Clueless in the UK

Every trip is tiring but in the end every trip has been worth it, so I am grateful for yet another carefully and painstakingly planned trip by Sue, this time a trip planned to Holland motivated largely to see my old freshman year college roommate for the first time in 15 years.

The funny thing is, prior to 15 years ago, I saw him once 17 or 18 years ago, and HE FORGOT ABOUT THAT, and then before that, it was freshman year in college, in 1984. So after we arrived in Amsterdam last week, planning to drive to Delft the following day, Sue said, "So what can you tell me about Coenraad? What has been up to? How long has he been married?" I suddenly started wondering what I was doing going all the way to Holland to visit a friend I knew 23 years ago for one year! I started to break out into a cold sweat, since I had pretty much committed us to two almost full days of our vacation time with him …

Turns out, all was well. It's like we stayed in constant touch the whole time. It was great to see him and meet his family for the first time. Weird, huh?

If I had a 24 year old picture I would include it here, just to show how we've not turned into a couple of old farts, that we've always looked this good ;-)

But back to Amsterdam, where we spent the first day. First of all, don't rent a car if you are going to stay there. We made one false turn and it took us 30 minutes to go around the block to try again. Then it cost us £40/day to park the car there! Wait - not £'s but … €'s. Wow - how do I type that on a keyboard? Still prohibitively expensive!

Instead of cars, this is what they use:

If you are not careful you will be hit by impatient bicyclists who are on a mission and you better not be in the way! They take it very seriously. Amsterdam is a great city to have a bike in I think, but so was everywhere else we visited in Holland.

Amsterdam is a city of streets with lots of canals. Venice is a city of canals with lots of streets. One of these scenarios makes a lot more sense to me, and so I thought Amsterdam was a great place.

A one hour canal boat tour was recommended to us for Amsterdam, and it was one of the better boat tours we have had I'd say. Amsterdam is interesting and pretty and pretty mellow. OK - I am not sure why we liked it so much. We just did.

Kinderdijk

After one night in Amsterdam, we jumped into the car and let our GPS to the talking. I love this thing:

This thing never lies, at least not to us, not yet. But at one point we were driving along, minding our own business, when we rounded a corner and were faced with nothing but water. Luckily we figured out that even though there was no road there, there was a ferry service: 

It was the only way across this body of water we could see on the GPS for many many miles so off we went. We were trying to get to the windmills in Kinderdijk, where we wanted to do the Dutch thing of riding around on bikes admiring windmills:

Funny thing is, less than a month ago I was riding on the back of a bike just like Jason is here, with my arms lovingly wrapped arou … ok, never mind.

Jason wasn't big enough to get a bike for himself, but we decided to give him a go on the large bike. Pretty quickly he figured out how to get on and off the bike without killing himself, even though his feet were 6 inches from the ground when sitting on the seat. He loved it.

The windmills were awe-inspiring in a number of ways. The power is incredible. My friend Coenraad told me that people get whacked by them regularly and it's basically game over, and here you can see why:

As you can see, we're dwarfed by this thing, and the blades are moving very fast. This shot was slowed down on purpose to show you the blur: 1/15 seconds. Wow - it took me a long time to remember how to convert .0666666667 seconds into a fraction. Scary. 

Inside the windmill we got to see the whole mechanism from top to bottom, although not too up-close and personal because there's no much opportunity to basically die inside there if you get too close to the wrong moving part. The two things which blew me away were: the thing is made of wood, the size of the vertical axis going down the height of the tower: probably 2 feet by 2 feet, or maybe more. Just a huge hunk of wood. The thing is loud!

I wish I had taken a photo of the little cupboard bedroom we saw in there. Reminded us of Harry Potter's room under the stairs … tiny.

Delft

Coenraad lives in Delft where we stayed for three days. It's a really nice, small town. The first morning there was a small fair being set up. Very small but everything was free. Madeline went straight to the top:

I like the church in the background there. But what is it with Holland and church bells? That thing rang every 15 minutes all day and into the evening, finally stopping at (I think) 11pm and then picking up again at 4am. Wow.

