Scott's professional blog

Scott's been asked to write a monthly blog for the online publication H & V News, and I'm so proud of him that I had to let you all know about it.

Check it out: http://www.hvnplus.co.uk/page.cfm/Link=25/t=m/goSection=21

On another note, it's getting dark here at 4:30 pm and we had our first snowfall last night. Ick. Sue has the right idea and has burried herself beneath blankets on the bed for warmth. I think I may have to go warm up my hands on her, right after I make some hot chocolate...k bye.

Oktoberfest!!

Hello family, friends and fans! Barbara and I have now been back a week after spending a quick night outside London, and a fast weekend in Germany for the opening of Oktoberfest. We flew into Salzburg, Austria (Barb says the Sound of Music was filmed there, it was Mozart's birthplace and she was impressed with the snow capped mountians!) then met up with our friends in Augsburg, Germany. We met up with Brett and Jenny Sterling (from Berlin), Jessica Luhn (from Paris), and Jerod Bradshaw (from Austria). We all attended high school and college together, and we all happened to be living in Europe so we got together for a rare occasion and lots of beer!

The first night we went into Munich and went to an outdoor garden that Brett had been to before. Basically there's a Chinese pagoda, and Umpa band and lots of beer and brats. We each got one litre glass beer mugs which we all ended up keeping. After having a good time there we walked back through the neverending park in the dark. We stocked up on more beer at the station and all ended up back on the train to Augsburg-thankfully! We had a really good time drinking beer on the train (which is acceptable and actually encouraged in Germany). There were plenty of photos to mark this occasion.

We stayed in a youth hostel in Augsburg since there was no room at the inn for us in Munich. This is because Oktoberfest is the largest festival in the world and there were one or two extra people around as a result. 6-6.5 million people have attended the 16 day festival in recent years (this makes Bikes, Blues and Barbeque look like a small get together between friends!). The festival was originally started in 1810 for the future King Ludwig I's wedding reception. The festival has been cancelled 24 times since 1810 due to war, disease and economic emergencies. A staggering 7 million litres of beer are consumed in the 16 day festival! (this is not so surprising when you see these Bavarians drink).

Anyway, enough facts and figures. What was it like? It was awesome! According to our impressions the Germans basically just drink beer and eat a lot of meat, which Brett confirmed is not too far from the truth. We had our taste of sausages and pork knuckles in addition to brew. Oh and don't forget pretzels! They are huge! One of the downsides though was we didn't get a seat in a "tent" (the tents are about the size of Sam's Club, and there are almost 10 of them!). We got to go in to the Paulaner tent and walk around and get pictures but for some reason they've come up with the policy of not serving beer to anyone standing up. Apparently they found out a long time ago that are just too many people at this festival and not enough tents. So you can go into the tent and look around, but since it was opening day and pretty early we knew people weren't about to give up their seats. So we reluctantly left the tent. The area outside of the tents is a huge midway filled with fair rides (I think roller coasters and beer are a cruel mixture personally), food tents, and little shops. I'm really not sure why they don't serve beer outside of the tents seeing as less than half the people I saw actually got into a tent (oh yeah, and by tent I actually mean warehouse). So once we got our fill of snacks, pretzels, and spectacle, we left.

That's it? That was Oktoberfest? Yes, but the spirit of Oktoberfest stayed with our little troop the entire weekend. We weren't about to have the party end, so we went to Hofbrau House downtown. This is world's most famous brewhouse. We thought since everyone was at the festival, the restaurant would be slow right? Wrong. It was full. We got in but we had to sit outside. I'd estimate the temperature that day was around 48-50 degrees F, so it was a bit chilly for eating outside. That didn't bother the three tables of Italians next to us though. They were having a grand old time singing songs we hadn't heard of and toasting each other with their liters of beer every 5 minutes. We had some good food though and some beer.

After we got sick of the cold outside, we left and checked out a nearby gift shop. After that, we made our way back to the Rathaus-Glockenspiel (built in the 1500s) which is a music playing feature of the town hall complete with mechanical life-sized dancing figures. It only comes on at 11am, noon and 5pm so we stuck around for the 5pm one. We went into a coffee shop across the street on the fifth floor and had a nice window view almost at equal height. I'm not sure how much coffee the six of us drank over the course of that weekend, but it definately rivaled our beer consumption. We stayed there and just played cards until they kicked us out around dinner time. In fact, we were pretty good at getting kicked of restaurants and cafes for playing cards. I'm not really sure why seeing as we drank plenty of coffee. Oh well, we're used to finicky shop-keepers, they're all over Europe. We kept playing cards at the train station until it was time for everyone to part ways at about 11:15pm. Brett, Jenny, Jessy and Jerod had to head back to Augsburg for their second night at the hostel while Barb and I had to start a long journey back to England via Salzburg. Our train left the station at 11:30pm. Yuck!

Our itenerary was a nightmare from the beginning of this trip. We had to fly Ryanair because it was the only affordable option. I don't know if anyone knows this, but if you fly Ryanair to or from London it has to be out of Standsted airport. I use the term "London Airport" very loosley because it's a one hour train ride from northern London. Which means it's two hours from Reading. The only flight we could get out of Stansted was at 6:30am and there weren't any trains early enough for us to make it so we were forced to stay in a hotel near the airport the night before. Even still we had to get up at 4am to ensure we cleared security. And it's a good thing we did because Stansted was surprisingly busy at 5:30am. Mostly young people take Ryanair because...well it's not the discount airline for nothing. It's very cramped, your flight times are NOT flexible, they try and sell you stuff over the intercom during your flight, and the service leaves much to be desired. And that was just the one way to Salzburg. For the way back, we were supposed to fly out of Salzburg at 9:30am on Sunday. At the time I really didn't think this was undoable but after we made the journey from Salzburg to Augburg when we arrived, we quickly realized that there was no way we would be able to make it from Augsburg on Sunday morning and still catch our flight. I looked into moving our flight back since I had Monday and Tuesday off work. The pricetag to get a later flight would be £300. That's British Pounds so that's like $600. So we took the course of action that was necessary; we stayed up all night Saturday night and journeyed back to Salzburg early. Barb got some sleep on the train ride back to Salzburg in the middle of the night on Saturday. Once we got to the train station though, my fears were realized: Salzburg has no night life so the public transport wasn't running at 2am. Luckily the cab drivers knew this and were there. I had fully resigned that we might have to walk to the airport across town in the middle of the night. I'm glad we didn't, it's 4.5 miles away.

So we slept for a couple of hours in the darkened airport in the middle of Austria until our flight finally came the next morning. We were exhausted and basically slept for two days when we got home, but it was one of the best trips we've been on! It's was really great seeing our buds.

Salzburg

Hey everyone!

As many of you know, Scott and I are going to Germany for Oktoberfest tomorrow! Woo hoo! We'll be meeting our friends Jessie, Brett and Jenny there too. Jessie is coming in from Paris, and Brett and Jenny are coming in from Berlin.

We're flying out of London on Friday at 6:30am. So we'll be staying at a little Inn, called the Bushel and Sack by the airport in London tonight to make catching our early flight that much easier.

I had a minor heart attack this morning as I was looking over our travel plans. I knew we were flying into Salzburg then taking a train into Munich, but when I Googled "Salzburg, Germany" it showed me Salzburg was really far away in the middle of Germany-not at all down in the SE corner like we'd thought! So I did a bit more research, and it seems that our flight is not landing in Salzburg, Germany at all, but rather Salzburg, Austria!! Hee hee! It's not as bad as it sounds, though. It's exactly where we thought Salzburg was, only it's in Austria, rather than Germany. I guess we need to work on our geography! Ah well, who am I to turn down a few extra stamps in my passport? : )

We'll let you know how everything went when we get back on Sunday.

Love you all.

B

France trip continued

Hello family and friends! It's been a while since our last post and we didn't get to finish telling about our trip to France. Barbara gave us her account of the "poultry incident". She actually didn't tell me about that until we were alone. I kept looking at her at dinner while she was giggling, but nope she wasn't going to talk about it yet. Anyway, I'm here to try to recount the rest of our trip.

On the second day, Phillipe took us on a tour of Provence in his car. We slept in and then went to Aix-en-Provence for lunch. We walked the old part of town where everything looks hundreds of years old. We went into a very old cathedral there which was prettier than any of the ones we've seen in England thus far. They had a huge open air market going that day too. They had booths selling: cheese, bread, sausage, spices, clothing, fruits, vegatables, novelties, fabric, and much more. We ate a nice lunch with Phillipe then headed back to the car. He then drove us all over Provence it seemed. We went far enough to notice a handful of different architectural styles. We got to see three or so examples of Phillipe's favorite villages in the area. One of which is Gordes where we looked upon the town that cascades down the hill (refer to our photo album for some of these beautiful views). I'm afraid the names of these other villages escapes me. We also saw a very old village of homes build out of stone called Bories. Even the roof is built out of un-mortared stones, it seems a bit percarious, but they're still standing. The last place we went to was Roussillon. It is a village up on a hill. The earth of this hill is very colorful in shades of read, pink, yellow and white. It has a sandy texture, but it's different than clay. It's called ochre in French (no not the kind you fry). There are also plenty of pics of this interesting substance. After we got back home from our whirlwind Provence tour, we went out to this pizza place in town that I remember going to when I was there and loving. I remember it as the best pizza I've ever had. France isn't exactly known for their pizza I know, but when you put roquefort, brie, and camembert on it, I'm sold. I'll be sure to try Italian pizza too when we go there for all of you purists out there.

The next day, we slept in a bit too. We then spent time with Hugette who took us to see her house in the neighboring village of Rognes. We didn't get to see much of it this time, but it's very picturesque. She then said that since we were interested in going to the beach that she was going to drop us off there for a while. We didn't argue. She drove us to Cassis, which is down the coast a bit from Marseille to the South and East. We killed about six hours there soaking up some sun (yes I had a thick layer of sunscreen on Mom), wading into the Mediteranean (no Blake I didn't wear my Speedo), pestering baby crabs, hermit crabs and barnacles, eating baguette sandwichs and sipping drinks at a cafe. It was a lot of fun. Eventually Hugette picked us up again and we ate dinner at the Casasola's.

On Saturday it was time for us to head to the second leg of our trip. I had booked two nights at a hotel in Marseille so we weren't intruding on the Casasolas for too long. Our hotel was right downtown and surprisingly spacious (after seeing hotels in England, anything looks spacious). Phillipe and Michele drove us to Marseille but they wanted to take us to lunch one last time to a seafood restaurant I had mentioned. It's out of town a ways but I remember eating there very vividly when I was there last (9 years ago). The restaurant is at the end of a peninsula and overlooks a craggy island off the tip. You have to walk a rocky footpath for a few hundred meters just to get there. We had a very leasurly, enjoyable lunch. When I'm in France, I don't even check my watch. I get the impression that none of the French check their watches either, they always seem to live for the moment!

After lunch, Phillipe and Michele said they were going to go see Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille before they headed back home because Michele had never seen it. It's Marseille's most famous land mark. It's a basilica on top of a big hill in the middle of the city. It is refered to affectionately as the "good mother" which watches over the city. The architecture is striking, especially the ornate interior. I believe Barb got a few pictures in. Any panoramic pictures you see of the city are from atop this hill. After seeing the Basilica, we had one more drink at a cafe and then parted company with Phillipe and Michele. We were now on our own in a foreign country (England doesn't count because they kind of speak our language).

We saw a couple other neat churchs. One was an Abbey that was built in the fifth century! It was very gothic. We also saw the old Parnier neighborhood and the Vieux Port which is a very famous port packed with sail boats. On our last night there, we decided to take a late night cruise. We took one of the last boats of the night to the Frioul islands. They are not far from port and we saw Chateau D'If (an island prison) as we went by. We were on a big ferry with only two other couples on it. When we got to the island they sent us ashore and proceeded to take off back to the mainland. I had no clue they were dropping us off and leaving so I got worried. It was about sunset at this point, and athough I'm sure there are good little hotels to stay at on this island, we had a hotel and a flight to catch in the morning! Luckily I asked somebody and they said the ferry would be back in two and a half hours. So we went on a walk and injoyed the peace and quiet (downtown Marseille feels almost like New York City with all the people crowded together!). We found a cove without a soul in sight and waded into the water. I looked over about three feet to my right and saw a good sized jelly fish. It kept washing up ashore and wasn't able to get back out to sea. It was about the size of my hand. Thankfully I didn't touch it. After it got dark, we found a restaurant and had some drinks (I had Pastis, the official licorice flavored drink of Marseille) and some ice cream. We then wandered the docks looking at boats and enjoying the sound of the waves. We finally got on our ferry at ten thirty and headed back. It was the end to a wonderful week where every day was warm and sunny with hardly a cloud in the sky.

Our flight back was uneventful (which is about all you can ask for these days when you fly), but our train ride back to Reading took twice as long as it did going out! One of the lines on the Tube apparently flooded from too much rain...welcome back to England I guess. We eventually made it back though and slept like babies. After that it was back to business as usual... well I guess as usual as a couple of crazy Arkansans in England gets. Until next post, ciao!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbarawest/sets/

Provence, France: Day 1

Hello all! Scott and I just got back from an amazing 5 days and nights in the Provence region of France. Provence is in the extreme SE part of France along the Mediterranean coast.

Our trip started off by leaving our home here in Caversham, England at 9am, and taking a series of train rides and Underground trains to get to Stansted airport in extreme north east London. The trains took longer than our flight of 1h40m! I found this amusing. We found that for the airline we were were flying, Ryanair, each individual flight had a seperate counter to check in at. A bit confusing at first since there seemed to be at least 30 Ryanair ticket counters with various size lines at them and only little bitty signs with different flight numbers displayed above them. Crazy. But we figured it out.

As some of you know, the West family has been good friends with the Casasola family for many many years. Hugette's daughter is Michele, and Michele and Phillipe Casasola have 2 children Marie (25) and Jean Baptiste (23). Hugette lives in the nearby village of Rognes. The Casasola family was kind enough to let Scott and I stay in their guest house just outside of Le Pue-Sainte-Reparade, which is near Aix-en-Provence for 3 days and nights. The Casasolas live in the country in a beautiful old 150-200 year old peach colored farmhouse with light blue shutters, spanish tile, and lots of nice flat open land and old trees surrounding their compound. Michelle picked us up from the airport in Marseille and we drove inland for about and hour to get to their house. The roads began to get smaller and smaller as we neared their place, and we started passing vinyards, olive trees, and fields of drying sunflowers just before we turned onto the yet smaller road to get to their house. We entered their estate through a short walled drive which was roofed with old timbers and exposed lichen covered spanish tiles. A set of large iron gates let us into their backyard where we parked the car just outside of their large new garage. (Phillipe is an avid wine collector and it was under this new garage where he had his wine cellar. I think he said he currently has over 500 bottles, and keeps a spreadsheet to keep track of the best dates to drink each bottle!) Their house is decorated in the traditional Provence style with lots of old wood, beautiful brightly colored fabrics, rust colored tile floors, and the occasional basket hanging from the low ceilings. You must stoop through the small timber topped doorways leading from room to room. The ceiling was all exposed wooden beams and the entire place is simply gorgeous! We spent most of our time there chatting and eating outside under a large old tree (with its resident owl) at a wooden table whose metal chairs were all painted different bright colors. There is an saltwater swimming pool just outside the backdoor, and a grill built into the side of the guesthouse nearby. Vines had started to creep across the backside of the new addition to the house from the older part which they had already claimed. There were 2 dogs and le chat (the cat) Max who helped keep our stay entertaining.

The first evening we were there, all 7 of us ate dinner together outside. As I don't speak French, I had an impossible time following the conversation, but strangely enough, by the end of our 5 days in France, I'd found that I was able to understand quite a bit of what was being said and could even tell when the topic of conversation had been changed! I could even speak very simple sentences to Scott in French! Hugette, Michele, Marie, and JB all spoke some English, but most of the time we were with them all French was spoken exclusively. Scott said that he even started dreaming in French the second night we were there! As most of you know, Scott speaks French very well. He's my official translator. I think I'll keep him around for future trips to France. ; )

Anyway, back to dinner the first night. We were eating chicken, and I had observed that everyone else was eating their drumsticks with a knife and fork -continental style. So I thought I would follow suit and do the same. Meanwhile everyone else is engaged in conversation and speaking French and I have no idea what is being said so I'm off in my own little world concentrating trying to cut my chicken from the bone and finding that it's actually a really hard thing to do. When all of a sudden my drumstick flips up into the air and shoots of to the left of me and lands on the ground! I swear it all happened in slow motion. I quickly looked up and NO ONE ELSE SAW IT! But of course, being me, I started laughing uncontrollably and in the split second I was debating whether to leave it there on the ground until I could pick it up quietly at the end of the meal, or draw attention to what I had just done and pick up the chicken leg and set it next to my plate, one of the dogs decided for me and swooped in and grabbed the chicken leg and trotted off into the darkness with it!! By this time I think I had confused everone at the table with my sudden outburst of laughter and was trying not to draw further attention to myself, so I quickly composed myself and said something like "I'm sorry, um, nevermind." since I was too embarassed to admit what had happened and felt I could still save face. Then as if I was being punished for trying to hide my folly, the dog with my chicken leg still in its mouth came trotting back up to within 10 feet of the table and started crunching loudly on it!! It was all I could do to keep a cringe off of my face. Phillipe looked over at the dog for a few seconds and I could tell he was thinking "What has he found?" and I could also tell he was debating whether or not to get up and take whatever the dog had found away from it, or just shoo him off. While I was on the opposite side of the table torn between trying to silently will everyone to just ignore the dog, and running the thought that "dogs shouldn't have chicken bones because they choke on them" through my mind, wondering if I needed to get up and save this stupid dog's life and embarass myself in the process. Finally, in what felt like 5 long miserable hours later of me listening for the dog to start wheezing, the dog stopped its crunching. Whew. I was safe. They never knew... of course now they probably will now. : )

More to come, but I must stop writing for now.

Our Cornish Adventure

Greetings All!
Well it's time for the next installment of Barbie and Scott's adventure! This one is to tell you about our trip to St. Ives in Cornwall. For those unfamiliar with British geography, cornwall is the county in the southwestern most tip of England. We took the train there which was a little over 5 hours each way! To put this in perspective, we used to make the drive from Dallas to Little Rock in about 5 hours, and it was 80 fewer miles. Normally the train rides are not that slow, but this particular trip called at just about every station on the line along the way. However, train rides are not so bad, you don't have to worry about traffic or being sleepy and you can read.

So anyway, we finally got there on Saturday July 26th at about 1pm. The area is gorgeous, as I'm hoping you'll see in our photos. I picked a spot on the north Cornwall coast which is supposed to be more interesting landscape and more waves from the Atlantic. The town actually has to beaches, one on either side of a peninsula. One beach faces a bay and the other the Atlantic. We laid out on some beach towels (after slathering suncreen) on the beach and enjoyed the sand in between our toes. The water wasn't exactly balmy though. As many of you may know, it does not exceed 65 degrees F here during much of the summer so the water is very chilly. My guess is the water temperature is 60 degrees F or lower. So we wading in it up to our ankles and then decided we'd had about enough of that. So just laying on the beach was just fine with us. The weekend's weather turned out to be great, especially on Sunday which was in the 80s! There were tons of Brits turned out for their annual holiday. This tourist spot didn't have very many foreignors at all. Many of the London attractions have more Americans/Asians/Europeans than Brits, but St. Ives was all British. Many people were donning wet suits just to enter the water.

This was our first overnight trip so we stayed at a bed and breakfast that Saturday night. It was very nice and quaint with a view of the bay. We killed time exploring curiosity shops (England is chalk full of them). We ate at a seafood restaurant and had fish and scallops, and went to a craperie for dessert. All in all we had an enjoyable and relaxing weekend.

Bath and the English kittie

Greetings everyone! This is Scott logged in as Barbara by the way. Sorry we haven't posted in a couple of weeks, we will try not to make a habit of that. So what can you tell by the title of this post? Perhaps we've been attempted to bathe English cats? Not quite, these are in fact two completely unrelated topics that have happened since our last post. One, we visited the old roman town of Bath, and two, we successfully navigated the red tape and imported our beloved cat Sue!!! That's right, Sue is with us now and in good spirits. She's sitting in Barb's lap right now trying not to fall asleep. Thank you very much to Barb's folks for taking care of Sue for us the last month and a half. Sue says: "thnx fur feedin adn petting me, kbai".

So Barbara and I saw Bath! You may have heard of it before, it was originally found by the Romans (or at least recorded as being found by the Romans, they had a habit of deciding to start history from scratch sometimes) and is the only hot spring in the British isles. The used this hot water to create a pool and they...worshipped it! They actually built a temple over the area and made sacrifices to the goddess of wisdom and decisions, Sulis Minerva. The crafty little Romans used the hot water from the spring and piped it to surrounding rooms and pools. Bathing was a very important social event for Romans (I can just see the English Victorians cringing) so they really liked it I'm sure when it was steaming hot! So anyway, the baths were neat. Right next door is Bath Abbey which is also very cool. They say it is quite possible that another Roman temple exists in this area and that it most likely lies beneath Bath Abbey. It's another very awesome medieval church just like you see everywhere here. Bath is quite unique, almost all of the rest of its architecture is Georgian (English for neoclassical), and the town is protected so that you can't built anything modern in the city center. We've posted the pictures on Flickr.

On another note, last Sunday Barb and I met up with Fei Song in Reading. Fei went to graduate school with me at the Walton College. She happens to have moved over here a couple months before us to Bracknell which is town very close by. We hung out and talked with Fei for a couple of hours at a pub, it was fun. Another MBA classmate, Jamie Lanius, will be moving to London quite soon also. Hopefully we'll meet up with her sometime soon. Also I'm been in contact with David Deitz, a friend of mine from undergrad, who's been living in Leeds now for a while. He and his wife are moving to London in a couple of months so we plan on seeing them as well. Small world.

Barbara and I just had a very relaxing Saturday. We only left the house to go to the grocery store and pick up picnic items. We then proceeded to ride our bikes to a spot on the Thames and have a picnic. It was a lovely day in the 70s (I'm sure this temperature does not seem fair to those we know in Arkansas and Texas) with lots of sun. We were in a park area outside the oldest church in town. Just to paint a picture for you all, we were sitting there eating a French baguette with blue cheese, French sausage, and watercress and drinking a bottle of red wine while watching the swans swim by. Aaahhh. Suuuch a hard life.

As a side note, Barbara would like to add that she found out a piece of trivia about our home. We live in Caversham which is our nice little suburb of Reading. Barb found out that Caversham is the oldest known permanent settlement in Britain! Wow, I had no idea! Barb also wanted me to say that the bobbies actually do look like the guys on Hot Fuzz! Wow, thanks Barbara! I'm sure everyone was wondering about that. Yarrrp!!!!

DVD woes

Did you know that you can't watch American DVDs on a UK DVD player?

Neither did we.

Our plan was to just watch movies on our new UK laptop, rather than buy a TV and separate DVD player. Sounded like it could work, and we even bought speakers to hook up to the new computer. Before we left home, we'd chosen about 10 of our favorite movies from our collection to bring with us. We have watched several of them over the past week or two with no problems. Save one. Anytime we would switch between one of our American DVDs and a rented UK DVD the computer would ask us to manually switch the zone setting on our computer so that the DVD drive could read the disk. Okay, a bit annoying, but totally do-able. Just a few mouse clicks and you're up and running. Usually.

Well, last night I went out and bought The Other Boleyn Girl at Tesco, and was excited about watching it over dinner. (Scott and I had been trying to rent it for weeks only to find out that its release date was much later in the UK than it was in the US...I digress...) So we pop it in the player, Windows Media Player pops up and basicly tells us that since we have switched zone settings 5 times (a mere 5 times!!), that we now have an optical drive error. Huh? It further informs us that even if we were to uninstall and reinstall Windows, that it would not fix the problem since it's a hardware, not a software, problem. Meh.

So we call Dell's support line to ask them about it. We go through the first technical support guy who says that it's not a manufacturer defect so it's not covered by our warranty. Would we like to be transfered to the Dell store to purchase a new disk drive? No. No we would not. Scott asked to speak to his supervisor. Mind you, we'd already been round and round with this first guy for a good 15 minutes about how there was no error message saying that changing the zone settings would do permanent damage! So his boss got on the phone and told us the same thing. Only in a more official manner. So we asked to speak to his boss. His boss, guy #3, gets on the phone and tells us that, yeah, what we've done doesn't usually happen very often, so they don't really have a standard way of dealing with it. Okay. What does that mean?

Somehow Scott manages to convince him to send us a new disk drive, free of charge, and walk us through installing it when it arrives. YAY SCOTT!! (See why he's my hero?!) So we promise the guy NOT to switch between watching US and UK DVDs anymore. Oh yeah, but we have to send back the one we have that's stuck on the US zone setting in return for the new one. Ah well. One can't have everything, I suppose.

Our new drive should arrive on Monday. I'm a bit sad that we won't be able to watch any of the disks we brought with us, or have any more of ours sent from home. But I also can't wait to finally watch our new movie! : )

Henley-on-Thames

Scott and I decided to forgo our trip to Bath last weekend for a "leisurely" 9 mile Saturday bike ride downstream to Henley-on-Thames. The "bike path" that the map showed turned out to be little more than a fisherman's trail along the Thames! Hee hee! We finally got so frustrated with the weeds that were taller than we were, the 2 foot wide clearance, and the stinging nettles (not to mention having to walk our bikes) that we turned back and crossed the river to see if it was better on the other side. It was, but not by much. Determined to press on (we were 3 miles downstream at Sonning by this point) we found ourselves riding in a cow pasture with big black and white dairy cows gazing lazily at us as we tried not to hit the tree roots by the riverbank and get pitched into the river. We had to lift our bikes over several fences (maybe 5) along the way and walk our bikes in many spots... but we made it!!!! We were so very sore by the time we got there, but it kind of felt good knowing that we'd done it! We just tried not to think about the return trip.

Henley-on-Thames was gearing up for their yearly regatta which is taking place this week. Evidently it's a very posh deal. Anyway, the town was gorgeous and very quaint. It's in the foothills of the Chilterns, and, as the name suggests, right on the Thames river (just like Reading and Caversham). We saw where the Wind in the Willows museum was and had a picnic lunch in a field between it and the river. There were little kids playing cricket near us, and we heard an English mom call her kid a cheeky monkey! Hee hee!

Scott and I walked around the town and window shopped. We found a rare bookshop where I got to hold a £50,000 (that's ~$100,000) first edition of Ian Flemming's Casino Royale. We were also allowed to handle a special limited first edition of Fahrenheit 451, signed by Ray Bradbury, whose cover was made of a material containing asbestos. Cheeky publishers! We stayed and chatted with the bookshop owner who kept bringing out treasures from behind lock and key for us to see and handle. She was one of the nicest and most interesting people we've met over here. We saw and held a first edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and she told us of how they'd just purchased a signed copy of Jane Austen's Emma at Sotherby's for over £200,000. Evidently there are only 9 known books ever to have been signed by Jane Austen, and this was one of them. It had just been sold to an american collector for an "undisclosed sum". Such an awesome shop. Here's their web address should you care to check it out: http://www.jonkers.co.uk/

Bless that bookshop owner for another reason: she informed us that we could take our bikes home on the train. EUREKA! I was no longer dreading the trip home! Previously our understanding was that only foldup bikes were allowed on the rail system. Man. For £4.80 each it was a bargain to stand on the train holding our bikes. We had to change trains once, and the smaller stations don't have lifts from one platform to another, so we had to carry the bikes up and down flights of stairs. But no matter! This was definately preferable to riding them the 9 miles back, I thought!

We're both still sore and a bit sunburned from our most recent adventure. It was alot of fun though! I'm really glad we did it. But before I try something like that again, I'm seriously thinking of investing in this new bike seat: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000VEG97I/ref=s9subs_c3_at3-rfc_p?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0BXPMDSW8575VY9TFVB3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139042491&pf_rd_i=468294

Until next time,

Barbara

Flickr account

Okay. I've set up an account on Flickr. The address to see all of our photos and videos is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbarawest/sets

Interesting or not, almost all photos will be making their way here within just a few short days. Who knows? I may even find time to tag them all.

London, Oxford and the Church of England

Whew! What a morning. Don't try to install a wireless router without being properly caffinated by your morning coffee. That's all I'm gonna say.

Scott and I have done so much since our last post! Where to begin? ...at the beginning I suppose:

Two weekends ago Scott and I made our first trek to London. What a city! We took the rail into Paddington Station where we stepped onto the Underground. Gosh. What a maze it is. You have to go up, then down, then turn left and right then do the hokey pokey just to get to the next parallel platform. So confusing. Anyways... We made it to The City which is the financial district or old London juuuust fine. We emerged from underground to find we were right below The Monument which is the memorial to the great fire of London that ravaged the city back in 1666. It was under scaffolding, ofcourse. So it looks rather unimpressive in the photos. Scott informed me that if you were to lay The Monument on its side from where it now stands, that its top would touch the place where the fire first broke out (some bakery). Kinda neat. I guess he's read the guidebooks.

Our first real stop of the day was at The Tower of London. Yay! It has been my absolute favorite thing we've done so far. So interesting and steeped in history. We took a tour led by a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater), Mitch and he helped to truly bring our visit to life. What a kook he was. Very fun. His wife is a guard for the Crown Jewels there too. We happened to have arrived in London on the day that the Queen's birthday celebtation is held. So out of respect, the Beefeaters were wearing their special uniforms that they only wear twice a year. And today they were only wearing them before noon, so what luck that we actually caught them! The special uniforms they were wearing were red and gold. We were informed that the gold piping and trim on them was, in fact, REAL GOLD! And very heavy. I think that each of those uniforms cost $50,000! Yikes! Their everyday red and navy uniforms cost about $2,000 each in comparison. At the tower we saw Henry VIII's obscene armor, the execution block and axe, the ravens, the royal china collections, all the crown jewels, including all the crowns and scepters, and the 530 carat Star of Africa! We also saw some tourists almost get run over by marching royal soldiers. It was actually pretty funny. The soldiers had to yell at them. I have a video of it I hope to upload in the future.

At one o'clock we saw a 62 gun salute over the river Thames in honor of the Queen. They have had all ceremonial gun salutes in London at this location on the Tower wharf since 1707. It was really more of a cannon salute actually, with 3 cannons taking turns firing. Lots of pomp and circumstance. We watched all this from inside the Tower of London. Pretty cool. And loud.

Next, Scott and I went up in the Tower Bridge. The views were amazing and we could see the London Eye, the spires of Parliment, St. Paul's Cathedreal, the Gherkin, and all the London cranes. Next we went down into the engine room which was Scott's favorite part of the day, I think. Lots of gears and machine looking things. He loooooved it.

Then it was off the the British Museum where we saw, among other things, the Rosetta Stone, a part of the Sphinx's beard, and the Elgin Marbles. It was AWESOME. I could spend a week there and still not see everything. I hope to go back soon!

Then we got lost. I'm not really sure how it happened, as I don't think anyone ever really plans on getting lost. We ended up over in Soho with all of the hopelessly trendy cool kids. I felt like I'd just stepped out of a Laura Ashley cataloge and onto the center stage at a punk show. Kinda unnerving. But we soon found an indian restraunt to duck into, refuel, and regroup. (And look at our map). Ah, what wonders a full belly does for one's map reading abilities! After dinner we were easily able to locate the nearest Underground line, and were soon on our way home for the day. Needless to say, exhaustion ensured that we both slept very well that night. : )

Last weekend we went to Oxford. It was really cold and rainy when we left in the morning, but cleared up shortly after noon. We took a walking tour of Exeter College and the center of the University. We saw the Radcliffe camera, Christopher Wren's sundial, Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Shop" Edmund Halley's rooftop observatory, The spot where Bill Clinton did not inhale, and Christ Church where Harry Potter was filmed. I only mention Harry Potter because there were sooooo many "Harry Potter" tours of the University! It was really quite silly.

I think we're headed to Bath this weekend.

Last Sunday we attended our first Church of England service at St. John's just down the road. It's a pretty good size flint exterior church that was built in 1888. It has spectacularly intricate stained glass windows, beautiful wood floors and has lots of peaked stone arches throughout the nave. There were only about 35 people in attendance and Scott and I were by far the youngest ones there. I really think the next youngest person was a gentleman who we met after the service. He will be retiring later this year!

The sermon, we were informed at the start, was recycled from a wedding ceremony that the priest had preformed some years earlier. It was based on Dr. Who. No, seriously, it really was. I totally didn't get it. Something about Dr. Who encountering strange and marvelous alien creatures on his voyages, being similar to men and women being strange and marvelous alien creatures to each other, being similar to us coming to church to encounter the strange and marvelous...aliens? Who knows!? Silly Anglicans.

After service we were invited to have tea and biscuits with the congregation. We were not allowed to serve ourselves, as there was a little lady who let us know that this was her duty. Tea was served in delicate little bone china teacups with matching saucers and with a tray of assorted biscuits on the side. So Scott and I stood around drinking our tea and making polite conversation in the nave before departing the church after service. It was simply adorable and so very quaint. I hope to do it again next week! Maybe the next sermon will be more...usable?

Okay well I've tried to upload more pictutes here, and all it's letting me do is upload the pittiful Monument scaffolding photo. I'll try again next time. You'll just have to use your imaginations for now. I intend to start a Flickr account. That will probably work better.

Love you all!

Barbara

Windsor and moving

I just finished moving all of our luggage and newly aquired household items down 2 flights of stairs and halfway down the street. Whew! It's okay though because we get to move today! I'm meeting with our agent here in town at 10 am this morning to go over final paperwork and get the keys.
We went to Windsor on Saturday and toured the castle and the town. The castle was absolutely spectacular and we saw things such as Henry VIII's suit of armor, huge ornate solid silver tables and the Waterloo chamber that has a table for formal dining which seats over 100! As well as many old uncirculated royal family photographs, sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, and Prince Charles' crown. The queen's flag was flying over the round tower, proof that she was at the castle lurking behind the curtians watching us. I thought I saw the corner of her hat peeking out one time, but Scott told me it was just a part of a curtian tassel. Drat.
The changing of the guard was cancelled, but we'll catch it next time.
I must run to meet with our agent. Thank you for all the comments! We really enjoy reading them! I will try to answer you all individually later on this afternoon.
Cheers! Barbara

Our new home

We got the flat! We move in on Monday, June 9th. Everyone's told us that it's almost impossible to find one as quickly as we have. Even the hotel manager where we're staying is amazed! I think I'm most happy about our new private garden. : )

Our new address is: 31 St. Johns road, Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, RG4 5AN, England.

We tried to open a bank account yesterday but found we must have a permanent residental address first, but in order to rent a permanent flat we have to have a British bank account! Quite the catch 22. Scott's getting a letter from his work today which should clear everything up...we hope!

Today's his first day at his new job. I can't wait to hear how it went!

We've decided to visit Windsor Castle this weekend. Time to figure out the rail system...

This is the lock and dam along the Thames foot path on the way to the grocery store.

Flat hunting.

We absolutely fell in love with the first flat we viewed yesterday! It's in lower Caversham (north of the Thames) on St John avenue. There's a really old church on the corner and the houses are brick row houses with little arched doors. It's a one bedroom with a private back garden that Sue would absolutely adore! We're on our way right now to make an offer on it. We'll just be renting it, of course, but here you jave to "make an offer". Who knows. The neighborhood it's in is really old and picturesque. And the flat has old exposed wood beams in the living room and a bay window in the bedroom, it also has a fairly large bathroom with a tub. It comes with a bed and couch and they can also put in a washer for us. Guess we'll be hanging a clothesline in the garden to dry our clothes! Wish us luck!
We'll also try and take care of opening our bank account today and getting cell phones. It's nice and sunny here today, and all the mud puddles on the streets and sidewalks have started to dry up. Looks like the beginning of a beautiful day. : )

We made it!

Hello family and friends! Barbara and I have arrived in Reading safe and sound. Our flight came in at 8:30am local time and we were all settled in Reading at about noon. We spent Monday walking along the Thames, seeing the town, and hitting the pub for our stereotypical pint. It's a cute little city, everything is very compact. We are beginning our flat hunt this morning, we will keep you all posted when we have contact information.
Here's Barbara:
Hi there! We had quite a time trying to corral our 6 suitcases by hand around the airport, up and down elevators and stairs into busses and trains to finally end up at our hotel. Whew! But we're actually here! We made it!
We saw TONS of baby ducks and swans on the Thames yesterday. They're such brats. They barely get our of your way and then proceed to hiss at you. heh heh. Lots of rabbits here too, I bet we saw 20 yesterday. The landscape is green, lush and absolutely beautiful! Just like in the the movies. We saw Windsor castle in the distance yesterday on our trip from the airport. I can't wait to do some sightseeing! But first things first. We must find a place to live, I suppose. It's raining here now, but we found a Tesco and bought umbrellas yesterday. Off we go! We love you all!
Scott and Barbara

We have reservations!

Scott just made reservations for us at "Caversham Lodge House" in Reading for June 2nd through the 9th. Hopefully during this week we can scope out some more permanent housing around town. The address (if you want to google it) is 164-166 Caversham Rd, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 8AZ. It looks like it's really close to the downtown area and only a block from the Thames!

I'm getting so excited! We've bought our plane tickets, and have a temporary place to stay! This is all really happening!

I think our first order of business once we get there is to of course find a place to live, but soon after we hope to buy a laptop so we can keep in contact with all you guys, and also buy bikes. We're hoping we can use them as one of our primary means of transportation around town. I guess once we're there we can see how hilly the area is, and if it looks like we can make it work.

We're going to start packing house things up this Memorial day weekend. Our parents are coming down next weekend to take it back to Arkansas (I can't thank you guys enough!).

Scott starts work at his new job on Thursday morning June 5th. Wish him luck!

UK work permit? Check.

We received notification that Scott's work permit was approved, and that it was sent to the Jacobs office (Scott's work) in the UK. They're mailing it here to us now.

We're also in the process of applying for our visas. We go to get fingerprinted on Friday 5/16. The whole process should take a week.

Also, we got out plane tickets for June 1st. Yay!

I guess that's all to report for now...