Look Kids.... Big Ben.... Parliament

On Wednesday we started out seeing some sights from Harry Potter. We went to the Australia House, which was used for Gringott's bank in the first movie. We then went to Somerset House which was used in Sleepy Hollow as turn of the centry New York. It was being set up for ice skating for Christmas which seemed cool. We went to have lunch with some of our relatives from New Zealand, Dan and Rebecca. It was great meeting them. We had lunch at Pizza Express, which had really good pizza.

Tami and me with one of the lions at Leicester Square


We tthen went to Victoria's Station to see the place we stayed the last time we were in London. We then went to see Big Ben, Parliment, and Westminster Abbey. The abbey was very cool. There are quite a few important people buried there, including Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. My favorite part was poet's Corner, which had several poet's buried there and tributes to many others. We then took a river cruise up and down the Thames at night. It was very pretty with all of the lights. Then Greg, Tami, and I rode the London Eye. As many of you know I am terrified of heights, but I did fine with riding the eye, I did sit down most of the time, but I did enjoy the views at night. By the way, they were one of the few places that were doing something to celebrate Halloween. They got a kick out of Tami's flashing devil horns and my cat ears.

The London Eye


London Bridge from the Thames cruise



Tami, Greg and me ready for Halloween


Big Ben.... Parliament. From the London Eye


We then ate at a place called Slug and Lettuce, where I had my first taste of Fruli. It is a wonderful strawberry flavored beer. I loved it!!!! Then we headed home and packed for our trip home. We had a great time in London and seeing Greg, Tami, Chewy, Willow, and Daisy. We can't wait to see them again!!

Paris, the city of Wares

We got up really early Tuesday morning and rode the train to Paris. Paris was absolutely amazing. I never thought I would get to see Paris in person, and it was more amazing than I could have imagined. We started at La Madeline, which was a really beautiful old church. We rode on a hop on hop off bus to get around and it was open to the sky. Even though it was a little cold, we braved the top to take in the spectacular views.

We rode the bus over to the Louvre first. The Louvre was closed on Tuesdays, but we had not planned to go in anyway because it takes several days to see anything. The outside was very cool. The palace part was beautiful and the pyramids looked really neat. We had lunch at a cafe on Ponte Neuf. I got a croquet monsieur, which is a ham and cheese sandwich covered with melted cheese, very safe but very good.

We then went to Notre Dame, which was Huge!!! It took quite a while to go through, but was worth the trip. The stain glass was amazing. We bought some really good crepes off of a street vendor.
Stained Glass window from Notre Dame (a puzzle Mom and Kaye did)


The family at the back of Notre Dame


We then walked up part of the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. It was a lot bigger than I imagined. The detail was great and we really enjoyed it. We rode around to the Trocadero, which gave us a great view of the Eiffel Tower. It was amazing.

My brother and me at the Trocadero with the view of the Eiffel Tower


Eating candy floss with Tami in front of the Eiffel Tower


We were a little short on time, so we headed back to the train. Our day in Paris was wonderful!!

Mom and Dad on the Open Top bus going through the streets of Paris

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.

What a way to take a Bath

Saturday, September 22, 2007

We got up early on Saturday morning to head out to Bath. The fare on the train was much much cheaper if you left around 7:00am, and that way we would have a full day out also. The train left from Paddington station, so we figured out the best way to get over there that early in the morning, which involved taking a route we had never taken before. We picked up the bus very easily (although it was 12 minutes late) and took it over to Euston Station. We noticed that they didn't have the right tube line, so asked and found out that we were at the wrong station, we should have been at Euston Square Station. We started panicking at this point, worried that we would miss the train. So, we asked someone where we could grab a cab and found out that Euston Square was very close, so a quick, mad dash down the road later, we finally were on the way to Paddington. We ended up making it with 15 minutes to spare... whew, what a way to start the day.

The ride to Bath wasn't too long, just one and a half hours, and we got there before anything really opened up. We ended up starting at the Roman Baths since we expected that to fill up quickly. We still didn't beat all of the tour busses, but it wasn't too crowded. The Roman Baths were built by the Romans when they originally settled the area since they had naturally warm springs.

The Royal Bath:



We then headed up to the Jane Austen Center. This weekend they were celebrating the Jane Austen festival, so we went by the center where they gave a little talk about her life and about the time that she lived in Bath. They also had costumes from the BBC miniseries that had been done recently on one of her novels call Persuasion. We then headed back down to the main promenade where they were having a processional of people dressed in costume.

