Long Day

Well, I managed to make quite the long day for myself today. I went to Derby (our sister city for Rolls-Royce in the UK) to present the work that I've been doing over the past 8 weeks. There was a flow conference that fit nicely with what I'd been doing, so I just gave a quick summary of my findings.

I'm happy to report that the presentation went pretty well. I'm unhappy to report that the trip back didn't.

I had to wake up at 5:00 am to catch Rolls-Royce's coach from Bristol to Derby. After a less-than-lovely 2 hour trip I managed to make it there. Unfortunately, I managed to miss the coach on the way back due to some faulty information. Oops.

Well, one taxi, three trains, and six hours later I managed to make it the 140 miles home. Oh, and did I mention the 1.5 mile walk from the train station back to my flat. That was nice. Really, really nice. But hey, I'm not bitter.

It's a good thing tomorrow's Friday.

Venice

Venice was the next place on our trip. We arrived fairly late and had an intersting walk to our hotel. The streets were pretty much deserted and dark. We had to wind our way around until we finally got close to the hotel. At that point some shady looking guy decided to help us out of what I thought was the goodness of his heart, but turned out to be the fatness of his wallet. Apparently walking 50 feet in the direction we were already going deserved some tip. I disagreed. Not a good start.

Anyway, walking around Venice was really quite fun. They had really good pizza and snacks you could grab here and there. The streets were all narrow and winding. It was just a quaint little place with lots of character. We had a good time.


A classic view of Venice down the Grand Canal.


A good view of another part of the Grand Canal.


A view from Saint Mark's Square. You can see both Saint Mark's Cathedral and Saint Mark's Clocktower in this picture.


Jen admiring the wildlife in Saint Mark's Square. There were pigeons absolutely everywhere. If you'd buy some food for them, they would literally swarm all over you.


A look across the water at another island near Venice.

Stonehenge & Avebury

I took some time yesterday to drive out to Stonehenge and Avebury. I don't really know much about the sites, but everyone has to see it when they come to England. I think there's some sort of astrological implications about how the stone are arranged. Druids and all that, you know.

The Stonehenge picture is below, but also of interest is the small town of Avebury. There's a huge circle of stones there, probably 1/4 mile in diameter. Just outside the circle is a huge ditch about 40 feet deep. It was some sort of pre-English-history fort or something. Also, they think it might have astrological implications.

Anyway, the drive through the countryside was nice. It made a nice little day-trip from Bristol.


Stonehenge. This is as close as we could get because the place closed just before we got there. Oops.


This is a picture of the huge circle of rocks at Avebury. The guy standing there is my friend David. We met in Berlin when I visited my other friend Dan. David just moved to Bristol to work for Rolls-Royce.

Barcelona

Well, it was off to Barcelona on Wednesday morning. We flew into the main Barcelona airport, so it was easy to get a bus from there to city center. Luckily, city center was very close to our hotel. We checked in, dropped off our bags, and off we went to explore our the town.

Exploring Barcelona was fun for two reasons. First, the city was very busy & bustling with activity. Second, we each new some Spanish so we could get by speaking in the local language. Everyone new English as well, but it was fun to try out our skills. Jen's skills are definitely better than mine. I can tell you my name, ask where the bathroom is, and order food, that's about it. Jen can actually hold a half-way intelligent conversation. Of course, the same is true when we're speaking English.

We started off by walking down La Rambla. It's a wide boulevard that travels down to the Mediterranean, starting about a mile inland. There are a bunch of shops, stands, markets, street performers, etc. The locals as well as the tourists frequent the area, so it was lot's of fun. At the end of La Rambla is a fairly large marina. Basically, there wasn't anything "touristy" about it, it was just fun to walk around taking everything in.

We did discover why there aren't any "Spanish" restaurants in the U.S. It's because their food is utterly horrible. We paid 26 euros for a small piece of fish and two small peppers stuffed with Lord-only-knows-what. It didn't taste too bad, although I wouldn't consider it good, but it didn't even take the edge off our hunger. After that we just headed over to a KFC and got a couple kids meals, with tasty ice-cream I should mention, to tide us over until dinner. That was basically our last attempt to eat local food, and it was very difficult to find anything edible after that.

We went to a Picasso museum in the "old city". I'm no art critic, but I wasn't that impressed with his work. Only a small portion of it was the weird Picasso style stuff we're used to, with noses where ears should be and eyes on top of each other. The rest ranged from simple sketches to landscapes to pottery and sculptures. The weird stuff was interesting, but it got old quick. He had some neat paintings of matadors & bulls, but the rest looks like it could have been made by a five year old. Again, I'm not an art critic (thank goodness), but I wasn't impressed. Boring.

