Extremepath

Exploring London

Carol's job brought her to London for a week before Aaron arrives so she had some time to enjoy expensive London on the company's bill.  Read along to get all the good details.

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Saturday 5/26/07 – We departed for London and arrived on Sunday 5/27/07.  The biggest event of the day was dinner at Souke (Morrocan food) in Covent Garden.  We were all pretty jet lagged.  It was an early night.

Monday 5/28/07 – We did a typical city tour (Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Covent Gardens, Changing of the guards at Buckingham Palance, river ride down the Thames).  It was bloody freezing , 8 degrees C.  The coldest day on record for May.  There were minimal pictures since we kept making a run for the bus after each site.  Dinner at Mint Leaf, very tasty. 

Tuesday 5/29/07 – We headed to the National Gallery.  We got half price tickets for Billy Elliot at Leicester square, although we actually probably paid double for the tickets. Billy Elliot was excellent.  It was a tear jerker with a happy ending of course.  Finally understood the Margaret Thatcher and mining industry references.

Wednesday 5/30/07 – We hit up the British Museum, Kensington Palace, walked through Kensington gardens and Hyde park and Marble arch.  Macula Society started that afternoon.  We had a nice dinner at Nobu, but the food was not extraordinary.

Thursday 5/31/07 - Tate Modern was cool and dinner at Gordon Ramsay at Claridges was very good, but a bit hiped up.  The fish was good but the chicken was dry. 

Friday 6/1/07 – We found Shenza, good Indian food.  Went to a gala at the Royal Courts of Justice and hit up the Hookah lounge in Mayfair.  Aaron and Ram smoked the hookah all night so Aaron could stay awake.  It worked. 

Saturday 6/2/07 – We walked 7 mi through London city center.  We saw Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Thames river, Tower of London, crossed Tower bridge, Trafalgar Square St. Paul’s Cathedral, Globe Theatre, crossed Millennium bridge, lunch at the Embankment.  We took a nap on a grassy square with the Tower bridge in the background.  We had dinner at a good tapas place called Il Pirates and saw a musical named Wicked.

United Kingdom / Ireland Holiday

As usual our vacation was determined by Genentech and Carol's travels for work.  Not such a bad choice for checking out a couple of famous islands by car, foot, bike, ship and train.  We recorded most everything about the trip using our camera and GPS.  You can check out all of the photos at Flickr & MotionBased (United Kingdom / Ireland).

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Since we have both been so busy we did very little planning, but we did book a car one way from London to Edinburgh (June 2nd - June 8th) then a flight to Dublin to rent a car in Ireland and tour the south returning to Heathrow on June 16th.  Of course the islands look a lot smaller on a map then they do in a car and some of the roads don't go so fast, but we were motivated to see the whole place.

Since we were winging it and decided not to book accommodation ahead of time
we brought a bunch of camping gear.  We heard that hotels could sell out and we figured camping would be a good alternative. The camping thing didn't work out that great for us, but most of the trip was a great success.  We saw all kinds of sights and learned a lot about history that we otherwise had ignored.  There is something more interesting about history when you are actually standing in a Castle learning about Kings and Queens rather than reading about it in a school text book. 

We will highlight the happenings for each day in the following posts.