Suttons Go To London

So, I had a really, really bad headache yesterday. Michael and I spent the better portion of the day trying and retrying to figure out what the heck happened to time yesterday. For some reason football started here at 5pm. Usually it starts at 6pm, and since London “falls back” with the time change, this should have remained the same… right? Wrong! It shifted an hour back. We verified that London did indeed fall back, we called friends and family, we tore out our hair and scratched at the walls, we even consulted an abacus when our calculator broke, and still we couldn’t figure out what happened. Finally, we got a hold of our international time and treasury consultant, Joanne, who mentioned that the UK falls back one week before the US does. Oh yeah….

http://www.suttonsbayarea.com/

Who knows, with only 589 people living there, it shouldn’t be too hard to take it over…

We were inspired to do a little in-country travel today, so we took the train out to Windsor to visit Windosr Castle. The Castle is the largest (484000 sq ft) inhabited castle in the world, and the oldest in continuous occupation (over 900 years).

Windsor itself was very picturesque - it is a quaint little town with tons of little old houses and pubs. The great thing about Windsor is that usually when we visit an historic site it involves a long trek up a mountainside, but this time the train dropped us off at the doorstep of the castle.

Since we got a bit of a late start, we got inside 5 minutes before they closed St. George’s Chapel at 1pm. I am really glad we did because it was the highlight of the visit, The chapel is the home of the Royal Order of the Garter, which is an order of chivalry (knighthood). If you really want to know all about the order, I’m sure you can look it up on Wikipedia. The chapel itself was Gothic in style - it reminded me a little of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona because of the soaring beams inside that were designed to look like they were growing from the ground to the roof. The floor of the building is scattered with the tombs of the royal family, dating back to the 1400s. Unfortunately, no photos allowed in the chapel, so you will just have to use your imagination.

After the Chapel we visited Queen Mary’s Dollhouse. The house was built in 1924 as a birthday gift from the Princess to the Queen. The whole thing is an amazing 12:1 replication of a working manor house. Everything within the house is not only miniature, but it is all “real,” meaning it has electricity, running water, the little books in the library are all real books, the grandfather clock actually chimes on the hour, and the paintings are original miniatures painted by the original artists just for this purpose. The even had little chamber pots under the beds!Check out this website if you want to see photos from inside the dollhouse.

http://www.victorianstation.com/interior.html

Then it was on the state apartments, which have about 18 dining rooms. Seriously… these people must do a lot of entertaining. I think the best part of the day was when we were viewing an enormous collection of the royal porcelain, which included all these different sets of dishes, and Michael proclaimed that he has seen stuff just like this at the Dollar Store in Phoenix, and he couldn’t tell the difference.

Ok… maybe I go a TINY bit overboard with the planning somtimes, but I have a really good excuse. You see, last February, I was put in charge of planning the itinerary for our Spain trip. And I might have messed a few very small parts up (such as any directions to anything whatsoever). After getting lost 18 times, Michael became very mildly annoyed one evening after we trekked through Sevilla for 90 minutes trying to find a hotel that ended up being 50 meters from our start point. No one can accuse me of not learning my lesson, however, I may be overcompensating just a bit now. For example, I had a clear plastic “pocket” for each day of our trip. The pocket contained such things as detailed directions, hotel and ferry reservations, area restaurants, etc. The average pocket had about 20 pages in it.

Everything was going along just fine until the day I proudly presented Michael with our 11 page itinerary for the day (which included a 5 1/2 hour self guided walking tour). I captured his response below:

Saturday morning got here WAY too early. Our flight left London at 6:15am, and since we flew on RyanAir (which only allows EU citizens to check in online) we had to be at the airport by 5am. The earliest train to the airport left the city at about 4:15am, and we were on it! We left the apartment at 3:30 or so we were tired before we started! It was actually kind of surreal to be walking in dark and quiet in a city that is always so busy. We arrived in sunny Palermo a few hours later. When we disembarked from the plane, we had to get on a little bus which was supposed to drive us to the airport building. So we waited for the whole plane to get onto 2 busses. When everyone was finally on board, the buses began their long and treacherous journey to the building, which took literally 30 seconds. I think we might have driven 20 feet!

