Day 6 Cardiff, Wales

Day 6

Oct 20/09

This morning we went out and explored the stone circle. The stone circle here surrounds the village and you can walk right up the stones and touch them. It was a bit of a drizzly day, but that didn't stop us from taking a hour or so walk around the stones. It was really quite fascinating. They were placed essentially in farmer's fields with sheep grazing around them. I guess the stones weren't placed in farmers fields, more like the farmer's fields surround the stones. Well we walked around, enjoyed the sheep fields and stones and headed out to Bath. At Bath we walked around and saw the beautiful Roman style buildings. This was the place the Romans lived a few centuries ago. They also had this giant map on the ground where for just a moment I standing in Edmonton. We then saw the Roman baths from the outside and headed back to the car to continue driving to Cardiff, a city in Wales. We drove off and then remembered that we probably should have looked for a money exchange a little more seriously, but I figured we'd be able to find one in Cardiff. Not long after that thought we made it upon our first and only toll booth of the trip. We ended up having to pay for most of it in Canadian dollars. Crappy thing was, they would only accept foreign dollars in denominations of $10. Since $10 is about 5 pounds and the toll was 5.40 it meant if we had paid it in Canadian dollars, the toll would have cost us $20! Luckily we had 40p and were able to pay the $10 and then 40p (in British pence). Man oh man. But we had made it across to another country. We were now in Wales. You could tell we were in a different country, but it's hard to put it in words why. There were still fields of sheep and green rolling hills with lots of colorful trees, but it was different. Mind you the signs helped since they were written in both English and Welsh. When we got to Cardiff, there wasn't too much to see. We could have gone into the Castle, but right now we have to be smart with money and we knew we'd be seeing Edinburgh Castle shortly. When circumstances are unknown, it's best to err on the side of caution. We walked around a bit and of course as I usually need to do it, I had McDonald's in Wales. My Big Mac tasted drier than in Edmonton, but still same old Big Mac. So we walked around a bit more and took pictures and then it was back to the car to decide where to next. We decided that we would spend the night in the Black Mountain National Park. We drove over and found a cozy spot near a lake, Trevor cooked up some pasta and we went to bed.

Day 5 London and Stonehenge England

Day 5

Oct 19/09

Trevor left after breakfast to pick up our Wicked Van. We decided that it would be cheaper if only one of us went. I stayed and carried all of our luggage down the narrow stairs to wait for Trevor's arrival. It was not an easy task since at least two pieces of luggage weigh over 40lbs and are not exactly the easiest thing to carry down stairs with little vision. Trevor arrived in our Tutti Fruitti van with fruit all over the sides and on the back the following message was written "Warning: the consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns to the forehead and knees". I thought it was cute, Trevor was less impressed stating it wouldn't have been his first choice. We were off on another road trip. First destination, Greenwich to see the Prime Meridian. It was definitely not an easy task to get there because we learned that London's streets change names as you drive on them! But we made it and we stood on time 0. It wasn't anything overly exciting, but it was just neat to be on, to say we've seen the Prime Meridian. We also walked around the Royal observatory and then drove to our next destination; Stonehenge. On our way we stuggled to find somewhere to pull off quickly to eat and ended up spending the last bit of cash that I had exchanged. We made it to Stonehenge just as the sun was setting and that's when we learned that you can only go to the stones at set hours. Otherwise you had to be satisfied with Stonehenge from 50 m away (not that you can walk up to the stones anyways, because there is a rope around them and a trail you must follow. It was pretty neat to see Stonehenge, though not as exciting as I anticipated. We took a bunch of pictures and drove to Avebury, a village which is the site of the largest stone circle. Right before we got there we decided to stop into a grocery store where we learned that our mastercard was not necessarily going to work in small town grocery stores (because they don't take credit cards). We had to scramble to find some sort of cash (which we had thought we had run out of the day before). We somehow managed to find 6 pounds between the two of us and went off with our groceries. It was to be our mission to exchange money as soon as possible after this. For the night we parked in a parking lot of a pub in the village after asking permission, though not getting a clear Yes in response. Apparently to ask the proper people was to find another company that was in charge of the parking lot. But we took our chances and slept there the night.

