Booboo Magoo

Archive for the ‘Other Places’ Category

Figuring that my mom might be a bit jet lagged on her first full day in Britain, I booked us for a bus tour that took us to a few pretty major sites around southern England. That way, she could nap here and there if she needed to, but it would also be a productive day. Mike took the day off of work and joined us, which was awesome because Mike is fun.

Anyway, the sites were awesome, but the real story here is the tour director. Picture if the Weakest Link host chick mated with a pre-school teacher, and that’s basically our tour guide. She lined us all up and counted us and gave us all sorts of calmly explained instructions like “no hot drinks such as tea or coffee”. The joke of the day, however, came about as we were pulling into our first stop (Windsor). She advised that as we had a tight timeline, we’d be allowed to (and her voice lowered here like an authority figure bestowing a great privilege on a child) bring a sandwich back with us from one of the shops in Windsor and *gasp* eat it on the bus. She then went on to explain that a sandwich was two slices of bread with something in between, and items such as hamburgers did not count as sandwiches. Also, we still were not allowed to bring any hot beverages on the bus, but we’d be permitted to bring one cold beverage if we wished. SUCH LUXURIES. Anyway, that was pretty much the joke of the entire day, and we weren’t the only ones joking about it – we overheard some of our fellow tour group members joking about it in line at Eat.

Anyway, Windsor Castle was BEAUTIFUL. Apparently the Queen spends most of her weekends there, and I can’t blame her. Here is my mommy and I in front of Windsor:

And then Mike and Mommy in front of Windsor:

And Windsor Castle by itself, being all Windsor-y

We made our way into Windsor and through the metal detector, and immediately walked over to St. George’s Chapel. We’re not terribly religious..but the final resting place of Henry VIII – HELL YEAH! It was actually surprisingly plain, and he shares it with Jane Seymour and a few other people. Surprising – I was expecting something more along the style of his daughter Elizabeth I. The only explanation we could think of is that Henry really never actually planned on dying. Anyway, we walked out of the Chapel and just happened to catch the beginning of the Changing of the Guard:

We only had about 2 hours at Windsor (including time needed to get our two slices of bread with something in between them sandwiches), so we decided not to watch the entire ceremony, instead making our way to see Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, which my four year old self would have been THRILLED to know I got to see in person (although sorely disappointed that it was behind glass and that I wasn’t allowed to turn the lights on and off. Actually, my 28 year old self was kinda disappointed about that.) I had a total obsession with Queen Mary’s Dollhouse as a kid. My mom had a book on it, and I used to pour over it for HOURS looking at all the pictures of miniature stuff.

Anyway, by then it was time to go get our tour-approved sandwiches and head back to the bus. Our tour director was very happy that everyone was back on time, and praised us, saying “You all did an excellent job coming back on time. No one made everyone else wait for them, and we’re all much happier for it.” NO KIDDING. I felt like we were about to all get a sticker on our good behavior charts. We ate our sandwiches (as well as contraband kit kat’s that mom snuck on for us), and the bus was on its way to Bath.

Bath the town was kind of neat – it was cool seeing the homes of Jane Austen and Nicolas Cage, but the Roman bathhouses were kind of disappointing – very museumy and kind of boring. We did get some nice pictures near the baths though. Mike is posing for GQ or Confused Dickensonian Weekly or something:

I’m just posing:

Mike said he wanted something “dynamic”. This is me being “dynamic”

The tour guide as well as about a million signs direct you not to touch the water at Bath as it’s not treated. To horrify mom, I dipped my finger in the water, then licked my finger. MISSION COMPLETE! She is now convinced I’m going to die of some diseased water illness.

We left the Bathhouse pretty quickly and strolled around the town of Bath. It was very cute and quaint, but obviously very tourist oriented – everything was incredibly expensive! Finally, we were all back on the bus (everyone made it on time again, thank god no one got their name written on the windshield with a frowny face next to it or anything) and it was off to Stonehenge.

Stonehenge was pretty rad. They have the main site roped off so you can’t get close or touch the rocks or anything, but they have a smaller rock outside that you’re allowed to touch:

Also, I continued my anarchistical refusal to obey signs:

Requisite Stonehenge Tourist Shot:

We again all made it back on the bus on time, and it was back to London. We hopped off at Earl’s Court, then had fish and chips and a few beers, then came home. We’re all pretty exhausted and are heading to bed. Tomorrow is Buckingham Palace – TOTALLY STOKED!

