Coming Home

Sorry for the delay, we have been home since December 20, but with the holidays and all...

Anyhoo, we got a cab to Manchester Airport as the second day of the snow delays were starting to destroy Heathrow and Gatwick air travelers down in London. We spent the night at an airport hotel and headed to check in early. The line was winding through the terminal, and all our bags were overweight. I shifted and restowed, and eventually we just paid to check an extra bag. We sat on the runway for a while, but after a second coat of de-icer, they let us take off for Philadelphia.

After our run-in with the Customs Man, we sailed on into Charlotte right on time.

If you're interested in seeing where we lived over there, here are some pictures. Hope you enjoyed the blog!

PICTURES OF OUR HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Chasing the Weirdstone in Cheshire

OK, we're almost home, but we had one more adventure to squeeze in (if you don't count our grand return to Waterworld tomorrow).

We have been reading a local classic adventure book called The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. It is set in Cheshire (the next shire to our west), and tells of the adventures of a brother and sister and their adventures in a place called Alderley Edge. The have dealings with dwarfs and little goblins called svarts and a mean ol' shapeshifter named Selina Place. It's all very Lord of the Rings, really, but a great story unto itself. The tale is built around a legend in the area about a wizard that lives in a secret tunnel in The Edge with an army of sleeping warriors. There is a map in the book, and we saw the other day that Alderley Edge is a real place, so we decided to see if The Edge itself was a real place.

Our pictures can pretty much tell the story from there...

CLICK FOR THE ALDERLEY EDGE ADVENTURE

Hanging Close to Home in Staffordshire

After the Marathon di Italia, we decided to stay close to home this week. We were able to get a short field trip in on Thursday, that, though rushed, was educational and fun as well.

The kids and I took advantage of Mom’s endless grading during this late semester and headed to Stoke and then took the train southeast. Down in that end of Staffordshire (our home county), you find the seemingly unassuming village of Lichfield. There would not be much to it except that it was the home of two imposing figures in English history as well as one of the country’s most imposing cathedrals.

Allow me start with a quick background story. Last Christmas, we were down at my mom’s house and I was looking for something to read. In perusing the Great Books collection there, I seized upon the volume by an author by the name of Boswell. Now, at risk of exposing my ignorance, this name meant nothing to me, but if you share my cloudiness, let me tell you that Boswell is famous for pretty much inventing the idea of the Biography. He wrote a biography of his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson in the late 1700s, and this has endured the test of time as the primary example of biography in our time. Now, don’t think for a minute that I held onto this giant tome and read the gripping story of Dr. Johnson from beginning to end, in fact I shoved it back on the shelf and snatched up the most recent Newsweek. As I flipped through, I came to the Books section of the magazine, and found a story about some recent biographies that had come out for the Christmas season, in case you didn’t guess, the central theme of this article was all about Boswell’s work on Johnson. This was all within maybe a ten minute period.

So, when I started learning about the area where we would be living in England, I discovered that Lichfield was in our neighborhood, and that Samuel Johnson, who just kept turning up, was actually from Lichfield. In addition to this, so was Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of my boy Chuck, and that his work was an important influence on his grandson’s. So, thusly and therefore, we decided to knock out one day trip southeast before we packed up for home.

The train and lunch schedules conspired against us, however, and we ended up finishing lunch in Lichfield around two. The train was heading home at 3:36, so we had to hustle. We snapped some pictures outside the big Cathedral, but skipped a trip inside, first because of time, and second because after all the churches we’ve seen…anyway, we headed on to Erasmus’s house. We watched a video and learned about some of his inventions (independent carriage axles, handwriting copying device), his work as a physician, his time as the premier poet in England, and also his work in animal origins, including where he said that all animals are clearly related at some level – almost a hundred years before his grandson got on the HMS Beagle. It was completely fascinating, and very hands-on as you can see in the pics. But, we had to hurry on out, and as a result, could not even get over to Samuel Johnson’s house at all. This was not a tragedy for the kids, but I guess I’ll just have to figure out what the universe was trying to tell me some other way. We made it back to the station with moments to spare, but the bus hit rush hour and we got home just in time for Sawyer to head to Tae Kwon Do.

Now, over to the Sportsdesk…

On Saturday, a local Stoke City football fan that I met while watching the game at the pub, Andy, picked Sawyer and I up at the flat and we headed into Stoke proper. We stopped by the pub for a pre-match pint with some of the notorious Stoke fans -- the loudest in the country according to their tickets. If the pub was any indication, they were not exaggerating.

We took a double-decker shuttle from downtown to the nearby Brittania Stadium for the big showdown with Blackpool, which had only been promoted to the Premier League this season, but were proving pesky to several teams. Stoke, which has been back in the League since 2008, went into the game ranked 7^th of the 20 teams in the division, just a few points behind the big boys like Chelsea and Manchester United. Sawyer and I had tickets in the family section, which means that instead of sitting with foul-mouthed, drunken hooligans, you sit with foul-mouthed, drunken hooligans and their kids. (This was not a problem for us though, because we ride the city bus everywhere already and hear it every day, and fookin shyte isn’t even officially forbidden in our version of English or I obviously wouldn’t write the term here.) At any rate, we were in the second row looking across the goal box as the first half ended in the traditional 0-0 tie, as Stoke had a goal called off ridiculously by the officials about midway through. Blackpool stole a goal early in the second half, and despite the good guys outshooting them two to one throughout the game, absolutely NOTHING would go in for the Potters. We went home frustrated, but with a Premier League game under our belts, and a big goose egg on the board for all our sports efforts in this country.

Ryder Cup – Monstrous washout AND America loses… Scotland v. New Zealand rugby – hometown Scots drubbed 49-3… England 1, France 2 in Wembley… and now our hometown Stoke crumbles to Blackpool before our very eyes… I don’t know if it’s a curse or not, but I imagine the local clubs will be happy to get rid of our sorry Yank luck before the new year begins.

And, speaking of which, we have one week to go, so you might hear from us one more time, but otherwise, we’ll be seeing you soon!

THIS JUST IN!

As we were going to press (as in, as we were sitting in the flat on Sunday thinking about tromping through the cold to somewhere with wireless that we could update this blog), we flipped on the telly for a moment and saw that ‘Guinness World Records Smashed’ was on, so we turned it over there. On the screen was a guy doing a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. We recognized his hair immediately, but we had to wait for the blindfold to come off… IT WAS THE GUY WE HAD FILMED ON THE TRAIN FROM BIRMINGHAM after we saw ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream!’ (See Nov. 10 entry). We jinxed him on this too, just as he was unable to approach his record time for us on the train, he fell way short of the world record for blindfolded cubing on TV. But hey! We know a semi-celebrity, so it’s all good. Talk about a small island!

CLICK HERE FOR PICS FROM LICHFIELD, THE STOKE GAME, AND THE RUBIK’S MASTER STOLEN FROM TV

On to Bergamo

ANOTHER LINK TO THE SAME VENICE/BERGAMO PICTURES

You may recall that the original plan for the Italian trip was to fly from Liverpool to Milan. FYI, on Ryan Air, when they say “Milan”, they actually send you to the town of Bergamo. It is within an hour of Milan, so that says to me that some airline conference somewhere included a vote that somehow makes it okay for them to lie about some things. Anyway, by the time we realized that we would be flying into Bergamo, we had already booked a hotel room (non-refundable) in Milan. We found the shuttle from Bergamo to Milan, and were ready to submit to this extra travel when, as you may recall, our flight to Milan (Bergamo) was canceled. A call to the Hotel Demo in Milan confirmed that non-refundable meant exactly what it sounded like it meant.

