15 posts tagged “travel”

Pictures from Christmas Eve at Kathleen's parents.

This is not everything yet.  I'd still like to post some video too -- but here are more pictures from our vacation in Tuscany...

Back in Virginia. In front of Gran and Opa's house. We are all tired from the trip but in good spirits.

Back in the USA

Here we are at Heathrow, waiting for our flight back to the U.S.  It was a great trip.  Yesterday we drove from the Villa in Tuscany to the Rome airport (about 3 hours).  We flew from Rome to London and stayed overnight in London to break up the trip back.

Hannah's watching Viva Pinata on the Slingbox as I'm typing this.  Here's my Heathrow tip:  T-Mobile hotspots are 1 pound cheaper per hour than BT's.  Who knew you could price shop for internet access in the airport.

That's all for now.

Ok -- so its a little hard to  think about doing too many posts from Tuscany, because who wants to be on the computer.  Anyway, tonight we celebrate my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary.

We spent the day in Florence (Firenze), which I'll describe more when I have a high-speed connection.  It was quite the ordeal.

We head back to London tomorrow and then back to the U.S. of A on Sunday. 

Pictures coming when high speed interenet access appears.

So no pictures, and you should be happy about that.  Day 2 of our stay was not a particularly good one for me -- as I spent most of the previous night driving the porcelin bus, as they say.  So I spent most of the day sleeping down by the pool or up in my room.  I did miss a good dinner.  But putting it all in perspective, the worst day here is better than the best day most other places, so I can't really complain.

Luckily, it only lasted for 24 hours, so today was much better. And tonight is Pizza night.  Many of our party took a pizza making lesson todayy, and tonight we'll be dining on the fruits of their labor.  Pictures will be available at a later time.

Also, we did go to Arezzo today, one of those cool Italian walled cities.  The main purpose of the trip was to find some gelato, which we accomplished.   Due to the heat of the day and the number of children in our party -- we did not stay too long -- just poked around in a few shops.

No trip to London would be complete without a trip to the "Tower."  Its like referring to NYC or SF as "The City."  In any case, we wanted to take our kids to the place where Henry VIII cut off Ann Boylen's head, in addition to several other grizzly beheadings (like Guy Fawks). 

It took 3 different trains to get there from our hotel, but it was certainly worth it.  We didn't have to wait in line to buy tickets because we bought London Passes, which get you into most museums and historic places withot waiting in line.

We started on a Beefeater led tour -- but it was really slow and there were about a million people on the tour.  So instead we rented the audio tour headsets, and went around using those.  It worked out great.  The kids loved it (even more than me.  The tour had the basic parts and in certain areas you could press certain buttons to hear extended information -- which Aaron wanted to do at every stop, so we did.)  All in all, the audio tour worked great.  It got us to see parts of the tower that we would not have gone to otherwise, and still left us time to visit the Crown Jewels and the Armor.  Visiting the crown jewels is funny because the building that houses them is designed to get thousands of people through quickly.  So its like a long line at Disney Land.  When you finally get to the crown jewels, you are ushered by them via a moving walkway.  Its kind of funny to be dragged by the crown jewels.

Pictures below show the kids and I being beheaded before going into the Tower of London (you get a discount if you leave your head outside the gate).  Then there is Kathleen and the kids standing in front of the TOL.  Note: the kids standing with the Beefeater too.

This is Hannah and Kathleen on the tubes on our way.  Note: Hannah's eyes are closed, but she is not asleep.

This is a picture of Big Ben and Parliment from the London Eye.

Street Performer:  Person in a suitcase gimmick....See the hand protruding from the top of the suitcase?  Is there a person in there?  We hear them talking.

Picture of the London Eye from the bottom of the Eye

Picture of the London Eye from a bit further away.

So after stopping to eat, we set off for the tube station, to take the train to the London Eye.  At this point its about 2pm London time, or 7am Pacific.  Basically, the kids did not sleep on the plane (neither did I), so we were all pretty pooped at that point.

We set of in the direction of the tube station, and because of some bad directions -- ended up going the wrong way.  At this point, Jason and Hannah had about had it -- both were basically falling asleep on their feet.  We finally made it to the tube station, and had about a 20 minute train ride to get to the station at the Eye.  It was another 5 minute walk to get to the eye.  It was a good thing we paid the extra for the Fast Track tickets, because waiting it line by that point would not have been an option.

So we made it one the Eye.  I'll put up some pictures (and eventually video) from the Eye in a seperate post.  The Eye worked out ok, but the kids basically were beyond over tired.

During the tube ride back to the hotel, both Hannah and Jason fell asleep on the train.   From the tube station to the hotel was a 5 minute walk.  We did make it back, but barely.

Needless to say everyone went to sleep pretty quickly last night.  They are still asleep, but I'm wide awake at 3:30am London time (as you can see from when this post was entered).

After a long but uneventful plane trip, a journey through Heathrow, a train ride, and a cab ride -- we made it to the hotel.  Its now about 1:45pm UK time.  Everyone is tired, but still alive (which wasn't necessarily a given).

Highlights of the trip:

• Luggage from our plane arrived on two different luggage carousels -- one was marked from Uzbekistan (or something like that).
• Taking many many large bags through Paddington Station.  The kids helped.
• Stuffing five people, and four large suitcases in a London Taxi.
• The hotel rooms are nice, and we got a great deal on Priceline.

In a few minutes we are heading of to find something to eat and towards the London Eye.