Christmas in the Country

We had a lovely Christmas week out in the English countryside. There were a few things that Laura and I realised once we got settled out in the cottage for a few days.


First, having space is AMAZING. It wasn't just the wide open fields (filled with sheep!) and hilly farmland that surrounded the house, although that was pretty spectacular. More than that, it was having more than one chair to sit on and more than two rooms to be in that was so lovely.

Second, when left without the internet for a week, I turn into a super-reader. I burned through 5 books during the week we were there, and it was fantastic. Sitting in a comfy chair, feet up, next to a roaring fire, reading a good book. There are few things better than that.

Third, cottages in this area were apparently built before modern humans became normal sized. As you can see from this picture, the house is not appropriately "Bob-sized." I bumped my head on the beams, doorways and ceiling more times than I care to remember. Laura was perfectly contented to walk upright through the doorways and then laugh at my misfortune.


Fourth, proper footwear is important. When stomping about on the hillside chasing sheep, it is vital to wear waterproof shoes. Laura remembered to bring her wellies, but I did not have any, and didn't bring my hiking boots. Luckily, we went into the nearest "big" town on the second day and I bought a pair of wellies for £7 that worked wonders.

Laura, doing her best to catch a sheep

In any case, it was a great week to rest and do just about nothing. We're back in London now and enjoying our second week away from work and the craziness of the city (by staying in our flat and napping as much as possible).

Here are some pictures from our week in the cottage.

We wish you all a Happy New Year and hope 2009 is even better than 2008 has been.

Happy Christmas!

We continue our streak of seeing how long I can go without a trip home while simultaneously suffering from severe homesickness by snubbing our friends and family and not coming back to VA for yet another important holiday. But really, how many times in my life will I be able to celebrate a British Christmas? Probably not many, so we’re trying to take advantage of it.

In that spirit, Bobby and I have rented a traditional British cottage out on the Welsh border for Christmas. The cottage fulfilled my two requirements for being “traditionally British:” 1) It has a fire place 2) There are lots of sheep around. It is, in fact, on a sheep farm. So bobby and I will be spending the week of Christmas sitting by the fire, reading some Dickens, going on walks through the Welsh hills, looking at sheep out the window, and trying to figure out what people do without internet.

We’ve rented a car to get out there, so wish us luck as we attempt to drive on the left (aka wrong) side of the road!

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas (or Happy Christmas, as the Brits would say) and a wonderful new year.

PS- Thanks to my mom who sent us some canned cranberry sauce! I will save it for Christmas day.

Things I Love About London, Part II: Cadbury Eggs

As i'm sure you're all well aware, you can buy Cadbury Eggs in the states as well. But one thing I love about London is the period of time during which I can buy this, my favourite of all candy, in this country. I believe that, perhaps only rivalled by Mac n Cheese, the Cadbury Egg is the single greatest culinary invention of mankind. This Sunday, December 7th, I bought my first Cadbury Egg of the season. I will be able to purchase them until well after Easter.



In the states, Cadbury Eggs are purely an Easter Candy and you can, therefore, only buy them for maybe two months of the year. In London, I get to enjoy them for nearly 6!! It has always bothered me that I cannot buy Cadbury Eggs year-round. Like Girlscout Cookies, I think that if they were always readily available, I would, infact, always be buying them. Hopefully one day the British will recognize this and start selling Cadbury Eggs for the additional 6 months of the year, but, until then, i'll appreciate the extra time I get to enjoy them here.



If you do not know what a Cadbury Egg is, shame on you. Please let me know and I will send you some.

Bruges

So, in our long backlog of blog posts, I haven't mentioned a trip to Bruges a few weekends ago. It was a short trip, and the major focus was drinking delicious Belgian beer.

I hopped on the Eurostar Saturday morning with some work friends for Brussels, then a short inter-city train onwards to Bruges.

The whole city felt so true to itself more than anything. There are some European (and American) cities that will play up their touristy areas: setting up a antiques market, restoring a castle or church, marking up food prices by 300%, etc. When we were walking through Bruges, the whole town simply felt old and inviting. There wasn't one part that was dressed up over the others, it just all seemed so uniformly perfect.

And then there's the beer!

I had researched a bar that was supposed to have 300 different beers available ('t Bruges Beertje ... which quickly became "The Bruges Beetle"), and we luckily stumbled that way early Saturday afternoon. We weren't quite ready to dive into all 300 just yet, so we had a few pints and then headed to dinner. After dinner we found another bar that served over 400 different beers! What luck.

