... and the rains came

Another lazy morning (at least for the grownups... the boys found a way to wage major battles in a small bedroom with an upper bunk, a few wooden swords, and a gaggle of beanie babies). Sprinkles in the morning breaking into more sprinkles by 11:30 a.m. Lunch at the house, then off to Hampton Court Palace in the afternoon.

As with Warwick Castle, I had been to Hampton Court on my 10th grade trip to England many years ago. My journal from that time remarks on the beautiful gardens--it was a similar time of year--but I don't remember much else about it. And it did not look terribly familiar when we drove up.

It's fun driving right through the gates of the palace and into the parking area, then walking up the long front drive to the entry. The building is impressively large, built in installments I gather. They had a special, widely spread and ubiquitous exhibit for Henry VIII, as this is the 500th anniversary of something or other. I have the details nearby, but this is a blog, not a NYT article, so forgive me if I don't check all my facts (if it was the NYT, I'd just make them up).

This is another site I'd recommend visiting. The artwork and rooms are really phenomenal, and the tapestries are ancient and mammoth. The sense of history, as with most places around here, is palpable. The great hall is enormous, with perhaps the highest ceiling I've ever seen (except the Kingdome, perhaps). I enjoyed touring the older parts of the palace more than the newer, perhaps because I really enjoy older medieval and dark ages history. (Being, of course, a recovering D&D aficionado).

(This photo happens to be the same photo used in the Landmark Trust properties catalog. Without, of course, the children. Apparently, there are apartments you can rent in Hampton Court Palace through the Landmark Trust, which I think is one of the coolest concepts I've ever come across.)

With a 9-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 12-year-old, though, we could not linger long over the tapestries or artwork or architecture. We hurried through the majority of the building, then out to the maze. The maze is very cool and very old, an outdoor shrubbery labyrinth that frankly is not terribly difficult to navigate but is fun for kids and also fun to imagine the aristocracy of the old days frolicking in. The boys led me at breakneck speed through the shrubs, past preteens playing tag and knots of little girls looking bewildered. All told, they made four full circuits of the path before we adjourned to the cafe for delicious ice cream (I had rhubarb).

Then, on to the gardens! The gardens are really quite spectacular. I somehow imagined there would be more drama to them, but after a little while I found the simple geometry and smartly placed color to be much more enjoyable than the Disneyland color explosions I'd anticipated.

Of note is the Great Vine, an ancient grape vine that yields nearly a thousand pound of grapes each year. It's immense, and I am sure the tremendously immense Wisteria outside has vine envy since the grape gets all the attention.

The boys also enjoyed this long tunnel, having a couple of sprints along its length.
While we were at the gardens, the British weather finally arrived. The refreshing, light sprinkles we'd enjoyed all afternoon finally turned into what this Bay Area resident would call light rain.

A quick trip to the gift shop and a hop into the car, and at about 6 p.m. the light rain turned into a legitimate rain in earnest. Dinner at home (nice little local Indian place delivers, thank goodness) and a relaxing evening.

Tomorrow the plan is Stonehenge, but we're not sure what the backup plan is if we chicken out due to the expected rain.

Imperial War Museum and HMS Belfast

We spent the morning recovering from our day off (yesterday was a total day off with a walk through the Royal Landscape somewhere between Virginia Water and Windsor, in which we walked across the Queen's Polo Ground and saw a robot lawnmower and lots of daffodils and forgot our camera). The afternoon was dedicated to London's war monuments: The wicked cool Imperial War Museum and the mostly wicked cool but not as cool as an overnight on the USS Hornet HMS Belfast.

It was another fine day--overcast and a little dreary, but warmish with a hint of sprinkles on the air. We wandered off to the local train station, a short distance from our hostess' house, and had a grand time on the platform for the two minutes before the train to London arrived.


On the train, I listened to a spritely young beauty yap on her cell phone with her mate about how awful the rain was (it had shed a few drops on the windows but nothing I'd actually call RAIN) and whether they had their umbrellas (which I think she called a bully, but I wasn't quite sure). Anyway, a short ride in to Waterloo station and a quick cab ride (for the kids; I'd have walked) later, we were at the Imperial War Museum.

