Love of Travel, Second Edition

Those of you who started reading later in our adventure may have missed the first ode to the joys of traveling, but no worries you can find it HERE. Saturday morning we were moving on to our next destination. Unfortunately for us, the flight was at 6:40, meaning we had to be up at 3 a.m. to make it to the airport in time. From various factors within our control and others outside, we only ended up with 2-3 hours of sleep. It shouldn't have mattered, it would be 2 quick flights and arrive at the final destination by 12. We waited in line to get boarding passes, (We are supposed to get to the airport 2 hours ahead of time right? Well we got there at 4:30, only to find out the SAS desk opens at 5:15. I wish they would have put that online. That's 45 minutes more of sleep we could have gotten. -Eric) went through security, sat in the terminal, boarded the flight, and sat on the plane. And sat. And sat. Finally the pilot came on that there was a small issue with an engine, a mechanic was on the way over, and hopefully it would be a quick fix. Unfortunately it wasn't, so they sent over shuttle buses and we had to get off the plane. We were driven back to the terminal, and to add insult to injury, they made us go through security again! (You are allowed to bring 100ml size bottles of liquid through security. Then after that you can buy larger bottles of liquid in the airport once through security. Well since we had already went through security to board the last flight some people had bought large bottles of liquid. Now that we were having to back through security it was mass confusion. People had huge bottles of alcohol that of course they didn't want to give up. But had some loud talking things got sort of straightned out. -Eric) After that we were given a £5 voucher for a little breakfast. Finally our flight left around 9:30. The problem is that we weren't flying direct, there was a connecting flight that we missed by 1 hour. Since it was a smaller regional flight and it was a weekend, there wasn't another flight till 2:15. We lounged around in the terminal with standby passes, and finally learned that there were no extra seats. We went back to the SAS counter to book on the last flight of the day, at 8:50. They gave us meal vouchers for 2 meals each, and expressed their apologies for the wait. No worries, we were hoping to spend an 8 hour lay-over in Copenhagen, Denmark after getting up at 3 and having flight trouble! We could have went into the city, but were just to tired, so we found good seating and sat, studied, and played chess on the laptop. Finally we were on the way around 9. The flight to Gothenburg, Sweden was only 45 minutes, basically up and down. We got to the baggage claim, waited 15 minutes, and of course my bag wasn't there. Eric decided to snoop around, and found my bag in the holding area. With all the confusion from the standby my bag got to come early, but thats better than the alternative. We found a taxi(rediculously expensive, take the bus if you can), and were wisked over to my grandmother's apartment building. (The taxi driver was going about 160 km/h, thats 100 mph for you American people. -Eric) She let us in, gave us the keys to our(my aunt's) flat, and we fell into bed, not to wake up for a long time.

Euro Fashion

Friday was relatively uneventful, we had few things to do before the next stage of the trip. After a leisurely morning and lunch at Subway we headed into central London on the tube. Once there we went to H&M; we were there to buy things, but the entertainment factor as to some of the "fashion trends" makes the trip worth it on its own. Picked up a few items, including a sweet had and shades. (I um.. spent sort of a lot of money. About 120 pounds, which is around $180. But its all good i had money set aside to splurg like that. -Eric) After a little trouble with Eric's card(For all you potentail travelers: Visa really is the card of choice over here, Mastercard has spotty coverage), we headed back home. In the evening we had the challenge of repacking our two months of clothes into one bag each, no small challenge at all. (And since had a just bought new clothes it made it even harder. -Eric) We went to bed way to late, and you'll discover why that was a problem in the next post.

I apologize for getting behind again, we've been quite busy/tired, but it will hopefully be current tonight.

