late posts and friends lost

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