Sunday was much more relaxed. We found the Brouwerij De Halve Maan, and went on a great tour of their brewing process. We ate lunch at the brewery, enjoyed some of their delicious liquid offerings, then headed for the Eurostar back home.

It was a very fun weekend, and a great excuse to get out of London for a short little trip to "the continent."

Here's the recap of pictures (I tried to take a picture of each beer I had, but that became more and more difficult as the night wore on).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just in case you didn't already know, Thanksgiving is not a holiday in the UK, so bobby and I will be working. Last year, we went out for Fish and Chips on Thanksgiving. In the past year, however, we have managed to make hordes of American friends and are therefore having a proper (albeit slightly delayed) holiday meal on Saturday. Watch the blog for pictures to follow.



The thing i'll miss the most about American Thanksgiving (other than friends and family)? From-the-can cranberry sauce. What can I say? I love it.





What's your favourite part of a Thanksgiving meal?

Whirlwind North American Tour, Part III: Ben and Sarah's Wedding

Sarah is one of my best friends from York High so bobby and I were so excited to be able to help celebrate her marriage to Ben in Sacramento. They were married on Ben's Aunt's vineyard. The weekend was beautiful and there wasn't a dry eye in the house during the ceremony!!

Here are some pictures:

Whirlwind North American Tour, Part II: San Francisco

After leaving Canada, I met bobby on our mutual layover in Atlanta (at which point I began drinking as much unsweetened iced tea as I could find and did not stop for a solid week- I miss it so much in the UK!) and we headed on to San Francisco.

Upon checking into our somewhat sketchy hotel, we did what I think all American expats do upon returning home, ate a ridiculous amount of food. After stuffing ourselves with things we can't get in the UK (like club sandwiches, dill pickels and rootbeer), we headed on to take in the sights of San Francisco.

mmm.. dill pickel *drool*

Bobby, Rootbeer and American Flags- Welcome home!

First we hit up Chinatown, which, I have to say, I was a little disappointed in. It was just lots of chinese stores filled with cheaply-made chinese crap. There were some interesting grocery/herbal stores, but those were a little overwehlming. However, in order to get the true Chinatown experience, I did haggle on a "coral" necklace in one of the stores which i'm sure is not real coral and i'm sure I spent about $10 too much on.

Me in Chinatown

After Chinatown, we headed down to the water in seach of San Francisco's famous sea lions. Upon arriving at pier 39, which is where the sea lions hang out, I thought I was in for more disappointment when we didn't actually see any. However, after about 15 minutes of wandering around, finding more american food to devour, and listening for their honking, we did eventually find hordes of sea lions, all together in one tiny area. Things I learned: 1- sealions like to sleep all piled on top of one another 2- sealions are very mean 3- never ask german tourists to take your picture in front of some sort of attraction, or you'll end up with a super zoomed-in picture of your face and none of the attraction behind you. I also learned why the sealions were there, but I waited too long to blog and now i've forgotten. However, being the internet-savy blog reader that you are, i'm sure you can find it on wikipedia.

After pier 39, we headed back to the hotel and did what bobby and I do best on vacation: nap. Later that night, we met up with Lindsay, an old friend from highschool, and her fiance who now live in San Fran to watch the election results. Needless to say, as an HUGE Obama supporter, being in a uber liberal city like San Francisco for the election was amazing. We actually missed the results announcement because it was all over so fast (about 8pm west coast time) but we learned about it soon enough by all the people crying and hugging in the streets.

We started off our second day in San Fran by going in search of some much-missed Mexican Food. After about 40 minutes of wandering aimlessly, we happened upon a Chipotle-much to our extreme joy. Once again, we stuffed ourselves, and then we took a very long bus ride out to the beach. After introducing myself to the Pacific Ocean for the first time, we headed into Golden Gate Park. After wandering around the park for a bit, talking about how much we miss trees and space in london, and then realizing that the park is about 45 city blocks long, we got back on the bus the head up to the Japanese Tea Garden (which is still a park of Golden Gate Park). The Tea Garden was ok- we got some cool pictures, but you have to pay like $5 to get in, and that doesn't even include any tea!!

Us at Golden Gate Park

Japanese Tea Garden

The next day we checked out of the hotel and did a short car-tour of the rest of the major sites of San Francisco- mainly Lombard Street and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Golden Gate Bridge

We then got on the highway and headed towards Sacramento for Sarah's wedding.

Whirlwind North American Tour, Part 1: Canada

I'll go ahead and get this blog going by talking about my trip to Canada.