One night I was woken up at 3 in the morning by the sound of people singing Billy Joel songs at the top of their lungs from a bar that was … frankly not that close! "Up Town Girl".

The Dutch are very friendly, and when I asked 'Do you speak English?' they always said, "Of Course!" as if I were stupid for asking. Finally I stopped asking IF and just said "CAN".

Jason was into the basketball, and this little silly shot went straight in:

The Dutch are very liberal. You can smoke pot, drink in public, have sex with women in windows, everyone has health insurance, they even allow men to get pregnant:

and in the zoo they encourage zebras and donkeys to get married and have children:

The neighborhood Coenraad lives in is very typical, he says, where the houses are laid out with tall brick walls and narrow paths between them, which is perfect for little kids to ride around on:

Here we all are enjoying a dinner at Coenraad's house taken with my lovely camera and my extremely handy, portable tri-pod, which was a recent gift from a friend who came to visit us here in London at the beginning of the summer:

I hope a few more pictures of Coenraad and his family are OK. I want to share them with some of our old friends from college. His kids are very cute, but whose kids aren't?!?

Madeline took about 200 pictures on her own. Some of them were good, like that one of Simon above, and this one below is kinda cool as well: 

We went to the zoom in Rotterdam and it was an excellent zoo, with a small aquarium and a nice little playground as well:

Madeline and Jason were jumping off the swings. I was reminded of one of my first times jumping off the swing, where I let go too late and landed right on my back, knocking the wind out of me for the first time in my life:

In this one, Maddie's feet are also off the ground:

Anne Frank

Back and Amsterdam we did the van Gogh museum, which I didn't remember at all from the last time I was there in 1989. OK - it appears that it's pronounced either "Hoff" or "Goff" where the "ff" is pronounced with a sound not unlike when you're going to hauk a loogie. I'd like to know the correct way to pronounce it. Most Americans pronounce it as "Gough" rhymes with dough, which I never heard once while there.

I think even the kids liked the van Gogh. I liked his work from 1888 to the end the most. I found his story to be sad, moving, etc. Sue and I are considering buying some of the paintings we saw to hang them on our mostly bare wall so we can maintain that depressed feeling ;-)

We also did the Anne Frank house, which I highly recommend. The little tour in the house was very well done, you can easily spend an hour in there watching the occasional video, reading all the notes and excerpts, and checking out the many rooms. The story, of course, is sad and horrible. It's a good reminder of what went on, sort of the ultimate, old-fashioned blog, complete with pictures.

The site of the Anne Frank statue with a swastika painted on it is a perfect example of why we need the Anne Frank house, even if some people choose not to believe what is undeniable. I was very moved.

Here's the church right near the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam:

Here's the bird trying to get a drink nearby:

and here's Jason doing the same:

EasyJet

Let me just throw in a plug for EasyJet. Leading up to this trip I was feeling more anxious than usual because we were going with a low-cost airline for the first time. The one-way tickets to Amsterdam were something like £5/each, which is obviously mind-boggling. Even more so is in the end the whole cost of flying to and from was about £200, the rest being taxes.

I was worried that we were flying on an airline with 30 year old, unmaintained, because-how-else-can-they-afford-to-fly-us-for-£5, airplanes. The night before we left I did a little research (without telling Sue, who planned the trip) to see what was the deal with them. I found out, among other things, that they have the youngest fleet of planes in the industry: average of 2.5 years old. Sue, it turns out, did all this research planning the trip.

Arriving at Gatwick, which is 50+ miles from where we live, we were greeted by an entirely orderly process, a professional airline, early boarding, effortless travel. I really quite enjoyed the whole thing and was blown away.

Also, 50+ miles away seems far, but we took a train to Victoria and then an express train to Gatwick. Pretty easy and not that expensive. Highly recommended, both EasyJet and Gatwick (as opposed to Heathrow).