This rehash of some of the last entry’s information is necessary to help explain why we didn’t fly out of Venice (which Ryan Air calls the airport in Treviso where they fly that is actually a 45 minute bus ride from Venice, see above apparent vote). We had decided in the post cancellation powwow in Liverpool to keep our flight from Bergamo to Liverpool instead of changing it to Venice to East Midlands because we already had bus and train tickets home from Liverpool. And all this is why on Sunday morning we left Venice and headed to the little known city of Bergamo at the foot of the Italian Alps…whew!

We had one last gelato (that a video will prove is excellent according to Savannah), and boarded the train. This got us as far as Brescia and allowed us to see some beautiful views of the Lake District and Alps, despite the fact that we were looking through snow to see it. A trundling train from Brescia dumped us out in Bergamo in the late afternoon, and we walked to our first hostel. It was fine, if you don’t mind the slamming and banging about of college students well into midnight hour.

We went out for dinner around five and realized that you can’t go to dinner in Bergamo until seven. We had a drink and snack at one place, checked some toy stores, and made our way to a promising little Italian place just off the main drag in the lower city right near where we were staying. It was fine, but not quite up to the Venice standard, though the pasta and butter seemed on par. We could see the upper part of the city from where we were, but it just seemed a little too far away to get to, and the kids were going to rebel against walking, so we went back to the hostel and fought through the noise and got some sleep.

After the most continental of breakfasts at the hotel, we had about an hour before we needed to head to the aeroporto. I found the location of the Association Montessori Internationale world headquarters training center, the existence of which was the only reason I had been previously familiarized with Bergamo itself. We hoofed it through a wet snow to go and visit for a few minutes, and were gently chastised for not calling to schedule an appointment. After this, she was nice enough to let me get a look at the classroom and say hi to the group of 16 doing their year-long training. It was interesting to see, but we had a bus to catch, so we snuck our way down the tiny sidewalks that were climbing up to the old city, and reached our stop with minutes to spare.

Another Italian travel tip: It’s hard to figure out how to pay for the bus in Bergamo. We ride A LOT of buses in England, but since the only bus fare we had paid in Italy was a clearly understandable shuttle with a window at the Treviso Airport, it was a surprise to get on in Bergamo and have the driver completely inaccessible. There was a nearby machine that people were sticking tickets into, but we didn’t have a ticket, and hadn’t been shown anywhere to purchase one. So we sat and stood on the crowded bus, and rode to the airport. Then we got off, and walked into the airport. So, if you don’t hear from me for a while, you might assume that I have been tracked down by the Transito Autorito di Italia and taken to the gulago.

Upon entering the terminal, the most obvious feature was the serpentine line stretching back from security. It was a bit terrifying to watch it grow as we stood at the Ryan Air counter, and we actually started hoping for a delay to our flight’s departure. As we took our place in the security line, it was impossible not to think about being careful what you wish for.

We got a one hour delay that lasted about two hours, and the snow continued to fall throughout this time. The flashbacks to Liverpool were haunting. Finally, we loaded buses to take us across the tarmac to the steps that put us on our last ever Ryan Air flight. Our train from Liverpool had its flux capacitator go out as we pulled into our station, so we considered ourselves lucky for a change. Then the bus was on time, but it had no heat. We were home, frozen and exhausted by eight.

Viva di Italia! Buongiorno!

The Big Ol' Trip to Italy (and it's accompanying nonsense)

Oh, just the view out our hotel window...

In case you haven’t seen it on the news, or gathered it from these entries, the weather over here became winter a few weeks ago, and it refuses to let up. It came into play big time for us as we embarked upon our biggest trip of all, the excursion to Venice and northern Italy.

We were set to take discount carrier Ryan Air out of John Lennon Airport in Liverpool, and it was sunny when we got there. Then it started snowing again. They put up an hour delay. They announced the gate, and we went there and got in line. And waited. And waited. And then, they canceled the flight. Then we stood in line, and waited….and finally got to the Ryan Air ticket window. We had already lost a non-refundable hotel room in Milan for that night (Wednesday), and we were booked into a hotel in Venice the following night, so when we were hearing that there were no Ryan Air flights from Liverpool to Milan until Saturday, we were concerned. Luckily, they did a flight to the airport near Venice on Thursday; unluckily, it was flying out of East Midlands, not Liverpool. We got a room across the street and determined to start again on Thursday.

The first of three trains took us from Liverpool, through Crewe (where we had started the day before), and then within spittin’ distance of our flat as we wound across the snowy middle of England. It was still snowing when we got off the bus that connected our third train to Derby (Dahh-by) to East Midlands Airport. But, believe it or not, we loaded up and took to the skies on time, and were getting onto a shuttle into Venice by dinnertime. We had no trouble finding our hotel, and were gazing out our window on to the Grand Canal before bedtime. So, of course, bedtime became dinnertime as I jumped across the street and grabbed a pizza. Guess what! The pizza was fantastic! -- excellent meal numero uno in Italy.

We got up the next day to chilly temperatures and flooded streets and doorways. The tide was exceptionally high and, as is often just the way in Venice, water was everywhere. We hung out in the room a while and relaxed (we hadn’t slept too well, though there are no cars in the city, the boats under the window sill can make quite a racket). The water receded and the wind calmed and we took to the streets. I did my best to follow the map to the Piazza San Marco (that’s what y’all would call St. Mark’s Square), but Venice is simply the biggest maze ever devised by humanity. Even with a map, it is just an absolute labyrinth. Lisa and I loved it, but – and stop me if you’ve heard this – my daughter does not like to walk for extended periods of time, and my son just quietly tolerates it then starts sympathizing with the girl in the evening debrief. We wandered quite aimlessly for a while before reaching the Piazza, but the whole city is just beautiful, so once I tuned out the whining, I had a blast. We had ducked into a dark restaurant where there was clearly a mafia meeting happening, and had a decent meal, but we found a very good place for dinner. The food was the only saving grace of Venice for the kids.

Day two was a bit more organized once we had our bearings. After the water went down again, we headed into the rain for the church where Titian’s painting of The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the centerpiece. They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside, but check the slideshow, you’ll recognize the painting. Titian is also buried in the church, and there is a wood carving by Donatello, that depicts an emaciated John the Baptist, one of my favorite characters in history. Donatello may be one of the lesser known of the big Renaissance artists – not to mention most underrated Ninja Turtle – but he sure could whittle.

After the church, we had another spectacular meal, three courses for Papa G, and then waddled down to the Galleria di Accademia, the premier art museum in Venice. We pushed the kids past a million paintings from the Medieval and Renaissance period of Venice’s history, some simply enormous, and several by people I had heard of. There was a John the Baptist there that took the cake, full gore of his beheading, the kids thought it was something.