Hello from England #2

Day 3

Oct 17/09

We decided to head down to Portobello Road, a market famous for it's antiques. Not too far of a walk, we decided to head there by foot. It was an extremely packed and extremely interesting market. Set on Portobello Rd, the area is awesome. The buildings are all colorful and the street isn't very wide, so when we encountered the garbage truck trying to get through, it was definitely a tight squeeze! The antiques were really neat. I never really had an appreciation for antiques, but this was a good way to start. We had a snack at the market and then headed to purchase a ticket for the Underground to get to our next destination. That destination would be the London Tower. This is a fortress in the middle of London that is from the 1200's! It was used as a residence for royalty as well as prison and a place of private execution. It was really neat. People still live there today. It looks like a fairytale. Unbelieveable that real life actually looked like the stories they tell. It also amazes me how London looks. Depending on where you are, you will find areas that look old, older than anything I'm used to with our modern day Edmonton. I think the closest thing we have in Canada to London is Quebec city (the old part) and even that doesn't look quite that old in comparison. It's crazy. So, we went around London Tower, saw the Crown Jewels of England, which I must say are very impressive, saw some graffiti from the early day prisoners and then we headed out. We also saw the London Tower Bridge and then went to see the London Bridge (I had to. The song kept playing in my head over and over.) We crossed over the London Bridge and walked over to the Shakespeare Globe which is a theatre rebuilt in the image of the original theatre that his plays took place on. We only looked at it from the outside. Again my feet were tired. It was time to go back home. I believe this was the day that jet lag hit me so hard that I fell asleep around 8p and woke up around 5a and had issues falling back asleep. Oh how I love jet lag.

Day 4

Oct 18/09

Today we again headed to the Underground, this time heading to St. Paul's Cathedral, the church that Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married in. We looked around and then we were off to the British Museum. The nice thing about most museums in Britain is that they're free. And they're really good ones too. The British Museum has incredible items from all around the world including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico and others. They have the Rosetta Stone on display (that was pretty cool). They also had mummies, Greek and Roman statues and all kinds of other very museum like items. It was a quick trip here so that we could make it to the next two destinations in time. Next was the British Natural History museum. Trevor has been following his Geek Atlas which tells him all the geeky places to see all around the world. This was one of them. I was a little disappointed after seeing the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Next it was off to the Science Museum next door. Now this was cool. Unfortunately my feet (again) were giving up on me, but I had a bit of strength left to see some of the amazing displays including a section on history of Medicine. Wow, the craziness of how modern medicine began! It's amazing. I also learned of William Hunter. I had heard of him before, but very little. He was a doctor of obstetrics and apparently an amazing one at that. There were some pretty things on display about him. They also had "the closest thing to Watson and Cricks original model of DNA" on display and a huge display on clocks. This was definitely a cool Science museum. We spent a bit more time at the pub next to our hotel after all the museums this day, this time having a traditional meat pie and Trevor had sausage and mash (better known as bangers and mash). We then went back to get ready to leave London the next day.

Day 2 London, England

Day 2

Oct 16/09

We decided to head to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. Instead of paying for the Underground, we decided to do the 45 min walk according to google from our hotel to the Palace. We walked through Hyde Park where we saw people riding horses and continued on to the Palace. At the end of the park we saw a procession of police on horses heading towards the Palace. We chased them for a bit to take pictures, but they were much faster than us. We arrived at the Palace 30 min before the changing and we stood with the crowd pressed up against the fence. Our view wasn't great but at least we were right up at the fence so we could see inside. It was an interesting ceremony for the changing of the guard with two marching bands and a lot of military commands being yelled, but near the end of it it was hard to focus. It was funny though that the marching band played ABBA music. I'm not sure if it was just to entertain, but it was funny to see the red coated black hat men playing Dancing Queen! Next we were off to see Big Ben. Only a couple of blocks away, we saw him took pictures and then moved on to West Minster Abbey where we thought it too expensive to go inside and continued on to the London Eye. Now we sort of regret not doing into the Abbey because one of Trevor's favorite scientists is buried in there (Sir Isaac Newton). We headed to the London Eye (a giant Ferris wheel like ride that takes 30min and you see views of London). It was a nice day so it was perfect for the ride. At this point my feet were not doing so well. Poor planning also meant I had no water and little to eat. We went on the ride and saw the amazing view. Next it was off to Trafalagar Square and the National Gallery. Inside the National Gallery we saw authentic paintings from Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo! Though most of it was of Mary and Jesus, it was really neat to see. We also went into the National Portrait Gallery where we saw a lot of photos of British celebrities and a sculpture of a man's head made of frozen blood! Gross! Finally we decided to head home. We walked (and at this point my feet were on fire!) On the way we stopped into the National Geographic Store which was super cool and we saw Picadilly Circus, an area that looks like a mini version of Time Square. We walked down the main shopping street which was fully of cool shops and tons of double decker busses. We finally made it home and decided to eat at a pub next to our hotel where I had the fish and chips (a must in Britain). Then it was off to bed for the next day!

