England Trip...First Leg

Saturday
After being induced into a state of delirium at the Toronto airport, we finally boarded the plane for England. I slept more on this flight than I've ever slept on a plane before. We got to London, found our hotel, cleaned up and hit the streets. We went straight to Live 8. We heard Annie Lennox and UB40 and heard the broadcast of Green Day and Black Eyed Peas. It was neat just being down there, but it was also a little bit of a disappointment. I thought they'd have tables and such set up, at least at the entrance, promoting the cause. But there was nothing outside the gates of the park. Oh, well, that's what I get for not returning Bob's calls. After a while, we headed back to Kensington and had fish and chips at the Stanhope Arms. It was kind of bleh so we found a pub down the street and sat outside for a couple of pints. We got hooted and hollered at by some blokes down the street, but mine eyes were on the firefighter that rode by. Yumsters. Anyhoo...Turned in early-ish.
Sunday
Hm...what to do today? Oh, let's go to the flea market in Notting Hill. Went. Found lovely things. What next? Wimbledon? Oh, alright. We headed down to Wimbledon and were able to get passes in. We found a great spot to watch the finals, Fedderer v. Roddick. Fantastic view. Alright, alright, it was on a big screen, but still we were there! The atmosphere was amazing. We were surrounded by hundreds of people who acted like this was center court. I'm not a huge tennis fan, but I found myself cheering and oohing and ahhing right along. After the match was over, we left. We started looking for somewhere to take our picture so that Wimbledon would be in the background. We walked up and down this little stretch a couple of times and were just giving up when this guy walked in front of me. I turned to Mary to jokingly say, "Val Kilmer" (we both find "famous" people in everyday folk) but her eyes were taking up the majority of space on her face. I said instead, "Oh, that really is Val Kilmer." and she just kind of nodded. So we stalked him for a bit and gave him time to finish his hot dog whilst standing in line for a taxi. Then we moved in and took our picture with him. He was not overly gracious. Now, I know famous people like their private time, too, but you're famous. You've chosen a life for yourself that puts you in the public eye. Get over it. People want to take your picture. We said please! Besides, the four people that ever saw Top Secret are in my family so I've earned the right to get my picture with you. We then left Val to head back to London. I found a Haunted London walking tour to go on that night. While it was about as scary as Strawberry Shortcake, it was very interesting because he pointed out little details and tidbits that aren't in the guidebooks. Afterwards, we headed over for Soho and found Raj, a fantastic Indian place. mmm! Nan bread is my friend.
Monday
Happy Fourth of July! While we didn't want to go around being obnoxious Americans and saying nanny nanny boo boo (okay, I did want to, but I showed a great amount of restraint) we did have a soul-stirring rendition of patriotic songs performed by our own Mary Gattis. Amanda and I joined in with an interpretive fireworks dance. It was beautiful. Then we were off to Oxford for the day. Oxford was amazing. We went to the Botanical Gardens and went punting. Our punter was HOT. (I'm sensing a theme with the good-looking Englishmen) And so polite..."Is it proper to wish you a Happy 4th of July?" Absolutely, hot punter. We went to Christ Church College and did a tour of the cathedral and grounds. It was stunning. Oh, we also all bought scarves in Oxford. Good thing we got them, too, because it was stupidly cold the first part of our trip. We got them at a shop that sold hilarious t-shirts. Examples: I have the body of a god. (Buddha) and I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings. We laughed at the shirts for quite some time. We got back to London and went to clean up. Rob suggested a Lebanese place at High Street Ken so we went there for dinner. Words cannot describe the goodness. I want to go back here in October. So, a good 3 days in London. Tomorrow, we're off for the Lake District.

Riddle of the Day

What has 5 zip codes, crosses 3 time zones, and spans 2 Canadian provinces?

Give up?

The Toronto airport!

I fell in love (big fat HA!) with this bohemoth monstrosity on my trip to England. I don't know which was worse: Air Canada or the Toronto airport. They both rank very high on my "Things I Will Never Do Again" list. In fact, they're numbers 1 and 2! Air Canada, to borrow a phrase from Chadd, suck great big donkey boobies. Overall, the people were SO rude. We encountered maybe 3 that didn't make me sad for mankind. You had to buy snacks on our first flight. No peanuts, no pretzels...That flight, for no apparent reason, was almost 2 HOURS late getting into Toronto so we missed our connection for London. Now generally, we found that you could arrive 2 hours late and still be 3 hours early for an Air Canada flight, but of course this time the exception proved the rule...So anyhoo, we got rebooked for a 10.30 pm flight to London. Yeah, we're gonna delay this one too...We left at 1.15 am. Neat. Ten days in England. Awesome. These will be blogged about seperately because the trip was incredible. I'll skip to the end. Yep, on time for the London to Toronto flight. We make it to Toronto and actually have almost 2 hours to make our connection (which, by the way, is still going to be cutting it close what with all of the buses you have to take to get from one terminal to another. I almost commandeered a bus when the driver got out and just walked around and we were left growling.)...Everything is hunky dorey. Oh, except for that it's raining in Atlanta. And Air Canada is apparently the only airline that Atlanta is turning away. So our flight got cancelled. They ever so accommodatingly rebooked us on another flight. For 8.30 the NEXT night. We finally ran into one of the good ones who rerouted us to Nashville. Where we taxied to the middle of a runway and had to walk across the tarmac to get inside. I didn't realize anyone still did this.

Girls, we've still got to get together to write our epic poem about the badness that is Air Canada...