Let's Geek Out!

Departing Amsterdam

What a whirlwind of activity!

So, making our way from London to the Harwich Cruise Terminal the train line was down for construction - instead we had to board busses for the long drive. We did get to see some of the English countryside though.

The ship is quite nice, and as we pulled away from the pier a group of bagpipers played us off.

Yesterday we did a coach & canal boat tour of Amsterdam, where we learned that we were in town for two of their national holidays. The first is their Rememberence Day, mourning the events of WWII (I think) and then today their liberation.

Near the Anne Frank House is the Homomonument, which pays trubute to the gays fallen during the Holocaust. Overnight large amounts of flowers have been left at the monument.

While walking around yesterday we also saw preparations taking place in Dan Square for a rememberence event includig the queen placing flowers at the large monument there.

Mostly we’ve been walking around visiting shops and museums — including The Other Side coffeeshop.

We’re back on the boat now, nibbling on some purchased chocolates and reading. (I just finished Carrie Fischer’s Wishful Drinking.)

Day at sea tomorrow!

Yesterday in London

Our last few hours in London — how sad!

We slept well into 9am yesterday before heading off to find 221B Baker Street. We toured the gift shop and nearly missed the Sherlock Holmes Museum, but finally purchased tickets and went upstairs to see “his apartment.”

After that was a jaunt over to the British Museum, where we took a quick spin through the exhibits I was most interested in — the fantastic rooms of Egyptian artifacts, as well as the Roman (Greek?) sculptures.

We hopped on the tube and then met Tania, Alfonso, and their other Seattle friend Chris for a walking tour of their neighborhood. We hit a bustling street fair for picnic fare then headed into the park.

London is unusually warm and beautiful at the moment, and it happens to be a bank holiday on Monday so it seems most of the city is crowding into the sunny areas of the city parks — sipping on beers with their disposable charcoal grills fired up.

We had a great picnic (meeting up with their friends James, Valeria, and daughter Olivia) and then they escorted us back to our hotel by way of an upper-deck bus ride on one of London’s famous red busses.

We said our goodbyes then cleaned up and grabbed a bite. After a gelato, we walked back towards Leichster Square for the late showing of Le Clique. This cabaret show was fantastic, and came highly recommended by Tania & Alfonso, as well as our waiter that night. Comedy, an aerialist, roller skates, hula hoops, balancing men in suits, balancing men in trunks, an amazing drag artist, a juggling Freddy Mercury, and a contortionist… Yeah, a pretty eclectic group! We stayed for an extra cocktail or two afterwards then came back to the hotel and crashed.

Now it’s just about 8 and we’ll venture out once more to do some shopping before heading off to Harwich cruise terminal. We’re sad to leave London behind, but are sure there are more great adventures ahead!

It’s only mid-afternoon and we’ve already had an extremely busy day!

Seen, in order: London Bridge, Thames Ricer Walk, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Rsndom Pub, London Eye, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament (ext.), Westminster Chapel (ext.), Buckingham Palace (ext. w/guards), Green Park, Picadilly Circus again, and Soho.

Phew! We stopped for a pint in Soho and met up with one of my favorite Britons, Zach Burns — a great photographer and a super guy, it was a pleasure finally meeting him in person.

Now we’re back at the hotel to freshen up, then we’ll grab some dinner and head over to see “The Mousetrap.”

It was a challenge, but we managed to stay up until 10:30pm last night, watching Graham Norton after seeing the play “3 Days of Rain,” which I really enjoyed.

From the window of our cozy hotel room you can see a sliver of the billboards in Picadilly Circus (think a miniature Times Square), as well as the London Eye (where I think we’ll start things off today.)

True to form, I popped awake at 4:30 - and I’m amazed that the habit managed to find me on the other side of the world! We skipped dinner last night after eating all day (or so it seemed) so I’m famished.

We’re hopefully going to meet up with a couple friends for a pint this afternoon, dinner with Tania, then off to see “The Mousetrap” for it’s eighty millionth performance. (Not really, but it has been running forever.)

We did run into a surprise yesterday when we walked into a square where they were filming a huge crowd of people for an upcoming mobile phone commercial. A huge LED screen was set up and there were dozens and dozens of microphones handed out in the crowd… Then they played Karaoke tracks and the whole crowd was singing evrrything from Beatles to Britney. It was pretty wild!

That’s it for now!

We’ve arrived in Amsterdam for our connection to Heathrow. Naturally we immediately found a Casino and (unless you count currency conversion fee) we’re up 1,50 EU! Now we’re sipping Fanta and water and waiting for our (enclosed) gate to open.

The flight over was great - upper deck Business Class on KLM. Good food — too much of it — and nice crew. I even managed to get some sleep without drugging myself.

Just seeing what little of The Netherlands we can from the plane gets me excited for the stop here later this week. It is gorgeous out there!