À Paris

Ever since my really strange panic attack at age 11, I’ve needed to go back to Paris to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Adam & I visited Paris as one of our first trips in November 2011, but I wouldn’t let him go to the top of the tower then either.  So, since my parents were coming 4,900 miles to visit us in London and then needed to go to Rome to catch their ship back to Florida, we decided we’d just ‘work in Paris’ as well.  Yes, our plan was just as crazy as it seems.

So the four of us went to Paris together on the Eurostar.  (Side Note: I think we’ve now used every method to cross the channel…ferry, Eurostar, Eurotunnel, and plane.  Score!)

After the next couple of sentences, you’ll know that I did not buy the train tickets.

We took the 7:05am Eurostar.  Which meant we had to be at the train station at 6am.  Which meant that we had to leave the house at 4:45am.

You see, the train station is 11.2 miles from our house, but as the British have never heard of a highway and London doesn’t have a road longer than about a mile & half, it takes an hour to drive 11 miles.  Even at 5 am.

Luckily we could take a nap on the train to Paris.

We made it to Gare de Nord on schedule and quickly found our hotel to drop off luggage before heading out for the main event for the day.

I promise we were all having a good time.  I have no idea why Adam was scowling and Daddy was looking at the train across the way.

We decided to attack from afar so we could appreciate the gracefulness of the tower from a distance (and take some better pictures) then get up close & personal to appreciate the scale of the structure.  You don’t really realize the size until you try to go to the base.  It’s like the mountains off I-10 as you approach Tucson.  You think you’re a lot closer to them than you really are, then once you make it to the base of the mountain, you realize that they’re twice as big as you thought they were.

I don't try to take pictures of him making odd faces.  This stuff just happens.

The tower itself serves no purpose except to impress (and take tourist Euros).  In 1889, Gustave Eiffel won the contest to build the centrepiece for the World’s Fair.  And with great gusto, he came up with the 1,000 foot tall tower made of 7,300 tons of metal and 60 tons of paint.  People of the time thought it was monstrosity.  The writer Guy de Maupassant routinely ate lunch in the tower so that he ‘wouldn’t have to look at it.’

When we’d made to the base, we got to stand in line for tickets and bag checks.  The tour books warn of two hour lines in off season and three to four hour lines in peak.  Lucky for us, at the end of November it was about 45* and raining so the line was only about an hour.  However, as Mother pointed out even though the line was outside, it was slightly blocked from the rain and the mass of people actually created some warmth.  Okay, it’s a stretch, but we tried to convince ourselves.

We made it through security and into the first elevator to head up to the top.

Yet again.  No idea...

From the top, or le sommet, is wind and grand, sweeping views.  The plaques on the tower claim you could see 40 miles.  Not sure I believe that.

When we’d taken in all the heights and made it back to solid ground we started thinking about what we wanted to do next.  Dad suggested that we go over to see Notre Dame then followed it up with ‘I also want to walk along the Seine, so why don’t we walk along the river to Notre Dame.  It’s only about a mile.’  I could tell by Adam’s face that he disagreed with this statement, but as Adam stated later, my Dad is 6’4” and knows a guy with a dump truck, so you don’t dispute anything he says.

So off we went.

It was a lovely walk.  We came across Pont de l’Archeveche (the ‘Love Lock’ bridge).  So many padlocks everywhere.  There are padlocks not even locked to the bridge, just to other locks because it’s so full.

We made it to Notre Dame.  It is beautiful and worth every second of time you spend inside.  

Adam & I chose to sit in a pew while Mom & Dad walked around.  We pulled out the map of Paris.  Do you know how far it is from the Eiffel Tower?  3.1 miles.  We convinced Dad to take the RER back to the hotel.

After a good night’s sleep, it was time to say goodbye to Mother & Daddy.  I was sad they were leaving again, but glad to know it’s only 6 more months until we get to see them again.  We went with them to Gare de Lyon and had some breakfast before they had to head to their train for Rome via Turin.

Mother & Daddy have gone posh.  According to Dad he didn't realize he'd booked first class.  If you know Dad, you'd believe him.

Adam & I had the day in Paris before heading to Berlin on our train.  What better way to get over being blue that Mom & Dad left than to do some shopping in Paris.  I thought.  Adam did not.

So instead, we started by visiting the Mémorial de la Déportation.  The memorial is for the 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps.  It’s a strange experience to walk down a flight of stairs into an empty void and watch the city of Paris disappear.  All you can see is vast sheets of concrete with names inscribed on the walls.  It’s a pretty eerie experience.

From there, I told Adam I couldn’t do anything else depressing, so we decided to have lunch.  I just happened to pick a restaurant Avenue des Champs Elysées. Adam didn’t realize this was a major shopping street until after we got there.  

Woohahaha!

