The long and winding road

Here's where we ended up today - the prime meridian, where you can stand with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western hemisphere. This plaque is on the side of a building at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

The red ball on top of this building drops at exactly 1 p.m. every day. It's used by ships on the Thames to set their chronometers.

How we got to Greenwich is the real story for the day. A few days ago, I mentioned that some locals consider the London Underground to be overcrowded, inconvenient, and unreliable? Well, today it was all of those. There are frequently "planned engineering works" on the weekends causing various lines to be partially or completely shut down. This weekend was a very bad one for such shutdowns. We live in Uxbridge, which is on the northwest side of London. Greenwich is on the southeast side of London. Since Darrell had to go in to work for a bit this morning, we didn't get started until about 12:30. It normally would have been about an hour and a half to get there. Today, it took over three hours! There were partial outages on three different lines which affect our travel, and long delays on some of the others, meaning that for about a half dozen stops, we spent more time sitting in a stopped train in the tunnel between stations than we did moving.

Upon arriving in Greenwich (by "replacement bus" service, since there were no trains running to Greenwich at all from the direction of our approach), we set out to find the Greenwich Union, a pub that Darrell had on his "to try" list. The beer was great, we were no longer starving after a snack there, and could finally get on our way toward the observatory, which we knew closes at 5. We hiked up the hill - the observatory is of course on the highest hill in the area - and arrived at the entrance at 4:30. We didn't have much time, but there is no charge for admission, so we made the best of it. We followed the signs to the meridian, where hundreds of people were lined up to take photos of their friends in front of a sculpture straddling the line. I opted to photograph the sign on the wall instead, as we had views to take in of London from the top of the hill, and even more importantly, a gift shop to visit. The girls have enjoyed gift shops almost as much as anything else on our trip. Almost all of the shops have a small pin or badge for less than a pound that makes a good souvenir.

After leaving the gift shop, the girls opted to get back down the hill by rolling down the grassy slope, joining many other kids doing the same. Darrell and I chose to walk, wimps that we are.


After our whirlwind visit to the observatory, we walked back into town and had dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant called Cafe Sol that we had seen on the way in. We didn't have high expectations. All I wanted was better food than we had at the Texas Embassy Cantina last week. Much to our surprise, the food was pretty good, definitely better than the cantina.

The ride home was much less eventful than the ride out. Other than the replacement bus service from Greenwich to the North Greenwich Tube station, everything else was running just fine. I think that we should try again for the observatory on a weekday!

High up over the river

Today's adventure was a visit to the Tower Bridge. I'm sure you've seen it:


The Tower Bridge is London's only drawbridge. About 1000 times per year, the road deck is raised to allow large ships to pass through. The bridge is over 100 years old and was a major engineering feat in its day.

There is also a tour, called the Tower Bridge Experience. Did we go on it? Of course we did! See those walkways way up high between the two towers? That's where you get to go on the tour. The views are wonderful. The walkways are completely enclosed and don't feel at all scary. There are two walkways, one facing east and the other facing west over the Thames. The tour sends you along both walkways. There are numerous little (about 6x10 inches or so) open windows along the walkways for the purpose of taking pictures. That way you can get your photos without having to shoot through window glass.

This picture was taken from the sidewalk at road level before we went up in the tower for the start of the tour. What a gorgeous bridge!


Here are a couple of shots taken from the walkway. This one shows all of the boat traffic on the Thames.


This is one of the shots that shows why I think that London's official bird should be the construction crane! Everywhere you look, there are dozens of huge cranes working on what must be massive projects. That funky rounded building in the foreground is London's city hall.


This photo was taken from one of the walkways looking toward the other walkway.

As we were leaving, the clouds had gathered, looking kind of ominous. I love this shot of the bridge with the darkening sky.

Groceries, baking, and other kitchen stuff

Wish you were here! More about this later. Keep reading!



I just returned from another grocery trip. As mentioned before, we shop very frequently due to being on foot, not to mention the very small refrigerator in our apartment. Here are some observations I've made in the grocery stores here. The shopping carts are seriously awesome. The wheels work! Forward, backward, and SIDEWAYS! It's a little strange at first, seeing people slide the carts sideways to the other side of the aisle, but it really makes things more convenient in a lot of ways. I did have to get used to watching for carts moving from any and all directions, though!

I am so happy that I decided to bring some of my reusable shopping bags to England with us! They really make it so much easier to haul groceries home than using plastic. I can sling the bags over my shoulders and carry far more weight that way. Save the planet and my hands at the same time. That's a win-win!

Some ingredients are kind of hard to find here. It's taken me a month to find the vegetable oil in the store. It was there all along, but hidden well away from the places that I would normally look. It's not anywhere near the olive oil, which was easy to find. Strange. Nuts to put in baked goods are in tiny little packages of around 4 ounces each, not in the giant one- and two-pound bags we can get. Pecans don't seem to be here at all. I've had no luck finding chocolate chips, but have made some great cookies with chopped up chocolate bars.

