9 posts tagged “england”

Ok, Since I was inundated with e-mails and messages from people all over the globe, despondent that there would be no more posts about our England trip, I've decided to post an outtakes entry.  No captions, just pictures.  Enjoy...

 

 

 

Ok, this will be the final post of our England trip.  Well, maybe.  I might do an outtakes post, I'm not sure yet.  Anyway, Day 4 started out bright and early with a train ride into downtown London.  We first visited the Victoria and Albert museum which we were suppose to do the previous night but didn't because I wanted to see a play instead.  The museum was by far the best museum we visited while in London.  It was right up our alley and I would have loved to spend more time there, but we had to get some shopping done so we left after a couple hours.  We'll definitely go back there the next time we are in London.  After the museum we walked down to Harrod's department store where Janie purchased some delicious chocolates and we marveled at the prices of some of the items in the store and wondered who in the world would pay $30,000 for a bejeweled cell phone.  The rest of the day was spent shopping around the Oxford Circus area in more reasonably priced stores.  I asked Esther's husband Damien on Tuesday where was a good place to get a reasonable priced suit in London.  I love the cut of an English suit, but it is nearly impossible to find one in America.  He recommended a store called Next for a good wool everyday suit.  He was spot on.  Thanks to his recommendation, I picked up two great looking suits.  I'll post pictures of them at some point.  Janie found and purchased quite a few articles of clothing and shoes that will come in handy for Ugly Outfit Fridays in the future.  Not that I think they are ugly mind you, it's just that they are quirky and most Americans probably would consider some of the pieces ugly.  I think they are great.  There's an example of one of the outfits in the last picture of this post.  We finished the night off with dinner at a place called the Crooked Surgeon, a pub we'd seen the night before.

I was glad to see that Ugly Outfit Day had caught on in England...

First stop was the Victoria Albert Museum.

 

 

Ugly Outfit Friday possibilities.

Mr. Bill and Statue...

Janie outside of Harrod's.

Shopping for some chocolate.

Mr. Bill meets a friend at Harrod's.

Janie shopping for jewelry.

The incessant shopping ended up being more than Mr. Bill could take.

On our way to dinner we stumbled upon the world premiere of the movie Hairspray.  I played paparazzi and snapped a few pictures of the people leaving the theatre. 

After the kids looked at the pictures, they immediately recognized the twins from the TV show The Sweet Life with Zack and Cody on the Disney Channel. 

This is the actor who "played" Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Dinner was at the Crooked Surgeon.  Janie had Bangers and Mash, while I had Steak and Ale Pie.

 

 

Janie after a long day of shopping.

Day 5 picture - Janie in her Ugly Outfit Friday outfit.  She sure is dedicated.

 

THE END.

Due to Kelly's impatience and vacariism, I've decided to write the England Day 3 post a day early, albeit late in the evening.  Hey, beggars can't be choosers.  Anyway, day 3 started off a little later than normal due to getting in really late on Tuesday.  We skipped breakfast and headed straight to the train station.  After grabbing a Cornish pasty outside the Victoria train station, we started out into London....

Janie at the train station...

Mr. Bill's first time on a train...

Janie and I in front of Buckingham Palace.  We weren't too impressed so we took a few pictures and left to see something else.

Typical palace guard...

We made our way through St. James Park our way towards Big Ben.

 

Janie in front of Big Ben...

Wesminster Abbey.  Right after this picture was taken it started pouring raining.  This turned out to be a great thing because due to the rain we took shelter inside the abbey and took paid entrance and paid a little extra for the guided tour.  I am SO glad we paid for the guided tour as it was full of information and granted us access to areas of the abbey that other don't get to see.  The history of that place is just amazing.

After Wesminster we walked over to Trafalgar Square.  Janie was a little disappointed because the square was cluttered up with stuff for the preparations for the Tour De France.

Mr. Bill said he didn't like Trafalgar Square too much.  I can't imagine way...

 

We walked through the National Art Gallery at Trafalgar Square which was free, but due to a strike, much of the rooms were closed.  We decided to go to the National Portrait Gallery instead and enjoyed that much more.  After the portrait gallery, we walked over to Piccadilly Circus and bought tickets for the Reduced Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged. 

Before the show we ate dinner around the corner at The Imperial.

Mr. Bill was attacked by a storm trooper at the exit to the theatre.  One of his arms was shot off, but we were able to replace it with a mechanical arm much like Luke Skywalker at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Oh, and that was a real guy in the Stormtrooper outfit.  Apparently he was advertising for a one-man Star Wars saga show at the same theatre later that night.

Janie and I at night in London...

Either some Star War's exhibit was in town or Engand's military is way more advanced than I thought.