Return of the In-Laws

So Amanda's parents have come to stay with us in our new digs in South London and since they have spent a little bit of time in the UK before, our quest was to find new places to take them. Gilwell Park certainly fit the bill as far as new and unique tour sites go so to follow it up we decided to take them out to the Camden Town Markets. Camden Town is quickly becoming one of our favorite places to take visitors because it is unlike anywhere else in the city.

On our way back that evening we stopped by Amanda's office to show off her view of Tower Bridge.

The next day we drove out to Hampton Court for the afternoon as none of us had been there before either. Set upon the River Thames in southwest greater London the Palace had originally belonged to the Order of St John of Jerusalem prior to Thomas Wolsey take control of the palatial estate in 1514. For the next 14 years Wolsey spent enormous sums building a his estate. However in 1528 Wolsey, sensing his power and influence over King Henry VIII slipping, gifted the entire property to the King. There is some debate as to whether this gift was indeed Wolsey's idea or was the result of a comment from the King himself upon seeing the palace for the first time.

Henry VIII continued to build on the sight after he received it from Wolsey and indeed construction on the palace took place sporadically over the preceding centuries until the final rooms were completed in 1737. During Henry VIII's ownership he added what would be the last great hall built for an English monarch, the Anne Boleyn apartments (completed after she'd lost her head) and of course a massive kitchen expansion. The King liked to eat. Long dine the King!

But rather than boring everyone with the entire history of Hampton Court here are a few of our favorite photos from our day.

Getting ready to walk through the gates.

What's up there?

Ahh, guns. Lots of guns.

Apparently I was supposed to be taking part in this photo...Oh well.

A pair of the Queen's swans.

Base of the oldest/largest living grapevine in the United Kingdom

Next stop Paris and the Eiffel Tower!

After a quick nap that is...

Gilwell Park

My parents have been to the UK numerous times.  We lived here as a family for a couple of years when Jonathan & I were younger, then they’ve wrangled vacations out of my continued attempts to run away from home.  So as far a tourist destinations in the UK, they’re starting to run low on things they haven’t already seen…which leads us to this.

Amazingly, Gilwell Park hasn’t quite made it into the Rick Steves’ London guide book yet.

As is much of the UK, Gilwell was originally a farm which fell into disrepair around 1900. It was bought by Scout Commissioner William de Bois Maclaren in 1919 and given to the UK Scout Association to provide camping to London Scouts.  It additionally became the home of the Scout Leader training academy (the Wood Badge) and Scout Leaders from all countries of the world have come to Gilwell Park for their Wood Badge training.

Dad has a Wood Badge and wanted to see the home of the original training center.  He had also been told of the Buffalo statue donated to Gilwell Park by the Boy Scouts of America in the 1920’s.

So off we went.

Luckily, I’m the perfect daughter and didn’t mock any of his enthusiasm.

At. All.

Luckily we had Adam to document the documentation of Dad's visit

Directions from the scout leaders

He was moving leaves, not shaking Baden-Powell's hand

So the buffalo was slightly smaller than we thought it was going to be.

Okay, so it’s not going to make my top ten list of prized destinations in the UK, but I’m so glad we got to visit and let Daddy see somewhere that he was really excited about.

Cambridge

Traveling for us these days isn't all about international destinations and amazing cruising experiences. It's also about making sure we take advantage of the places that are only a short day trip away. One of those places now that we are in London is Cambridge.

A couple of years ago, after we first moved to Bristol, we took my family on a similar day trip to the other prestigious English university, Oxford, and had an enjoyable yet brief time. We arrived late in the day during the Christmas Holiday period so there wasn't a great deal going on. Yet it was still fascinating to get a brief glimpse into what it might be like to study at such a historic university as Oxford.

To be honest, the University of Cambridge never intrigued me as much as the University of Oxford did. I'm not sure I could identify the exact region but it just seems like growing up I heard more about the Oxford than I had Cambridge. That concept was probably reinforced a bit by the fact that Amanda spent a semester abroad studying at the University of Oxford only a few short months after we'd met. Although that's a story for another day and probably an entirely different blog. I write all that to stress the fact that Cambridge was simply not a must see destination on my list, yet its only a few hours away by train and we had a free weekend between travels and guests so we decided to make a day of it.

Upon arriving at the train station we checked a map to get our bearings and discovered that the University and the station aren't exactly close to each other. The posted map had walking distances and times to various places throughout the city and next to the university it estimated the distance to be around 1.5 miles and take approximately 30 minutes. There was also a taxi stand a few steps away from the map and a bus stop a bit further down the road but as we are starting to consider ourselves locals, as far as being residents of the UK goes, we decided against motorized transport set out at a leisurely pace and enjoyed the cool yet sunny British morning.

About three quarters of the way through our walk we happened across something I hadn't really seen much in the UK. A Gothic Catholic Church.