On Friday, March 13, 2009, Mike took me down to a beach in Vancouver, told me nice things, and asked me officially to be his girlfriend. He didn’t realize at the time that it was Friday the 13th, and luckily (for him) I said yes. Since then, we don’t really celebrate on the year anniversary, we celebrate on Friday the 13ths. We had one this August, so we decided to hole up in a cute little cottage in rural Scotland.

We trained it from London to Glasgow. It was about a 6 hours train ride. Parts of it were really pretty, but it was looooong. I was certainly ready to be OFF the train by the time we reached Glasgow. Our rental car was a block away from the train station, so we walked over and picked up our car. Here we are in the car, before we actually started driving it around. You can tell it’s before because we’re smiling.

We got talked into a slightly larger model by the very friendly car rental guy, which was pretty much too big. It made it a little stressful when needing to reverse and park and whatnot. Also, stupid dumb old Garmin GPS doesn’t know diddly squat about Glasgow. It was all directing us to turn the wrong way on one ways and stuff. We FINALLY made it out and headed toward our cottage, with a brief stop along the way to grab some groceries. Also, Mike stalled the car a good 8-10 times. Anyone who has ever driven with Mike knows how bizarre this is – he almost never stalls out. Of course, I made sure to make fun of him, even though I am too much of a chicken to do more than drive around a parking lot (which I did this trip – WITHOUT stalling) in the UK. Way to stall the car, Mike!

Finally, we were in our sweet rental cottage. Here is the view from our window:

There were cows in that field, and living in a kennel not far from there were real live working sheep dogs. Super friendly, super well behaved, and SUPER EXCITED TO GO TO WORK. Lovely dogs, and very nice sheep farmer.

The cottage left us some champagne, so we took it outside and drank it while chatting and watching the sunset. Very, very sweet and romantic end to our anniversary day.

Of course, it couldn’t be all kissy face and sweet talk – that gets kinda boring after a bit – so we dug out some games to play. I don’t think Mike understands the rules of Jenga.

Slept SO deeply that night. No noise pollution, no light pollution, just deep dark quiet. It was lovely.

Saturday morning, we decided to go exploring. We always have these great plans about relaxing and doing nothing, but we’re pretty much like chihuahua puppies on speed – neither of us can sit still for very long. We decided to ask stupid dumb old Garmin what the nearest attraction was. We were so remote that the nearest attraction was over 12 miles away and required a ferry to get there. Not even kidding. But it was totally worth it. Dunadd Fort was a perfect mix of exercise, pretty views, and solitude.

As we were driving to Dunadd Fort, I noticed a sign for a castle. I freaking love castles – not sure if y’all noticed by now. Mike is an awesome boyfriend and generally indulges me in these things, so up we went. Carnasserie Castle was another bit of a hike – not too far but pretty much straight uphill. It was actually pretty awesome – it’s not one of the “Big Deal” castles, so they let you walk around what’s left of it unrestricted. A couple areas are fenced off for safety (it was bombed a long time ago), but other than that, it’s open. They even let DOGS in this one. Also, it’s free. Free is good. As are fantastic views.

We then decided that we’d take the long way back (ie: no ferry) and pass through some different countryside. We popped into Inveraray to grab groceries for dinner, and stumbled upon the Inverary Jail, which was a bit of an interesting history lesson, but mostly just filled with hilarious mannequins.

This fellow has been caught on the pot..

This guy is apparently insane. I think he looks a bit like Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies:

After that, we headed home and ate our faces off. Junk food galore. Seriously way too much. I felt ill after. Mike and I cuddled on the couch – him watching movies while I read a biography on Queen Victoria. Apparently I am now about 85 years old. I read for fun, and not normal stuff – no, biographies on Queens. Sigh.

Sunday morning, I woke up and went for a run – the Week 2, Day 3 run. I think RunKeeper got confused or something. I know my times were the greatest, but I could pretty much stand still and do a pace greater than 49:12. I don’t even know. The point is I did it, right?

We then cleaned up and drove back into Glasgow. Dropped off the car, then hung out in a series of pubs until it was time to catch the bus to take us to the airport. On the bus, some girl was freaking out and crying and trying to think up excuses for why she was about to miss her flight because she screwed around until the last second and wasn’t getting on the bus until after she was supposed to already be checked in by. It was a 30 minute bus ride. One of her stress case lines was “Why do I always do this to myself?” I have to admit, I lost all sympathy for her at that point. It wasn’t any good reason, she was just having fun hanging out with her boyfriend and didn’t leave on time. I was a little bit meanly happy to see she had missed her flight when we were going through security.

