National Ware's European Vacation, Part 2

On Sunday we took the long train ride to Windsor Castle. It was well worth the ride once we got there. There is a little town all around the castle with tons of shops. But we ignored all of that (although it was hard to ignore shopping) and headed straight to the main event. The castle was huge!! At the beginning of the tour there was a doll house that was four stories high. The detail was amazing. There was a gallery there that had some drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. There were a lot of weapons and also a set of china that was in the shape of pineapples. The china bankrupted the company to make it. The remaining state rooms were very ornate and beautiful. The view from the castle to the town below was really cool, even though it was rainy. (Imagine that, rain in England.) We the ate at Wagamama's in Windsor. It was really yummy!!

One of the best shots of Windsor:



We left Windsor castle and took the long train ride back to London, and went straight to Kensington Palace. Kensington Palace was a lot more drab than Windsor Castle, but there was a great Princess Diana exhibit that showcased some of her dresses and had some film about her life.

Here is a gold flower as part of Diana's Memorial:


We left the palace and went to the nearby Orangery and had tea. Since the time had changed the night before we walked through a nearly pitch black Kensington Gardens to catch the Tube to Piccadilly Circus. We went to a sports bar to watch the Giants beat the Dolphins (yay!!!!) It was not much of a game since it was wet and they had the roof open over Wembley Stadium, but it was still fun to see.

We started Monday with a climb up Primrose Hill for some amazing morning views of London.



On Monday we spent a lot of time at Harrod's. Harrod's is a seven story department store. They sell everything there you can imagine. To give you an idea there are about a dozen restaurants in this department store, not counting all of the food counters. They even sell pets and musical instruments.

A memorial to Diana and Dodi at Harrod's:


We shopped around Harrod's for quite a while until Greg finished work for the day, then we headed to a really neat shopping area called Covent Gardens. There was a guy there that was juggling and riding a unicycle. He was really entertaining.


We decided that it was then time to head to a pub. We chose the Lamb and Flag pub. It is one of the oldest pubs in London. We had a quick ale and moved on to dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen. The burgers were very good. We then turned in for a early night, because tomorrow is....Paris!!!

National Ware's European Vacation, Part 1

October 29, 2007

Friday we arrived and it was fairly uneventful, except that we had the yummiest fish and chips at this pub called The Black Cap. It was really nice to have real food after all of that airplane food. Although Tami and I did have quite an adventure going to pick up our London Passes. We were riding the Tube (subway) back and we did not know the train doors were closing. Tami made it in (well most of her did).Her shoulders and my purse kind of got caught in the doors. After a little tugging, I got my purse out and Tami was free from the doors inside the car. Yes, on my first day in London I had to ride the subway by myself. We met up at the next stop and all was well.

Me and Tami at Piccadilly Circus to pick up the London Passes:



Saturday was very busy. We started off at the Tower of London, which was really neat. We saw the Crown Jewels, which were more spectacular than I imagined. We then walked across the Tower Bridge, which gave a great view of the Thames. We then went to Borough Market, which was crazy with people. We bought a lot of food and enjoyed a lovely picnic in the church courtyard nearby.

View of the entrance to The Tower of London:



We then went to a place called Vinopolis, where all of us tasted wine and absinthe (see Tami's previous Vinopolis post for an absinthe explanation). Greg, Tami, and I also tasted whiskey, which was pretty good, but very strong. We then went back in time at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The theatre was built as the original Globe was before it burned. It was a very interesting tour. Then we had proper British tea at Shipp's Tearoom. We had little sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, jam, and of course tea.

We walked across London Bridge, which had beautiful views of the Tower Bridge. No pictures were taken of London Bridge as it is, in fact, a very boring bridge.



We then ventured over to Piccadilly Circus, which is like New York's Times Square with all of the lights and a lot of traffic. We made our way to a barbecue place called Bodean's, which had ok barbecue, but a great atmosphere. Greg and Tami even showed us a part of London that they didn't mean to on the walk over (we saw people with very little clothing to give you an idea).

Mom and Dad at the Fountain in Piccadilly Circus:



Greg and Tami had heard that the UGA Alumni Assoc of London was meeting there to watch the GA vs. FL game. It was so much fun. There were a few GA fans but more FL fans there to watch the game. There were also a lot of Miami fans and NY Giants fans that were there, since the game was the next day. Tami screamed herself silly, since she had not gotten to see a game yet this season, she had no voice the next day. Greg made a friend from Manchester who was very interested with anything to do with America. Greg got to show his America trivia skills. The Manchester men were rooting for FL but very nice to us, we even converted Greg's friend by the end of the night. They hung out with us all night. Tami even made a friend, named Harvey, who writes for the Sun Sentinel in Florida. In case you didn't know.....GA WON!!!!!!!!! We made it back to the flat around 2 am, luckily for us, the time changed here that night and we were able to get in 1 extra hour of sleep.

Us at Bodean's to watch the game with Greg's friend and the other GA alumni, Stacy:



Written by guest Blogger: Jenny Ware

The Wares have arrived

Just a quck post to let you know that the entire Ware family made it to London safely. Except for some jet lag, everyone is doing good.

More to follow......

Better late than never

It's that time again.... time for links to tons of pictures.