Now, we'd heard this would be impressive. You walk in, and there are Spitfires and biplanes hanging from the ceiling, and four or five tanks facing you with six different artillery pieces between them. A couple of mini subs and a jeep and a lorry round out the lot, making for a very impressive and engaging entry room indeed.

Although our hostess had to chat with the handyman in the morning about fire alarms and light bulbs, she joined us partway through our tour. The museum has a number of wonderful features. The cafe is one of them, though I would not include the steak and kidney pie among its recommended fare. It was too crowded, but once we found some seats it was pleasant enough. The staff certainly were quite nice and helpful.

The museum itself has this terrific "trench experience" exhibit downstairs where you can walk through a mock WWI trench. It's not muddy or cold, of course, but for those with a good imagination and a little academic background on WWI, it is a moving experience. Very well done and well worth the $0 admission. (Yes, it's free! They ask you to buy a museum guide for 3.50 pounds, which we did, but it's otherwise free.) They also have this terrific 1940s era house inside the museum. We happened to be walking behind an older gentleman who had been about 8 or 9 years old when the Blitz started, and he seemed giddy with memories and eager to share his thoughts. The whole museum was striking, from the dramatic display of firepower on entry to the gripping human drama illustrated in the Cold War exhibit and evacuee section. I did not see the Holocaust exhibit because I was in charge of the younguns, but the ladies did see it and were impressed with the quality of the exhibit.

(Speaking of the ladies, here they are in front of their preferred vehicle for hitting the high street shops on a leisurely Saturday morning. Then there are Maria and I in front of the Jeep and truck outside the cafe.)

After the Imperial War Museum (which, if you hadn't figured it out, I highly recommend), we continued our little boy day by visiting the HMS Belfast, a Cruiser class ship from WWII that is a docked museum near Tower Bridge. We had a good time finding the Northern Line of the Tube, wandering up and down about 300 steps (only slightly fewer than the Warwick Castle offers in their towers) and up and down through an open air market of questionable repute. Find it we did, however, and we boarded the Tube at the Elephant & Castle stop for the London Bridge stop.

Once there, we had a good time viewing the ship. It's certainly a fun time for anyone interested in military history, particularly WWII or naval military. It was a little smaller and less impressive to our boys than the USS Hornet aircraft carrier we've spent a few overnighters on. But it is very well done, with excellent descriptions and a top notch self-guided tour. I thrilled to see the inside of a big-gun turret and the magazine room below it, and the boys loved the boiler rooms and engine rooms. We also enjoyed inspecting the AAA guns on the side, and then seeing them from above from the upper decks. All in all, another site worth seeing.

The train ride back from Waterloo Station was uneventful, followed by a pleasant dinner out at a local restaurant with too much wine, which will account for any typos you see in this blog post.

Two days in Paris

It was a whirlwind. We rose early on Monday and made it to the airport in about 18 minutes instead of the 90 or so it took us to find the house on the first day. (When you're totally jet lagged and unsure of the difference between dusk and dawn, what's "early"?) British Air from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle was pleasant and quick, and the train in to the center of Paris was simple and enjoyable.

We exited at Saint-Michel Notre-Dame (purple dot on map), and because we had no idea which exit to take we accidentally walked up into the gorgeous Paris afternoon right in front of the cathedral. Last time I was here, it was dark and rainy and freezing, and the whole front of the cathedral was under scaffolding. This time, it was festive with hundreds of tourists wandering about, taking photographs. It was about 70 degrees and sunny-hazy.

We hauled our bag across the bridge and down a few streets to our hotel (red dot right near the center of the map), the Best Western Left Bank-St. Germain. I would say we had a wonderful experience with this hotel. The staff were courteous and friendly (as friendly as any Parisian I met, anyway), they gave us two adjoining rooms on the top floor, and breakfast Tuesday morning was pleasant enough. The rooms were tight but not cramped, and each had its own bathroom. I'd recommend the hotel to first time Paris visitors for sure.