Our flight was delayed (possibly karma for my mean feelings towards Little Miss Irresponsible?), so we hung out in an airport lounge, drinking and defacing colouring pages we got in a Disney Princess activity set. Being an adult is pretty rad. You can have candy for dinner, and no one scolds you if you draw a penis on Flounder from The Little Mermaid.

Made it home safe, sadly coming down with colds. I forced myself to run this evening even though I’m all snuffly. My thought is then I don’t have to feel TOO bad if I’m all sick and skip Wednesday, right? Times were again, shitty, but I’m getting sick and was running into the wind for a fair bit of it. Frankly, I’m just proud I went.

In other news, NINE short days until my mom lands here. I’m pretty stoked. I love and miss my mommy like crazy! I wish my dad was coming out as well. Maybe we can talk him into it later…

I own an iPhone 3G. It is sadly locked to a carrier in Canada, so needs to be jailbroken and unlocked in order to work with a UK sim. It’s kind of a pain, but since iPhones are so freaking mainstream, it hasn’t been too hard, and everything has been working pretty well.

That is, until ios4 came out. OH. MY. GOD. Slowed my phone down to a crawl, apps crashed regularly, phone actually needed to be reset TWICE in one day (and prior to ios4, I could probably count on one hand how many times I had to do it in the entire time I’ve had it – > 1 year). Mike spent a good portion of yesterday evening trying to roll it back to ios3, but the evil overlords at apple have made that pretty much impossible. I ended up reinstalling and then jailbreaking ios4 again, only this time with no multitasking enabled. I used the instructions and tools found here, if anyone else is having the same problem. Fingers crossed – it’s been pretty well behaved so far today. It’s definitely slower than it was on ios3, but at least my apps aren’t crashing, and it only takes 10-15 seconds to open SMS, instead of the 30+ seconds it was taking with multi-tasking enabled. I am hoping it can hold out and not be a useless piece of crap until November. We’re going to Vegas then, and iPhone 4s are SO much cheaper in the States than they are in the UK. Like the equivilant of $200 Canadian dollars. The plan is to pick one up in the States, so I am crossing my fingers that my trusty little 3G can play nice til then.

This month is going to be CRAZY BUSY. This weekend we are trying to get a crew together to go check out The Great British Beer Festival during the day on Saturday, then come back to ours for a BBQ and more… beer sampling.. for the rest of the evening. This Sunday there is nothing official planned, but I think I am going to do my best to convince Mike that we should go see Inception. Next weekend, we both took the Friday off, and we’re headed to a cottage in Scotland for our anniversary (Mike asked me out on a Friday the 13th, so we celebrate Friday the 13ths rather than the actual year anniversary). Tonight or tomorrow night we need to call Mike’s grandparents and see if they are interested in having some weekend visitors for the 21-22, and if they are, we are trying to arrange Mountain Biking in Wales for that weekend. And then on Wednesday the 25th, my mom lands here for a week of sight-seeing. I took off the days when she is here and we are going to SEE STUFF and HAVE FUN and DRINK WINE! It’s gonna be rad.

First thing Sunday morning, I got up and went for a walk/run. Mike had pointed out that Kastellet was shaped like a star, and well…IT NEEDED TO BE DONE!

After that, we showered and had some free hotel breakfast, then packed our bags and checked out. The hotel had a luggage room, and was nice enough to let us rent bikes for the day, so that’s what we did. We rode around pretty aimlessly – Copenhagen is amazingly set up for biking. I think I mentioned before that pretty much every road has a bike lane, and all of the drivers are super aware and super friendly to cyclists. It is pretty much the only time I’ve ridden on streets without being super nervous. The only problem I had was that the bike had back pedal brakes, and I appear to have a bad habit of backpedalling when I just want to coast, so I ended up accidentally stopping a few times. I actually managed to throw my hip out pretty badly by accidentally backpedalling. The good part of that was that it was still comfortable to sit and bike. Walking sucked though.

We managed to find Hans Christian Anderson’s grave. Lisa, lover of books, enjoys this.

Mike uses it as an excuse to rock out.