The first part of our recent trip was to Bath. I was anxious because I hadn’t done a lot of driving and it wasn’t entirely clear how well our GPS was going to work. As I hinted in the previous post, the GPS was brilliant, flawless, amazing. The only difficult part was the occasional roundabout.

All of a sudden I am not clear whether it is roundabout or traffic circle. Ah, I just have to think back to what the GPS said: “Enter roundabout and take 3rd exit to blah blah street.” So here are Sue and I counting exits: “One … two … wait - was that an exit … THREE … oh shit!” Once I took the wrong exit but the GPS recovered quickly and so did we. Another time I knew where I wanted to go but must have counted wrong, so I did a quick maneuver and ended up on the wrong side of the road … uh … very briefly, no worries, nobody was hurt … cheers!

My US license expires in September this year. Meanwhile I have one year to get a UK license and that year is up at the end of June. BUT, once I officially apply for a learner’s permit here I cannot drive on my US license AND I cannot drive in the UK without an experienced UK driver … pretty weird, eh? So, we have a UK trip to Wales next week and then after that I think I just need to try to get my UK license ASAP.

So in Bath we arrived at this beautiful B&B just outside of Bath:

The house was something else, quiet, nice, very nice family, etc.

The next day we drove into downtown Bath, about, oh I don’t know, 2 or 3 miles away if that? The highway was backed up from the roundabout at 10am, Bath is a tourist attraction extraordinaire, and for what? Well, this:

That’s the Bath Abbey in the background there.

Yes, the Roman Baths, 2000 years old, the original plumbing still works except for a minor algae problem that apparently (but how they know I have no idea) wasn’t a problem back then. Anything 2000 years old is all right with me, however, and I thought this was pretty cool.

While wandering around afterwards, we wandered in to the Bath Abbey and saw a small orchestra and chorus practicing Bach’s The Passion of Christ. Coincidentally, Sue, Madeline and I had just gone to watch our friend Ruth perform that somewhere in London. I was shocked, simply shocked, to discover that I had been blasted by this very music my entire childhood. Seeing it performed before my eyes was an unexpected pleasure, and unlike every ballet performance I have been to, I had absolutely no trouble staying awake even though the whole thing was in German.

In London the week before, Madeline couldn’t help giggling at seeing a grown man sing like a … grown woman. In Bath here was just such a grown man doing just that during the rehearsal:

This particular man was very good, however, definitely better than the one at the London performance. Still, I can’t help wonder whether a woman wouldn’t make a better choice for this role?

After watching this for a while we decided to hang out in a square across the way from the Roman Baths and watch a very very bad performer get strangely large amounts of money from onlookers (unless they were just putting in 2-pence pieces):

I think the picture speaks for itself. That guy was so bad I almost gave Madeline some money to offer the guy on condition that he would just stop playing and leave. I am not exaggerating.

So then these two guys came out and since one had a cello I thought they might be more serious musicians, and indeed they were:

They took a very long time to get started and they should have had some sort of amplification because it was a decent sized square, and the cellist seemed a little embarrassed and there was a problem with the wind, etc. Still, with his friend holding the music he played a nice cello piece by good old J.S. Bach that I liked quite well. So as soon as he finished in went the two kids with a pound each to show our appreciation.

From there we headed out to the local park, and this park was one amazing park. We knew the kids would love it when we drove by the day before, but we didn’t realize how much they would love it. We spent two hours there just watching the kids run around from one thing to another, happily playing with kids they never met, running into the occasional obnoxious teenager, and one really obnoxious mother. But that’s ok. The highlight was the zipline, which with the occasional push got the kids going so fast that when they hit the end of the line they ended up almost horizontal to the ground. Hard to explain but luckily we have about 30 pictures, which I have narrowed down to two:

Luckily both kids knew to hang on for dear life!

All in all, Bath was a nice place to visit. Not sure when we’ll get there again.