After checking in (one of our two rooms was actually ready at noon) and depositing our gear, we walked across Pont Neuf to the Louvre (orange dot).

Maria had read a travel writer's article that said, "In all the times I've been to the Louvre, I have never seen a child under the age of twelve look happy there." I am sad to report that he is entirely correct.


While our boys loved the pyramids and the plaza, it was too crowded, too hot, too free from the burden of drinking fountains, and too full of boring old art for their taste. We did get this photo of some guy, and as luck would have it we think there's something of interest in the background. (Yes, that is I in the extreme foreground. No, it was not the 9 year old who took the picture.)

After the Louvre, we hiked back across the Seine and down to Jardin du Luxembourg, an enormous park south of the Left Bank area we were staying in. The park must have had the entire vacationing population of Europe in it, and most of them were taking up the benches and chairs. We sat on a stone wall and within 30 seconds were shooed away by a polite but insistent Gendarme; I don't know what building this is, but it has lovely flowers.

The rest of the park was quite pretty and serene despite the billions of people. Pretty much everyone seemed happy. There were tulips that had blooms the size of small dogs. We stopped to get some ice cream, and I was momentarily confused by the wild gestures and French babbling from the poor girl who served us, until I realized I had tried to hand her a five-pound note instead of a five-Euro note.

Refreshed from the park, we returned to our hotel for some rest before heading out for dinner. From our 5th floor windows, you can see the candy shop at the end of the road where we spent half our children's inheritance. (It was mostly worth it.)

Maria wanted to walk through the Latin Quarter, so we tried and mostly failed, having gone straight through an interesting plaza instead of turning left. We ended up meandering among some monstrously granite university buildings (Sorbonne?), which would have been pretty if we hadn't been trying to find something else while dragging along two reluctant, tired, hungry children.

Eventually we made our way back to the restaurant (lime green dot), a traditional bistro called Cremerie Restaurant Polidor that Maria had found online reputed to be family-friendly.

I would have to agree, and although it is more expensive than we're used to, we had a fine dinner. Poor Sam was so tired that between ordering and receiving the starter course, he took a five minute nap in his chair with his head on the table. Poor Ethan didn't like anything we ordered, but we pieced together a dinner for him mostly of bread and chicken with the sauce wiped off.

After dinner, we wanted to have a wander so we gave the children the map and had them guide us back to the hotel. We are pretty sure we walked most of the Latin Quarter before finally returning to the candy shop right outside the Metro stop Odeon. But at least the children were yelling at each other and not at us. It was quite a pleasant walk.

The elegance of these areas is inspiring--I kept wanting to stop and just sit in a cafe and watch people, but with the two boys that was impossible. It's easy to get a sense of the rich history and culture of Paris just wandering the streets. Some are tight little alleys filled with boutiques; others are wider avenues strewn with people and color and energy.

We had our breakfast in the hotel Tuesday morning around 8:30 and checked out at 9:30ish, our adventurous goal to navigate the Metro system straight away. The breakfast attendant was efficient and polite, but not quite the quality we had come to expect from our stop at Holiday Inn in St. Paul, MN a couple of years ago. (Then again, that was the Holiday Inn Breakfast Bar Attendant of the Year.)

Our first mission: A stroll up the Champs Elysees to the Arch de Triomphe. Another gorgeous morning filled with the vibrancy of tourists everywhere. Tourists seem to smile a lot in Paris. We did see a lot of Brits along the way (or rather, hear a lot of Brits).
From the Arch we Metroed a few stops to Trocadero, which provides a brilliant walk to the Eiffel Tower.

The wait for the elevator was two hours, but we waited along with everyone else because Sam really wanted to go up, and with all the activity it didn't really seem like two hours even though it was. Be bought some souvenirs while in line and truly enjoyed the view once we got up to the 2nd floor. We didn't go all the way to the top, but we didn't feel the need.

Quote of the week: A woman waiting for the restroom up in the tower said, "This is the only women's room in all Paris that doesn't have a line!" Having just spent two hours waiting for the elevator, I wasn't quite sure of her logic.