I got the feeling I was back in high-school literature class, with everyone trying to find the hidden "meaning" and "purpose" behind the art. Of course a line on a page couldn't just be a line on a page, it has to be some sort of commentary on life in an oppressive world or something. Blah, blah, blah. Give me architecture and history any day over art.

We also went to a neat church in the old city. I've put some pictures below.

The coolest thing we saw in Barcelona was a church that was designed and started by Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect. It was immense and varied in its style. Gaudi models most things off nature, so there were columns shaped like trees, lots of fruit and animals in the stonework, etc. It is a very interesting building. It's still under construction, but that almost added to the charm. Check out the pictures below for an idea of what I'm talking about.

I guess that's pretty much it. Next up, Venice.

This looks down toward the statue of Columbus at the end of La Rambla. This road isn't La Rambla, but is a neat looking boulevard running parallel to the Medeterranian. 

Here I'm sitting on a top of a lion around the statue of Columbus. 

The Sagrada Familia from a distance. The cranes are there because the place is a work in progress. You're looking at the newest end of the cathederal. The other end is older, being built by Gaudi himself, and has quite a different feel to it. 

This is a great example of the stonework on the modern side of Sagrada Familia. This is just above the entrance. 

This is a beautiful stained glass window inside the Sagrada Familia. The stonework is really neat here as well. 

This is a museum of some sort. I'm not sure which, but it was a neat looking building. We didn't go in it, though. Good story, huh? 

London

The first two days of our European whirlwind vacation were in London. We left Monday morning and took a train from Bristol to London. From there we found our hotel on the north side of Hyde Park and then it was directly out to see the sights.

You can see lots of pictures below, but basically we hit all of the major highlights; Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, The Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Picadilly Circus, etc. It was fun.

We just spent a single night in London, the next night we took a train to an airport about 40 minutes north of London in a town called Luton. We were flying cheapo airlines, like EasyJet & RyanAir, so we had to go to some small airports to get flights. They save money on taxes that way & we get flights for next to nothing.

London was neat. I vaguely recalled the Palace from my trip there as a kid. I seem to remember it being quite a bit bigger though, which is probably a result of my being quite a bit smaller at the time. We had some decent food & no rain, so we can't complain.

That's it for now, I'll update you on the rest of our trip shortly.

The front of Westminster Abbey. 

Parliment. We went inside and watched the House of Lords for a while. It was actually quite boring, but the building itself was magnificent. 

This is the main keep inside London Tower. It was a surprise to me to find out that London Tower is actually a large castle with lots of different areas. This is just a small part of the entire complex. 

Big Ben at night. 

This is the "beefeater" that gave us a tour of London Tower. He was a funny guy. 

Just outside of London Tower is the Tower Bridge. It's really neat looking. 

Picadilly Circus. It's the Times Square of London

I didn't know this, but apparently Jen has her own cafe in London. 

Inside the British Museum, a free museum in London, we saw the Rosetta Stone. I thought that was pretty neat, because I didn't expect to see it. Quite an interesting piece of history. 

Venice was cool, but Rome rocks!

Just another quick hello to let you know that we've made it to Rome safe and sound. We're having a blast in Rome. We'll tell you all about it when we get back this weekend. Bye!

A quick hello from Barcelona

We just wanted to let everybody know that things are going fine. Jen arrived safely in Bristol, we've been to London for a couple days, and now we're finishing up our second day in Barcelona.

London was great, we saw lot's of neat things. It was pretty much a whirlwind tour, but we saw all of the highlights. We definitely got our exercise hiking around the city.

Barcelona has also been nice. The food is utterly horrible, but everything else is great. I guess we should have known that the food wouldn't be good, since there is no such thing as a "Spanish" restaurant in the U.S. We've got every other kind of food on the planet, but not Spanish food. Now we know why.

Anyway, tomorrow evening we leave for Venice. Two days there and then it's off to Rome. We'll talk to everyone soon. Bye!

Berlin

I spent this past weekend in Berlin with one of my friends from Rolls-Royce. Dan had worked with me in Indianapolis and had then gone to Germany for a secondment very similar to what I'm doing now. However, instead of coming home at the end of his secondment, he decided to quit his job in the U.S. and move to Germany permanently.