All this, of course, was just filler until we could eat again. We got some pictures from the Accademia Bridge with the Church of the Saluti in the background (it’s the church you picture when you think of Venice), and we took a little gondola ride across the Grand Canal for 50 cents apiece. Check that one off the list. After some down time, we headed back along one of the main drags, and ended up in a restaurant that seemed more touristy than we wanted once we sat down. However, the food was every bit as good as the rest of our meals, and probably the best spaghetti with meat sauce I’ve ever had in a restaurant. And I should know, because I’ve eaten a lot of Chef Boyardee. I got a quick jaunt back out into the streets when Lisa went back to the hotel with the kids, it was peaceful and pleasant, just like I expected Venice to be. I can’t imagine what made it feel so different than it did in the day…

We had to get up the next morning and get to the train station to head to Bergamo. We still had our tickets to go from there back to Liverpool. I’ll pick up there tomorrow to spare you the drama of our trip home…

Arrivaderci!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICS AND VIDS FROM OUR ITALY TRIP

A Pilgrimage Across the Salisbury Plain

“…Before the dawn of ‘istry, there lived a strange race of people – the Druids. No one knows ‘oo they wuh, or, wha’ they wuh doin’, but their legacy remains, hewn, into the living rock … of Stone’enge.”

– Spinal Tap

The kids and I finished up work Wednesday morning and jumped onto a bus to the surprisingly close by attraction of Waterworld. I know, it sounds cold – and for Kevin Costner aficionados, horrifying -- until you realize that this indoor, heated water park is the perfect place for winter fun! The mercury has plummeted over here, to the tune of the snowiest November in two decades, and last year was their snowiest winter in half a century, so the drama is building steadily. We needed a warm-up and you can see for yourself how perfectly Waterworld fit the bill.

Thursday saw the ASU students join us for a Thanksgiving feast (I know there are some of you out there jealous of them for getting my turkey this year), in fact I just had leftover sandwich number four before I sat down to write this. It brought a little taste of home to the proceedings over here, and it seems pretty obvious that most everyone is going to be ready to get back to Boone in just a few weeks now.

Friday we rose and grabbed an early bus to the train station for a three hour plus ride to the middle of the fat bottom of England and the ancient town of Salisbury. We walked past the tallest cathedral in the country (maybe Europe?) and went into the county museum. They had some great primers on Stonehenge to help us get ready for the morning, plus a keen section on rock music in Salisbury. Check the photos for more on this. After dinner, we took a cab through the snow to our hotel far out of town, but more in the neighborhood of Stonehenge, a Holiday Inn at a place called Solstice Park near Amesbury.

Our room and breakfast were nice, and we were out the door and into the blustery cold by 11. We had a couple of maps and a couple of potential destinations. We also had about a quarter inch of snow on the ground. We started the pilgrimage to the west, but after reaching Amesbury had to go underground to avoid a giant traffic roundabout, and when we emerged and walked a mile or so, I wasn’t seeing any of the landmarks on my map. Then I saw the sign for Woodhenge. We had toyed with the idea of going by Woodhenge to whet our appetite, but in the weather, I wasn’t so much going there on purpose. Anyway, we were there and we checked it out, and then took to the paths that crossed directly across the plain and away from the car traffic… but very much through the snow.

It was cold, and we were alone on the paths with nothing but sheep for company. The paths were easy enough to follow, and it was easy to feel the millions of pilgrims that had been making this same journey for the last several thousand years all around us. We finally got a view of the monument across the plain, but our feet were wet and our toes were getting more numb by the minute. The last push across an open field took us to The Avenue and we made our way to the stones. (Okay, first we made our way to the WC and the hand dryers were we defrosted our socks, shoes and toes, and then we got hot chocolate.)

I didn’t know what to expect tourist-trap wise, but I’m pretty impressed with how they handle the historic majesty of Stonehenge. The stuff is underground and out of sight if you are looking across at it, and most of the drama is intact. There is no doubt that it is thoroughly impressive, but I have to admit that it was colder than we wanted it to be. The wind was howling on the hilltop, and we gave them rocks a good look and then headed for the warmth of the wind-free subterranean gift shop.

We were soon back in a taxi to Salisbury, and later on a 5:45 train north to home, secure in the knowledge that we had completed a trying pilgrimage to one of the greatest wonders of creation. All in all though, the kids would probably tell you that they would have rather gone back to Waterworld.

We’re off to Italy Wednesday morning. We fly into Milan, spend the night and then take the train to Venice. We have two nights back in Milan after that and fly home Monday. You probably won’t hear from us until next Tuesday, so have a good start of your December. We’ll be home soon…

Papa Glenn out.

CLICK HERE FOR THE STONEHENGE AND SALISBURY PICTURES

The Prodigal's Return to Oxford

It’s been 20 years and 20 weeks since I stepped off a bus in Oxford for the first time. My fellow history students from the University of Georgia would be spending six weeks at Jesus College, right in the center of one of the most beautiful cities on earth. Those weeks changed me dramatically, I returned to the states not only more versed in the goings on of the English Civil War and the Restoration of the monarchy, but much more aware of the kind of person I wanted to be. Not only that, but there was one night there that I reached out and grasped something that stays with me to this day, however that is another story for another time.

Against this backdrop, we grabbed a taxi from the train station and dropped off our ridiculously heavy suitcase on the top floor of an old school guesthouse on the south side of town. It was much closer than it looked on the map (the town really was as small as I remembered), so we set out for Christ Church Meadows and the accompanying college.

You may not know that Oxford University is actually a collection of somewhat independent colleges in the same area. As I said, when I was there, I attended Jesus College, but you will also find Trinity, Hertford, and about 20 others, each with a list of acclaimed alumni. It was a close run for most famous until a few years ago, but now Christ Church is easily the biggest draw to outsiders. The fame that once rested squarely on the shoulders of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, author of a couple of books about a little girl named Alice), is now overshadowed by the backdrop of their Great Hall. Yes, eleven prime ministers took their meals there in their college days, but none of them are as famous as the Gryffindors and Slytherins who ate there in the first two movies of the Harry Potter series.

It costs 12 pounds for a family to walk through this college to see Harry’s dining room (which is only barely recognizable among the numerous paintings of Christ Church alumni that returned to the walls after filming). The supplemental draw of the hall is the stained-glass window containing tiny characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that is just about too high to even see, much less get a good picture of (it’s in the gallery, have a look for yourself). Adjoining the college is the cathedral, a very impressive structure in its own right, but when you add the two pianists that were preparing for the night’s concert, it is rather overwhelming.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PICTURES AND VIDEOS FROM OXFORD

We continued on from Christ Church to Jesus College to rouse some dormant memories for Papa Glenn. It felt good to walk the paths and to see our own Great Hall again. I realized that I couldn’t quite remember how to get to the classroom where we studied, but my dorm and the college looked exactly as I remembered. We tromped around past the Bodleian Library and some of the other areas in my old neighborhood, and then made our way to Carfax Centre where the best fish and chips in the world were no longer being sold from a little hole in the wall. Carfax is all chain stores and generic now, too bad. We grabbed some Italian at the English version of Olive Garden and headed back to the guesthouse.

I wasn’t done however. I let the family hit the sack while I trudged back to town. I had a mission. If you read the Golden Compass books by Philip Pullman, you might be aware that a central theme of the book was that there was a portal in Oxford to other worlds. I’m not completely crazy, but I thought it was worth a look if I was here. At the very least, Pullman lives in Oxford, and I wanted to run into him and tell him the story about what had happened to me here in 1990. Long story short, no portal, no Pullman, but I did run into a couple of Canadian rescue pilots that were over for simulator training. We had a great conversation about the area, and they told me about a meteor crater in northern Quebec that I had never heard of. Portal? I’ll keep you posted.