Natural History Museum

We thought that today we were going to meet the Peruvian family to go sightseeing in Central London, but upon arrival at the meeting point we found out it was just the daughter and her friend taking us to the Natural History Museum.  O well, we're flexible and had nothing better to do.  We took the bus because it was closer and cheaper for everyone, but my goodness it was crowded and slow.  Now i know why we always take the tube.  We got there around 10:00, and discovered another monstrosity of a building.  We just started on one side and worked all the way through to the other, and finally walked out around 3.  I couldn't even begin to describe all that we saw, but it was amazing.  One could easily spend days in there, but you can get a glimpse from our new slideshow, located HERE .  Afterward we went to take the bus back, got on the wrong one and rode it for half an hour until it stopped at the end of the route and we realized the mistake.  So we got to take the same bus in the other direction, half an hour to the museum, and continued on towards home.  It was rush hour by now, and then bus was jammed in traffic.  What should have been a ten minute journey took an hour.  (It was unbearably hot too. Probably about 28 or 29 degrees Celsius. Which is unusually warm for this country. -Eric)  We then got on a connecting bus, the pace was quicker but it was wall to wall people.  Moral of the story: Public transport is great, but don't take London buses during the busy times.  Meeting tonight was wildly entertaining as it somehow always turns out to be, I'd explain but it's one of those you had to be there situations. We finally managed to get pictures that you asked for of the friends, so here they are. (These are only very few of the people we have been with. There will be many more pictures coming of other friends but some of these people won't be in Acton when we get back from Sweden so we decided to get pictures with them now. We should be able to get the rest of the friends when we return to Acton. -Eric)

Sister Henry

Michael who we played football with

The Almonacid Family (The wife/mother Christina was not at meeting so we couldn't get her. -Eric)

Japanese Sisters(they're going back home tomorrow)

Queuing Pros

Sometime last Saturday evening we discovered that a very famous event was starting the on Monday.  We mapped it out and were delighted to discover that it was relatively close to our home base.  To our dismay, however, the ticket ballot(draw) is back in December meaning we had no chance of buying admission online.  What are we trying go to? A historic event steeped in tradition, dominated by currently two sisters and a longtime veteran.  What is it?  Wimbledon, of course!  We are only recently tennis fans, but most likely never have the chance to go again, so why not?  Since it is a tournament, the early rounds have 19 courts playing at once.  Like I said before, we were not able to buy online, but if you get there early you are able to get "Ground Passes" that allow you to wander around to watch courts 3-19, the smaller games.  With a little more digging we found out that 500 tickets are available each day for Centre Court and Courts 1&2, but you have to queue(line up) early for them.  As in overnight early.  We joked about camping for a bit, and then went back to our activities.  Later that night we talked about it more seriously, and on Sunday we inquired around about a tent.  Just before we left we found a brother who had a small two man and we asked to use it.  He said it was fine if we wanted it, and that spurred us on to make plans.  Sunday evening we gathered a few supplies and decided to go for sure.  In the morning we woke up in decent time and went into town to buy food, other supplies, and the tent.  We went to brunch with some sisters who wanted to show us proper English breakfast. It consisted of bacon(ham), an egg, fried mushroom, baked beans, grilled tomato, a really good sausage, hash browns, toast, and tea.  (They accidentally gave us an extra plate of food. They were going to take it back but i said it was fine for them to leave it. An extra plate of food never hurt anyone right? -Eric)  After that we went back and finished packing.  Around 3:30 we left for the train station.

The journey took about an hour total,  we arrived at Wimbledon about 4:30.  What a sight it was! We thought we were early, but walked in to see two rows of tents already up.  Each row took 2 minutes to walk down, at least two football fields long.  The event was extremely organized-rows clearly marked, orange-vested stewards everywhere, trash bags every ten feet, temporary sidewalks and barricades installed, and food vendors at both ends.  (We read in a blog before we left that if queuing were a sport, the English would be champions at it. The blog was right. -Eric)  Immediately we were give a handy "Guide to Queuing" and told to set up our things but not to stake down.  We were in the back half of the second row, and the row gradually compressed until there were no gaps, then we were allowed to stake in.  Shortly afterwards a steward came around with the "Queue cards", a guarantee of our place in line.  With all the people ahead we were worried we weren't in the first 500, but to our delight the number at the bottom was 335!  After the tent was up there was not much to do, other than be attacked by fliers from about 10 different area restaurants trying to persuade us to eat with them.  After some reading and catch we gave in to one of the offers and ordered a pizza.  We talked to our neighbors until it came, and found out they had been coming every year since 1976.  They also informed us that the ticket we get are not the leftovers, as we suspected, but premium positions, that's why people put for all the effort.  The pizza came, we ate, and then back to complete boredom until bedtime.  (The pizza was surprisingly um... not large. -Eric)  Fortunately the brother who lent us the tent also gave us us thin foam pads as well, but that's where the comfort ended.  We slept in jeans and sweatshirts, no pillow, my blanket was an old towel from the house and Eric's was a thin blanket stolen from some airplane.  (I at least had sweatpants instead of jeans but still. -Eric)  The tent was small, our fellow campers noisy, and the night chilly.  We slept ok for the circumstances, but not good by any means.  By around 4:30 there was movement as people awoke, by around 5:30 the place was alive.  At 6 we broke down our camp and took everything to the left luggage facility.  By 7 the line was once again compressed, and 10 minutes later we, and 2,000 other people were on the move.  We tromped through the park where we had queued, into the golf course next door, and then the line ground to a halt.  There was a Evian sponsor tent nearby that kept us supplied with water, but once again we were stuck with nothing to do.  The steward came by and gave us wristbands for the court of our choice, we chose centre of course.  Finally by about 9:00 the queue started to move slowly, we went through security, across the bridge, and bought our tickets.  The grounds don't really open until 10:30, so for another hour we got to wait in the entrance area.  When the time eventually came we explored the grounds until 12:00, when the matches on the outer courts started.  We watched until about 12:40, and then moved to find our seats in centre court.  We were in row J, just 10 rows up, just to the right of center.