Big Ben at night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We woke up bright and early Tuesday morning, ate breakfast, and headed out to the English countryside to either see Stratford Upon Avon or Warwick Castle.  After making our way through the parking lot-like traffic on the London Orbital (beltway) we decided to drive through Oxford on our way north.  We then decided to skip Stratford and head to Warwick Castle.  Warwick Castle was great.  If you're ever in England, make sure to add it to your list of things to do.  It's a very well preserved castle and they always have things going on like jousting, archery exhibitions, launching a trebuchet, etc..  After that we made our way over to Esther and Damien's village to meet them for dinner at the world famous Joiner's Arms.  Dinner was excellent and we had a fantastic time hanging out and talking with Esther and Damien.  The only way the night could have been better would have been if we could have convinced Esther to break out her American accent.  Her son Hyrum humored us and demonstrated his American accent for us and it was hilarious.  Apparently Americans say "Like whateverrrrr..." and "Like Okaaayyyyy" a lot.  We actually ended Day 2 in the early hours of Day 3.

We make a quick detour through Oxford and snapped a view pictures.

 

Janie and I at Warwick Castle.

Janie and Mr. Bill in the stocks.  Next time she'll think twice before she gives me any lip.

Heading into the castle...

We insisted that Mr. Bill help the blacksmith make some horseshoes...

Unfortunately Alex missed the shooting of a fireball from the worlds largest trebuchet.  It was pretty impressive.

Apparently Janie was a tad annoyed that I wasn't standing in the right spot to take the picture she wanted.  I'm such a horrible husband.

We left Mr. Bill in the dungeon for safe keeping while we made a few tours of the castle...

Janie enjoying some ice cream...

While touring the castle, a few guys broke out in a spontaneous armwrestling match. 

This bear was more than a little excited to meet Mr. Bill...

Bird's eye view of the castle...

Janie and I by the river Avon...

Us in the rose garden outside the castle...

Janie calling Esther to let her know we were on our way...

Like a big dummy, although I brought my camera in with me, I didn't think to take any pictures of our dinner or time with Esther and Damien.  Thankfully I did get this picture of the back of the Joiner's Arms and a shot of Esther and Janie before we left...

 

Tomorrow....London

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though I didn't get a chance to regularly update while in England, I figured I would still do a day by day posting of our trip.  Just pretend that we're still in England while you read them.  We were suppose to get into England at 6am on Monday, but didn't actually get into the country until about 2pm.  That was a little depressing because it pretty much subtracted one day from our trip.  Because of that, day 1 was kinda boring, but here are the pictures anyway.

Us waiting at the airport.  I wasn't really this happy to be waiting for our flight...

Finally boarding at midnight...

Hey Mr. Bill, we're driving on the wrong side!

We squeezed in seeing the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.

Hannahbajama recommended Wagamama.  We were just going to go in and get a snack to tide us over, but after looking over the menu, decided to eat dinner there.  The food was awesome.  Thanks Hannah.

Janie was in heaven at an English grocery store....

Seriously, people eat this stuff?

View out our hotel room window.

Next up, day two....

 

 

 

 

 

I only have 1 minute to type this, as I just saw that someone had left a few minutes of paid internet time on a computer terminal at a service (truck) stop. But just wanted everyone to know that we are having a great time. They want thirty dollars a day at our hotel for internet access and i just won't pay the much for internet access, especially when we would only be using it for about an hour a day.  I'll just have to do a long string of post with pictures when I get back.  Oh, and Hannah, just a few hours ago we were eating at the Joiner's Arms with Esther and Damien and it was sooooooooo good.  Wagamama by the Tower of London was great also.  Thanks for the suggestion.  We wouldn't have eaten there if you hadn't suggested it, and we are glad you did, because the food was really awesome.  It was also entertaining watching the police cordon off the area due to a suspicious vehicle.  Thankfully we were done with dinner before they asked us to move away from the windows.  More to follow.....

Ok, after a thorough search of the terminal, we found Mr. Bill passed out in the Duty Free Shop.

We imediately made him call his AA sponsor.  No way I'm going to let a drunken hunk of clay ruin my vacation this week.

What's worse than driving 4 hours to New York to catch a flight to London?  Driving 4 hours to New York only to find out that your flight departure time has been delayed for 4 hours.  That's 4 less hours in England! Ugh!

 

Thanks to Janie finding an awesome deal on airline tickets to London, Mr. Bill is going to England next week!  I'm sure the guards at Windsor Castle won't mind a bit when I pose Mr. Bill next to them for a picture.  Mr. Bill being eaten by a raven at the Tower of London?  Mr. Bill getting run over by a red double-decker bus?  Find out next week.