Fruli or not Fruli

We're going to go back in time a little since Tami finished the posts from London until we left, but I was slower in getting my parts done. We flew out on Tuesday, Feb. 20. The day that I'm writing about is on Sunday, Feb. 18 (what can I say, Tami isn't as bad of a procrastinator as I am....)

Anyway, on Sunday, we went out to Richmond to try and meet up with Rebecca and Dan. Rebecca is Janeen's daughter and Dan is her husband. They are both from New Zealand and are on a holiday visa working in London. We had been traveling almost exclusively by subway to everywhere, and found out that they had closed the line to Richmond only on the day that we were heading out there. We figured that we could switch to a bus or something and would be fine, so we headed down there anyway. It really wasn't too bad, just a bit confusing. We took the subway most of the way to Richmond, switched to a bus for a short ride, and then switched over to a train which took us to the station. We were confused, but they directed everyone pretty well, so we weren't too worried.

When we got there, we were both worried that we wouldn't recognize them. While we had met them in New Zealand, it wasn't for a very long time and we were very jet lagged on the day that we had met them. We shouldn't have worried because we recognized them both instantly when we saw them on the street.

They took us around Richmond and we walked around the green and up the river. We went by Ham House, which is rumoured to be the most haunted house in London. Here is a picture..... I couldn't find any ghosts in it though......



You can go in, but it was closed at that time (plus it was really expensive), so we just kept walking and talking. Here is a picture of the area we were walking around



After all of that walking, it was time to start drinking. We went to the Roebuck which is where where Mick Jagger went to drink before he cleaned up his act....


Here are Dan and Rebecca


and Tami and me


After the Roebuck, we were getting pretty hungry, so we walked back into town to one of the local pubs (I forget the name) to get a Sunday roast. While it was pretty late in the afternoon, it was still packed. We had to wait awhile before we finally found a place to sit... and by then, they told us that they had run out of the food that was on the menu. It wasn't too bad though since they soon had a new menu printed up with new food. The food was wonderful, and so was the beer. Tami even drank a beer that we found called Fruli, which is a strawberry flavored beer.

After we ate, we just hung out at the pub and talked for a few hours. We had never really talked with Dan and Rebecca before, so it was a lot of fun getting to know them. We found out that they were going to be going back to New Zealand for awhile for Dan's job, so we were excited for them. After we left the pub, we went back to their place and hung out a little more. We even got to see pictures of their cruise down the Nile that they had just recently gotten back from..... It looked like they had a great time, so we had to add a new place on our list of places to go :)

It had started getting dark, and with the subway line still down, we wanted to go ahead and get back since we weren't sure how easy it was going to be, so we said our goodbyes and caught the bus to the train station which took us back to our hotel.

Bridget Jones and other movies in London

The Globe Tavern is one of the neatest buildings that I had seen in London. It is kind of located under a bridge but it is round. The door to the far left is where Bridget enters to get to her apartment that is located above the Tavern in both Bridget Jones' Diary movies. This spot is also thought to be where one of the 2 original Shakespeare Globe theatres were located.



The picture below is The Royal Courts of the Justice. Here I could see Bridgett running through the gates, past the attendant to confess her love to Mark Darcy in the second Bridgett Jones' movie. I got so tickled when we came upon it and I could actually visualize it. This happened shortly after she had been drenched by cars splashing water all over her.


The Somerset House was used in Sleepy Hollow. It was portrayed as old New York at the very end of the film. We watched the end of the movie when we got home to see the strong similarities but also you could see where the back drops ended and the actual building in the movie began.


This church was used in Shakespeare In Love. It was mainly the inside that was used but the outside was very attractive.


The Empire theatre was used as a reception area in Notting Hill. Not too much to see from the outside but it was fun to know that we were there. There was a whole section in our book of the area known as Notting Hill in which the movie was filmed but we never made it out there. Next time it is on my to do list. The book did say that the front door that was used by Hugh Grant's character has been sold, it was very popular after the movie and too many people were coming by to take pictures.


We also went to Regent's Park and walked around but could never find the spot that was used in The Wedding Date so we didn't take any pictures. There were many other movies that were filmed around London but we only concentrated on the movies that we really enjoyed and could recall scenery from.

Harry Potter in London

While in London Greg and I bought a book about movie locations in and around London. Since we are such movie buffs it was a must. We took about a day or so to just visit sites from the book and take pictures.