But Salisbury, where we stayed the following day, that is a place worth visiting again, just for the privilege of seeing the amazing Church. Unfortunately I have no pictures of it because I thought we didn’t have the camera with us - turns out we did, which is a shame. The church is called Salisbury Cathedral, built in 1220 or thereabouts. It’s the tallest medieval church still standing in England. It contains one of the four remaining originals of the Magna Carta. Ah - maybe wikipedia won’t mind my borrowing the image???

Inside the huge church was a massive organ and some choir boys singing, rehearsing for an Easter concert. They were angelic - uh, their voices were. The church was huge, each chair had a “in memory of so-and-so” on it, the choir was practicing, and I was thinking … If you ever feel the need to be part of something bigger than yourself, you might just want to give church a try … it might be what you’re looking for.

Yes, I was moved, but I doubt it would last beyond the first sermon. But you never know …

We just got back from Bath and Stonehenge. I assume I am not alone in having a hard time saying “Stonehenge” without going into Spinal Tap mode? As I was walking back to our apartment with my first overseas case of wine, our new neighbors (last couple of months I’d say) said hello and asked where we’d been and I mentioned Stone Henge in Spinal Tap voice and the husband got it pretty quickly. He said he had the DVD if I wanted it, and I said I had already decided to go buy it, so yes! They are having a baby in 3 months or so. I am excited for them.

It goes without saying that if we go on a trip it’s only because Sue has put in countless hours researching places to stay and see. I mean, almost as much time as I spend reading up on Mac computers!

This was the sunset as seen from our B&B the night before, so we had high hopes for a spectacular evening at Stonehenge the next day.

Sue bought special tickets so we could get in with the stones with a handful of people after the crowds have left, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm. We’d have to wait until the evening the following day to find out how it would turn out, however. Before then we headed to the beach (Bournemouth) for the day.

Yes, this looks just like a beach:

We thought that on a super clear day you could see France from this position. But now we’re back in front of a computer I can see that it’s at least 60 miles to France. There’d have to be some nice big hills at the other end to see anything:

Madeline showing her form:

I got in on the action eventually:

You can see the kids were dressed for beach weather (well, they were able to undress for it) but I was not. But for the first 2 hours on the beach I had a sweatshirt and a long sleeve shirt on, so it wasn’t exactly toasty. But it was probably the nicest day of the year so far and we were lucky to have headed to the beach for it.

I could make a comment about english women in bathing suits, but I think I’ll refrain.

I could also make a comment about the fact that I put close to hundred miles onto the English roads this weekend, and not a single person was injured. We made heavy use of our Garmin nuvi 350, which I thought sucked when I first got it but now think it is the best little device I have ever bought. Its quality blew away the quality of the GPS that came with our 2001 Acura MDX that I am so glad we no longer own. I especially love the “There’s a traffic camera coming up” warning, including the speed you need to be below to avoid getting a ticket. Amazing… Amazing how many picture taking devices there are, even out in the middle of nowhere!

Here’s a comment I can make about the English: I love the way they get together and play a game of football. Everywhere you go, kids, adults and everyone in-between are playing an easy game of football. Everyone seems at ease and relaxed about it, too. A happy competition. Oh - except it is just the boys. Madeline is just about the only girl I have seen playing, except when she was in a soccer league attended almost exlcusively by Americans.

Here’s the Stonehenge teaser:

This next one will probably show up on our Christmas photo this year:

Jason doing some serious contemplating:

Obligatory cute kids shot:

My attempt at a cool, artsy fartsy shot. Yes, that is Sue and the kids on the right, and yes it sure looks like we’re the only ones there:

A nice father and son shot. Do we look at all alike? I don’t think so:

But now we’re home and things are presumably getting slowly back to normal. Sue, Jason and I were sick during this whole trip but I think I shall feel more comfortable coughing up a lung in the privacy of our own … apartment, than in some random B&B. On the other hand, we stayed in some nice places I must say.

Madeline is in the bath singing her heart out right now. Some day she is going to audition at American Idol, I can just see it. But maybe … maybe first we should get her some voice lessons to go with her one obvious, year-round passion.

