Sorry, I know that if I don't blog right away that I will end up not blogging at all, which is what happened with London.
Driving on the wrong side of the road was sadly dissapointing. Most of London has double lanes in each direction, or one way streets, so if you kept in the right lane it was just like driving at home. Plus I had a German rental, which meant that the steering wheel was on the side that I was used to. The only problem was taking left turns, where you had to be careful because you needed to stay inthe left lane. I wasn't too bad, and I am proud to have become a member of "I have driven on the wrong side of the road in England" club.
The first day we were there they had a heat wave.. (84) LOL BUT our room had no airconditioning, so we bought a fan just to be able to sweat out the night. VERY hot and stuff room, but a good price for London. BE PREPARED TO PAY ALMOST DOUBLE THE US DOLLAR. Truly horrible exchange rates, I was appalled at home much money we ended up spending. For some reason I came with the idea that for every British pound would would pay $1.50. Try closer to 1.9x!! Augh!
So we shopped and sweated away the first day. All I ended up with was a pair of Van's tennis shoes. LOL Jess got some good deals on light weight shirts for her new job at the Child Care Center on post. Other than that we got lots of exercise walking.
The second day we decided to scrub the walking and go on a bus tour. Smartest move we made while in London. It was a fleet of double deckers, top open (YES) and it made the rounds of all the main attractions in London, you buy a ticket for one day and could get on and off the buses whenever you pleased. We ended up just taking the entire round trip (sore legs)only getting off at Buckingham Palace ( a must!) and Harrods ( a dissapointment)but otherwise was a cool way to see the sights from up high. They had a tour guide on every busm so we got all the information you could ever want. We even got stopped near Parlament(sp) when out of the blue a motorcycle cop comes from another way, stops traffic in all four directions, and then a BUNCH of police, limos, ambulances, chimney sweeps(j/k), you name it came out of the building and drove away. Someone important obviously. So we at least drove by Big Ben and all the other thingys....
I was also dissapointed there were not fish and chips vendors on the street corners. LOL Obviously they don't sell them on corners in the little cons made out of newspaper anymore. NO! And the only way I even got to eat fish and chips was when we stopped in a pub near Buckingham Palace to eat lunch. But no cone, just a plate. They WERE good though.
The last day before starting home we decided to take a short road trip and drive out to Windor Palace. You are able to tour what the call the Royal Apartments. LOLOLOL. Yeah, of Kings from about 1,000 years ago. (I wanted to see the new apartments dang it. LOL. Yeah, but St George's Cathedral was amazing, and they actually ahd a guard out from behind fences, so you could pose with him. I told him that I apologized for everyone who gives him a hard time. (Had to do it, sorry) They are so YOUNG, they all look about 18, probably the only ones who can stand motionless for so long.
We also bought two St Christopher medallions, the patron saint of travelers. (snort) Yeah.. We put them on and headed back to drive down to Dover to catch the Ferry back to France and start the drive home.
I think we hit every traffic jam within 1,000 miles. We ended up missing the Ferry, though we were able to catch the next free of charge. Getting off on the France side we discovered that our GPS navigation system no longer worked.
This was the beginning of a FIFTEEN hour hellish drive through the entire country of France. We should have been home by 3 am LATESt, we got home at 10:30 the next morning, 2 hours before I had to work.. My daughter spent the entire night keeping me awake by telling me not to drive off the road. Oh my lord. (Needless to say, we immediately took of the St Christopher medallions and have not worn them since. LOL)
France seems to be the country of NO largehighway system. Once we got off track, we literally had to go through all sorts of odd roads through small towns, etc, even with a map.
I did however get to dredge up any of the French words most people have heard along the way, in order to talk to the people at the gas stations. I mean, we were in France no man's land, these people spoke NO English. I quickly dug up the words, merci, S'il vous plait , bon jour, oui, the whole bit. Everything else was communicated via shrugs, hand gestures, pointing to things and a LOT of dumbfounded looks on my part. I love how when people know that you don't know the language, they still ramble on, leaving you with a stunned look like "You REEALLY expected me to understand that??" LOL
But hey, just one more adventure under our belts.
I already have my next trip planned, BY MYSELF!
I am leaving Monday, July 3rd to go to the Italian island of Sardinia. Paradise I have been told. Aifare cost $75 round trip, though now I am adding another $50 to it, simply because I found out I can stay another day, and so I didn't get the one cent fare on the second way back. Hotel is $65 a day, 3day/nights on the beautiful island of Sardinia ran me $320 minus food, etc. Not bad! I may also take a ferry over to the mainland which would be Cinque Terra (sp) a place I have always wanted to go.
Anyway, I am pretty excited about this trip.
On a much sadder note, a man I worked with at the State of Minnesota was killed this past Friday in a truly horrible car/motorcycle accident. Unfortunately he was driving the motorcycle.