Harry Potter of course is pretty much my all-time favorite series of books so I knew I had to see as many of the spots where the films were done at. Although a lot of the actual school scenes were set in Oxford we did as many local London shots as we could.

Below is a picture inside of King's Cross train station at platform 4, this doubled as platform 9 3/4 in all of the Harry Potter movies. It was so neat to see it in person because it does look a lot like the movie.



We then headed across the street to St. Pancras station. The outside of this building was used in both Harry Potter and Bridget Jones' Diary. In Harry Potter this is where Ron's dad's car was parked at when Harry and Ron jumped in it and began to make it fly, since they missed their train to Hogwarts.

In the first Bridget Jones' Diary you see Bridget walking in front of the building and the second movie you see her here to pick her parent's up from the train station.


This is Leadenhall Market. The store fronts here doubled as Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies. I could see Harry and Hagrid walking through the streets for the first time and could imagine them looking in the windows at all of the wizarding gadgets.


Also in Leadenhall Market is the Lamb Tavern that doubled as the front of the Leaky Cauldron that Harry and Hagrid enter to have a ginger beer after shopping.


Here is the front of the Australian House. This building doubled as Gringot's Bank in which Harry went to retrieve some of his money in order to buy supplies for school. At one point the Australian House had to be completely blocked off because there were so many tour groups coming through to take pictures, after the first Harry Potter movie was released.


Next time we have time in London I will do an official tour for more of the Harry Potter set locations.

2 days around London

Saturday Feb 17, 2007

Today began at Kensington Palace, this is the home of many generations of royalty, including Princess Diana and Prince Charles. We got to tour the Palace and see a lot of attire from the different generations. We were also able to see some of Princess Diana's dresses and some never-before-seen pictures from a photo shoot with Vanity Fair. That was definitely the highlight, although the entire inside of the palace was impressive.

Kensington Palace also had a large garden and park outside, which was so beautiful and peaceful.


We left Kensington Palace and headed back to King's Cross for lunch at Mor-ish (we needed to change shoes, our feet hurt already). Mor-ish was a great little greek place that served all types of food. We then headed out to see some more sights of London, including Kings Cross train station and St. Pancras Station (pics in a later post). We then headed out to see some various parks. We saw a little bit of Hyde Park but mainly we sat on a park bench in Regents' Park, it was so peaceful. It was great to see so many people out and about walking, riding bikes, having picnics, or just sitting and enjoying the outdoors.

Here you can see that we visited the famous Baker Street and were able to see the statue of Sherlock Holmes. (We tried several times but couldn't get a picture without the other foreigners)


We left Baker Street and decided to enter this place called Harrod's, or better known as shopping heaven. Harrod's is a very large, expensive department store that contains pretty much every single department that you can think of any type of store having. We spent nearly 5 hours here. They had your typical clothing, purses, and shoe departments (nothing we could afford) but they also had departments like musical instruments, electronics, a pet store, furniture, a guitar exhibit, and 2 floors of nothing but food. Oh my goodness the food, I couldn't believe my eyes. They had a whole wall of nothing but cheese, which we ate a lot of on this trip, 2 rows of meats and seafood, about 8 counters of chocolate, 3 counters of coffee, a couple of tea, an entire bakery, prepared foods galore, sushi, pizza, pastas, and so on and so on. You name it they had it. They even had a Krispy Kreme donut store that had a line of about 20 people in it, man did it smell good. Anybody who likes to shop should definitely go there. They also have about 8 restaurants in this one store. We ended up stopping for a break at a small cafe and having a milk shake, yummy yummy!

Monday, Feb 19, 2007

Today was the day we went back to downtown London to take a trip on the London Eye. The Eye was built for the millennium celebration. It is a huge ferris wheel type ride that you stand inside of. They have multiple pods that go around that take nearly 30 minutes to go a full rotation. You get to see some of the most amazing views of the city from here, well worth the ride.


Above is the actual London Eye and below is Greg and me on it. We were able to see a lot of buildings from the sky that we had seen on the ground, it makes them look a lot different.


Here is a picture of Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye.


After the London Eye we walked around downtown London some more and ended up meeting Dan for lunch. He knew we liked Mexican food so he took us to Beach Burrito, it is kind of like Willy's. A good time was had by all, and we really enjoyed getting to see him one last time before we left, too bad Rebecca couldn't have joined us. We hung out with him until he had to go back to work and then we continued on our way. We walked through Chinatown and Soho and through some other areas of London that I will mention in another post.