I’ll have more pictures of Bath tomorrow, but for now I will leave you with this: I now look at every new meal as an opportunity not to stuff myself into oblivion. I have been successfully avoiding it for about a week or so now, although tonight was by far the toughest test: Indian food. Oh, nasty nasty Indian food, I love it too much, I have caused myself more physical discomfort with Indian food than anything else. The reasons for this new approach are self-explanatory and I will uncharacteristically leave the details out …

During the last week of October we spent 4 nights in Rome (over the kid’s half term school break). There was a lot of gelato to be had, interspersed with fountains, outdoor cafes, statues, piazzas, churches and some pretty amazing ancient ruins. It’s a good thing that we haven’t had a car for months, hence we all had pretty good walking legs which came in very handy in Rome. We explored mostly by foot, took an occasional bus, and did not use the metro at all.

First, a word about the public drinking fountains in Rome. They aren’t like the modern push button or pedal fountains you might be thinking of. They are located around town, and the water is apparantly very safe to drink, coming from deep natural springs. When we spotted our first one, Jason was so excited that he didn’t bother to wait to hear our guide’s explanation of how to drink from it properly.

hence, the after math…

Big sis took her time and clearly paid attention. Well done!

Trevi Fountain
Jason loves to throw things, so naturally we couldn’t pass up tossing coins into as many fountains as possible, especially the famed Trevi Fountain.

We wound up visiting the Trevi fountain twice since the kids really liked it (and it was a mere 5-minute walk from our hotel). We decided to fully engage in tourist behavior by tossing coins over our shoulders into the fountain, which supposedly means that some day, each tosser will return to Rome.

Here’s a shot Madeline took. Not bad…

Piazza Navona
We spent part of a day unwinding at the Piazza Navona, known for street entertainers and local arts & craft vendors.

As expected, there was a very old fountain in the piazza.

Everyone liked the water coming out of the the lady’s mouth, with the added touch of the pigeons making themselves at home.

While there, we had lunch at a nice outdoor cafe and then checked out the local arts & craft vendors.

There were a bunch of street entertainers who stood like statues dressed in various costumes. Madeline got a bow from King Tut.

Jason decided to give Tut his soldier’s pose. To this day, Jason remains uncertain whether these are real people. We haven’t indicated one way or another…

The kids especially liked the tallest street entertainer, who we named the Big Friendly Giant after Roald Dahl’s the BFG. We had coincidentally been reading this book to Jason, which has a central character that looks a lot like this guy.

We also visited the Church of St. Agnese. Madeline was quite fond of the the angel statues on the outside of the church.

Inside the church, I found myself quickly having to explain what a confessional was to Jason, in trying to prevent him from climbing all over one. I didn’t really think that he was paying much attention to what I was saying, but then he suddenly signaled for me to lean over for him to whisper in my ear and confessed that he had “kicked Madeline in the butt.” Ha ha ha! I was so tickled that I decided to see how Madeline would react. She immediately confessed that she picks her nose!

The Forum and Colosseum
At the recommendation of a friend, we wound up hiring a private tour guide to take us through both the Forum and Colosseum. We’d highly recommend our tour guide Olivia. She was extremely knowledgeable, patient, and we had absolute flexibility with the kids in tow. We also lucked out with the weather, so the kids were able to “run around” the ruins of the Forum.

At first, Madeline was not interested in the tour at all, and was quite moody (I think the prospect of having to spend a few hours listening to a guide rather than running around seemed quite boring to her). Then, to our surprise, she got over it and wound up having some very animated conversations with Olivia. I was privately hoping she would be able to get more out of our visit to Rome, because over the summer she had devoured all of the Roman Mystery books by Caroline Lawrence — a series of historical fiction books for children on ancient Rome.

In true Madeline fashion, she started quizzing Olivia on such things as the actual location of the emperor’s box (in the Colosseum), who Pliny the Elder really was and (amazingly) referencing actual page numbers in specific books when recalling some of the details.