There's actually very little to say about this. I went to Canada (Niagara-on-the-Lake to be exact) to help run my work's Annual Meeting. For those of you who don't know, I work for an organization called the Global Leadership Foundation which is a network of former heads of state that are now retired from politics and work with us to help solve current governance issues using the lessons they learned in office. The Annual Meeting involved 4 days of me running around stressed out of my mind, hanging out with former heads of state, attempting to speak my bad french and only slightly better swahili, and leaving the hotel only twice: once to lead a tour to Niagara Falls and once to go to a $500-a-plate fundraising dinner.

The best part about my trip? The Hotel! The great thing about my job is that, when you travel with former heads of state, you travel in style! My hotel room was about twice the size of my flat in London and had a fireplace in it!! The hotel also had a supposedly amazing spa, which I did not get to use, but I did get a lot of use out of my jacuzzi tub!!

From what little I saw, Canada seemed nice and I hope to go back one day. However, maybe at a warmer time of the year.

Back from California

We're back in London town, but the effects of an 8 hour timezone shift make blogging very, very difficult.

Hopefully we'll have a post and some pictures up before our quick weekend in Bruges coming up.

Halloween and Holidays

So, yesterday was Halloween. Unfortunately Laura left early yesterday morning for Canada (work-related weekend), so she could not take part in the festivities.

It wasn't too much of a crazy night. However, in keeping with the Halloween spirit, I carved a pumpkin. I also dressed up as an out-of-work Dick Fuld (CEO of Lehman Brothers). My fake resume was pretty awesome, but I didn't get to hand out too many. Hopefully Jacob had better success with his version of the same costume.

In more exciting news, in two days I will be flying to California (and meeting Laura on her flight from Canada to Cali). We are going to be in San Francisco for 3 days and Sacramento for a wedding after that.

I could not be more excited for a little bit of America-time, and I know Laura feels the same. They have Dairy Queen in California, right? That's not just an east-coast thing I hope.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll have some super exciting adventures to share when we get back, but the blog will be pretty sparse until then.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween.

Winter in London

We turned on the heat in our flat yesterday and I busted out my long wool coat to wear to work today. Winter has officially arrived in London.

Finding Religion on the Underground

I always wonder about people I see reading the Bible on the tube. It happens on a daily basis. Considering the fact that I find it hard to concentrate on my poppy-fiction books on the crowded underground, it seems hard to believe that anyone could really absorb what is surely one of the most difficult pieces of literature every written. Maybe the Bible is the only book they own? Maybe it makes them feel closer to God to just be holding the Bible, even though they're not really understanding it? Maybe they can find inspiration from this Book in even the most chaotic of situations?

Any enlightenment on this subject would be appreciated.

I do partially understand. I think there are only two places that could make a person grip onto religion so fervently: one's death bed and the London Underground at rush-hour (if there's a difference).

Budapest

Rule #1 when travelling out of London: Never, ever, ever fly out of Luton airport. According to Wikipedia, it is the fourth largest airport serving London, but considering that London City airport (the fifth airport) is both easy to get to and has amazingly short security lines, there is no reason for anyone to fly out of Luton airport ever again.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about our trip. The reason for our newly discovered hatred for Luton airport is that we managed to miss our flight at 08:05 on Friday morning. Granted, we had started cutting our flights closer and closer in recent trips, so it was bound to happen eventually. But mostly, it's Luton's fault.

In order to get from our flat to the airport, we have to take the tube from Bethnal Green to St. Pancras International (via Liverpool Street). Then we have to catch a train from St. Pancras to Luton Airport Parkway station. THEN, we have to get on a shuttle bus to get to the actual airport. Miserable.

In any case, a series of events (not feeling very rushed as we left the flat, waiting 8 minutes for the tube, waiting 10 minutes for the shuttle to leave the station) caused us to arrive at the check-in desk at 07:28 for our 08:05 flight. No problem. We've only go hand luggage, they've only just started boarding, we'll breeze through security and hop right onboard, right?

Wrong.

"Check-in for WizzAir flights closes 40 minutes before departure."

C'mon, surely that's not the end of it. First, who closes a flight 40 minutes before departure. Second, we're only 3 minutes late, you must be able to do something. Third, why do we keep booking these damn discount airlines? (Answer: because they're sooooo cheap and our memories of the inevitable disaster are magically erased whenever we calculate the price difference to a "real" airline.)

To make a long story only slightly shorter, we missed the flight, resigned ourselves to paying more money to the bastards at WizzAir (to change to the next available flight), further resigned ourselves to never flying WizzAir again, and got on a plane at 2pm that afternoon.