Sam was elated that when he looked through the view finder thing, he saw the "one room hotel" with the perfect view of the Eiffel Tower that is supposed to be $10,000 a night or something. He read about this in his Ripley's Believe It or Not book, I think. It was an odd looking thing, sort of a broken-in-half train car on top of a roof across the river.

After the tower, we were pressed for time. A quick trip to Montmartre (not the porn area near Moulin Rouge but the more bohemian feeling part northeast of there, at Anvers Metro stop), where we saw the energetic and touristy market street on the way up to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. Only had time to buy a Coke and then hop back on Metro to retrieve our bag, get a few quick snaps of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame again, then back on RER to the airport for our flight back to London.

I never really thought I liked France much, but these two days have changed my mind. I could spend a few weeks in Paris, easy, just hanging out and really soaking in the feel, watching the people, seeing sights we missed, and writing in cafes. (Also, I say the boys were reluctant and whiny above, but really they had a great time and enjoyed most of the trip quite a lot.)

haiku wednesday - April 15, 2009

This week's words are
allure
perch
vivid

I had good intentions, but I was unable to keep up with a poem a day during April. I blame jet lag. Still, I'm here for 3WW! The first just popped into my head; the second was inspired by a certain person in the plaza at the Louvre; the third was inspired by the souvenir salesmen crawling all over the place around the Eiffel Tower.

---

vivid rainbow hues
snagged by allure of a lure
is it perch or trout?

---

vivid Paris noon
long-leg girl on stone wall perch
knows her own allure

---

hawks descend from perch
allure the unsuspecting
with vivid trinkets

Warwick and Windsor

Too jet-lagged and exhausted from extensive driving after day one, I failed to blog it yesterday. Instead, I crashed on the couch for a bit, then discovered Premiere League Match Day on BBC, then discovered sleep. So this entry covers both our first full day in the UK and our second (nearly full) day. Monday and Tuesday will be Paris, and I'm not bringing my laptop, so the next entry will cover, um, whatever.

Saturday: We decided to go to Warwick Castle, but because of the time change we got a bit of a late start. Fortunately, our hostess left her GPS unit, which frequently reported I was driving 400 miles per hour. We have not yet gained tremendous confidence in this device, but it has a very pleasant voice with a British accent, so it sounds trustworthy. In any case, it got us to Warwick just fine (about 90 minutes away), and we drove around seeking parking for 20 minutes. Eventually we stopped at a playground park with a little cafe, paid our few paltry coins for insufficient parking time, bought "hot dogs" for lunch (the polite clerk informed us that these were not "American hot dogs," but we thought that was just peachy, so we got them anyway), used the change for additional parking time, and wandered off to find the castle.


Castles are not as hard to discover as you might think. They tend to put the castles pretty near the town centers, so if you find parking you are likely to find the castle. When I was in 10th grade, I visited Warwick Castle on a school tour. It was very cool, and nearly no one was there, and in the Great Hall among the armor and other Things of Historic Note was the Dudley coat of arms. Dudleys ruled as Earls of Warwick for three generations, if I remember correctly. But Warwick had nothing about the Dudleys that I could find, even in the kitschy gift shop which had coats of arms for 200 different names, pretty much every English name ever created except Dudley. So I can not at all recommend Warwick Castle.


Anyway, today's Warwick Castle is not nearly as tacky as York's Jorvik Viking Museum, but it is far more tacky than you might expect your basic historic castle to be. Some of the tacky was good, like an encampment of people living in period costume and methods, and a battle reenactment, but some was less good.

Still, we had a great time seeing a real, medieval castle and walking the ramparts and towers and some of the interiors. It was terribly crowded, though, and I found that detracting from the ambiance. The towers and ramparts stroll included over 500 steps, most of them in four spiral staircases in two towers.



Saturday night we tried to find one pub in a different town, but our amusing GPS cleverly took us on a seven mile circular route right back to the house, so we went to the Rose & Crown, a local place that my 9 year old called "the most welcoming restaurant I've ever been in." I'd have to agree, for the most part. Terribly friendly, decent food, lovely cozy atmosphere. (This is not the Ascot Rose & Crown but the one in Surrey.)