I awoke slowly, and we had the inclusive full English breakfast at the guesthouse. In case you are not familiar with the English Breakfast, it is always as follows: bacon (which we would call ham), a sausage link (which is mushier inside than ours), an egg (usually poached-ish), toast (which is often fried in batter to make it less good for you), and, believe it or not, regular old baked beans that run all over everything. To this you can often add a cooked to-mah-to and mushrooms, if you’re insane.

After breakfast, we had to get out of the guesthouse by 10, but our train didn’t leave until 2:30 -- the perfect window to finish up the Harry Potter theme in Oxford. The new movie was released the night before, and there was an 11:15 showing. It was great. We got to the train on time, and were home around six on Saturday evening. This gave us a nice day off Sunday so that I could start writing these two books you have been subjected to over the last couple days.

We’re having Thanksgiving for the ASU students Thursday, but we will not be able to watch any football. This will be the first time this has happened to me in ever. On Friday, we get up and head south again, this time to see “the living rock of Stone ‘enge” (cue the dancing dwarf Spinal Tap fans!).

Soccer, Towers and the World's Biggest Toy Store

WARNING! The first part of this story contains significant rambling about professional and international soccer. Some of you (read girly-girls) might find it technically boring. If you’d like, feel free to skip down to where we go to the Tower of London and I ramble on about my issues with Colonialism and Greed instead of talking about how purty the Tower is.

You folks that have been paying attention to (non-American) football, at least over the past year or so, should know that England has a pretty strong reputation for their skills in the international pastime. That is to say, they did going into the World Cup competition last summer. We Yanks were scared to death to have to open the tournament against them, if you recall. But then, England’s keeper let Clint Dempsey’s shot slip through his fingers and we snuck out of the match with a tie, and honestly, things have been downhill for these boys ever since. In our second week over here, the national squad had a match with Montenegro (I’ll pause while you find it on Google maps…), yes, that Montenegro, with most of the English stars from the Premier League healthy and available. Most everyone was wondering just how many goals the home team would win by. I watched the game on the telly, along with the rest of the nation, and was just as unimpressed as said nation. Were it not for a Montenegrin shot that slammed into the crossbar rather than the net just below, England would have lost, as it was it ended in soccer’s standard 0-0 tie.

So, maybe that was part of the reason it was possible, and indeed rather easy, to get Sawyer and I tickets to the England/France match at Wembley Stadium in London last Wednesday. To test your World Cup memory yet again, do you recall France’s overwhelming humiliation in the competition? They were annihilated in the first round and sent home to an appalled nation that met their plane with bonfires and misery. This was unacceptable after they had reached the finals in the previous completion in 2006. Their program has not recovered from the summer, and they looked to be an easy target for the rebounding Englishmen.

But no one seemed to account for the dark clouds that the Grizzard boys can bring to a sporting event on this island. (Ref: Ryder Cup entry below)

We took the Wednesday afternoon fast train from Stoke to London Euston station and tubed over to our hotel near Paddington in Sussex Gardens. Every building on that street is a hotel if you ever come to visit, there are numerous reasonable choices and it’s a very convenient location. We left the girls to an Italian dinner in that area while Sawyer and I headed northeast toward Wembley. The rain was falling, of course, but the walk was relatively short, so we grabbed some dinner and headed in. If you’ve never seen Wembley, it is nearly covered but with a hole in the roof over the field, so the rain wasn’t a problem for spectators. It would prove to be a problem for the best English player and his club team though.

We stopped by for some refreshment, but, and take this as another travel tip for your visit, there are no grown-up beverages allowed in the seating area. So, if you buy two 20-ounce cups of anything grown-uppish, fifteen minutes before kickoff, keep in mind that you are not 22 years old anymore. And, if you set the last eight or so ounces in a very specific place you hope to find during your loo visit, remember that the clean up staff at Wembley is ridiculously efficient. I’m just sayin’, you know, hypothetically, for your benefit.

Anyhoo, it started slow, both teams getting their feet and England seemed to be keeping the action near the French goal, and then, as football matches tend to do, it all switched up and before anybody knew what hit ‘em, France was up 1-0. This was bad. We went into halftime that way. Then, before a third of the crowd was back from the loo after the half, France scored again. Unbelievable. The 18^th ranked team in the world against the (underachieving) sixth, and they were up 2-0 in the 50^th minute, how’s that for some numbers. The Frenchies continued to hold the lead with just minutes left, when England’s single best player, Gerrard, who is also Liverpool’s best player for his day job, went down with a hamstring injury on the wet turf. The bright side of this was: A) It drew more attention to Liverpool getting beat by my home team of Stoke last week, and B) It brought in Peter Crouch off the bench, who scored a goal less than 30 seconds after running onto the pitch. This gave us a bit of what turned out to be false hope, as France closed things out, sending us home in the rain. At any rate, it was a fantastic experience, and it has us fired up for our match that we will be attending in Stoke on Dec. 11. Our boys will be facing Blackpool, and there is a possibility that those boys might have to win that game to keep their hopes of remaining in the Premier League alive for next season.

To the Tower and the Toys!!

We got up Thursday morning and rode the rails to the Tower of London. If you recall, we had tried to go on our previous visit to London, but had run out of time and ended up just walking around the walls and the Tower Bridge. In continuing my advice about your pending visit to the UK, I suggest you try to visit the Tower of London before you go to Edinburgh Castle. Because, you see, it’s pretty much the same thing, but not up on top of a mountain overlooking a perfect medieval city. It’s beautiful, and worth doing, but, visit it before Edinburgh is all.

The main attraction at the Tower is the Crown Jewels of England. These are the huge scepters and orbs and, of course, crowns, and piles of gold and jewelry. (Remember, I warned you up top) This stirred up my emotions in a way that I wasn’t honestly prepared for. The Scottish jewels at Edinburgh took up a room. One crown, one scepter, one other royal stick of some kind. They had been hidden buried for a hundred years so that the English wouldn’t take them a few centuries back. Compared to this pile of extravagance it was nothing. This started to weigh more and more on my sensibilities.

I suppose the farthest you can get from being a monarchist is being an anarchist. I’m not an anarchist, but I do believe I could not possibly despise monarchy -- and particularly the imperialist brand that England was so instrumental in inventing -- much more thoroughly. I could not separate the sparkle and splash before me from the families, hearts and lives that were broken all over the world to allow them to all be assembled here before this moving sidewalk. There was no mention of the elephant that I seemed to be the only one seeing in the room, no expression of remorse, no “our bad, we probably didn’t need 12,000 diamonds in this particular crown.” Having to feel this in the context of the week’s top news story: “Royal Engagement – Prince William Finally Asks Kate,” it was just a little too much to take. The Royal Family is a sticky subject over here, but it never has been for me (as some folks who have heard me sing inappropriate songs late at night can attest). If they ever have the bad sense to elect me dictator of this particular island nation, every one of the Windsors better start packing that night. I simply find it incredible that this country can sit in the midst of the worst recession since WWII, with gold fetching over $1,300 an ounce, and decide that they can’t load up this room and head to the pawn shop and pay off the debt of the whole Commonwealth. And I’m sure if you turned Buckingham Palace into condos, they would probably bring in a tidy little monthly income for years to come. The ridiculousness is absolutely baffling. So, that was the visit to the Crown Jewels for me. Sawyer thought the swords were cool, and Savannah really liked the moving sidewalk. I don’t think they followed my rant completely, but they’ll get to hear it again someday.