We met our hostel owner (Jim at the August Hostel - highly recommended) and he gave us one of the more informative guides to any city I've ever heard. Sitting around a tourist map at his kitchen table, he proceeded to circle, highlight and label all of the best sights, cross out the ones that were too expensive or too boring, and generally pave the way for our city adventure.

As we were told by Jim many times, "Walking around Budapest is like walking onto the set of a Dracula movie." While we didn't see any caped figures with sharp fangs lurking about, the analogy definitely fits. Check out the pictures.

Budapest at night

The mood of the city is very dark, walking around you see very few people, and the ones you do see aren't all too friendly. Jim's fountain of information also informed us that "nobody comes to Budapest to live. You move to Budapest to write sad poetry for 3 years and then jump off a bridge." When I asked him how long he'd been there, I don't think he saw the humor of his answer of "4 years." Oh well, I guess there's an exception to his 3-year limit if you run a hostel instead of write poetry.

In contrast to the dark feeling, it is a very safe city. We had no issues walking around at night, even if the streets weren't too bright. We walked around the first night along the river that divides the city into the Buda side and the Pest side. The main attractions are all brilliantly lit up at night, as you can see below.

The infamous Chain Bridge, splendidly lit up every night.

The big problem with Budapest (as a result of our missed flight) is that it really is a "3-day city". Some cities you can walk around, hit the main sights, grab some good food, and be done with it in a quick weekend trip. Some cities can even be tackled in a single day. Budapest is not one of those cities. The sights are both beautiful and completely spread out. Bring some comfortable walking shoes, and make sure you get on the earliest flight for your 3-day weekend.

We did manage to see most of what the city had to offer, and also squeezed in a nice 3-4 hour nap on Saturday as well. (What else should a vacation be if not a great excuse to nap in the middle of the afternoon?)

We strolled along the river, wandered inside Saint Stephen's Basilica, saw the mummified Holy Right Hand of King Saint Stephen (he's a pretty big deal), enjoyed the thermal baths that the city is famous for, and went up to see Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church.

Saint Stephen's Basilica

Outdoor section of the baths, a very intellectual crowd

It is definitely a city that's been put back on our list to visit (a list which has not stopped growing for the past two years). There is simply too much to see for a two day trip.

Matthias Church & Fishermans Bastion

One thing you can count on: if we do go back, we'll be HOURS early for our flight, and it won't be out of Luton Airport.

Thanks Mom!!

A big thanks to my mom who spent $30 to send us 3 boxes of Velveeta Shells and Cheese!

Best present ever!

My big plan for friday night is to try and find some hot dogs so that we can have the most fabulous American dinner ever. And some rootbeer. Man, rootbeer would be great.

Budapest

We went to budapest this last weekend. Look for bobby's blog on the trip coming soon!

Vice Presidential Debate Preview

In keeping with our political theme, I'm going to throw my punditry hat into the ring and give you my predictions for tonight's debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin.

Be warned, I have no experience in doing this and this post is likely to be completely biased and very long-winded (maybe I should be the VP candidate?).

I've been keeping up with the US Election pretty well from across the pond (YouTube is my friend), and from all the commentary, it seems that the tide has turned against Palin and McCain over the past few weeks.

There was the nonsense about "suspending the campaign" last week, single-handedly saving the economy, the absolute hilarity of the Palin/Couric interview clips, as well as the beautifully crafted SNL jabs from Tina Fey (here and here).

But what I think will happen is not a landslide victory for the Democrats, even though the McCain campaign seems to be imploding. Tonight, Biden may very well mop the floor with Palin's inexperience, her lack of foreign policy knowledge, and lack of any real substance in general. But I'm worried that's not how it's going to play out.

The expectations have been set so low for the Governor, that as long as she leaves the debate without having collapsed on the floor after exhaustively repeating the phrase "I can see Russia from my house", she'll be viewed as a winner. It's a sad state of affairs.

The other hand I expect what will get played out a lot during the debate is the question "Is Biden being condescending/paternalistic/mean?" You may have seen the clip from the last major debate between male and female VP candidates Bush and Feraro (thanks again YouTube). Anything Biden says tonight that calls into question Palins (obvious) lack of experience or knowledge is going to be twisted by the McCain campaign as "mean", "sexist" or "elitist".

Guess what people, it's not sexist if Palin doesn't know the answer to something. He's not beating up on her because she's a woman. I thought Hillary did a fine job over the past year of tackling the question of "Can a woman be president?" head-on. It's not because she's a woman that she doesn't know (I thought Hillary cleared up that misconception quite well over the past year). It's because she DOESN'T KNOW THE ANSWER.