We had a great day wandering around Palermo. First, a couple of downsides… we somehow ended up in a single room with a tiny bed, good for cozying, not good for getting ready in the morning. Also, the city is really dirty and polluted - there are piles of garbage all around, and just unbelievable noise from all the scooters and general traffic. When we first arrived it was hot and sticky, we were tired and hungry, and we had to make the 1 mile trek from the train station to the hotel with our packs. After a nice little nap, we set out to see the town. There is some really beautiful architecture - there is a strong Moorish influence in a lot of the buildings, which I thought was cool.

For me, the highlight of the trip was day 2, when this pretty German Shepherd decided to be our stand in dog for the day. There are stray dogs everywhere In Palermo, and if you even make eye contact with them they decide to be your friend. I was trying to illustrate the strays and just how much garbage is in the city when I took this photo:

I think the dog thought my photo-interest meant I was going to feed her because she followed us around for a good hour or two. We started to get really scared that she was going to get hit by a car because she would just follow us everywhere, but she seemed pretty street savvy. Most of the strays are… in fact, we saw one old dog laying on the sidewalk waiting for the light to change - as soon as the walk sign lit up, she got up and crossed with the light! I suppose you live on the street long enough and you get to know the rules really well.

We finished the afternoon with our first of many gelatos at  the Liberty Bar. As you can see, Michael is working on the skill of magically producing gelato:

(tip of the cap to Melanie)

Jen and I and the Pope. That’s right. We took on the country of 900 people and so much artwork that they put it on the ceiling…

First, I’d like to say that the Sistine Chapel was all that it was cracked up to be. Anybody who would paint standing up, looking up 18 hours a day for 4 years gets major props, but then to see it was pretty spectacular. There were no pictures allowed in the Chapel (although it didn’t stop some ding dongs) because Nippon has exclusive rights to all photos of it (they paid 5m+ for restoration) so I can’t show you anything I took of it. Instead I will use this guy’s…

As you can see, this photo is a collage/panorama of photos that show not only the ceiling but the front wall which is also done by Michelangelo and called “The Final Judgment” (the bottom of the photo with the blue background). I could write a paper on all the cool things, but I will leave it at this, who ever thinks old art is boring, should read up. A few nuggets:

Vatican City is defended by the Swiss Guard. They are pretty much show as they are armed with swords only and dressed like the Trix Bunny got hold of them. Either way, everyone seems to feel the need to photograph them, and, when in Rome…

Something stunning about the Vatican was that while it has so much art work in it that if you spent 15 seconds looking at every piece you would be there for 12 years, as you near the end (and the entrance of the Sistine Chapel) there is a collection of exceptional modern art. We didn’t have the luxury of time to look at all of it, but there were some fantastic pieces there. Even the stained glass pieces had a bit of edge to them. This piece signals the start of the real modern work.

As we’ve traveled through Europe, we’ve entered many a church and basilica. Some of them have been quite ornate or sizable or expansive, but they all paled to St. Peter’s Basilica. I think Jen summed it up best, “Good Lord!” The place is huge and it has some amazing statues in it.

So while the US stock market falls of a ledge, the US Dollar is tearing it up. In July, 1 Pound here got you 2 USD. Now it only gets you 1.6. That is a 20% change in months. Somebody is making a fortune in currency exchange markets right now.

Sunday afternoon was a lazy day for us, since we just got back from our week long trip to Italy. We did manage to get to Whole Foods, and on the way out the door Michael spotted Jake Gyllenhaal. This is Michael’s 2nd celebrity sighting here in London (the 1st being Russell Brand). I think he has either been reading a lot of OK! magazine, or he is just a teenage girl at heart…

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Just another reason to love Jennifer.