We went on around to see where crazy old Henry VIII had the heads whacked off, and we saw where our state’s big daddy Sir Walter Raleigh got himself thrown in jail THREE times. I’m going to have to learn more about that dude. We saw the ravens that can’t leave the Tower or else the empire will fall (no I didn’t try to sneak one out, but you might note in the pictures that their wings are clipped to keep them from getting away to freedom). There was also some cute little video things the kids played with, such as where you get to pretend to be a ghost, or just under surveillance. There was also a couple of other jail rooms with some interesting graffiti from ancient prisoners, and they even had a gift shop. (That was sarcasm by the way, if the guv’ment were to lay an extra tax on gift shop c-r-a-p in this country, it would probably eat the deficit up too.)

We still had a little time after the Tower and another round of fish and chips, so we headed downtown to Hamley’s, which claims to be the world’s biggest toy store. The reason they claim this is because is has six floors in a city-block sized building, so, I’m guessing it’s the world’s biggest toy store. Check out the videos, but I’ll say it was worth a visit, and Sawyer and Savannah will probably tell you it’s the coolest place in England. I was still a little sour on the whole rampant capitalism thing, so I probably could have been biased in my assessment, but they did have puppet shows and radio control car areas that were free, so go Hamley’s!

I see that this entry has reached the 1,666-word level, so I think we’ll put off the jaunt up to my old stomping grounds in Oxford until tomorrow. As you may know, 1666 was the year that the Great Fire took down London, and they way I’ve been talking about the Queen, I may be burned at the stake myself. Hopefully, you'll hear from me tomorrow, if not, check the Tower.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ENGLAND-FRANCE, TOWER AND TOYSTORE PICS

Grab Ye’ Kilt, We’h Gon’ to Scotland

It wasn’t the smoothest trip north last Thursday. There’s not a direct train from Stoke on Trent to Edinburgh, and we bounced through Manchester and finally had to change trains completely at Carlisle near the northern border of England (a freight train was blocking the one and only track), but we finally reached our destination in a misty rain in the early afternoon. Before we had even stopped completely, you could tell we were in what was, though not officially another country, most definitely another world.

A giant castle looms high over the city on a cliff of volcanic rock. Almost every building looks as though it had stood rooted to its spot since 1473. Though it has the bustle of a modern city, Edinburgh has the charm and feel of a medieval outpost and centre of trade. It is truly breathtaking around every corner.

Now, before we go any further, let’s work on your pronunciation. It’s E-din-burr(a)h. It’s not that you want the ‘g’ to be lessened, you have to get rid of it altogether, but fill its space with that little ‘a’ in parentheses up there. And, honestly, that still doesn’t even get it. Scottish enunciation practically makes English a foreign language, especially to Suthun boys like myself.

I had taken a pair of khaki pants in the hope that I might be able to get in some golf in its ancestral home, but it became evident early on that we just had too much to do to experience Edinburgh’s treasures. We took off Friday morning and skirted past Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she is in Scotland, and took in the Discovery Centre and its multi-dimensional take on the history of the earth. It is well done, and it almost makes up for the fact that its rugby ball-shaped building is a complete eyesore amongst the gothic backdrop of the city’s skyline. We saw the Scottish Parliament building, where their representatives meet and pretend that they are an independent country from Great Britain, and we got some great views of the geological wonders that hang over the city at the end opposite the castle. The cliffs and the extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat come into our story shortly.

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE EDINBURGH PICTURES

We hiked the length of the Royal Mile, which really amounts to a much more pleasing version of the main street in Gatlinburg. There are no less than 30 shops where you can buy your own kilt, or man purse to go with your kilt, or Scotch shot glass, or various other sundries to commemorate your stay in the North. We even bought some fudge…and it was good.

We got to the castle and it turned out that we weren’t going to get to see much of it before closing time, so we decided to save it for tomorrow. We still took some pictures under the rising half-moon though.

Saturday turned out to be a whirlwind. We were up and scaling the heights of Arthur’s Seat by 10. The kids did great and just kept plugging along, and it was a genuine hike. The peak you can see in the photos is the highest point for many miles around, and we stood on the very tippy top. Even the castle looked small from up there. We could see across the Firth of Forth (the arm of the North Sea that provides Edinburgh’s access to the world), and probably halfway to Glasgow on the other side. When we got down and grabbed some second-rate Mexican food on the Royal Mile, we headed back to Edinburgh Castle.

The highlights included the Crown Jewels of Scotland that were worn back in the occasional days of independence that the country experienced, and we got to see the prison rooms where prisoners of war from the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars were held. It is a castle like no other I have ever seen.

I diverted from the family plan on our way home and took a bus out to the stadium on the off chance that I might be able to scalp a single to the international rugby showdown between the Scottish national team and the visiting squad from New Zealand. I had watched a little rugby here and there on the telly, but we hadn’t really gotten a firm grasp of the rules, or of the hierarchy of national skills, though I did see that England had stayed pretty close to New Zealand the week before but finally the ‘All Blacks’ had triumphed. It turns out that New Zealand was having an off day against England, and have actually been the best rugby team in the world since, well, since pretty much as long as there has been international rugby. I was able to get a ticket close to game time, and by the time I got to my front row seat at the equivalent of the fifty yard line (25 pounds! Singles are the way to go at scalping time), Scotland had kicked a penalty shot and taken a 3-0 lead on the All Blacks. This could be exciting! And it was, but for a different reason. It was exciting because I got to see the best rugby team in the world up close. New Zealand proceeded to decimate the hapless Scotsmen. It was 28-3 midway through the first half. It was 49-3 by the end. However, there was not enough room on the bench, so many of the New Zealand players were forced to sit at the far end of the row my scalped ticket was in. I’d bet there are people who feel the same way about rugby that I do about football that would be pretty darn pumped to be as close to the New Zealand stars as I was that Saturday night.

Wow, that’s a lot of Edinburgh information. I’ll spare you any further details except to say that on the train ride home on Sunday we saw fields of snow in the Lake Country and it was beautiful. We are on our way back to London Wednesday for more memories as Sawyer and I have tickets for England vs. France in football (soccer) at Wembley Stadium. We’ll be in the upper deck if you get it on the satellite. I think we’ll be under the cover of the roof, so don’t worry about the rain. Ta!

A Tale of One City Two Times (Part Two)

Return to Birmingham

As I said, we made plans to hop back on the train on Monday morning to return to Buhmingum for a Shakespeare for Kids production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We had read a storybook version of it (along with Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet), but we didn’t really know if we would be able to follow the real thing on stage. Luckily, it strayed heartily from the original language, but did a great job of retaining the essence of the story and the more famous quotes and nuances of Billy’s original.

I’m going to let Savannah tell us about the play while I play the ‘scwibe’…

Puck is the main character. He’s a troublemaker, and a sprite. In the play he had green facepaint all over him with a bit of black to look like leaves. Then it started with Theseus and Hippolyta, Theseus is the Duke of Athens and Hippolyta is his Amazon bride-to-be. Hermia’s father came out and told the Duke that Hermia has to marry Demetrius, because Demetrius approves the wedding and so does he. Hermia doesn’t approve because she loves Lysander, who loves her. Helena, Hermia’s lifelong friend, loves Demetrius, but there’s no hope for that because Demetrius is going to marry Hermia, like I just said. On Midsummer Night Eve, Lysander and Hermia run away into the woods. But before they ran away, Hermia told Helena that they were going. Helena told Demetrius that they had run away, so maybe he would change his mind and wish to marry her. But when she told Demetrius, with his sword, he ran finto the woods cursing revenge on Lysander. Helena followed, she pretended to be a dog so she could serve him. Lysander and Hermia, still in the woods, decided to rest a bit. Lysander wanted to sleep next to Hermia, but she said that since they weren’t married they shouldn’t sleep next to each other just yet.