Part of the parade:



We then walked around the shops, up to the Pulteney Bridge that has tons of shops. This is only 1 of 3 actual bridges with shops on it. We made sure to go into the chocolate shop to get a few samples. We then walked up Walcot Street and over to the Fashion Museum. The Museum was a little disappointing, but it wasn't too bad. We had lunch at the Slug and Lettuce (which is much much better than it sounds). As a bonus, they serve Fruili, so Tami was happy.

The Pulteney Bridge:



We then walked over and admired the Circus, an impressive circle of houses designed by John Wood and Royal Crescent, a much larger set of houses (in a semi-cirlce) designed by his son. Then we headed back into town and hit a few more shops before going to the Bath Abbey and looking around inside. It was very nice, and as a bonus, we were allowed to take pictures of the inside.... woohoo!

Inside the Abbey:



The Abbey at night:



After the Abbey, we had tea and "Bath Buns" at The Pump Room. We also tried the water from the springs, but it was warm and smelly.... I wouldn't recommend it. Some people like it though since one group downed three glasses while we were there. After tea, we went to the Thermae Bath Spa where you can go into the warm spring water through one of the pools. The best pool was on the roof and overlooked the town... it was very impressive. We spent two hours at the pool before drying off and having supper and a pint at the Huntsman Pub. We then strolled around the town which had mostly closed down until it was time for our train to leave again around 9:00pm.

Castles and Whiskey, what more do you need?

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Today started out the same as yesterday. We enjoyed a full breakfast at the B & B before checking out and getting on the road. Our first stop was a brief stop at Inverness Castle, which is in the town center. You cannot go into it, as it is used for government offices now, so we just walked around outside taking pictures. It was around 10 am so not many people out and about yet, very quiet.

Here is a picture of Inverness Castle:



We then drove to Cawdor Castle, deemed as one of Scotland's most romantic castles. It was very nice, it had a draw bridge leading into the entrance, the owners still occupy part of the castle today. We even walked through the gardens, the maze, and one of the forest walks. We did the short walk, as it was raining but it was gorgeous.

Cawdor Castle:



Next we drove to Brodie castle, it was kind of plain but still nice, located on over 30 acres of land. We opted not to go inside, as it was 8 pounds per person. We walked around the grounds a little bit and went to the gift shop before heading on down the road again.

Brodie Castle:



We continued on down the road and went to the Glen Grant Distillery, not many distilleries were open on Sundays but this one was. We did the tour, which was very interesting, and the tastings. They were pretty good but I (Tami) prefer mine mixed with something else. Greg really enjoyed the tasting. We would have loved to have walked the gardens, because the Admiral had spent so much time making it beautiful, but it was raining too hard so we decided to just head back to town. With the rain it took us nearly 2 hours.

Greg at the Glen Grant Distillery:



We ended up just eating dinner at Pizza Express, before getting on the bus at 6:15 pm to head back to London. We arrived back at 6:50 am on Monday, enough time for a nap before work.

The Search for Nessie

Saturday 9/15/07

We got up fairly early on Saturday. The place that we were staying included breakfast that was cooked by the owner, so we had fruit, toast, eggs, bacon (english bacon, which is pretty much ham), grilled tomatoes and grilled mushrooms (Greg only) washed down with tea and coffee. The food was really good, but the tea and coffee was sort of blah, so we grabbed some coffee and hot chocolate on the way out from Starbucks. We also stopped in at Marks & Spencer to pick up food for a picnic later in the afternoon.

We started out by driving down the south side of Loch Ness which has some beautiful views. We had heard that this side was a lot less travelled than the north side, and we quickly found out why as the majority of the roads were one lane for both directions of traffic. There were just some "passing places" where a little bit of the road jutted out so that two cars could barely fit on the road at the same time. We definitely never saw roads like that in Atlanta :)

Before we left for Scotland, we had invested in some nice raincoats, given Scotland's reputation and actually London's reputation as well. It turned out to be a great investment as all of the rumors about Scotland's climate turned out to be true for us.... it poured down the majority of the time we were there. We got to try out our raincoats for the first time when we stopped off at Foyers Falls, which was a short hike down some stairs. They were pretty, but seemed rather small compared to what we had seen before. We had read that they were more impressive if there has been a lot of rain before, so apparently there hadn't been all that much.