Karl Boese was his name, and I remember him always having a big smile, always willing to help out when I had problems.
He was only 42 and leaves behind his wife of only two weeks, and their unborn child.
I am not a religious person, but those of you who are, please say a prayer for him, his wife and children.
This was the news report on the accident: News video
Monday, June 26, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Holy Moly!
What a crazy last few days. We are heading back to Germany today, but stopped into an internet cafe to check mail, bank balance (gulp) and write a bit in the blog, before we head back across the pond to mainland Europe, Germany, and jobs. (sigh)
We headed out of Hanau about 10:30 Sunday night, drove though Germany, a bit of Belgium, very nearthe Amsterdam border ( I was sooooooo tempted to stop in *wink*) and then through a bit of France to the town of Calais, on the English channel. We got there about 4 I think, and ferry across did not leave until 6:30, so we queued(sp) up with the other drivers in a line to get on, then walked around a bit, hung out in the car, etc. Jess was really nervous about the whole boat thing. I told her not to be, because the English Channel is very shallow, not like a real ocean, etc.
The only thing I was worried about was if there would be enough movement to get seasick. I had only been out on a boat in the ocean twice before, once in the Florida Keys when we went snorkeling, and once whale watching in California. THAT trip I got really seasick.
Finally at about 6:15 everyone started driving onto this HUGE ship. I have pictures, but they will have to be posted after I get home. So they SQUEEZED this three lanes of cars onto the ship, I was the first on in the middle line,and he stopped us so there was NO room on my side to get out, and Jess' door could open between two cars. i thought this weird until I remembered we were driving a car with the steering on the wrong side for England, so usually the other side is where the driver got out. SOOOOO I got to crawl over the shift knob, with visions of knocking it out, the car jumping into gear and the whole first 12 cars dumping into the English Channel. (Hey, what can I say, I have an active imagination. LOL)
So all parked and out of the car, we followed the line of people upstairs. I wanted to go outside to take a look around, and we found the back deck and Jess sat down, begging me not to go near the rail, hang onto my camera, etc. LOL It was funny. I have a picture of her sort of hunched over in a seat, scared to death.
I LOVED it out there, we had picked the perfect time to cross over, the sun was just coming up, seagulls doing their thing and making there noise, you could see out into the Channel from the back of the boat. GOD!!! This is life! I am scared I will never be able to go back to a so called "normal" life ever, after all of this. (thank god)
Finally the boats engines started churning, right under us.. You could just feel the boat vibrating, and see the water behind churning. All the seagull and some tern like birds landed in the water behind. It looked like the boats engines were churning up the fish, so all the birds were hanging out getting an easy breakfast..
I just couldn't stop smiling. Here were were, on the edge of France, with our car on a ferry, waiting to sail across to England. AUUGHHH.. I could barely stand it..
So we back out of the port, then as the ferry started turning around, we headed in to check out the rest of the ship.
It was huge, four decks high, and huge restauarnt area, a coffee shop in the front with windows along the whole front. That was as close as you could get to being outside along the front. There was a duty free store, mostly liquer, a huge cosmetics store, along botht side were windows and nice plish seats to sit in, or sleep in. While we were up front with a couple of cups of coffee, there were several members of a sporting team, still in uniform with the coch snoring like crazy.LOL
The whole journey across the channel took about 75 minutes, and then you could start to see England! It looked like sandy dunes with green gross on had been scooped downword so as if someone had taked a spoon and scooped them. They were high,but looked more like sand from far away. As we got closer we saw a big castel, etc.
People started heading down to their cars so we also did. We docked, the front went down and we all started driving out. NOW I would get to see what driving on the wrong side of the road was going to be like!!
Well, not to be rude, but I have to get my car out of parking, and we need to head out. I will write more tongiht when we get home (hopefully) Hang in there, hope you all are well!!!
We headed out of Hanau about 10:30 Sunday night, drove though Germany, a bit of Belgium, very nearthe Amsterdam border ( I was sooooooo tempted to stop in *wink*) and then through a bit of France to the town of Calais, on the English channel. We got there about 4 I think, and ferry across did not leave until 6:30, so we queued(sp) up with the other drivers in a line to get on, then walked around a bit, hung out in the car, etc. Jess was really nervous about the whole boat thing. I told her not to be, because the English Channel is very shallow, not like a real ocean, etc.
The only thing I was worried about was if there would be enough movement to get seasick. I had only been out on a boat in the ocean twice before, once in the Florida Keys when we went snorkeling, and once whale watching in California. THAT trip I got really seasick.