Then we went to the zoo. We tried to blend in with the monkey biography pictures. I am apparently a constipated monkey.

And Mike is a special-needs monkey.

We got bored of the zoo after a while, so we grabbed our last amazing Danish hot dogs, then went to check out Christiania. We don’t have any pictures from here because there are enormous signs that say NO PHOTO. Christiania…smells like Vancouver. I hope I’m not being too vague when I say that. It is very well known for smelling like Vancouver, but they are not fans of photographic evidence. We enjoyed a drink in Christiania, bought a super ugly sweater for me, and it was time to head back. We dropped off the bikes and grabbed our bags, then made it to the airport with plenty of time to wait in the long Easyjet line up. Only…there was no line up. We made it straight to the counter and checked in, then went through a security (Mike got extra screened for not having the sunscreen in a plastic bag). We sat around and enjoyed beers for a while. My back/hips were getting progressively worse by this point, so I tried to keep them loose with walking and leg swings and gentle stretching. I also took a painkiller, which I usually try to avoid.

The flight itself was pretty awful because of the backpain, but our luggage made it to the carousel quickly, and we had no problems with security. I ended up calling in sick on Monday and seeing a chiropractor. She popped my hip back into place. Since then, I’ve been in pain, but not as bad as before I saw her, and it’s been getting better and better all week. I hope to be able to be back to running again next week. Mike’s rash has all but vanished (thank god). We also came home to the news that my cousin/family friend/whatever Buddy and his girlfriend are coming to London and are going to stay with us for a few days, so hopefully we’ll get some interesting blog posts out of that. Viva la weekend!

We had decided that there wasn’t a band playing on Saturday or Sunday that we wanted to see more than we wanted to explore Copenhagen, so after we got up Saturday morning, we packed our stuff. Mike needed room for the gas masks, and we decided we could sacrifice our air mattress to make the space. I gave it to a group of guys who were still lying in their tent with no mattress beneath them. They seemed pretty stoked. We also had about 8 beer left that we didn’t want to haul, so I put on my grass skirt and leopard-ear headband and played beer fairy to a bunch of confused Danes. Their English was very strong, but they kept trying to reaffirm in different ways that the beer was, in fact, free. This was a baffling concept to them, but once they were sure they understood, they insisted on giving me hugs. Basically, dudes in every country can be won over quickly with beer.

We did the short walk to the busses, and made our way back to Copenhagen. We hung out for a bit until we could check in, making use of the hotel’s public computers to book and extra piece of checked luggage (tent) and check email/facebook. Then we had a brief nap. I’d slept pretty terribly the night before because I kept waking up convinced that my sleeping bag had pulled the skin off of my legs. Bad combination of sunburn and hot sweay, lotiony legs. It would only take me a brief second to realize that my legs were fine, just sunburnt, but still a terrible, panicky way to wake up. We cleaned up, then made our way to Tivoli Gardens, a rad ass amusement park. What can I say – Mike knows the way to my heart.

We don’t have too many photos because we put most of our stuff in a locker so we could RIDE THE RIDES. The rides were pretty awesome. It’s not the largest park I’ve ever been to, but the rollercoaster was awesome, and they had this plane ride that is all fast and loops around like you’re an insane WWI fighter pilot that was super rad. Here is one of me by the little garden on one end. You can KIND of see rides in the background.

Before moving on, we stopped for a relaxing beverage in a super ritzy looking patio. I had the most delicious chai tea latte I’ve ever had. It was so delicious that the first thing I did when I reached English soil and had mobile access was text Katy to tell her how delicious it was. So good.

Then we decided we needed a few couply photos.

It was right about this time that the man in the tutu started running around and swimming in the fountain behind us while all his friends cheered. In North America, that sort of behavior gets you evicted from theme parks. Not in Denmark. No security showed up. People just watched and clapped, and when he was done having his fun, he got out. We also noticed that the security restraints on the rides were…somewhat less restrictive. The really dangerous, upside down, crazy ones had 5 point harnesses and locking stuff, but we went on one roller coaster that was seriously just a lap bar like you’d see on a kiddie ride. No real danger – it didn’t go upsidedown or anything, but it just struck me that we are sometimes a little overzealous with the safety in North America. No one got hurt, no one did anything stupid. Was just fun for everyone.