The first game we saw Serena Williams, number one women's seed.  She is one big lady!  (Not like fat or anything.. just huge. She was probably at least a foot or a foot and a half taller than the other girl she was playing. -Eric)  The other girl fought hard, but it was clear to everyone that it was a lost cause.  Serena was serving around 120, higher than some of the men we saw.  She went on to win 6-0,6-4.  Next was Rafael Nadal, the number two seeded man.  His opponent was a 20 year old from Japan who gave him a very good challenge, they were both serving in the 120-130s.  Rafa prevailed in the end though, winning 6-2,6-4.  Forgot to mention we were getting baked the entire time, so by the third match we were tired and sunburned.  We watched the first set and called it a day.  The atmosphere was fun, definitely worth going once.  We walked back to the queue area to pick up our bags, and started the long walk to the train station, meeting loads of people just arriving to queue for the next day.  We took the two trains back, walking the 15 minutes home, and dragged in around 6:30, tired, sunburned, dehydrated, undernourished, but happy from a neat experience.  We ran to the shower to hose off 36 hours worth of grime, and shoveled down a large dinner.  Exhausted only begins to describe how we felt, sleep came easy this night.

I could make today's blog separate, but we were so tired that we have done absolutely nothing so far.  The only things to report are that the water is not working for some unknown reason and I'm going to play the European brand of football with the brothers again tonight.  Tomorrow will be a more interesting read, more big things planned! (Centre Court is the main stadium in the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. But surprisingly its not very large. Only 15,000 seating capacity. And during play the crowd is required to be completely silent. I am used to being at Notre Dame for American football games with 80,000 crazy screaming, and at times half drunk fans. There was classical music being played by a live string quartet, and people sipping wine in their seats watching the match. Just totally different. During the match i found it hard to get into it because the energy seemed so low, because cheering only occurred between volleys and only for a few seconds. But it was still very fun, and i am glad we were able to go. -Eric)

Make sure to look for our new Wimbledon slideshow, located HERE .

Another Semi-Lazy Sunday, London Day 18

Once again, I wish to acclaim the genius of afternoon meeting; we used every spare second of time and jumped into our seats at the opening song.  (Actually i think we both woke up at like 930 but just laid in bed til 1115 enjoying not having to get up. -Eric) The talk was about having good associates.  Eric almost got to read the Watchtower, as the brother assigned was also at his listening convention, but they figured it out a little sooner.  Once again we were confined to taking up seats instead of helping out.  (I'm dying here. I'm used to doing like 3 things every meeting so just sitting all the time is getting hard. I feel bad for sisters; they either just get to comment a lot or hold a baby. -Eric)  The kids here are spiritual Einsteins, (I think its spiritual Russels or Rutherferds reincarnated. -Eric)  I wouldn't blink if they were sent out in the missionary work tomorrow.  It was pretty neat hearing their comments, and realizing how ours paled in comparison.  We went home afterwards and played tennis for a few hours(in front of a large Sunday crowd at the park, and we weren't embarrassed to be seen with each other's playing skill!).  After that we had Sunday dinner once again-this time it was beef with an amazing red wine gravy, stir fried veggies, roasted herb potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding of course.  (Which is delicious by the way. -Eric)Then we watched more World Cup action(its really nice to have good sports on every day), and here we are. Most likely there will not be an entry tomorrow night, sorry to disappoint our all of our 3 fans.  We are planning a little adventure, but you'll just have to wait to find out.  Should be lots of fun, a great story, and tons of pictures included.  We will fill you in with what went down as soon as we've recovered from the event!