Finally at about 6:15 everyone started driving onto this HUGE ship. I have pictures, but they will have to be posted after I get home. So they SQUEEZED this three lanes of cars onto the ship, I was the first on in the middle line,and he stopped us so there was NO room on my side to get out, and Jess' door could open between two cars. i thought this weird until I remembered we were driving a car with the steering on the wrong side for England, so usually the other side is where the driver got out. SOOOOO I got to crawl over the shift knob, with visions of knocking it out, the car jumping into gear and the whole first 12 cars dumping into the English Channel. (Hey, what can I say, I have an active imagination. LOL)
So all parked and out of the car, we followed the line of people upstairs. I wanted to go outside to take a look around, and we found the back deck and Jess sat down, begging me not to go near the rail, hang onto my camera, etc. LOL It was funny. I have a picture of her sort of hunched over in a seat, scared to death.
I LOVED it out there, we had picked the perfect time to cross over, the sun was just coming up, seagulls doing their thing and making there noise, you could see out into the Channel from the back of the boat. GOD!!! This is life! I am scared I will never be able to go back to a so called "normal" life ever, after all of this. (thank god)
Finally the boats engines started churning, right under us.. You could just feel the boat vibrating, and see the water behind churning. All the seagull and some tern like birds landed in the water behind. It looked like the boats engines were churning up the fish, so all the birds were hanging out getting an easy breakfast..
I just couldn't stop smiling. Here were were, on the edge of France, with our car on a ferry, waiting to sail across to England. AUUGHHH.. I could barely stand it..
So we back out of the port, then as the ferry started turning around, we headed in to check out the rest of the ship.
It was huge, four decks high, and huge restauarnt area, a coffee shop in the front with windows along the whole front. That was as close as you could get to being outside along the front. There was a duty free store, mostly liquer, a huge cosmetics store, along botht side were windows and nice plish seats to sit in, or sleep in. While we were up front with a couple of cups of coffee, there were several members of a sporting team, still in uniform with the coch snoring like crazy.LOL
The whole journey across the channel took about 75 minutes, and then you could start to see England! It looked like sandy dunes with green gross on had been scooped downword so as if someone had taked a spoon and scooped them. They were high,but looked more like sand from far away. As we got closer we saw a big castel, etc.
People started heading down to their cars so we also did. We docked, the front went down and we all started driving out. NOW I would get to see what driving on the wrong side of the road was going to be like!!
Well, not to be rude, but I have to get my car out of parking, and we need to head out. I will write more tongiht when we get home (hopefully) Hang in there, hope you all are well!!!
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Off we go to England!
Sorry I haven't kept up. I've rented a 2006 Volkswagon Polo, we've booked a hotel, I have bought my gas coupons, my friend has lent me his satellite navigation system (WAY cool) and it it about 9:45 Sunday night, and we aree packing, planning to get out of here by 10:30 to start the drive. Will keep you informed!
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Road trip!
But not your ordinary road trip... We aren't talking Duluth or South Dakota. We are talking London!
Just booked a car for this Sunday through Thursday, though we will be really going sunday night, coming back wed night.
Ryanair didn't have any good specials so soon, you usually need to book a couple of weeks in advance, so what I ended up doing is booking a little Volkswagon (do you know that volks means people in Germnan, so in effect it is called a people car.LOL) Polo (golf??) sized car.
We will drive through Germany, Belgium and a bit of France, park the car on the France side of the English Channel and then ride the ferry for the 1 1/2 hour trip.
Driving will be about 5 1/2 hours, then 2 hours to get to England. WOO-HOO!
That is all I have planned out so far. LOL Will keep this updated daily with more info as I book the hotel, etc.
Car rental is only $214, but I plan to add insurance and probably theft since it will be parked in France a couple of days, so I am guessing about $300. Gas, should only take me less than two tanks according to a friend who has driven to England, so I can get gas coupons from on post to get gas at the US price, not the $4-5 it is on the economy.
YES!!!!!! England!
OK, have to go sling some tacos now. Later!
Just booked a car for this Sunday through Thursday, though we will be really going sunday night, coming back wed night.
Ryanair didn't have any good specials so soon, you usually need to book a couple of weeks in advance, so what I ended up doing is booking a little Volkswagon (do you know that volks means people in Germnan, so in effect it is called a people car.LOL) Polo (golf??) sized car.
We will drive through Germany, Belgium and a bit of France, park the car on the France side of the English Channel and then ride the ferry for the 1 1/2 hour trip.
Driving will be about 5 1/2 hours, then 2 hours to get to England. WOO-HOO!
That is all I have planned out so far. LOL Will keep this updated daily with more info as I book the hotel, etc.
Car rental is only $214, but I plan to add insurance and probably theft since it will be parked in France a couple of days, so I am guessing about $300. Gas, should only take me less than two tanks according to a friend who has driven to England, so I can get gas coupons from on post to get gas at the US price, not the $4-5 it is on the economy.
YES!!!!!! England!
OK, have to go sling some tacos now. Later!
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