I flew in Friday night and left after lunch on Sunday. We had a good time going around to all of the different sites. Probably what I enjoyed the most was the food. Germany has some excellent grub that you just don't get much of a chance to sample in the U.S. More on that to come.

I also enjoyed the German language. I was surprised to find that I could understand quite a bit of what was said. I don't know German any better than I know Chinese, but I found that many of the words, especially when spoken out loud, sound very similar to English. I guess this shouldn't surprise me, since English is a concoction of both the Romantic languages and the Germanic. Since I've always studied Spanish I guess I've just never had any experience with the Germanic side of things. I also found that I could distinguish individual words much better than I can in Spanish or Italian. They tend to break their words more clearly. This definitely helped me to understand things.

We didn't do much on Friday night. We walked around his neighborhood a bit, taking in the hustle and bustle of a Friday evening. He lives in an area with lots of restaurants and stores. Many of the restaurants have tables on the sidewalk, so there is lots to see and hear. We ate at a little place in the basement of a building. It has some historical significance, but Dan couldn't remember what it was. Mostly, he just wanted to go there because it's gotten good reviews. We weren't disappointed, the food was great. I had what amounted to a giant hunk of ham on a bone. Quite hardy.

Later that evening we went to Potsdamer Platz (sp?). It's a hip area with lots of office buildings and shops. We went to the Sony Center. It consisted of an outdoor area between four or five modern office buildings. The top of the plaza was covered in a huge dome of metal & fabric. Lights would shine on it and change color every few seconds. It looked like those scenes in Independence Day where the alien space ship hangs over the city, waiting to strike. We decided we were still hungry so we got a plate of what turned out to be the best cheese I've ever had. Good stuff, although at one point I mistook a pad of butter for a piece of cheese. That was a surprise. :^)

The next morning we went on a whirlwind tour of Berlin. After an amazing pastry for breakfast, we started the tour at a "needle" similar to what they have in Toronto. We were able to go up and look around all of Berlin. This gave me a good overview for everywhere we were going to go that day.

After the needle we headed to a large section of the Berlin wall. There's not much to say about it, but it was quite long. There's a picture below.

Next up was "Checkpoint Charlie". This was where the standoffs with the Russian tanks happened. A lot of history about post-war occupation and the conflicts between Russia & the allies centered around this area. There was also a museum right next to the checkpoint with lots of photos, videos, and paraphernalia about the checkpoint's history.

Next up was the Brandenburg Gate. There were originally five gates to Berlin, but Brandenburg is the gate that kings and queens have used for centuries to access the royal hunting grounds. It has become an important area for politics, etc. Napoleon travelled through the gate during the ill-fated conquest of Europe. On top of the gate is an angel of war riding a chariot. Napoleon stole the angel, and it had to be returned decades later to reconstruct the gate.

On our way to the gate, we stopped for lunch at another great restaurant. This time I had wiener schnitzel, breaded veal with fried potatoes. This was probably the best thing I had while I was in Germany. It was awesome! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Anyway, while we were sitting there we noticed a political demonstration heading down the road toward the gate. There were probably two or three thousand people in the demonstration, if not more. When we left the restaurant they were still streaming by. I got some decent picture of them, but unfortunately the demonstration stopped right in front of Brandenburg Gate. This made it difficult to get good pictures.

I did get some good pictures from the back of the gate. I had mentioned that the royal family used the gate to access the royal hunting grounds. Much of these grounds has been preserved as a giant park. We took a walk through the park from one end to the other. It was probably two or three miles all together. That was quite tiring. Ugh. We ended our walk near the Berlin Zoo. Right next to the zoo there is a bombed out church that has been left since WWII.

From there it was on to the parliament building. We didn't take time to go in, because the line was so long, but you can see from the picture that there is a glass dome on top. Apparently you can take stairs up into the top of the dome. We were so tired by then that we just settle for a picture of the front. Standing in line for an hour or two didn't seem particularly appealing after all of the walking we had done.

That was pretty much it for the sight-seeing. We finished the night off with another very hearty meal at The Berliner, a restaurant on the river near Dan's apartment. I had meat on top of mashed potatoes. Simple but good.

We weren't able to do much on Sunday because I had to leave fairly early. After a good breakfast and a quick walk we hopped on the train to the airport. Then it was back to Bristol. All in all, a great weekend.

A bombed out church from WWII that was left as a monument. 

Parliament 

I forget the name, but we deemed this beautiful monument "Angel on a stick".