Olivia was fantastic and patient through it all, and had even read some of the books herself! At one point, after Madeline proudly recounted a story line of how a central girl character had to fight as a gladiator to free her friend who had been forced into slavery. Olivia gently clarified that children never actually fought as gladiators in ancient Rome, and cautioned her not to believe everything in the books because they are fiction. Madeline sat back quietly with a thoughtful look on her face, which was priceless. :-)

In the mean time, Jason mainly occupied himself with climbing amongst the ruins (where ever possible) and finding ways to relate his experience to Star Wars in as many ways possible. We hung on to an empty Fanta bottle which he wielded as his light saber.

After the Forum, we headed to the Colosseum.

In Jason’s eyes, the Colosseum was akin to the arena in Star Wars, episode II. Unfortunately, they didn’t allow any one to go down into the actual field area where the gladiators fought. They had most of the field area “peeled back” so you could see the underground rooms where the slaves and animals were apparantly kept in holding.

The Pantheon
We toured the inside of the Pantheon, after overcoming my shock at the huge mobs of tourists milling around out front (October is supposed to be off season — I can’t imagine what the crowds are like during the summer!). There were lots of horse and buggy rides and people hocking their wares.

And of course plenty of tourist traps like this one.

I had never realized what an architectural feat the Pantheon was, and it’s truly amazing how intact it still is!

Jonathan took this cool shot of the domed ceiling. It has a perfect circular opening in the center that provides enough natural sun light to completely light up the interior of the Pantheon, even on the overcast day when we visited.

The highlight here for the kids was climbing all over the majestic columns.

Other Experiences
We tried unsuccessfully to get in to see the St. Peter’s Basilica cuppola (dome). You can see it in the distance here on our approach.

Even though we arrived before 10am (and it was supposedly off season), the line was already out the door and half way around the perimeter of the piazza. So, we took some nice pictures from the outside…

while the kids had a bit of fun jumping on and off the concrete posts and chasing each other in and out of the columns.

In the end, we skipped the dome, yet were able to at least tour the popes’ tombs. We were told to not even bother to try visiting the Vatican unless we lined up at the crack of dawn, so we skipped that entirely. However, we were able to glimpse parts of Vatican City via the open top bus tour, which the kids enjoyed.

We really enjoyed the outdoor cafes around Rome.

Some times, there was entertainment, even on a narrow street
with oncoming traffic!

We tried to visit the Castel D’ St. Angelo, however it was closed on the day we visited. It was impressive from the outside though.

Just past the castle, we were nearly swindled by a street vendor. The kids spotted some dancing paper characters on the street and went into major begging mode. Since we had promised them they could buy a few souvenirs, we stopped to look. After close inspection, I couldn’t figure out how the cheap paper characters seemingly pasted to popsicle sticks with pipe cleaners for support and magnets for feet, were moving completely in sync to the music from a nearby boom box. I asked the vendor and he explained in broken english that it was the magnetic waves from the boom box causing them to dance. I didn’t believe him, was still puzzled, but since I managed to bargain down the price to 3 euros for 2 of the characters, I thought it was relatively cheap and not a big deal as long as they worked. As I paid the guy, Jonathan came up and pointed out that the dancing characters were positioned between the boom box and a black duffle bag (which I hadn’t noticed). He asked the guy whether he could move the duffle bag, thinking there were something hidden in the bag that was really making the dancing trick work. The man vehemently said no, at which point I realized there was definitely something up with that bag. I quickly waved my hand in front of the bag and accidentally snapped a nearly “invisible” black thread that was holding up the dancing characters and tied between the duffle bag and boom box. The characters instantly fell flat on their faces and our kids’ jaws dropped. I immediately demanded our money back and the vendor quickly obliged. We left quickly, but later I felt bad about not doing something else like reporting him, but then who would we report this too? I was really glad that Jonathan had the wherewithal to probe further and so we didn’t get “taken” after all.