After Tivoli, we went for all you can eat pizza and salad. Apparently all I can eat is two pieces and one salad, but that’s okay because it was pretty cheap. Only 89 Kroner! I loved the prices in Denmark. 100 Kroner is about £10 or $17 Cdn dollars, so you’d get bills for dinner that were comically large numbers – 180 Kroner for two people to eat pizza and have a soda, or 100 Kroner for a t-shirt. Also, you feel pretty rich carrying around bills with numbers like 500 on them.

We then went back to the hotel and crashed. Hard. The air mattress and tent were good as far as camping go, but it’s hard to beat a real bed.

We woke up on Friday and Mike’s rash had just gone insane. Bright red, all over his body, terrible, ugly rash, so we decided to get it looked at by the First Aid Tent. Consensus – sunburn heat rash. Apply Aftersun. He has asthma and breaks out in full body rash at the first hint of sunshine. HE’S TAKEN LADIES!

Anyway, we got him his aftersun, then did a whole lot of…nothing. Wandering around looking at stuff, and stopping to relax and read/watch stuff on iPod.

We walked around the main festival area too. Mike bought 3 WWII gas masks from a random tent. This was apparently a necessary purchase. I bought a grass skirt and a leopard-ears headband…so not exactly in a judgment space here. We seem to have forgotten that we had a camera, which is kind of okay because we didn’t really do anything. I did find this picture of us taken by a random Australian chick that tagged along with us for a while. I have no idea why Mike is being so creepy.

A little bit more hanging out (it was a vacation, we were RELAXING, yo), and it was time to see NOFX, the highlight of the whole festival for me. They were amazing and funny and awesome. We stayed mostly outside the tent. We weren’t scared of death – 9 people died from being crushed in 2000 at Roskilde, and the event was being super strict about not pushing and no body surfing and basically NO UNSAFE MONKEY BUSINESS. It just was way more relaxing to sit outside and enjoy the show and not get our ear drums blown out. Anyway, NOFX was amazing. Highly recommend.

After that we went back to the tent for our second night of tenting it.

After our fabulous sleep in the amazing hotel of awesomeness, we woke up bright and early and enjoyed our last civilized showers for a few days. We had noticed the day before that the hotel had bikes available for rental and decided to take a couple out for a spin. They are not the most amazing bikes ever, but they did the job. We rode around for about 2 hours taking in the sights of Copenhagen.
Here we are by another fountain.

All of Copenhagen looks like a real life Disney movie. Makes sense, it is the home of Hans Christian Anderson, who the Danes are pretty obsessed with. There are statues and whatnot of him everywhere.

Finally, we decided it was time to go to Roskilde. We caught the train at the Metro to the town of Roskilde, where I made Mike pose under the train sign. He was not terribly thrilled, but I maintain that someday, he’ll be happy I made him pose there.

From Roskilde the town there was the option to take another train or a bus to Roskilde the festival. We picked the train. We should have been a little bit suspicious when we saw that the train looked like the WWII trains used to haul people to concentration camps, but it was all nice and cute on the inside, even if I did have to use a luggage strap and a case of beer to keep the window open.

WE SHOULD HAVE PICKED THE BUS. It turns out that the train takes you to one entrance, and the bus takes you to a completely different entrance. On the opposite side of the festival. Where the tenting area is. Which is where we needed to be. Roughly 3.5 km if you know where you’re going, but if you’re us and DON’T know where you’re going, it’s more like 5 kms. Across uneven terrain. In the baking sun. While carrying all of your clothes and camping gear. Basically awful. Really and truly awful.
By the time we made it to the tenting area and got set up, we were ready to just chill the eff out. So we grabbed the bedsheet and headed to a nice grassy area near a lake and spent the afternoon drinking (me: coke zero, Mike: beer, both of us: water) and hanging out. I read Emma. Mike watched stuff on his iPod. Super chill. Super necessary.

After a while, we ventured off to get some food. Here is me by tent city, which was relatively close to the food. See how tent city looks shitty and terrible? Imagine that in food form, and you have the festival food. The best meal I had there was cheese and jam on a bun. I wish I was joking.

We found a human-sized hamster wheel. Mike tries it out.

We also notice that the small rash that started appearing the other day is getting worse. Here is the back of one of his arms. This was also on his legs and stomach, and was apparently very itchy.

Mike takes some antihistamines, and we go back to the lake, where we find some woman’s birth control. With one pill left. Are we seeing the start of a new little Roskilde Dingus?