Day 1 London, England

October 15, 2009

Day 1

We have made it to our first destination, London, England. Our flight took us through Chicago, and was fortunately very uneventful. I'm not use to only 8 hr flights, so when they fed us supper and then with less than 2 hours sleep woke me up for breakfast, I wasn't too impressed. Saying good bye to family and friends was definitely difficult and I'm not eager to have homesickness set in (and around Christmas, I can see it being inevitable).

Getting our luggage to the hotel was a pain. I know I probably should have packed less and maybe had better luggage, but this was the only way to fit 40lbs of stuff (instead of 35 lbs with 5 lbs of suitcase). We took a train called Heathrow connect from the airport and then walked a couple of blocks to our hotel when we hit Paddington Station (as in the bear!) I waited in the train station until Trevor found the hotel because the luggage was so heavy (2 trips to get the bags in the hotel!) Our hotel is the Shakespeare Hotel and it's in an old Victorian building. The room is tiny, but at least we have an in suite bathroom. There is no elevator and the stairs are ridiculously steep once you get to the third floor (where of course we ended up) so dragging our bags was interesting.

Today was spent walking around our neighborhood and napping. I only meant to nap for 1 hour, but it turned into 5 hours. The weather was warm and sunny so I wish we had taken advantage, but I guess my body had no intention of functioning with only 2 hours of sleep. In our neighborhood there are a ton of double decker buses as well as fun red phone booths. We walked through Hyde park a bit (it's massive) and we'll try and see the Peter Pan Statue (the one from the movie Hook) tomorrow. We also walked around after supper and ended up in a very Egyptian part of town with tons of Shisha bars.

So far everything is great. We are 7 hours ahead of Edmonton so right now it's 10p as I write (3p Edmonton). That's all I have for now.

I'll talk to you all soon!

The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Montreal

September 21, 2009

Hello everyone,

A lot has happened since we last talked. We were heading to Rhode Island to meet up with Emanuela and Fil. We had a chance to get together with them and they took us on a tour of Brown University where Emanuela is doing her PhD. She walked through their traditional Van Winkle gates with Emma Watson (Hermione) and Bruce Willis’daughter Scout!!! Apparently she sees Emma Watson quite often! Wow! I was hoping for a glance, but no such luck. We stayed the night in their place, then it was off to Boston where we checked out the MIT museum. Very cool! The museum holds stuff that is/was made by people going to MIT. There were jumping robots and a robot named Kismet that responds appropriately to human speech intonations! So crazy! They also had these crazy art sculptures that would move with gears. Crazy stuff. We also stopped by Quincy market and had some atlantic lobster, clam chowder and Trevor had oysters and clams. Very yummy. I also managed to get us a parking ticket because I was parked too far from the curb! At least there wasn’t any face to face cop action happening with us. Laura, I know you warned us about how crazy Boston was, but it wasn’t until I was super angry with Trevor that I remembered you telling us! Next stop was crossing the border back to Canada!!! We were welcomed back by a very unenthusiastic and uncaring border officer. That was nice. Trevor found a lovely campground at 5 am atlantic time (we lost an hour crossing into the maritimes) that we parked at for the night in New Brunswick (though unfortunately I slept through the arrival, the park and most of the departure from the campground). We then stopped into Saint John where we had some breakfast and I felt a bit of nostalgia from being there back in 2002 for nationals. Then it was off to Nova Scotia to meet up with Moriah and Jared. Their place is AMAZING! They have a river in their backyard! Just insane. This is the kind of place I want to live in. Very cute house (small) with a netted back porch that looks out into the small yard and river flowing by. That river meets with the ocean only a few hundred meters away. You can walk about 2 min and swim in the ocean!!! Unbelievable! We celebrated Moriah’s birthday and went to bed for the night and the next day headed over to Peggy’s cove, a cute tiny village with randomly placed and randomly colored houses. Trevor and Jared jumped around on the huge boulders and Moriah and I took pictures of them and the lighthouse. We headed then into Halifax and walked the boardwalk (apparently the longest in somewhere…Canada maybe?) We stopped into a restaurant there to have oysters (well, Trevor had oysters and mussels, I had the chowder and the crab dip). You got to take advantage of the seafood while on the coast. That night we drove all the way to Charlottetown PEI! It was a cute small town and for some reason all the hotels were completely booked up but we managed to find a deal on Orbitz for this one hotel (that when asked inside told us all they had was suites that would cost $150). Turns out they were all booked, so through the deal on Orbitz we ended up getting a suite!! Very cool! It was a two story hotel room, very spacious with a microwave. The next day we went to their international shellfish festival where we indulged in mussels, Trevor had a ridiculous amount of oysters (some of them for free!) and clams and we both got to eat award winning chowder!!! They were having a competition and after the judges got served the chowder, everyone could go up and get a sample. We sampled 4 different kinds! We also got a free taste of a lobster dish that was being demo’d. We watched her cook it and then we ate it! How fabulous! And then we were off. Off to Quebec City. We made it 50km out from the city and parked in a rest area for the night. Today we walked the walled city and checked out all the cute little shops. It was like Europe (not that I’ve been, but I assume from the pictures I’ve seen). So very cute. We had crepes for breakfast and had poutine for lunch from chez ashton, apparently one of the restaurants claiming to have invented the poutine! We then drove to a chocolate museum (very small little chocolate store with a display) and then it was off to Montreal. We figured we wouldn’t do much in Montreal so we went to dinner and ate and were heading back to the hotel when a couple stopped us and offered us free tickets to the Canadien’s hockey game that had already started (because they had to leave early) so luckily our hotel is right outside the bell centre, so we went. We watched the Canadiens score 3 goals against Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh score 1 on the Canadiens. It was very exciting! (The score was 4 vs 3 for the Canadiens, but we missed the first two of Pittsburgh and the first one from the Canadiens). Now we’re hanging out in the hotel. Tomorrow we are heading to Ottawa!