It should be a no-contest debate. We have the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (and 4-term senator) going up against someone who didn't get a passport (and hasn't been outside of North America) until last year. Biden is able to pull out years and years of foreign policy experience and extensive knowledge of how the world works, and Palin simply is not. There should be no point of contention. A more productive debate might be "Is the sky blue?" or "Does the Pope wear a funny hat?"

As an aside, the idea that labeling Obama/Biden as "elitist" is one of the funniest campaign techniques I've ever seen. Why do people seem to want their president to be "one of us"? I'm not smart enough to be president. Why would I possibly want you or me, or someone "like us", to run the biggest superpower in the world? I haven't got a clue how to run this country. I want the best educated, most internationally acclaimed, MOST elite person in the country to be president. I don't want my neighbor to have the job; they can hardly remember trash day, much less negotiate with dissenting world leaders. I want, and I think we need, somebody to bring America back into the fold of international politics, not keep them as a pariah.

So, here's my final prediction for what happens tonight.

• Sarah Palin sticks to Republican talking points, gets flustered a few times in the back-and-forth, but general sticks to her message.
• Biden stays calm through most of the debate, but then gets flustered and lashes out at Palin once or twice with real questions that she can't answer.
• The media completely ignores the lack of substance coming from Palin and focuses all their energy on repeating the 10 second clip where Biden was "mean" to Palin.
• Republicans view the whole night as a victory, blame the "liberal media" for taking jabs at Palin.
• Democrats view the whole night as a victory, blame the "conservative media" for ignoring important questions about Palin's readiness.
• Somebody says something about a pig or pitbull wearing lipstick.
• The public, in desperate need of a debate about real issues, watches Dancing With the Stars instead.
  

Living abroad? Don't forget to vote!

I'd like to thank our good friend Mike Roy for reminding all of us expats out there to register to vote absentee in the upcoming election.  

I sent mine and bobby's absentee ballot request in a week ago.  VA is looking to be very close this year, so it may actually count!  If you're living abroad, please remember to register to vote, unless you're a republican- if so, um, please disregard this post.  

If you need help requesting your absentee ballot, please visit this website: www.fvap.gov

Flextime!

A few months ago, my boss (who is a former UK Ambassador to Spain) half jokingly/half seriously suggested that we adopt the Spanish tradition of summer hours.  This would mean closing the office for a few hours each afternoon to take a siesta and then working later into the evening.  Needless to say, because I have a 45-minute commute each way on the tube and going home during siesta would not be an option for me, I vetoed this idea.  

I did suggest that we adopt the great American idea of flextime.  He seemed very excited about this idea, but we never really followed through with it.   The more I thought about it, however, the more I thought that this would be a really great schedule for me.  For those of you who don’t know about flex time, basically you work an hour more each day and then you get every other Friday off.  This is great for me for two reasons.  1:  my commute to work is MISERABLE.  The London tube at rush hour is just about the most miserable thing I’ve ever experienced.  By leaving home half an hour earlier and coming back half an hour later, I avoid the worst of rush hour.  2:  Three day weekends mean huge traveling possibilities.  In three days, we could go to Spain, or France, or really anywhere.    

So, I have now initiated flextime at my office.  It’s fabulous.  I had this Friday off and, while we didn’t travel anywhere, I did get some shopping done that is normally miserable to do on weekends (because, once again, London is overcrowded), watched a movie, and, most importantly, got to sleep in! 

In two weeks, when I have another Friday off, we’re planning a trip to Budapest.  

Mary's Wedding: Photos

I finally got around to posting pictures from Mary's wedding on Picasa.  You can see them by clicking on the "Pictures!" link to the right.

More Cycling Action

The Tour of Britain started this past weekend, kicking off the first stage with a great course along the River Thames. But don't worry, this race was only an hour long, so I can probably only stretch this topic out into a two or three part series, not the full five. (Only kidding.)

I had managed to convince one of my coworkers to go with me on Saturday to watch and take pictures (since I knew Laura wasn't too keen on the idea). However, I failed to recognise that the race was on Sunday, not Saturday, so that ended up being a major failure in planning. A few pints of beer made up for my error in judgement, so we're friends again.

On the actual race day, I wandered from my flat down to the river and walked back and forth on the course to get some pictures. The race was 10 laps of a fairly quick circuit between the Tower of London to Westminster, so it provided plenty of opportunity to see the riders again and again.


Typically, the problem with watching a race like this is that you only get to see the cyclists for about 10 seconds as they fly past your spot on the course. It gets a little better on mountain stages, since they're going slower and usually the group breaks apart. The time trial stages are the best for seeing lots of cyclists over a long period of time, but you don't get the dynamism of watching the bunch race together that you do on "normal" stages.