First, here are our pictures from the Scotland trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Greg.Ware/Scotland

and here are the pictures from the rest of September which includes Bath and Stonehenge:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Greg.Ware/StonehengeBathAndMiscSept2007

Enjoy!

Tower of Terror

Sorry we didn't get a post up for the weekend before last. We didn't really have anything too interesting since Saturday was mainly spent on a wild goose chase to find Asda, the equivalent of Walmart over here (Walmart in fact owns them.) We were on the hunt for cheap stuff for the flat in preparation for Mom, Dad, and Jenny coming in a couple of weeks. After two tries (one was closed and the other was only a grocery store), we ended up just going to IKEA. However, on Saturday we did make it over to a place that showed some college football. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes after we had been seated, they changed all of the TV's to Rugby since a Rugby World Cup game was about to start.... oh well. On Sunday, we took all three dogs to the park which was fun as well.

This past weekend, we had decided that we had done stuffy castles and palaces a lot... we figured it was time for some low brow fun. With that in mind, we rented a car and drove out to Alton Towers. Alton Towers is a theme park that was built up around a ruined manor house. Driving out there was interesting because as we are getting there, it didn't look like there was a theme park anywhere. Plus, you go through this really small town with really narrow streets. But, we finally made it ok without getting lost.

Alton Towers is essentially like Six Flags. They have all of these sections with different themes and different rides. Plus, this was the first day that they had their Halloween celebration going on which was kind of cool. We rode most of the Roller coasters that they had, although we like the ones at Six Flags better for the most part. A lot of them were really similar, but seemed to go slower. One of the more interesting ones was the Spinball Whizzer, a rollercoaster that went out one car at a time. The car spun around randomly as you went along the track, which was pretty cool. Another good one was Oblivion, a coaster that had a vertical drop that went underground.

Because of the rollercoasters, we decided not to take our camera in, which means no pictures on this post. Sunday, all we did was run errands around town, so nothing much to report there. This is going to be another slow weekend since we are going to stay around the flat most of the time getting everything ready for Mom, Dad, and Jenny to come the weekend after!

Sunday Rocks!

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Today was a great experience, finally able to see one of the wonders of the world, Stonehenge.

We started early, on a train to Salisbury, where we then got a bus to Stonehenge. On the bus we met Victor, a very interesting guy from Portugal, and he talked our heads off, and latched on to us as well. It was fun listening to his travels that he has taken, alot of places that we want to go to.

We arrived at Stonehenge, and paid our admission, then walked to the stones. It was absolutely amazing, smaller than I had expected but actually we were closer to them than I expected as well. It was still very interesting to see how big these rocks were and to learn how they had stacked them up.

It was so cold, windy, and rainy, but well worth the journey.



The entire Stonehenge:



The most intact portion of Stonehenge:




We had originally planned to go to Avebury after Stonehenge but it was going to mean us waiting for 40 minutes on the bus to get there, then 1 1/2 hours on the bus to go to Avebury, then us catching the only remaining bus back that would take us another 1 1/2 hours to get back to Salisbury to catch the train back to London. We didn't really feel like it was worth it, since right now very few buses run in that direction. We will make it out there one day.

So, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a local pub and then go see Salisbury Cathedral. This Cathedral was amazing on the inside, we even got to take pictures. I think it may have been even more beautiful than The Bath Abbey. It is also known as the Cathedral with the tallest Spire in all of England.

The inside of the main chapel:




The spire:


The other main feature of the Salisbury Cathedral is that it houses one of only 4 originals of the Magna Carta, this one is the one that is in the best shape out of the 4. It was neat to see, I didn't really have a desire to see it but when we did it was amazing to see. It was written on cow hide and in very small script, I don't see how they wrote so small and neatly.

We then headed over to have afternoon tea at a historical home in Salisbury, then went to a pet shop to pamper the pets, of course, and then headed back home. We got home nearly 5 hours earlier than we expected, which was actually kind of nice for a Sunday evening.

Cheers!

Friday September 28

Friday was the last day that the Queen's State Rooms at Buckingham Palace was going to be open. If you get your ticket validated when you leave, you can come back for free, so we decided that we would do a quick trip there before I had to go into work. We were in line when they opened and went through fairly quickly, mainly lingering in places that had been really crowded before (like the display with the wedding dress and other things from Queen Elizabeth's wedding.) We also were able to get pictures of the back of the palace this time...woohoo

the back of the palace






Window to the Music room



One of the large decorative urns



Tami at Buckingham Palace


After the palace, we went to grab some lunch. I had seen a Benihana on the way back from Scotland that Tami had not seen, so I surprised her by taking her there. It was really good, nice to have Japanese again, although the soup and everything was much better here. It should have been though, it was much more expensive!

Saturday, September 29

Today we decided to take it easy and went back down to Borough Market to get supplies for the week. I have been addicted to the olives that they sell at one of the vendors down there. After that, we headed over to the Piccadilly Circus/Oxford Circus area to buy sweaters to prepare for our trip out to Stonehenge. Most of our winter clothes are going to be coming over in October, and we had heard it was really cold out there. We were able to find some that weren't too expensive, and ended up stopping at the Cheers bar for a quick drink. For some reason, they made a replica of the bar from the sitcom Cheers and plopped it down at Piccadilly Circus. It was nice to give us a chance to rest our feet since we had been carrying around a bunch of heavy bags all day. From there, we just headed back to the apartment to listen to the UGA game.