Our Lady and the English Martyr's was actually built in from 1885 to 1890 in the Gothic revival style so it wasn't a pre-reformation Catholic Church that had somehow managed to survive 100's of years of Catholic and Protestant turmoil. While the building itself isn't as historic as I'd originally thought one of the statues inside is thought to be a specific statue Thomas Cromwell ordered destroyed in August of 1538.

Walking a bit further down the road got us to an open air market in the center square of Cambridge were we picked up our lunch. It really was better than my face suggests.

The building behind me is the Kings College Chapel and houses the worlds largest fan vaulted ceiling. Unfortunately there were private services taking place in the Chapel so we were unable to view them. Kings College was original established by King Henry VI in 1441 just prior to the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. After Henry VI was deposed from the throne, work at Kings College slowed to nearly a stop until King Henry VII, in a move to solidify his reign took interest in the college and saw work resumed in 1508. Thirty-six years later Kings College was finally completed in 1544 during the later stages of Henry VIII reign.

The Chapel itself was completed in 1515 and its twelve stained glass windows were installed by 1531. The windows are considered some of the most important stained glass in all of England as they are a few of the only surviving pre-reformation windows that were not ordered destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in the 1640's. Some believe this is because Cromwell himself was a Graduate of Cambridge University. However, Cromwell's alma-mater was actually Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and not King's College so the argument in favor of sentimentality might be taken with a grain of salt.

Upon finishing our lunch just of the green of Kings College, there's no walking on the grass, we moved along down the street towards a gathering of people at the corner of Corpus Christi College to see what everyone was taking pictures of.

This is the Corpus Clock and it displays the time within the small grooves within the three concentric rings of the clock face. As time progresses the grooves are lit with a blue LED. Seconds are displayed on the outer ring, minutes the middle and hours on the smallest ring. So by the clocks count this photo was taken at 1:35:49 in the afternoon. While doing some additional research for this post I also learned that the clock was not designed to be consistently accurate. Rather it is only accurate once every five minutes and its irregular motion, stop and start nature of the pendulum and occasional backwards motion of the grasshoppers appendages were actually designed to impart a sense of "erratic motion that reflects the life's irregularities".

Moving on we came to Queens' College, Cambridge. Established in 1448, a few years after work began on King's College, Queens' College was originally founded by, you guessed it the Queen. Or more specifically, Queen Margaret of Anjou, however it was then refounded by in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville who was Queen to Edward IV. This is why the apostrophe is found after the s in Queens and not before when discussed in common. Anyway, Queens College was largely completed by 1460 with various expansion and refurbishment projects taking place in the subsequent 550+ years. Amazingly, however, Queens' College remained closed to female's until 1980.

Having finished viewing the Old Court and its impressive Moondial, the buildings were closed to visitors, we made our way around the perimeter of the College towards the River Cam and its famous bridges. The two most famous bridges, probably because they are the most ornate and easiest to see are the Mathematical Bridge and the Bridge of Sighs.

Mathematical Bridge

Bridge of Sighs

There are total of 22 bridges that cross the River Cam within Cambridge and the most entertaining thing to do is watch people attempt to punt down the river without bumping the bridges or perhaps more importantly, into each other. You can either hire a guide who will do all the work for you while you watch the Colleges meander past or you can hire just the boat and try your hand at propelling/steering a 20-25 foot long boat with a stick equally as long and apparently quite heavy. Several of the brave souls who decided to forgo hiring a guide struggled mightily as they attempted to execute the proper punting technique and were nearly overcome by the weight of the pole. A few even lost their poles to the river, although, thankfully for them wood floats and with a little help from the professionals were able to retrieve their poles. After watching all of this unfold below us we decided to stick to land for the day and finish our walk through the more peaceful green areas behind the University Colleges.

By the end of the day we felt we had scene just about everything we could and made our way back to the train station. In the end I came away far more impressed with Cambridge than I anticipated being and apparently a bit tired from all the walking as well. Did some say nap time?

The other stories of our cruise

You’ve seen all the highlights of the cities we visited in our cruise.  But just being on a cruise ship, we can now tell you, is an experience within itself.  So here is what was happening on the ship while we were heading to all these places.

As Adam has told you, we were the youngest people on the ship by a good two decades.  We were also the only Americans.  In fact, we were one of probably 3-4 non-EU couples on the ship.  This combination caused a constant talking point with anyone who came near us.  The questions usually began with ‘did you know that you’d be significantly out of the average age?’ ‘Did you fly from America just to take this cruise?’ ‘Would you ever do this again?’ Yes. No. Yes.

A couple of days into the cruise, word got out on the ship that a couple on board was celebrating their honeymoon, so then we started being asked all about our wedding.  It took us a day or two to figure that one out.  Then, when we told people that we’d been married for 8 years and this was in no way our honeymoon, they were even more confused!