For those reasons, the 10-lap format of this stage was perfect. Lots of chances to see riders combined and lots of chances to see them interacting with each other (breakaways, chases, etc).

Chris Sutton leading in the break.

Team Chipotle was out in force, with Chris Sutton in a breakaway for about 6-7 laps of the race. British champ David Millar didn't see much action, just tucked back in the pack staying safe and upright. After the breakaway was caught and the race came together around lap 8, Magnus Backstedt managed to squeeze through the bunch sprint and claim 3rd on the day.

The rain only came down for a few minutes, so it was a very enjoyable day of spectating. Here's a full showing of my pictures.

Things I Miss About America, Part VI: Mac n Cheese

The closest thing i've been able to find here:

Thats right, "Macaroni Cheese" in a can. It's not Macaroni AND Cheese, it's just Macaroni Cheese. Who would try such a disgusting looking product, you ask? Why, me of course. And it was just as disgusting as you would have guessed. Oh, how I long for the blue box.

Why not just make my own Mac n Cheese from scratch? A) What do I look like, a chef? B) Is Mac n Cheese really Mac n Cheese if the cheese begins in its original block form? Give me the powder/goo over the block any day. C) If I could make it from scratch, you would be less tempted to send me care packages filled with boxes of Velveeta Shells n Cheese. Right?

Lagos, Portugal

I have to admit, Portugal was the vacation I had been most looking forward to over the last few months (other than going home, of course). While travelling relentlessly around Europe is exciting, it is also exhausting. The continual seemingly obligatory task of trying to cram a week’s worth of sight-seeing into 2 or 3 days had really started to run me ragged. We never seem to have time to just RELAX on our vacations; we’re so busy trying to see everything. The solution: A week on the beaches of beautiful, sunny, Southern Portugal with nothing to do but work on my tan.

We flew into Faro in Southern Portugal and then took a 2 hour train ride west to the beautiful (albeit somewhat touristy) town of Lagos. We were met there by some of our friends from London who had rented a beach flat for the week and with whom we would spend the first few days of our trip. Days one and two consisted almost entirely of the following: wake up, eat, nap on the beach, eat, nap by the pool, eat, enjoy Lagos’ night life, go to bed.

Train we took from Faro to Lagos

Me in Lagos

On day three, our friends returned to London and Bobby and I moved into a quaint little hostel which we learned, upon arrival, was actually just some little old lady’s house. The cute little Portuguese woman spoke no English, and bobby and I had only learned about 4 phrases in Portuguese, but the stay went surprisingly smoothly with the aid of a lot of grunting and hand gestures.

Beach in Lagos

Bobby and I on the beach

Day four included the part of the vacation Bobby was most looking forward to: scuba trip. Now, while we do have some super fun photos of us in full Scuba gear, this was, for me, the dive from hell. First of all, it turns out that the water in Portugal is not at all warm in August. Something about the currents pulling down cold water from the north makes the Atlantic in that region unbearably cold. Even when we were baking in the hot sun for hours on end on the beach, I would refuse to go into the water. The result: We ended up wearing the thickest wetsuits you can wear: 7mm. Now, I’m already what my scuba instructors call “a floater” meaning that I have to wear tons of weights to even get myself to the bottom, but when you add 7mm of neoprene on top of my already buoyant body, it becomes quite the task to get me to sink to the bottom (aka, the point of scuba diving). Because of this, I ended up wearing nearly 30 pounds of weights around my midsection on this dive. Since this was a shore dive (diving off land instead of a boat), this meant that I had to trek down the side of a cliff wearing all of my gear (probably 20 pounds) plus 30 pounds of weight. Not fun.

We did, eventually, get into the water. Upon reaching the bottom, things only went from bad to worse as all of my weights had miraculously shifted to my left side on the hike down and I now had to swim underwater, for an hour, with the left side of my body basically scraping along the bottom. Anyways, it was a disaster, I think I saw maybe one fish the whole time because I was so focused on trying to correct my body positioning, which ended up being impossible. According to bobby, everyone has bad dive experiences every once in awhile, but I threatened to never go diving again after that one. But, let’s get back to the rest of the vacation (which was fabulous).

After scuba disaster, I consoled myself by sitting on the beautiful beaches again for a few hours before we went out for what is always mine and bobby’s favourite part of vacations: delicious, authentic, local food. Needless to say, this area of Portugal is famous for its seafood. Everything we ate was amazing, and so fresh!!

On day five we had to head back to Faro to fly back to London, but overall it was a great trip! I’m not sure if I would go back to Portugal ( I like to swim when I go to the beach) but it was beautiful and everyone was so friendly!!