Sunday the Easter Bunny made an appearance, miraculously finding where Ethan and Sam were spending Easter and cleverly providing English candies instead of American ones. Then we stuck at home to receive the household dog from its minder, then allowed its next minder to pick him up a half hour later. It is a dog of much friendliness and vigor, of very high spirits. Afterwards, we successfully drove into Windsor (20 minutes away) with the intent to visit Windsor Castle. After looking at the entry line (about 90,000 people long) and the pricing, we decided instead to wander the shops. A lovely little town with a sufficient compliment of tourist gift shops and cafes. Here are the boys in one of the streets with the castle in the background behind them.

We made it! No thanks to us...

We were prepared. We were really prepared. I was more caught up with work than at any time in the past four months. I had just successfully hired for my open position. I was on track with April's poem-a-day, the pool was chlorinated, the house was super tidy, I had Euros in my wallet... we were prepared.

The day started well. Antoinette picked us up at home and brought us to BART right on time. A gray, sprinkly morning was a good warmup for what we expected in England. The boys were excited on BART to SFO.

(Don't ask me what was on Ethan's mind. Isn't that a great suspicious look?)

We were confident and happy to be going on vacation.


BART got us to SFO on time. We sailed through check-in and security. We found a Burger King and even got a table. Life was good. We boarded through the spacious. luxurious business class to get to our seats near the back of steerage and found that the engineers of the Boeing 747 have discovered the secret of the Bag of Holding (you D&D players know what I'm talking about... it's that normal-sized bag into which you can cram pretty much unlimited things). Judging from the space available for my legs (and I am only 5' 8", remember), they packed a lot of seats onto this plane. Anyway, it was on time and the people were friendly and we got food. And they played four movies on the 11-hour flight to Frankfurt. I watched Quantum of Solace (frantic and, like the 747, cramming too much into the available space) and Frost/Nixon, both of which I quite liked. I ignored the other two. Seven Pounds and something else I forget.

What's that? Frankfurt? You thought we were going to London? Yes, well, with four tickets to purchase and a savings of $300 a ticket, we took the San Francisco to Frankfurt to Heathrow redeye route rather than the comfy direct flight. We got to know our little section of Terminal 1 at Frankfurt airport pretty well in the three hours we spent there, though.

Here's the plane that carried us across the Atlantic:


And here are the boys on the bus from that airplane to Terminal 1:
And here they are in Terminal 1 while we figure out where we can wait out our three hour layover:


Finally, after a bit of a nap, a $5 Sprite, and being frisked and wanded through the intraterminal security screening, we boarded the Airbus A321 to London. (Oh, Ethan also had a flashlight of his tested for explosives. That was probably the highlight of his day.)

We arrived without incident at Heathrow, breezed through Immigration, had no trouble with our luggage, took the scenic route to find bus stop #2 for the Hertz bus, and made it out to the Hertz rental lot reasonably smoothly. That's when the angst crept in.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about driving on the wrong side of the road, but I had just seen James Bond (who is British) drive on both sides of the road in pretty much equal measure, so I figured I'd fit right in. Just like at home. But what really freaked me out was that as prepared as we were, we had not printed out directions to our friend's home where we were to stay.

We knew it was in a town named Virginia Water "pretty close to Windsor," which was "pretty close to Heathrow." I had the address but no map. And this particular Hertz office on this particular day had (a) no maps, (b) no internet directions kiosk, and (c) no one who knew of Virginia Water ("Virgin what?"). So I asked for Windsor, and I got "M4 west." Which was a start.

We made it alive onto the M4 westbound, somehow. And we saw signs for Windsor. We thought maybe we needed to go even farther west, but we got off at Windsor hoping to find a place to stop for directions. We managed to make a wrong turn off a roundabout and miss the town center, but it led us to a gas station that had a woman who knew where Virginia Water was... and how to get there. She directed us, and we followed her directions, and they got us there. Here is the route we followed:


You may notice that it seems a tad circuitous, and that there is a thick bluish road labeled M25 that cuts off, oh... I'd say 75% of the distance. In fact, here's what Google Maps suggested once we found the house and hooked up to the internet:


Regardless, we still had to ask directions two more times to find the house itself, which we eventually were able to do, on a cute little street that looks something like this:


The benefit to our scenic route was that we got to meet some locals, got to see some scenery that was not planted by a highway work crew, and got to visit a grocery store and an ATM.

haiku wednesday - April 8, 2009

This week's words are
flirt
ploy
stunning

Crazy day at work. Leaving for vacation in the early morning. It was all I could do to get these done. May miss next week. Happy Poetry Month! The first two below are a sort of he-said, she-said. The third is unrelated.