An advantage of being from the EU when you travel in the EU is the open borders.  When you are not from the EU, everyone would like to see your passport.  When we first boarded the ship, they told us as non-EU passport holders, we would need to surrender our passport to the concierge for immigration checks at each port.  We became great friends with the concierge’s desk over the two weeks.  Every morning when we would pull into port they would discuss us with the country’s immigration authorities, then call us (and the other 3 couples – an Aussie, and two from Canada) to pick up our passports and any other relevant landing cards we needed so we could go onshore.  Whenever we returned from the ship, we had to return our passports back to the concierge so the whole process could start again in the next port.  One night, we forgot to turn ours back in.  They sent a steward to our cabin to pick them up from us.  We are apparently not kidding around with these procedures!  We asked our dinner table partners (all British) if they had to do anything at any of the ports.  With the exception of Russia, all of them left their passports in their cabins for the entire trip.

As cruise ships go, ours was small.  It held just over 800 passengers and had about 250 crew members.  So instead of the quite large ships my parents have told me about with six or so restaurants, ours made do with two.  This seemed to be okay.  One was casual, buffet style – we typically went there for breakfast and lunch.  The other was a sit down, formal two or three course meal regardless of the time of day you went.  The dinner seating was at assigned tables and a set time, but lunch or breakfast you could sit at any table.

Like I said, it worked okay.  Until it didn’t.

I mentioned in a previous post that a few people on the ship started feeling ill while we were in St. Petersburg.  Well, by the next day it was more than a ‘few’ people.  It was about 30.  Then the next day, the guest services manager came over the intercom and reported that it had been discovered that the illness was due to the Norovirus (google it if you don’t know – I’m not ruining my blog to explain the symptoms!).  As a ‘precautionary’ measure they closed the game room, workout facilities, library, swimming pool, whirlpools, public restrooms, and the buffet restaurant. 

So now all 800 (old, cranky) people (okay 798 old, cranky people and two spry young things) had to figure out how to coexist in just one restaurant and reduced activity centers.  It didn’t go well.  In addition to passengers falling ill, crew were also susceptible.  We looked around at dinner one evening and noticed that two of the four assistant waiters in our section were missing.  When someone was suspected of having the virus (passenger or crew), they & their bunkmate were quarantined into their room for 48 hours until the test could prove they didn’t have the virus; though the virus only lasts 48 hours so by the time the medical tests come back to tell you you’re sick, you’ve pretty much gotten over it.

Also as precautionary measures, the crew also had to clean the walls of the ship with a sudsy, bleach solution twice a day.  So you then had to be very careful not to touch any walls as they dried.  They used the same solution to clean tables anytime you moved throughout the ship, so caution again had to be used when sitting down somewhere that had been recently vacated.

In total, by the end of the cruise there were about 200 reported cases from the passengers plus about a third of the crew.  Luckily nobody on our table (including us!) ever showed signs of illness, so for us it was just an additional talking point at dinner.  Thank goodness we’d moved on from our age!  The waiters had been told to be on high alert through.  One evening I ordered something that, when it came, I didn’t particularly care for.  I picked at it for a bit but ended up not eating any figuring I could make do with the chocolate cake that was coming in the next course.  Within a few minutes of our waiter picking up my plate, I had two other crew members beside me asking if I felt alright and if there was anything wrong with the meal or my appetite.  She even wanted to know if I was running a fever.  I felt horrible having to tell her that I felt fine, the dinner was just bad – but I did out of fear of being locked in my room!

Okay, that was the downside of our trip.  I think it affected everyone a bit differently; obviously if you were actually ill or if your spouse was and you were bored to tears sealed in your cabin you probably think the virus was a much bigger deal than we did.  The part which annoyed me the most was the library closure.  I only brought two books with a plan to pick something out of there.  By day six I’d finished what I had and was seriously contemplating having to read one of Adam’s (he’s been into very serious WWII historical analysis lately, which is not my cup of tea on vacation!) when one of our dinner table friends shared some light mysteries.

Speaking of our dinner table friends, they were much more fun than I expected.  We had booked the late dinner setting (7pm by the way – late?  I’m rarely home, and never eating by 7pm!) and the largest table option they had.  We figured with a bigger table, there is a better chance that you’ll find someone you like or at least can hide from the people you don’t like.  It turned out to be great.  We always had something to talk about (and not always our age or nationality), we were able to fix a couple of digital cameras, and they were able to decipher the menu for us some nights – seriously, you can’t take these backwoods Texans anywhere!

After dinner every evening, there was a variety of shows ranging from Abba to Joseph’s Dream Coat to a comedian and just about everything in between.  It always seemed like the perfect way to wrap up the evening.

I guess to answer one of the questions that we were asked frequently… Would we ever do this again?  Well, yes.  We’ve already booked with the same cruise line to do a trip through the Norwegian Fjords in March.