HOPE EVERYONE IS DOING GREAT!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Maine

This is an amazingly long email! I apologize for the length and hopefully you'll be able to get through it so that you can see all the crazy stuff we've done. Right now we are in a Welcome Centre in Maine heading to St.John New Brunswick. We'll see how far we make it tonight. Watch for the next email with details about the last day or so.

SMILE:)

September 12, 2009

We did a bunch of stuff in the last few days. Kennedy Space Centre was super cool. We did the NASA up close tour which brought us around to the launch sites and other areas of the Centre. Okay, they were from a distance, but still cool. We got to see a shuttle and touch a moon rock. Then it was off to the beaches of Miami. We got an awesome hotel using Hotwire. It was called Whitelaw and it was literally 30sec from the beach (not beachfront, but pretty close). The beach was awesome!!! It was a nice way to just hang out and do nothing. They were pretty empty too because it was a Tuesday. Unfortunately half way through the day it did cloud over, but it was still warm, so we hung out until around 5p and then headed back to get supper. We found out that our hotel was serving complimentary drinks from 7-8p so Trevor and I took advantage. It was great, until I realized that getting burnt at the beach and then getting drunk meant that my immune system had been down for too long and I was going to get sick (in retrospect, everything is so clear). After Miami we drove to Fort Lauderdale to see if I could meet up with one of the girls I worked with. Unfortunately she wasn’t there and I couldn’t get a hold of her L oh well, next stop. We drove as far as we could toward Washington DC. We passed through North Carolina (Kami, I did a little wave for you and Ron) and South Carolina (obviously not in that order) and then Virginia where we pulled off for the night. The next day around 5 p we finally made it to Chantilly, VG where we went to a sister Smithsonian. We saw some pretty cool air and space stuff including the concord that in Transformers is the old guy (okay I have no idea any Transformer names, but if you see the second one, you know who I’m talking about) and we saw the Enterprise shuttle and cool artifacts like their food and personal items. We also saw the Enola Gay which is the airplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Crazy stuff. Then around 7p we got into Washington DC and went searching on Hotwire to get a hotel. We got a Hilton, but once we got to the Hilton we realized that the Hilton is not all it’s cracked out to be. It means that parking costs $30 a day and you pay for every bloody thing including internet! It was such a scam. The room was also much smaller than our Best Western and Whitelaw AND no fridge or safety box (well you could ask for it, but the other hotels just had them in the room). At this point in the trip I was starting to feel crappy. The next day we were off to see the Smithsonian’s. We saw “the castle” where the loot pile from The Night at the Museum 2 was held and also one of the American Idol desks. And then we went to the Museum of Natural History full of stuffed animals. It sounds worse than it was. It was actually pretty cool. Ash, you would have been right at home at this place! They had a bones display from pilgrims in the 17^th and 18^th century and their analysis of the bones. It was cool. Then we went to the air and space museum but at that point I was definitely museum’d out! I was not pleasant company, but Trevor was awesome! We also went to see the Washington monument, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know how far we walked but it was insane! We got pizza that night and went back to the hotel. The next day was another round of museums and the zoo which has a panda!!! That was awesome!!! We tried doing that quick and then headed back to where the monuments and stuff were but some crazy rally and concert were going on and it was impossible to drive. We parked and ended up going to the Museum of American History which goes through how science spread and how the Americans travelled and there is one display on Pop Culture with one of 5 pairs of the original Ruby Slippers as well as a Kermit puppet and