Portugal

I'll let Laura go into more detail about our trip last week to Lagos, Portugal.

But in the meantime, you can check out pictures of our trip.

Also, added a new link to the sidebar so you can find our pictures anytime.

Mary's Wedding

We're running a little behind on our blog here, lets see if we can't catch up.

A few weeks ago, I went home for a short but sweet visit for Mary Carroll's wedding. For those of you who don't know her, Mary is one of my oldest friends (from Freshman year in high school). She and I have had many adventures together (traveling around Europe as well as Alaska) not to mention the fact that I lived with her and her mom (aka, my second mom) for a few summers. I was so excited to come back to northern VA to be a part of her wedding.


Mary and Misha were married at St. Francis church in Triangle VA and the reception was at Potomic Point Winery. It was a beautiful wedding!!

Unfortunately, I only gave myself 4 days in the states which was not enough time to do everything I wanted to do/see everyone I wanted to see. I didn't even eat any mac n cheese!!!! Thanks to those of you who came up to visit me!! It was great to see you. And to those of you I didn't see this time around: i'll be sure to allow myself more time at home on my next visit (whenever that is).

So, congrats to Mary and Misha. May you find all the happiness in the world together. I love you both.

Here are some photos from the wedding weekend:

Before the bachelorette party. Our super cute shirts say "the girls are out to mingle for Mary's last night single"

Mary and Misha at the rehersal dinner in Clifton, VA.

Married!!

Me with the other awesome bridesmaids.

I'll upload the rest of the pictures to Picasa soon so that you can see them all.

Tour De France - Part 5

Alright, seriously though, finish this drawn out series already, right?

Right then, just the time trial left. Our last adventure into le Tour de France and we went out strong.

It was a fairly easy 3-hour trip from Lyon to catch the time trial finish in Saint-Amand-Montrond. That means we only had to wake up at 5:30 on Saturday morning to get there "on time" (better known as "way too early"). We were rewarded with our early morning and punctuality with some fantastic weather.

At least the weather reminded me of home.

It was our first real case of bad weather on the trip, and the first point where I was glad I brought my rain jacket all this way.

We setup shop at the finish line, and started plotting our day.

Anytime you can take a picture with the devil, do it!

Our first real success was catching Will Frishkorn (my favorite Chipotle rider) at the finish line and snapping a picture or two. He event talked to us as we ran next to his bike (swoon). So I was super excited at this point, but only because we didn't realise was else was in store for us.

Frishkorn at the finish.

We re-grouped after seeing 'Korn, snagged some lunch (where my terrible French was ridiculed by some locals with no teeth), and then picked up the beer back at the car. We ran into some fellow Chipotle supporters from Oxford and invited them to drink with us (even though they've never tasted the deliciousness of a burrito the size of your face). At this point we started making our way back to the finish line and headed over to Team Chipotle's camper to see who we could find.

They'll be even bigger fans once they get a taste of Chipotle.

Our British companions were Team Garmin-Chipotle fans because the team managed to scoop up British National Champion David Millar at the beginning of the season. They were also really bummed out when we told them they missed Millar's ride down the course, he had passed by 20 minutes before they got to the race.

So, it was a fantastic surprise when we got to the team's camper and spotted a few of the guys relaxing after their races out back. Now, it's one thing to actually have the opportunity to meet some of the best cyclists in the world face to face. Then it's a completely different (and much more exciting) thing to drink a beer with them outside of their camper after they just finished posting some insanely fast times on the race course.

Danny Pate (left) and Trent Lowe recovering from their race.

Almost immediately upon walking around to the back side of the camper, Millar took a look at the case of beer in our hands and asked us if he could have a beer. It was our full intention to see if we could offer these great athletes a celebratory beer in order to gain their favor. But Millar took the words right out of my mouth when that (slightly warm) case of Kronenberg came into view.

We both gushed and immediately opened a bottle for him and Danny Pate (Trent Lowe wasn't down for any post-race refreshment). One bottled turned into two and we managed to chat with these guys for about 20 minutes. Just throwin' a few back with the boys after a hard ride. No big deal.

Just hangin' out with the boys.

Well, we ran out of beer, decided not to be "those guys" who just hang out with nothing left to say, so we thanked them profusely and moved back to the course to watch Christian Vande Velde come across the line.

The finish line of a time trial is basically a free-for-all. There are riders who, 15 meters ago, were pushing their bodies to the limit trying to edge out every last second they could. Now they're thrown into a crowd of people trying to shake their hand, pat them on the back, or (in the case of the 6 or 7 kids in front of us) snag a free water bottle. Absolute mayhem.