We spent the rest of Thursday relaxing and exploring at our own relaxed pace, then crashed around when the sun went down.

There is just WAY too much stuff to say about our trip to Denmark for one post, so I’m gonna break it down by day. Here’s Day One!
Wednesday, June 30
For some reason when we booked the flight to Copenhagen, we thought 8am was a great time to fly out of London. And on paper, it sounds great, but when you actually do the math – be there minimum of one hour prior to departure, train from London center to Gatwick takes 30 minutes, it’s a 15 minute walk to the train station…it basically means getting up at 4:30am to catch the flight. Which is the SUCK. We flew Easyjet, which is pretty much known for being cheap but not exactly awesome, and that was pretty much our experience. We got to Gatwick, and the line to check in was about a bazillion years long. Basically, nobody made it to the front of the line in time for their flight. Everyone just stood in a line that moved super slowly, and when it got close to your flight time, an Easyjet employee went around yelling your destination city, and everyone going to that destination stepped out of line and was served next. The flight itself was pretty uneventful – it is a budget airline with seats that don’t recline and no in-flight entertainment, save for the comedy-show stylings of safety announcement attendant.
Easyjet is super proud to announce that they’ve gotten us into Copenhagen an astounding 5 minutes early. Unfortunately, there is a snafu with everyone’s baggage, and the baggage is another 90 minutes later hitting the carosaul. So, we got to wait 95 minutes instead of 90 for luggage. The highlight of the airport wait is listening to a woman chastise her son, Dingus, for playing with the luggage carosaul. Yeah, you read that right…Dingus. There is a 3 year old child somewhere named Dingus. Ha ha. Dingus.
Anyway, once we had our luggage, we realized the second bit of folley to our GET TO DENMARK SUPER EARLY PLAN – we can’t check into the hotel until 2pm. We take the Metro to central Copenhagen and walk around for a bit. I get to experience Danish drunk food for lunch, even though it is only noon and I am nowhere near drunk. Basically, Danish drunk food is a bagette with one end cut off and a hole cored in the middle. Then they squirt in your choice of toppings and jam in a hot dog. A bacon-wrapped hot dog, if that is your wish. I approve of this.

We kill a bit more time taking photos by a fountain in the main square. We tried to get a couple picture, but people kept walking in front of the camera right before it snapped, or Mike was too slow getting it balanced, or it fell over…basically, couple photo just wasn’t meant to be at that time.

Finally it is time to check into our hotel, and we love our room. It is lovely and has a huge big king-sized bed that is super comfy. It’s also done in a purple and white color scheme, which I love. We had a quick nap and a shower, then hit the town again, this time without big heavy bags.
For some reason, we decide to eat Mexican food. In Copenhagen. It is gross. Advice: don’t eat Mexican food in Copenhagen.
We walk around a harbour area. It looks like pictures of Newfoundland

After a while, we stop for a drink (I have water. Mike has beer). We also buy a bag of the local delicacy, salty liquorice. It’s actually pretty good!

We walk around some more, then finally settle in to a pub. Mike has a beer and gets me to try the local party shot, sma gra, which is salty liquorice dissolved in vodka. I know, right? Sounds vile. I love it and decide it needs to be poured over ice and sipped like scotch.

We ended up sitting with a middle-aged guy from Texas for a while after this, shooting the shit. His name was Mark. He worked for an oil company who had offices in Denmark, and was out on business (read: alone). Seemed like a nice guy.
Danish people are, in general, all tall, thin and blonde. I think it’s because they bike everywhere. Pretty much every street in Copenhagen has a separate biking lane, and even young children (think, like, 6) bike on city streets. They also all speak English, in general, and all of the signage is in both Danish and English, which is handy, because I don’t speak Danish. They all seem to know that Mike won’t speak Danish and address him in English, but think I am Danish, which is weird because although blonde, I am not tall and thin.
By now it was night, and even though we’d had naps, we were still pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel. The square was much quieter though, and we managed to get a couple photo by the Fountain.

I read for a while at the hotel while Mike watched stuff on his iPod, then we crashed for the night.