Oberon, King of the Fairies and Titania, his queen, right then were in a quarrel, they didn’t care that it was pouring down rain or not. They were fighting over who should get a little Indian boy as a page. Then, after Titania and the boy left, Oberon had heard about an herb that in sleeping eyes of anyone it would make them fall in love with the first thing they see when they wake up. He told Puck to go and get this herb so he could get revenge on Titania to get the Indian boy. After Puck left for his errand, Oberon’s peace was shattered by seeing Demetrius and Helena tramping through the woods. Helena was still reminding Demetrius how much she loved and adored him. After they were out of Oberon’s sight, Puck returned from his errand. Titania was already asleep so Oberon squeezed the juice into Titania’s eyes. He said a tiny speech and told Puck to put the juice into a boy with Athenian clothing’s eyes, so he’d love that girl who followed behind him.

Puck didn’t know there were two Athenian boys in the woods and accidentally squeezed the juice into Lysander’s eyes. When Lysander woke, Helena was beside him after Demetrius had left her behind, and she was trying to make sure Lysander hadn’t been killed by Demetrius. When he saw Helena with the love juice in his eyes, he wanted to worship Helena and love her. Helena didn’t like the sound of this and she ran off to find Demetrius with Lysander running behind.

Anyway, the highlights are that these men were putting on a play for the Duke’s wedding, and one of the actors, Bottom, was hiding behind a bush during their rehearsal, and Puck gave him the head of a donkey. When he came out, the other actors fled. That’s when Titania awoke and saw Bottom. Through the love juice she wanted to love him, and she called her fairies to do stuff for him.

Oberon saw Helena with Lysander chasing after her, and he told Puck that he had squeezed the juice into the wrong eyes. Oberon told Puck to fix it all. After Puck fixed it, it was time for the Duke’s wedding, and they all woke up, and thought it was all a dream. The Duke saw Helena and Demetrius and Hermia and Lysander together and said that they should all get married when he got married too.

After the wedding, they had the play. The play was funny because they made a boy play the girl in the play and the boy put balloons under his dress that he wore. When she was trying to kill herself because her boyfriend had killed himself because he thought a lion had killed her, she killed herself by popping the balloons. After the play, everyone went to sleep again, and it stopped raining, and then the play ended.

Thanks Savannah.

As I mentioned, there was another bit of excitement on the train ride home. We were sitting next to a couple of guys that were twisting around their Rubik’s Cubes very quickly. We kept watching them and noticed that one of them was wearing a Rubik’s Cube competition shirt. We asked if we could make a video of them doing the Cube. He wasn’t happy with his 20 second time, his average is 12, but he has done it in NINE seconds before. They were on their way back to Manchester from a competition in Bristol, and pretty tired, so we accepted his apology…

We’re on our way to Edinburgh this weekend, we’ll keep you posted.

A Tale of One City Two Times (Part One)

BIRMINGHAM – (Oh please, it’s pronounced Buh-mean-gumm) The Grizzard family arrived in England’s second largest city on Thursday expecting an industrialized gray mass of buildings and depression. In fact, Birmingham has a beautiful downtown area, great walkways along their canals, and THE chocolate factory that inspired the creation of Mr. Willy Wonka himself!

We caught the train into Birmingham and spent the afternoon at the science museum learning more about recycling than we already knew, and we worked on our deductive reasoning in their exhibit where you catch the jewel thief. We played a bit in their miniature town set-up, and we made our own aliens suitable to live on the planets that we were given. Outside of the rain, it was tons o’ fun. We also grabbed the best Indian food we have had from the restaurant at our hotel (not the hotel restaurant, the Indian restaurant at our hotel, just to be clear). Finally, before bedtime, we flipped past a channel on the telly -- and this is especially for Sawyer’s teacher Miss Kristy and her ‘Disco Friday’ friends – watched a bit of the band that you can see on the video in the picture file.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR FIRST ROUND OF BIRMINGHAM PICS

We woke up Friday in great anticipation of a chocolate lunch at Cadbury World. This museum/factory tour is the biggest draw in Birmingham, and there were the tons of people there to prove it. They started handing us chocolate before we even walked in the door, and we proceeded to chocolate coma our way through the whole place. We learned the story of chocolate from its beginnings among the Mayans and Aztecs, and of how Cortes brought it back to Europe along with all the Aztec treasure in the 1500s. The mixture found its way to England and the shop of Mr. Cadbury right there in Birmingham, and then he added some milk to it, and before you know it, you got the best chocolate in the world. They also did an amazing job of treating their workers well and giving them nice places to live around the factory, this was all part of the Cadbury family’s Quaker tradition. Then they gave us more candy. There is a video and picture of the kids writing their names in chocolate, and then Sawyer in front of a crazy shadow machine that you have to check out. We closed the visit with – you guessed it – more chocolate…this time liquid chocolate mixed with your choice of other ingredients, but we took the safe route with marshmallows and rice krispies instead of things like sour gummy bears, yuck!

We had some more Indian food at the hotel as the rain continued, but we awoke to a sunny day for our ride home on Saturday. We got a few more pictures around the city centre and came home to rest up, because we would be heading back to Birmingham again on Monday for another taste of Mr. William Shakespeare at a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but that’s enough for now, check tomorrow for that story, including the train ride home next to the Rubik’s Cube professionals.

(That says Chester Zoo -- The Kids are in Charge Again)

CHESTER ZOO

By Sawyer and Savannah Grizzard

First we got on the bus to the train station, where we got a direct train to Chester. After we got off the train, we saw a free bus outside the train station that goes to the Chester bus station, which is exactly where we were going to go anyway. After we got to the bus station, we got on the bus to the Chester Zoo, which is, obviously, where we were going.

When we got to the zoo, we got our tickets to allow us in without breaking the law. When we got in (legally), we went to the Elephant thing. After that, we went to the monorail to get us to the important stuff. On the way, we saw cheetahs, lions, cranes, bats, ostriches, many different species of deer, monkeys, and other things with such weird names that no one I know knows how to pronounce them, such as sitatunga (even the computer doesn’t know that it exists!).

When we got off the monorail, we saw some more animals that we never knew existed(and some we did know existed that we didn’t expect would be there). We saw things like Giant otter, which make the most horrible, high-pitched noise, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Gibbon monkeys, a Burmese Python -- the longest snake in the WORLD, iguanas, huge turtles, big fish, penguins, mongoose, lemurs, tropical birds, flamingos, camels, onagers, snakes, tigers, warthog, and even Komodo Dragons! And near the end, we went in this place that shows you how zoo vets take care of the animals. At the vet place we scanned stuffed monkeys’ wrists that have microchips to show who they are when scanned, listened to heart beats, and saw how the vets check the animals’ blood temperature. After that we went back to the entrance. We had a really Great time!