Vande Velde trying to make it past the finish line crowd.

We saw Vande Velde finish, the race was wrapping up for the most part (he was the 5th to last person to cross), but we had one more trick up our sleeve. We needed to get into the press area and meet the broadcasting legends of Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwen, and of course Bob Roll ("Tour DAY France").

A front-door approach wasn't going to work for this operation, obviously. We grabbed the remains of our bottle of wine and polished it off as we walked around the enclosed press section.

A plan was formed as we got to the back gate. We'd approach the guards, say that we talked to a producer on Versus ("Jim" was the oh-so-clever name we decided to drop), and that he wanted to get some film of Americans travelling with the Tour. It was genius. Of course they would let us right in. How could it fail?

Well, it failed. The security guard's broken English and my broken French were not working well and we went to the backup plan -- wait on the outside of the gate near the Versus TV truck.

It turned out that wasn't such a bad plan. We got to wave and chat with Bob Roll from the top of the truck where he was filming. Then, as Paul and Phil finished up their broadcast, we managed to wave just enough to look excited and not so much that we looked crazy. They both came over and talked for a minute and then posed for pictures with Jacob.

Jacob and Phil Liggett.

Jacob and Paul Sherwen

Hooray! Tour de France, mission accomplished! We may have only seen bikes on two days, but we certainly accomplished quite a bit on those two days. Drinking with the crazies on Alpe D'Huez, meeting our favorite team and enjoying a beer with them, meeting the guys we've watched for years on TV give us the play-by-play of the greatest event in all of cycling. Yeah, we did alright.

Pictures from the Time Trial.

The next day we packed up, drove back to Milan and then flew home to London. Jacob had one more day in the city and then headed back across the pond.

Now that we've had a taste, I just need to figure out how to convince Laura that the Vuelta d'Espana and the Giro d'Italia should be our next holiday destinations.

Wish me luck!

Tour De France - Part 4

(I thought I could get it all in one final post, but it got too long... here's Lyon, the TT is up next.)

It's all come down to this. We had our fun on the shores of Lake Como, got drunk on the infamous Alpe D'Huez, and even abused the little Peugeot rental car on curvy alpine roads. But here we are, the final penultimate installment of an epic Tour de France journey.

First off, we had been planning on waking up early after Alpe D'Huez to catch the start of the next day's racing. For some reason, after getting in past 1 am the night before, that didn't sound like such a good plan.

Instead we pushed off at a leisurely pace and had a fun little drive to Lyon. We stopped in the town of La Mure along the way for lunch. Jacob got to experience his very first Croque Monsieur, and it was just as delicious as my Croque Madame. (Please don't read anything too deep into our sandwich selections, or the fact that our hotel in Lyon had the beds pushed together.)

Not sure why, but I thought this door in La Mure was cool.

La Mure was really just a way to kill time so that we didn't get caught in hours of traffic following road closures from the tour, which mostly worked. We only hit a minor hiccup on the roads to Lyon, and before we knew it we were horribly lost in yet another new city. Yes, GPS would have come in quite handy at this point. However, a quick stop at a random hotel to steal a map and we were all checked in and ready to hit the town.

Lyon is famous for a few things, but the best by far is the food. In the "old city" of Vieux Lyon, the street is littered with bouchons, authentic (and delicious) food. Over the course of a few nights, we sampled a couple of different bouchons around that part of town, and were rarely disappointed. (There was an incident where part of the restaurant next to us collapsed, but people just kept on eating, so I guess it wasn't a big deal.)

Jacob on top of Fourviere Hill.

In addition to a gastronomic adventure, we also took in some of the famous sites of Lyon. First and foremost is the Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourvière, an iconic white cathedral perched on top of the hill overlooking the rest of the city.

Basilica in the background, with a mini-tower nearby.

The second day in Lyon we spent walking around Croix-Rousse and Vieux Lyon, investigating (and getting lost amongst) the many traboules that provide cut-through access to the streets. They're also some of the longest and steep stairs I've seen in a while. If either Jacob or I had been in any sort of shape, I imagine a crew-practice-stadium type run would have ensued. Luckily, we decided to ignore those instincts and hit the bar instead.

One of the many cut-throughs (traboules) we tackled in Lyon.

Market in Croix-Rousse

We had a great time in Lyon. And aside from a slight language barrier at one lunch stop, we managed to navigate our way around the city with ease. More importantly, managed to successfully eat our way all over the town for 2 solid days. Delicious.

Here are the pictures from the city. Up next (hopefully without all the waiting) is the time trial.