, my mind is in fact 260 years in the past, struggling with such issues as antibiotics, knife wounds, time travel, etc., and the deep personal feelings of exactly two fake people.
The books are told from the Scottish perspective, so I found myself getting angry about 250-300 year old events. However on the “Visit Scotland” website I discovered that there were almost equal numbers of Scots fighting on both sides in 1745. So it’s time to let go… except I have about 3000 more pages to read, literally.
The Abbey is so impressive, like so many of the old buildings in Europe, and I found myself wondering what kinds of quality control issues they had, were contractors hell back then as well, and why were people willing to wait 500 years for completion? But I digress. Sadly we couldn’t take a any pictures inside the Abbey for some reason. That pisses me off. I wanted to say, “In France they have no problem with picturing taking in the Notre Dame, which FYI, is bigger than your Abbey.” We overheard one tour guide talking about Anne and Mary Boleyn, saying that Mary was the older sister. Sue and I were quite confident that Mary was the younger sister, because we read some other historical fiction, The Other Boleyn Girl, which incidentally is going to be made into a movie with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. Can you imagine a movie with both those babes in it at once? The thought of that is almost enough to get my mind out of the mid 18th century. Let’s hope they don’t butcher it.
This shot was taken in an outside portion of the Abbey:
Since we were close by we stopped off at Big Ben …
… walked over a bridge to the London Aquarium and London Eye, but decided not to wait in line, and then crossed another bridge …
… and headed for Trafalgar Square to find something to eat.
From there we walked to Picadilly Circus and went into a toy store since Jason has a B-day party this coming weekend. And from there to the Green Park station, which is across from … Green Park I think??
The Green Park station was where Sue and I went to the most expensive dinner in our lives when we were visiting in February to decide whether to do this crazy move. It was the scene of the great Aperitif incident, which proved so embarrasing that I decided to make up for it with a $300 bottle of champagne. But I digress.
Our kids continue to do pretty well in school. Sometimes I think they are both doing very well, and then a few minutes after Madeline gets home she starts to unravel as she tells us about some of the injustices that befell her that day. We’re trying to learn to take these with a grain of salt, because for one everything is new and you can’t expect it to just be a completely smooth transition, and for another, if she’s hungry her entire world is falling apart no matter what. Today she was hungry because she transformed from the biggest pain in the ass to the sweetest child you’ve ever know as soon as her dinner began registering in her stomach.
The most important thing to the kids, however, continues to be getting to play in the neighborhood after school and/or after dinner. It boggles the mind that we have kept them from this lifestyle their entire short little lives. What will we do when we decide to move back? Things that make me go Hmmm …
I want to learn how to cook. Last week I accidentally cooked two of the most delicious steaks of my life in the frying pan. Would somebody please tell me how to cook chicken breast so that it’s moist yet fully cooked? Please, anybody, what is the secret? I’ve seen my sister do it but I can’t recreate it anymore.
I’ve recently taken to buying pre-made sauces, such as Thai or Indian curries, and cooking chicken and veggies and throwing it all together. And the result would be fine if I could get the chicken part to work. God I hate chicken! ;-)
Love reading your posts - keep it up.
Madeline sound a little “hypoglycemic”, try giving her a small snack (cabs+fat) to eat on the way home, or late afternoon.
Have you read “The System of the World”, Neil Stephenson, lots of it are set in London and you can visit everything.
cheers.
I want to hear more about the Great Aperitif Incident!
BTW, Andrew, I bought The System of the World … wait, I am not sure what I ended up getting. Ah - I went to the beginning of the series to get started. Sounds like fun. Thanks for the tip.