We then went back to Kensington Palace to have a traditional English tea. It was great. For only 9 pounds we had tea, scones, cucumber sandwiches, and lemon cake. It was so fantastic, we didn't even eat dinner that night because we were so full.

We left afternoon tea and walked through Hyde Park. We had no idea how big it was. We walked for over an hour just to get across it. At one point we saw a road and thought we were at the end, ended up being the entrance that cuts the park in half.

Tuesday Feb 20, 2007

Today was the day to go home, we were sad but ready to see our puppies. We ate breakfast at Mor-ish. It happened to be pancake day so I had a pancake for breakfast, how appropriate. We had to hop a train to the airport and then had a layover in Detroit, we ate dinner at Jose Cuervo and then headed on back to Atlanta. Greg bought me tulips as a late Valentine's Day gift that miraculously made it through customs and immigration and I was able to bring them home, all the way from London. They even survived at home for about a week.

Bonjour, Paris!

The day to Paris began very, very early. We woke up at 3:15 am to catch the early train. Once we arrived in Paris we jumped on the hop-on hop-off bus. Our first stop was to the Arc de Triomphe. We figured we would just make a quick stop here and continue on to the Eiffel Tower. However, once we got there we were so impressed, we had no idea how big the Arc was. It was mammoth, and I was in such awe. Words cannot describe how impressive it really was. There was so much detail in the carvings, every inch of the Arc was covered. There was also an eternal flame for their unnamed soldiers.


We spent about 45 minutes walking around the Arc. We decided that we did not want to get back on the bus, we were ready to hit the Eiffel Tower. If we had gotten back on the bus we would have to ride through 4 other stops before we got there so we decided to walk. We walked for about 30 minutes and noticed one of the red buses. We thought we must be getting close but we had no idea what we were in store for. We had been walking through a downtown street and when we got to the end, there in front of us was the Eiffel Tower in all of its glory. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life. You see pictures of the Eiffel Tower and statues but seeing the actual thing was something entirely different than I had ever expected. It is known to everyone other than the Americans as the Tour Eiffel.



Greg and I decided to walk up the Eiffel Tower instead of taking the elevator, little did we know that this meant you had to walk up all 700 stairs to the second platform. When we started to walk up the Tower we got to the first platform (360 steps) and decided to stop and have a snack. We went to the little cafe and ate a chocolate croissant and a quiche along with some hot chocolate, all while we looked at the spectacular views from the first deck.



We were going to take the elevator up to the second platform but that is when we found out you had to walk the rest of the way, that was where the remaining 340 steps came in. We then took the elevator up the the very top of the Eiffel Tower. It was magnificent. We got to see all of the views of Paris, I never realized how big Paris was and how many buildings they have, they are all crammed in like sardines. We even saw their replica of our Statue of Liberty that they had given us.

Once we were done with the Eiffel Tower we decided to take a river cruise down the Seine River. We saw many building, bridges, gargoyles, and so much more. One of the most unique buildings that we saw was Notre Dame. I had always heard the story of Notre Dame and the Hunchback, but never had seen any pictures of it. The front was gorgeous but the back was so much more intriguing. It is very gothic looking. There are even statues going up the roof of the building. This picture is the backside of Notre Dame.



Once we got off of the river cruise we headed to the Musee du Louvre. Everyone had warned me that the Louvre would take a couple of days to go through but did not believe anyone. We did not arrive until 5 pm and they close at 6 pm so we did not actually go inside and look at an of the art, we didn't feel like we would have any time. We did however walk around the outside and take in all of the statues and beauties that the building itself had to offer.

The entrance to the Louvre is exactly how it looks in The Davinci Code, the big glass pyramid, as seen below.


We spent about 45 minutes walking around the outside of the Louvre, again, it was amazing. The age of the buildings and the detail that was put into them was nothing like I had ever seen and don't think the states will ever appreciate. We jumped back on the hop-on hop-off bus and took a small tour of the city, we rode back by Notre Dame, we also got to see the Hotel des Invalides. This is where Napoleon's Tomb is located. We did not get to go in but got to see the outside. We ended up at the Opera House, which is where we got on the bus. We did a little shopping, didn't buy anything, and also grabbed a beignets to snack on. We walked around this shopping area and decided to walk back to the train station instead of taking the bus. We walked down La Fayette street and stopped to eat a cheese crepe for supper. We got back to the train station and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the rest of London.