We then hopped back in the car and headed down to Fort Augustus, a small town on the Loch. We stayed for a little bit, but the next leg of our journey required a little more driving, so we wanted to go ahead and get moving.

Our next trip was to Glenfinnan, which has the Glenfinnan Viaduct. We wanted to see it because it was featured in the Harry Potter movies (there is a scene where the train goes over it.) It was cool to see, but it was still pouring down rain, so it didn't make the pictures look as good.



We then drove back to Urquhart Castle. Urquhart castle is more of a ruins then a castle. The castle was destroyed quite, but you can still walk around the ruins. It is right off of Loch Ness so there were some spectacular views. Fortunately, the rain held out for a little while to give us a chance to explore.


When we first walked outside we saw the most beautiful rainbow that extended all the way across the Loch.



The next stop was the Loch Ness Visitors Center, this is where we took pictures of Nessie, mainly Tami with Nessie.



After that, we headed back into Inverness. We were pretty tired, so by the time we got there, we started looking for a place to eat so that we could get back to the Inn. We ended up going back to Girvan's since it was close by and we were too tired to look for much. After that, we went back and hung out at the Inn before going to bed.

We even got to listen to the UGA football game before going to sleep.

The long ride

Thursday, September 13, 2007

We logged off for work at 9 pm and started our journey to Scotland. We got to the National Express and realized we were to take a bus to Inverness and not a train, we were not sure when we booked it. No biggie, the price was definitely worth it. Our bus left London at 11:00 pm and we arrived in Inverness at 11:35 am, we grabbed a rental car and headed toward our B&B that we were staying in.


Friday, September 14, 2007

We arrived at Ivybank Guess House B&B, which was spectacular. We had paid extra to have an ensuite bathroom, it was worth it. Our room was very cute and was located above the lobby area. The B & B only has a total of 6 bedrooms but is very quaint. Our bathroom was the neatest thing about the room. You actually had to walk up some stairs to get to it, and it was located in the Tower of the building. Also, notice that our door is rounded.



It was after 1 pm now and we were getting hungry, we hadn't eaten a real meal since 8 pm the night before. We walked into town and finally decided upon this place called Girvan's. At first it looked more like a cafeteria but it was not, they had a wide variety of food and I ended up eating nachos while Greg got a BLT, we split the two meals.

We walked to the tourist information and picked up some brochures to decide what we were going to be doing over the next few days. We had originally planned on going on a 6 pm dolphin watching cruise, but when I went to book it we found out that the season ended in August and they now only run 10 am and 1:30 pm cruises, so we were too late for those. Oh well.

We headed back to the B&B so Greg could work for a few hours. Once he was logged off we then got in the car and decided to drive up the coast to the Moray Firth area to try to view some dolphins. At this point it was around 4 pm. The roads in Scotland are few and far between, and not very well marked. This meant we ended up over an hour and a half of this free time we were lost. Again, oh well. We finally found the right road and headed north. We stopped off at the first place that was marked in our book to view dolphins, there is a lighthouse here as well.


While they were a little bit off the coast we could see 2 or 3 dolphins playing, a couple of seals, and I even spotted a penguin. I was just as happy doing this as th dolphin cruise. I didn't really plan on Scotland being a place to view dolphins, we were there for the castles and the distilleries and Nessie, mainly.

Here is one of the dolphins that we saw:




Look closely, you will see the lone penguin:


It was starting to get dark and getting close to 7 pm, we headed back to Inverness and ate dinner at Rocpool. This was a great restaurant. I had orrechiette pasta with broccoli and pine nuts. Greg had pan fried chicken with lemon sauce, fried sweet potatoes, and mushrooms. The chicken was excellent. We then headed back to the B&B to get ready for Saturday, and to get a good nights sleep in a real bed. We watched some of Notting Hill before heading to sleep.

Here is just a beautiful shot of the area where we were dolphin watching, it is actually an old fort:

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Thursday, September 13, 2007, 7:35 pm

There was a major incident across the street, the roof of the building collapsed.

We interviewed a neighbor, Greg Ware, and this is what he said:

"I was just sitting in my reception room, working, when there was this loud noise from outside. i ran to the window to see what was the ruckus to discover that the roof across the street had collapsed."

Further reports show that there were many emergency vehicles on the scene. Not 100% sure what happened but you can see into the attic and there are no lights in the upstairs portion of the building.

We will keep you updated if there are any more developments in this story. Back to you Chuck.