---

you're stunning tonight
my ploy to make you jealous
I flirt with your friend

---

you flirt--I punch, hard.
your ploy ends in broken nose
how's that for stunning?

---

tough boys flirt with war
stunning ignorance displayed
this ploy failed before

Missy Higgins and Harlan Coban

I don't go to concerts often for the same reason I don't ski much: It's usually too expensive, and I'm usually too busy. Tonight, though, we took time to go to a unique show at the Lark Theater offered by Corte Madera's Book Passage.

Recently, my wife heard a song while she was waiting overlong at the Verizon store in Walnut Creek. She wrote down some of the lyrics and later googled them to find out the song was by Missy Higgins, an Australian singer we'd not heard of before. It wasn't long before we had bought most of her recent album on iTunes. The next week, we saw the advert for tonight's show in the Book Passage newsletter. Neither of us had ever heard of Harlan Coban, the author appearing with Missy at the theater. He's a crime fiction author, and we don't really hit that genre. We weren't sure what a crime fiction author would be doing at a concert, but my wife liked the music enough to tolerate his presence, and I like my wife enough to go to a concert with her.

We got into downtown Larkspur, a quaint little downtown just a mile off highway 101 but you'd never know it. One parking spot and one taco-to-go later, we arrived at the front of the theater, collected our tickets and not-yet-signed books, and headed inside. They served wine! Perfect. The theater is small, seating 246 but feeling more like a large parlor. It's wide, and even the seats near the back seemed close to the stage. We sat about eight rows back. (Later, as we exited, we realized there were several empty seats. General admission at the door was just $15, an amazing price for such a cool event.)

What we got was one of the coolest concerts/author speakings that I've ever been to. Harlan kicked it off with an introduction and a description of how the two connected to put this together. Apparently, Harlan had been inspired by a line from one of Missy's songs, so as a sort of tribute he named her and the song in one of his books. Later, Missy's mum was reading the book on a beach and discovered her daughter referenced. Thus a friendship and collaboration was born.

The night was a combination of about a dozen songs and a dialog about writing and the writing process. They even stopped to answer audience questions at one point. And it was clear that the whole thing was ad-lib because at two different points, Missy played a song shouted out by the audience. The first time, she seemed at odds about what song to play, and someone up front asked for Sugar Cane. She said, "Yeah? OK," and played it.

So, anyway, it was awesome. Harlan is very cool, seriously funny, and clearly a talented speaker. At some point I'll read his book and decide if he's a talented writer. Missy is a genuine treat to see live. Cute, sincere, terribly talented. Go buy her albums.

New Pete's Poetry blog

I have set myself up with a new place to post my poems (mostly light verse) and my upcoming sequel to the Unlucky 26. Those of you who are regulars or in my feed reader should have gotten an invitation to this private, most exclusive of blogs. If you did not, then I did not have your email address where I could reach it without stretching. If you didn't get an invitation and want in, send me an email at dudleypj@gmail.com and I'll hook you up.

Happy Poetry Month!

haIku wednesday - April Fools edition 2009

This week's words are
crush
knack
varied

HAPPY POETRY MONTH! I am going to write at least one poem a day through April, though I won't necessarily be posting them all. In fact, bloggy buddies who liked The Unlucky 26 may want to stay tuned for a sequel in the works, though plans are still sketchy at best.

---

knack for stomping feet
tantrums varied and robust
crush sour grapes; make whine

---

I crush easy, hard
a knack for losing my heart
varied receptions

---

her colors varied
champagne gold to Orange Crush
a chameleon's knack