We’ve been in the UK a solid 5 months now, and had yet to visit Mike’s grandparents up in Wales, which makes Mike pretty much the worse grandson ever. We decided to rectify that this weekend. Mike had been wanting to try driving in the UK, but we decided that central London wasn’t exactly the best location to attempt this for the first time, so we trained it to Chester and rented a car there. He actually did pretty well – he needed reminding only a few times in the beginning to be a little more James Bond and a little less Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. By which I mean he was driving on the righthand side of the road, and whatever else you’d like to take from that regarding his appearance, intelligence, and behavior..

Anyway, we got to his grandparents’ place around noon, just in time to take them out for lunch. Well, I guess they took us for lunch? We drove, but they paid. We bought dinner though.

After that, we drove around and checked out a few touristy places. Basically, it was a beautiful sunny day, so all of Wales was a postcard.

Mike and I ruining the beautiful scene. It was gorgeous and sunny, but also really windy, which is why I’m wearing Mike’s coat.

Mike is manly and not bothered by the wind’s chill. Or so he says. Which I think is his way of being a gentleman.

We went back to the grandparents’ for a bit, then out for dinner. Then back home where Mike and his Granddad watched a documentary on Hitler (fun fact, Mike is super interested in anything WWII), while Molly (his Nan) and I read. I was reading Somewhere Inside, which I finished on the train ride home. It was pretty good, but I have to wonder if the Ling sisters worry that some of the things they wrote could get people who were kind to Laura in trouble back in North Korea. I hope that’s not the case.

The minute our heads hit the pillow, we conked right out. Mike woke me up twice because I was snoring. I am not usually a snorer, but I am thinking the walking around in the wind, mild allergies, and nice full belly combined to take me RIGHT out.

In the morning, we had breakfast with the Grandparents, then went for a drive ourselves around. We ended up finding an animal sanctuary place that had a restaurant overlooking the farm, where we enjoyed hot bevvies and watched the animals. Geese are kind of mean. One of them was chasing a pony away quite aggressively! Here I am by the fence. None of the animals wanted to pose with me.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and Mike actually had the day off, so we decided to go check out Hampton Court Palace. Hampton Court Palace was the main home of King Henry VIII, who is pretty much the baddest ass English monarch ever. It’s about a 30 minute train ride from London to Hampton Court train station. Once you’re at the station, it’s a 2 minute walk over a bridge and you’re there. Here we are on the bridge, with Hampton Court Palace behind us:

Anyway, the inside of the castle wasn’t terribly fascinating – we basically learned that Henry’s court ate a lot of meat. Thousands of animals worth. It was 70% of their diet. OH GOD THE MEAT THEY ATE. They boiled it. They roasted it. They fried it. Meat meat meat. I sweat, the first third of the audio tour was all about meat and how much of it he ate. He also had a huge wine cellar and liked fruits and sweets, which is no surprise to anyone who has read or watched anything about Henry VIII. Dude was totally about his pleasures – women, wine, and food.

Anyway, we saw about 2/3 of the inside before the call of the sunshine overtook us and we went out into the garden. I love the trees! They look like Super Mario Bros mushrooms

Also, a cute bridge with a royally gate behind us. We’re at a palace, yo!

We walked around the formal gardens for a while, then made our way to the park that has the MAZE in it. We made it to the centre of the maze, then out again. Apparently, the maze turns me into a turbo nerd with terrible posture. Weird.

By then, we were ready to head home. We made a quick stop in the gift shop (I have been putting together a mishmosh tea set from English gift shops. So far, I have a tea cup and saucer from Westminster Abbey, and I bought a teapot from Hampton Court Palace in honor of Henry VIII being my favorite monarch.), then headed home to drop stuff off and head back to SoHo for dinner. We went to Gourmet Burger Kitchen. I know it’s weird considering I LOVE steak, but I actually prefer veggie burgers to “real” burgers. I like the seasoning better. Anyway, I had a lentil burger. We were supposed to go on a pub crawl, but I left my ID at home because I’m 28 and older than time, and nobody IDs in the UK anyway – except, apparently, the pub crawl people. We found a cool pub instead and people watched and drank wine/beer. Not really a super huge night – we were home by 11. It worked out though, because around midnight, it started to POUR. Like stronger than our shower. This is weird for the UK. Usually a “rainy” day means it mists annoyingly all day and accomplishes nothing other than making your hair look stupid. Proper rain was actually a nice treat.

Today is all about the lazy but getting stuff done. Mike is working on a rig of some sort, and I’m going to study my DBA stuff for a while. Then we’re going to go somewhere local for lunch and get groceries. Also, laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.