Daddy’s Halloween note: We forgot to take our camera to the zoo, but we do have some pictures from Halloween the night before. They do trick or treating here, but it is actually seen as more of an American tradition. Probably half the houses in our neighborhood gave out candy, but I think we managed to hit all of them. In case you can’t tell, Savannah went as a cat, and Sawyer went as a disgusting zombie killer (not killer of zombies, mind you, we’re very proud).

CLICK HERE FOR THE HALLOWEEN PICTURES

Recovering from London

We've had a pretty slow week, but we're getting ready for Halloween this evening...To help us gear up we went to a small festival at the Potteries Museum in the Hanley area of Stoke-on-Trent, our nearest big town. This area was famous for making pottery back in the day, and they are still trying to get people to come here and see the area because of it. Hence the museum, but they did have some cool stuff, like the owls...

We're going to try and get to the Cadbury factory in Birmingham this week. We're going to watch Willy Wonka on the telly to get geared up for it this afternoon. Talk to you soon, and remember how much we hate the Florida Gators....sigh.

A Kid's Eye View of London

I'm turning over the reins of the blog to the younger Grizzards this week, enjoy....Glenn

Click here for the photo album from London

LONDON by Savannah Grizzard

Hello, this is Savannah Grizzard. I will be talking about London.

On Wednesday I went with my mom to a concert. It was fun! After the concert, me and Lisa Grizzard had to get back on the tube (subway) to Stratford. We had to walk from the station to our hotel. On the walk, Mommy had to carry me, ‘cause it was cold. When we got to our hotel room, we knocked on the door, and Sawyer answered. Then Sawyer started chatting away about this dumb comedy show he watched while she was at the concert. Then we brushed our teeth, and went to bed. On Thursday, I went to Waterloo. I saw the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Regents Park, and Trafalgar Square. You know what the London Eye is right? Good, Big Ben is a famous clock tower in London. Westminster Abbey is next to it. Abbey Road was not too far away, so we went there. Regents Park is a flower garden. It’s very big. Trafalgar Square has water fountains and lion sculptures. We ate at Garfunkel’s. It was very good. Then we went to the London Eye to ride it, but it was closed. So we went home to the hotel.

On Friday we went to the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a Lion King play. First we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral .It has too many stairs—more than 500 of them! After that we went to see the Tower of London, and we walked around it to the Tower Bridge. Then we walked back to the tube (subway) to the hotel to clean off. Then we got on the tube again to go to the Lion King play. It was good, but the costumes were a bit cheesy.

On Saturday we went to South Kensington, The British Museum, and the London Eye. First we went to South Kensington, where Lisa Grizzard was taught in a basement. Then we got on the tube (subway) to the British Museum. At the British Museum, they had the Rosetta Stone . It was big. They also had Egyptian, African, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and a lot of other stuff. Then we got back on the tube (subway) to the London Eye to ride it. We stood in a short line to get our tickets. After we got our tickets, we waited in a line to get to our cart. Our cart number was 32. In fifteen minutes we were at the top. In another fifteen minutes, we were done. Then we went to a tube (subway) stop but it was closed so we got on another line to the hotel.

THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LONDON!

Written by Sawyer Grizzard

Hey Everyone,

This is not Glenn, the guy who has been updating the blog so far. This is Sawyer Grizzard, the cool guy in all the pictures. We have recently gone to London, the capital of the United Kingdom. This is, obviously, what will be written here. So, let’s start with some jokes. So, there are three bandits, who are running from some policemen. The bandits- you probably want me to tell you about London now. So, it started like this: we went to the train station on the bus at about 3:00pm, we got our train tickets to go to London, we got on the train to go to London, we rode on the train to London, we got off the train in London, we went to the subway station in London, we got subway tickets in London- you probably know where we are by now. But, just in case, I’ll remind you. We are in London. So, after that, Savannah and my mom rushed off to a Selena Gomez concert, which is the reason we ended up in London in the first place. My dad and I just hauled the suitcases up to the hotel.

The next day, we went to Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and Abbey Road. If you don’t know what Big Ben is, you should go see a doctor. Trafalgar Square is this place with a bunch of lion statues. Abbey Road is the place where the Beatles recorded a bunch of their songs. If you don’t know who the Beatles are, then you should really see a doctor. We also saw the London Eye. Now, if you don’t know what the London Eye is, the hospital is the place for you. We were going to ride it, but the dang thing closes at 8:00, and it was about 8:01 when we got to it. So, that’s the end of that day.

On Friday, we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Paul’s Cathedral is this church thing. It is very famous, apparently. It’s really cool, and it’s really tall, but you can’t get to the top without climbing a zillion stairs. So after that, we were all pooped. Then we ate lunch, and after that we walked around the Tower of London and across the Tower Bridge. After that we went to the hotel, changed into fancy clothes (NOT my idea!), ate dinner, and then went to this Lion King musical. It was good, but the costumes were horrible. Ex: Simba’s costume was just a lion hat and a tail tied to some guy’s butt (He had other clothes on, of course). That was Friday.

On Saturday, we went to South Kensington, which is where my mom went to school when she was over here, The British Museum, which is a British museum. And to end it all, we did the London Eye. It was really cool. And that, was the trip to London.

THE END

What’s the Buzz? Why, It’s the Second Coming and the Fab Four

Talking about my “favorite musical” is not completely unlike talking about my “favorite terrorist” or my “favorite green pepper dish,” but albeit surprisingly, I do have a favorite musical and it came to the Liverpool area this past weekend. I have known Jesus Christ Superstar backwards and forwards since my mid-teens. (Feel free to challenge me anytime on my Judas vs. Mary vs. Jesus imitations in “Everything’s Alright,” or make a request for my King Herod, I’m told it is a treat.) The production just across the Mersey River from Liverpool was too tempting to miss, so we made arrangements for a return trip to the home of The Beatles. John Lennon and Jesus in one weekend, how can you pass that up?

We got up on Friday in time to check in and drop our bag at our hotel by the Albert Dock and ventured over to The Beatles Story museum, which we had not had time for when we took the Magical Mystery Tour our first weekend over here. As much as we learned on the Tour, I think the museum lets you get to know the boys even better. I take that back, neither one is better than the other, but they really support each other and I feel like all of us are ready to go on a Beatles trivia show by now.

Our family ticket at The Beatles Story was good for 48 hours, so we decided to continue the intensive with another session on Saturday morning, along with the gimmicky “4D” movie that they added on, before we grabbed the bus to take us to the Wirral. The Wirral is the peninsula that lies on the other side of the Mersey and juts out into the Irish Sea. We grabbed some fish and chips as we looked out over the sea at a huge collection of windmills that I can guarantee were put there for a good reason, but the wind was taking an appreciated break while we were there.

The play itself was excellent: An amateur production with a minimalist set, a passionate Jesus, solid Mary, and an overweight blonde Judas who was almost up to the challenge of the gut-wrenching solos. We brought the average age of the audience down considerably, there couldn’t have been one elderly person left at home on the Wirral on Saturday afternoon. Speaking of which, there was a sweet old lady in a wheelchair a couple of rows in front of us and I couldn’t help noticing the brand name on the side of the chair. It struck me as spectacularly odd, especially in light of my intense George Harrison over the previous 24 hours, it was a “Karma.” If you don’t know why that’s a completely inappropriate name for a wheelchair company, we can discuss it in my debriefing after the new year.