other things of that sort. We saw a CP30 from one of the movies and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle from one of the movies. Weird things like that. It was cool. But I was definitely done! We headed to our now new favorite place to eat (at least my favorite) Duccini’s grabbed a ridiculous amount of food and then headed out of Washington DC. We drove until we got to Jackson, New Jersey and parked by a lake for the night. The next day we were off to Six Flags! It was AWESOME!!! I LOVE ROLLERCOASTERS! Trevor didn’t feel too well for most of the day, but I went on most of the rollercoasters twice! It was awesome. By 5p we decided to head out and drive to New York. Once again, Hotwire put us in a Hilton. We used Hotwire outside a Crowne Plaza where we found internet. Finding internet has been interesting. There isn’t much unlocked wireless down here. Since we were going through New Jersey anyways, we decided to stop by Trevor’s old co-workers place. It was neat to see another person we knew on this crazy trip of ours. That night we got into our hotel by the Newark Airport (cheaper than New York) and slept until 10a. I just couldn’t get out of bed. We didn’t get out of the hotel room until 12p. At that point we headed to the Liberty State Park from the New Jersey side so that we could go see the Statue of Liberty. First we took a Ferry to Ellis Island, the main island of immigration. We went through the building where people would register to be immigrants in the USA. It was really neat. Then we took the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty where we actually got to go inside of the monument. We could only go up to the base of the statue on an oberservation deck that looked out to New York but it was still pretty cool. The view was great. Took some pictures then headed on the ferry back to our car. Thank goodness we went through the New Jersey side because there were probably 50X more people going on the ferry headed to New York than New Jersey. It was insane! Back at our car I figured we should head into New York but once we got there we were pretty much at a stand still. Traffic was awful. It was at that point Xenia, one of my old synchro kids, called and we told her we’d meet her. Never agree to something unless you know the full details. Apparently to get out to Long Island where she lives is 1.5hours from NewYork! But we drove out there and had supper with her which was really good. We were there quite late and then had a 1.5 hour drive back to the hotel, so once again we slept in until pretty late. This time we drove into Brooklyn and parked outside Trevor’s cousin’s place because she got back to us and said we could spend the night. It was the most interesting neighborhood. There were all these Jewish people with top hats and ringlets(the men) and the women wore black skirts and these cute hats or head wraps. It was crazy! I didn’t realize that New York had these kinds of neighborhoods. We took the metro into New York and headed to the World Trade Centre memorial site first, then it was off to Time Square where we saw the Mayor of London. Time Square was incredible! I can’t imagine seeing it all the time. This is where ADHD develops I think. So many flashing lights and adds, it’s crazy. Then we headed to Central Park before our Broadway was going to start. We went to see Wicked! It was AMAZING! That was definitely a great broadway musical to see and I highly recommend it to anyone going to New York. The singers were amazing and the set was incredible. It was so well done! After the show, we went through Time Square to our metro station. Time Square was showing Fashion week on the big screen! You should have seen all the people staring at the giant screen. It was very cool to be there. It was amazing how quiet it was even though there were so many people. Very neat. And then it was off to Manda’s for the night. We finally got in touch with her and got to talk to her briefly before she headed to bed. Her apartment was really neat. It was a very spacious high ceiling apartment with 2 bedrooms and an amazing view of New York! It was really awesome. Today, we are off to Providence to see Emanuela and Fil.

Hope everyone is doing great!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices