Trip Report - England - Part III - London

London:

We had one and a half days to see everything we wanted to see in London, which meant we walked a little faster, jumped on the tube as much as we could and took pictures like we were from National Geographic (probably like 40 frames a second or something fast like that).

It is quite an awesome site when you exit the tube only to see Big Ben right in front of you, but this time it wasn’t in some cheesy ‘80’s Chevy Chase movie…ok, here is something to jog the memory…. remember “look kids it’s Big Ben!” It is almost like a big monument that screams, “Welcome to London – we will impress you with our stature.” And we were impressed!


We were pumped to be able to take the tube (take the tube buddy…it’s faster) and indeed it was, catch a show (Chicago and “all that jazz”), I was up for seeing Mary Poppins, however, Robert wasn’t up for the “spoon full of sugar.” We saw the quite impressive “Big Ben,” the House of Parliament, the infamous Thames River (I still remember reading all of those incredible pieces of literature that reference this body of water), Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Buckingham Palace where we couldn’t resist having our photo taken with the guards…come on, what if we never get back? We also saw, St. James Palace, Green Park, Marble Arch, Nelson’s Column, Eros, St. Paul’s Cathedral and how could the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge not leave a lasting impression on someone? Wow, that is quite the site, regardless of the rain, it is simply incredible!


Highlights/Observations from the trip:

London – a beautiful city with amazing architecture, fabulous shows and great fish and chips…from what we heard, we didn’t eat any, but I really liked the food in St. Alban!

The Abbey in St. Alban – I fell in love with my personal tour guide, Alec who was about 70 plus and full of incredible knowledge.

England is very similar to America, from the language, the news, the behavior of the youth, the stores, but much more expensive.

The ability to maintain a sense of humor when things do not go as planned.

easyJet is a great value for your money; you get two landings for the price of one!

The realization that not all places in the world will be like Switzerland.

Trains will not always run on time, nor will they always show up.

Two adult people can fit into a twin bed.

You can learn new phrases, like, "Hello Love," "This is Brilliant," "Mad as Crackers."

Tower of London

Melinda and Robert in front of the Tower Bridge

Tower of London Gardens and the Tower Bridge

Westminster Abbey

Nelson's Column

St. Paul's Cathedral

The London Eye AKA The Millenium Wheel (Or the very expensive ride!)

Tube Sign

Take the Tube Buddy...It is Faster...Tea and Toast...

Melinda and Robert with the Guards at Buckingham Palace

Melinda and Robert in front of Buckingham Palace...the Starbucks was Robert's idea...

The House of Parliment

House of Parliment Continued...

Eye of London over the Thames - View from Westminster Tube Stop

The House of Parliment and Big Ben

Overall:

Great trip and we are pleased to say, we have checked off one of our "Must See" Destinations!

Trip Report - England Part II - St. Albans

St. Albans - Part II

We then spent the next two nights and days in St. Albans where we had easy access to London – only 20 minutes by train. St. Alban is a quaint, nice town with a beautifully huge Abbey, a nice park and old roman ruins. I also became quite familiar with the town, in fact; so familiar that when we met an English man in a bar and he mentioned he lived on Fish Pool Street, I immediately knew where he was referring to. Again, I started to give tours of the local area. We also had some incredible food (wow, some really good food, so good in fact, I wanted a year supply doggie bag to take with me back to Switzerland…thanks Chris and Amanda – these are some friends from the States who recently relocated to England – nice food, good company, and really nice food – I know, I already mentioned the food, but it was really that good!)

The Abbey

Robert, Melinda and Chris



Front of the Abbey

Chris, Robert, Amanda and Melinda at the White Swan, Go for the Beer, Stay for the locals!

More Abbey

Abbey

St. Alban Clock Tower

Roman Ruins (More Abbey in the background)

Trip Report - England Part I

England Trip Report - Part I

Upon arriving to Switzerland, we quickly put together a list of the “Must See” locations before our assignment or two years of living abroad was up. Needless to say, that list included London, which we have heard only positive things about. Below you will find our trip report for England, where we visited the following cities: Birmingham (not Alabama), St. Albans, and London.

Tuesday, March 22 we headed out with luggage in tow to catch the bus to the airport. We do not have a car in CH (we have decided to live the “Simple” life) and made our way to the airport in a speedy 10 minutes. After getting to our gate, we realized we had a 2 plus hour wait for the plane. On a cool day this wouldn’t be a problem, however, with AC being illegal in CH, the 2 hour wait quickly became a saucy one, as we sweated through our jeans and felt the need to splurge on 4 dollar bottles of water to keep us cool. Boarding the plane was much like cattle finding their way into a stall, with no seat reservations it truly becomes a “free for all,” with masses of people finding their way onto the plane. No problem, we kept our cool and were happy just to be able to sit together. The plane ride was adventurous – Robert and I have now coined Easy Jet as the Sky Circus – between children screaming, not crying – screaming (though we do not have children yet, we can empathize with the parents of these poor children), but nonetheless, it does make for a long flight. We were also offered raffle tickets to win 20,000 pounds, which was rather interesting and our landing, well, the landing was actually a repeat of the take – off, right before landing we quickly, ok, forget quickly, as fast as you can imagine pulled right back up. Robert and I looked at each other after the flight attendant came over the intercom and announced, “this is normal procedure” and smiled, (happy to still be in the air, yet quite anxious to be on the ground) and said, “no, we don’t think that is normal.” Believe it or not, we were still in great moods, happy to be traveling to a new place and being able to check off one of our “must see” before we die and we actually felt after the “almost” landing that we were indeed close to expiring without having ever seen London! Yikes…at least let us check one off first…ok, let us check them all off at the ripe old age of 95.

Once on the ground, we boarded another bus, which took us to a train station, which according to Robert’s directions was a simple 5 – 10 minute walk to the hotel. Now, this is where we became Amazing Race contestants without evening knowing it! We walked, out of the station, bags (heavy, very heavy bags) strapped to our backs and headed to the hotel. After choosing several different routes, and getting a great tour of industrial, very tired Luton at 12:30 in the morning, we decided taking a cab would be the best way to go. Once aboard the cab, we realized the 5 –10 minute walk would have been more like an hour. Thankful to be in our hotel room with romantic twin beds, we crashed for the night only to wake up at 5:00 am so that Robert could make his appointment.

Birmingham
Since Robert had to work each day, that left a lot of “down” time for me. I quickly boarded a train and found my way into the city of Birmingham. The city has a checkered, unique past and after going through a major revitalization, has become a mecca for shopping, restaurants, and cultural sights. You will see some photos of Birmingham, which apparently is the second largest city in England next to London. I spent my days in museums (I loved the museum there, some incredible paintings, I would have them on our blog, but I signed a waiver saying I wouldn’t reproduce the images, needless to say, if you are ever in Birmingham, check out the museum!), wandering in and out of bookstores (happy to be able to read books and magazines in English, it really is the simple things in life!). I became so familiar with the city that I started to give tours – well not really, but doesn’t it sound cool…I am in a city for a day and have already started to make some cash by offering tours! I’m like the Rock Star Birmingham tour guide with a funny accent! Right love?

City Building Dedicated to the City by the Queen

My favorite museum.

Cool, modern building.

The train station we nearly were stuck at all night.

Birmingham street canal.

Traveling Ballet Show.

Hike - Pratteln to Arlesheim

Melinda recently joined a hiking group, which now entitles us to access amazing hikes right in our area. We have now officially coined Sunday as the day of hiking. This hike was about 4 hours through very interesting terrain, ending at an amazing castle and in a very cute, quaint town.

Church in the town of Arleshein.

Old City Castle.

Old City Archway near the castle.

Robert and Melinda at the top of the castle. Unfortunately, the castle is not open to the public.

More castle walls.

View from the bottom of the castle and the village.

Amazing lake with huge fish - Matthew, you would love it here!

Hike - Laufen to Liesberg

On Friday, May 18 we decided to take a 3.5 hour hike from Laufen to Liesberg. We boarded the train in Basel and headed for Laufen.

The hike was called the Planetenweg hike - each planet was represented by the distance from the start of the hike, which also represented the sun. Each planet was shown to scale based off of its' relation to the sun. Sorry...no photos.

The wandering paths of the hike.

Robert and Melinda in a field of wildflowers!

Switzerland really is beautiful!

Robert - admiring a beautiful day after intense rain the day before.

Baby goats...

More cows...so nice that they actually roam outside... This photo was taken right after we hiked through a field of bulls..quite exciting...quite scary, especially when you are locked in with them and can only escape through a narrow gate. No photos available - we were walking too fast to stop and take photos of our unpredictable friends.

Our favorite shot of the hike!

Cathedral in Laufen.