Many things come in much smaller packages than we're used to in the U.S. We get huge bags of potato chips at home, but here the crisps (chips) are more available in bags of individual sized packs. That would be convenient at home when packing kids' lunches - we sometimes have trouble finding the varieties that we want in the individual packs. Sandwich meats seem to come in very small packages here - maybe six or seven slices of turkey or ham per package.

The bananas are wonderful here. I've become so frustrated with the bananas at home. Seems like if I buy them from the big "W" store, they start out way too green and go straight to rotten without ever turning nice and yellow. And the other stores' bananas are starting to act the same way. Every batch I've purchased in England has been perfect. I can buy them with just a tiny hint of green and they ripen perfectly and last for at least three days before getting too "freckled" for my kids to eat them (I personally like them freckled, so more for me if they get that way).

I love to bake. I seriously considered having my Kitchen Aid mixer sent to England in our air shipment. I decided against it in the end, as I'd cry if anything happened to it. So I bought a cheap hand mixer and sent it instead. We've baked at least a half dozen batches of cookies and a cake since we've been here. Earlier this week, the girls decided to try carrot cake for the first time. They loved it, so today, we're making carrot cake. We're using this recipe from the Pioneer Woman, since she's got awesome recipes that never disappoint. Her blog is hilarious, too, so stay and visit for awhile when you go. That's the cake up at the top of this post, by the way. It's so yummy it ought to be illegal. Someday I'll get even with Pioneer Woman for what her blog has done to my rear!

Baking in the apartment has been a bit of an adventure. First, there's the oven temperature. I knew that it would be in Celsius, so I tossed a little oven thermometer from the dollar store in our shipment. Boy am I glad that I did! Not only is the oven in Celsius, it's mis-calibrated pretty badly. A temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit equates to about 190 degrees Celsius, but on this oven, I have to set it to nearly 220! So I have a little cheat sheet of what oven temps to use. Then there is the issue of baking tools and equipment. Of couse, I sent a set of measuring cups and spoons. I also sent over a small cookie sheet, since Darrell told me that the oven was small. A small sheet just barely fits in the oven. I can bake eight cookies at a time. I have no large mixing bowl, so we've been using a small pasta pot to mix in. I figured out that a 250 gram package of butter is just a little bit over two sticks of butter. Lop off a little piece to grease the pan, and use the rest in the recipe. Katrina and I just repeat, "we're making do!" each time we make a substitution for an ingredient, tool or dish that we lack.

Here's our kitchen. It's not very big, but it has a surprising amount of counter space. We haven't been cooking much, but it's not been bad for cooking when we do take the time. In the center near the sink, that is the washer/dryer under the counter. Yes, it's in the kitchen, and it is indeed all in one machine. First it washes, then it switches to drying. The load size is tiny, less than half what our machine at home will hold. And it's very loud. It sounds like a plane is taking off in the kitchen when it spins. The electric rates are six times higher in the daytime than after 11 p.m., so we run it after bedtime and put up with the noise. On the right side of the kitchen are the dishwasher, the freezer, and the refrigerator, all under the counter. I haven't seen a refrigerator like that since college. Fortunately, it works better than our dorm fridges ever did!

The royal treatment

The girls and I set out early (for us) today to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Many people go really early - at least two hours before the 11:30 ceremony - to get in a good position. We did not do that. And I'm glad. Take a look at the people in the good positions. We were across the street, and we still had other people's elbows in our faces. And it wasn't even a really crowded day, I'm sure. It's a weekday, school is still in session, and I could see large swaths of sidewalk behind us with nobody standing there.

Here are the Welsh Guardsmen marching into the palace grounds for the ceremony. I love the scale of the photo, with the guardsmen against the backdrop of the enormous monument.


Here's the palace, with the Royal Standard flying, meaning that the queen was in residence today.


After watching what we could from our vantage point, we left to find a snack. First we walked several blocks from the palace to get beyond the tour groups. The tour buses aren't allowed to get very close to the palace, so they all line up about four blocks away to let everyone out. After the changing of the guard, small groups like the three of us have to be wary, so as to not get trampled by groups of 50 or so people trying to keep up with their tour guides. Once clear of that craziness, we picked up some cake and drinks at a small cafe. Then more walking to see if we could find a little park to sit and eat our snack. I found a little park, sat down, turned around, and what did I see? Check it out! We just accidentally ended up right across the street from Westminster Abbey. Gotta love a town where that kind of thing happens every day.


We took advantage of our find and went on the tour of the abbey. It was great! They have an audio tour, so we all got our handsets and took off to see the church. I could have stayed there all day looking at the magnificent architecture. The ceiling in one area, called the Lady Chapel, was so fabulous that I wished I could just lie on my back in the middle of the floor and stare at it!

I hadn't realized just how many famous people are buried in the abbey. Kings and queens, of course, but also Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Hardy, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Olivier, and many more. Wow.

Upon leaving the church, I happened to snap this photo. What a perfect London sight - Big Ben with a London double decker bus in the foreground. London is just a wonderful town for sightseeing.

Rain, rain, go away

Another gray rainy day in London. I missed the opportunity shot for the day - in the morning, everyone was wearing coats and scurrying about because it was below 60 degrees, windy and raining. You would have sworn it was winter if not for the fully-leafed trees and blooming flowers!

Another museum visit was on the agenda for today. We made an excursion to Trafalgar Square. Lunch was at the Texas Embassy Cantina, a restaurant chain started by Gene Street, who's well-known to Dallasites. I'd love to say that it was superb Mexican food, but I can't. It was the best Mexican food we've had in London, but that's really not saying too much. And the prices, like everything in London, are outrageous. Enchilada dinners are £12-£15 ($24-$30!) Oh well, it was worth a try.

The National Gallery is at Trafalgar Square. You can see the building in this photo behind Lord Nelson's column. The museum is very large, with collections covering about 500 years. My favorites were the impressionists, as usual. My years of high school French class taught me more about these artists than any others, so I'm on familiar ground in a room full of Monet, Degas, Renoir, Matisse, Pisarro, and their contemporaries. The National Gallery does not disappoint when it comes to this era. It's amazing to me that *cough* twenty-seven years after high school, I can still identify these artists on sight. Thanks, Ms. VanderGiesen!


On the way home from the train station, it was raining fairly hard. We walk about 3/4 of a mile from the train to the apartment. Since Katrina's feet were already wet, she set about jumping in every puddle she could find. Not our usual July kind of day, but she was jubilant, and I loved watching her.

More museum hopping!

Because my girls are being so great about letting me continue to snap their photo nearly every day, I'll start off with yet another "aren't they beautiful?" picture. For those who know my kids, you'll appreciate the totally appropriate sentiment on Katrina's shirt - "I (heart) pink". 'Nuff said.


Now for more London adventures. On Thursday we went to the London Transport Museum, which is dedicated to the history of the London Underground, the buses, and the taxis - all of the components of the super convenient public transportation here. I've talked to some locals who consider the Tube to be overcrowded, inconvenient, and uncomfortable. I, on the other hand, find it to be very reasonably priced and easy to get from one place to another. And yes, sometimes it's overcrowded, inconvenient and uncomfortable. But for those of us with no car, it's fabulous. And when you come from a city like Dallas, where the public transportation system is about 30 years behind the times, you can truly appreciate how great London has it!

Anyway, the museum was terrific. I was amazed to see how long ago all of the Underground lines got started. Even our little town of Uxbridge, which is way out at the end of the line, got train service before 1910! Here are a couple of photos from the museum, one of an old double decker bus, and one of an early horse-drawn tram car. There were displays beginning in the 1800s and continuing through planned expansions up to around 2050. There's even a simulator where you can drive one of the trains. The girls and I all had a great time.

The transport museum is located right next to Covent Garden, which is a lovely market with lots of shops, arts and crafts vendors, street performers, bakeries and restaurants. All in all, a very nice way to spend an afternoon.


Today we ventured in to London again, this time to the British Museum. This place is absolutely massive, so we didn't even plan to try to see the whole thing at once. We spent most of our time in the Egypt and Greece collections, which are amazing. One of the major things to see at the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone. My photo stinks, but it's proof that I did indeed see the stone up close and in person (my kids did too, as you can tell by the reflection that I managed to capture of them!)



For those looking for crafting news on this blog, you'll be happy to know that we slipped in a visit to Blade Rubber Stamps, which happens to be less than a block from the museum. I found a few British-made stamp sets and some patterned paper. It's very nice to be able to get these things here instead of paying even higher prices for mail order to the U.S.

Summer is here!

Finally - the temperature in the London area topped 80 degrees for the first time this summer! The girls and I celebrated by going to the London Zoo for the day. We heard a lot of people grumbling about the heat, but it really wasn't too bad, at least not for people who frequently visit the zoo back home when it's over 90!

This photo was taken at the very end of the day. We were completely exhausted, but they still managed some smiles for the camera.


We really enjoyed the zoo. One great thing about London's zoo is the large number of walk-through exhibits, where you're in the enclosure with the animals. We walked through a butterfly house, three different aviaries, and a monkey enclosure. There were many groups of school children on field trips at the zoo today, which is always a bit of a challenge. Late in the afternoon, things settled down quite a bit when the field trip groups left to return to their schools. In the walk-through monkey area, the guide said that the kids had scared the monkeys and that they were hiding. We watched one area of dense leafy bushes and found that if we watched very quietly, the tiny monkeys would come out to the front of the bushes and watch us, too. They got really close to us - maybe a foot or less sometimes. Very cute and worth the wait to see them.

Here are a couple of animal pictures. Katrina loves the giraffes, so we had to catch them. And the bird below was in one of the walk-through aviaries. I'm afraid I didn't catch his name, though.