We’re doubling up on homeschool work this week, so that we can take our first major trip since the Wales fiasco. We load up for London Wednesday afternoon, Savannah and Lisa get to spend the evening with Selena Gomez, and we are going to hit some other highlights of the big city over the weekend. Hopefully, the Tube workers won’t go on strike again, because apparently you want a free-flowing, functioning Tube when you’re in London.

Y'all stay cool, remember "Everything's Alright, yeah, everything's fine, let the world turn without you tonight..."

From Thor's Cave to Manchester

We’ve had a busy last few days, but I’ll try to be quick.

On Friday, we visited briefly with the head teacher of St. John’s Primary School in our local village (which is called Keele and is the town our University here is named for). The school was having what they call their Heritage Festival at the church right up the hill from them. This is not a festival like we would think of it, but rather a church service where people bring extra bounty to the church to share with the less fortunate. She invited us to come visit the school on Monday.

After that meeting, we headed to the bus station for the day’s adventure. We took one bus to the big City Centre in the town of Hanley, then took another to Leek, and then a third to a tiny town called Waterhouses. As the name might indicate, it is a little settlement by a little river. We were hoping to rent bikes at a ‘cycle hire’ on the Manifold Valley Trail, but it was closed. Luckily, we had called the week before, and Lisa still had the number for another place in her phone. By a second stroke of luck, that place was closed as well (a slow time of year in Waterhouses!) but the owner lived on site and he told us to come on down and he would let us have some bikes.

We saddled up and headed north on the Manifold Valley Bike Path in the edge of Peak District National Park in eastern Staffordshire. It is a lovely jaunt through the woods along an old railroad bed. By far, the most amazing thing to see on the trail is a place called Thor’s Cave. We hiked up and got some pics and videos up there that you can check out along with the ones from the valley floor…

CLICK HERE FOR THE PICTURES FROM THE MANIFOLD VALLEY AND PLAYING AT OUR LOCAL PARK

Well, after all that bikin’ and hikin’ we were ready for a chillout weekend. We caught the train in Crewe and went through Chester to the town of Frodsham in Cheshire. It was a pretty easy trek except that the mile walk to our hotel turned out to be straight uphill, and partially on a road without a sidewalk. Just as we came to that part, we asked a passerby if we were still on the right trail, and he insisted on carrying us the rest of the way in his motorcar. This is just another example of how nice the people are around here. They won’t hear of you being distressed or unhappy with their country.

It turned out to be worth the work to get to the Forest Hills Hotel. It was on top of the mountain we had partially climbed, and had amazing views. But is also had a Spar! What’s a spar? That’s how you say Spa over here. We had a giant heated pool, big spar hot tub, sauna and steam room, all inside a giant wooden room. It was decadent. Lisa even got to do the weights in the gym, but I stuck to the sixteen ounce curls at the poolside pub. They also gave us a big buffet breakfast before we took a cab back to the train station in the morning. We checked out a bit of the ancient Roman settlement of Chester on our way home, got some excellent Thai food (the Pad Thai came wrapped in a pancake), and made it home for a restful Sunday evening.

We had our tour of the school on Monday morning. They have almost 200 students from age 3 to 12, and it had several similarities to Mountain Pathways. It was sort of in between public school and Montessori. They were separated into grades, but they also sat at tables instead of desks, and they all wear uniforms. The kids were pretty impressed with their playground, but the head teacher is looking to make it better. She asked us to come and present an assembly for their whole school after their mid-term break in a few weeks, so we’ll keep you posted on that.

Tuesday, we forgot the camera again as the kids and I rushed out the door to catch the train to Manchester. We didn’t expect much as we haven’t heard great things about the UK’s second largest city, but it is really nice. We spent several hours in the Manchester Museum on the campus of the University of Manchester. It is in a beautiful building and has an amazing collection. We really loved the mummies in the Egypt section, and their natural history stuff is unbelievable. They also had a stuffed albatross in the bird section. I knew they were big, but had no idea how big. That got us talking about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ so we’re reading that today. We got to ride in the top of a double decker bus, which Savannah had been wanting to do, but mostly gave Sawyer and I flashbacks of riding to and from the car park at the Ryder Cup.

Of course, we had curry Tuesday night after Sawyer’s Tae Kwon Do class. Did I mention it’s two meals for six pounds at the Sneyd Arms on Tuesday? I highly recommend it. We’re hoping to get tickets to a production of Jesus Christ Superstar up near Liverpool this weekend, and we’ll be in London the last half of next week, first for Savannah to see Selena Gomez at the Apollo, and then to tool around until Sunday. We’ll let you know how all that turns out!

The Garden Party Rocks On

After homeschool this morning, we went on a field trip. We took the bus into Newcastle-Under-Lyme and then transferred over to the 99 bus to Biddulph (aren't we just the locals?). Then we grabbed a short cab to the Biddulph Grange Gardens. It was a home in the mid 1800s where a fellow named James Bateman blew his family's fortune on beautiful gardens and a fossil museum. There is a section devoted to China and another to Egypt, and he had folks bring him floral specimens from all over the world that he added to his collection.

Check out the pictures of this place, it was really beautiful, especially after the sun came out this afternoon!

The Biddulph Pictures and Vids

A Second Chance for Wales

View all our Wales pictures by clicking here

So you have probably determined by now that we survived Wales. In fact, the day after All The Evil happened (sorry, that was a nod to my new favorite book ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ – highly recommended for the strong of heart and stomach!). Saturday was a huge improvement and served to reinvigorate our excitement about the little sub-country. With the help of our next door neighbors, the farm's godforsaken roosters, we got out of our mountaintop cottage early and strolled down to the main road in hopes of catching a bus to a town that is honestly called Mumbles. It is named for the two islands (THE Mumbles) at the tip of the point that marks one end of Swansea Bay. We had been looking at the Mumbles for two days from our cottage and were struck by their beauty.

(That's the view out the front door of our cottage!)

Mumbles is also famous as the stomping ground of the poet Dylan Thomas, who I have always been fascinated by as someone who actually drank so much that he finally just fell over dead like poor ol’ Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, but that I had never officially read anything by. We found our way there with no problem and took in the remains of their local castle, the equally well-named -- but currently under renovation -- Oystermouth.

We grubbed at the pub and strolled along the Atlantic, pausing to get a little feel of that water I had seen so many times from the other side, but never from this angle.

The kids got some playground time and got to share their crazy accents with some local jokers and another fellow visiting Mumbles from across St. George’s Channel in Ireland. We toyed with the idea of heading even farther from home this Saturday and finding an island where they claimed we would see puffins (a lifelong and quite hopeless quest for me), but we decided instead that we should amble back to the train for Crewe in hopes of getting home before bedtime. I had to climb Mount Rooster to retrieve our hopelessly overpacked valise, which allowed me to cut through one of the most beautiful parks I have ever encountered. There is a private castle right in the middle of it where someone lives. I retrieved our rolling bag and set out upon the journey down by way of the horse manure dappled driveway as carefully as possible. Remember that if you ever want to borrow a suitcase from us.

The train home was a welcome break for my legs that Wales had been so hard on from Celtic Manor to Rooster Mountain, and we were home at a decent hour. All in all, given the chance, I would go see some more of Wales. The people (not counting the shagsters that planned and controlled the Ryder Cup) were unequivocally delightful and happy to have us in their corner of the island. It’s one of the greenest places I’ve ever seen, but I suppose it would be in a place that gets so very, very much rain.