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Thursday, March 22, 2007

London, Leah, Starbucks and Queen

Day 1
My trip to London from Munich got off with a bang –literally– while we were descending into heathrow. It was stormy and because of the static charge from the rain (I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but this is how the captain explained it) a giant static charge occurred on the right wing and it sounded like a million guns going off at the same time. I flipped out. It actually looked like lightning hit our wing. Alas I’m alive to tell, so all ended fine. Thank God.

Met up with Leah at our hotel near Paddington, caught up a little and headed straight for the town. Leah was of course looking great sporting brown hair! It makes her eyes really pop. She actually did her hair brown in the fall, so she’s had more time adjust to her new self than I have.

Got to Leicester square despite the torrential downpour and crazy high winds, and purchased tickets to Queen’s musical We Will Rock You. Turns out this was a great choice! Among hundreds of adoring teenage fans waving glowsticks, punk rockerish 20-somethings and 50-somethings reliving their youth we oooed and awed at the most high-energy show I’ve ever seen performed in the theatre. I felt like I was at a massive rock concert. We Will Rock You is in my top 3 fave shows along with the likes of the Lion King and my all-time fave, Joseph.

Day 2 – Couldn’t get enough Starbucks…
After our relaxing morning sipping java at the Paddington Starbucks, we faced a jittery experience at H+M.

While in the change room and a massive H+M on the corner of oxford and regent street a crazy alarm started going off and the staff freaked out and told us to drop everything and go outside. I was a little scared that it was a terrorist threat or something. At the time, I wasn’t wearing any H+M clothes, but leah was, so we got separated and she was ushered away across the street to a location unknown to me. At the time I was really scared because I didn’t know how long we’d be huddled on the street sans jackets in 2-degree weather. The situation resolved itself quickly and we were harmoniously reunited in the change rooms. I later found out that Leah had quite a funny experience huddling with other H+M refugees and staffers while trying to keep warm.

After a quick bite at Pret-a-Manger, one of my fave take-away cafes in London, we headed to Camden town. Because it was so cold, we spent most of the time at a Starbucks bordering the river. It was quite a picturesque location. While there I used an oddly-located, one-room unisex bathroom above the building and I accidentally walked in on the security guard doing something weird and drugish maybe, but I didn’t see anything because he shut the door quickly. Lets just say when I went back inside of the Starbucks, it was awkward between me and the security guard.

To put the icing on the cake of my London experience, we went to see The Queen. What a though-provoking movie –especially seeing it while in London!

Day 3
Due to certain annoying experiences this day due to travel and lack of sleep, I must say the latter part of the day was TERRIBLE.

Here’s a synopsis-
1) Good: Had a lovely morning with Leah walking in Hyde Park and sipping a Starbucks at Paddington before we both went out separate ways. :(
2) Bad: Our hotel’s boiler broke which = no hot water that morning or the night before. Don’t even get me started.
3) Bad: Bristish Airways flight to Seattle was delayed for 3 hours……this delay occurred on the tarmac while I sandwiched between two nice-ish men who may not have used strong enough deodorant….
4) Bad: Whenever I travel alone back from Europe (3 times in past 6 years) the customs people always think it’s suspicious that a single woman would travel by herself on vacation to Europe. I will spare everyone my rant as to why this thought is highly old fashioned. It also took me 1.5 hours after our plane landed to get out of the airport because our bags took ages and an annoying circumstance with customs.

Munich, or as the German's Call it: Munchen

Day 1
Arrived in wintery Munich on Friday afternoon. I've never been in a Euro country that I can't at least semi understand the language, so I was pretty overwhelmed right away. We spent 25 mins at the airport just trying to figure out the train into the city. The train ticket dispensing machine was difficult to figure out because it has no English, and we were accosted by a nice/creepy taxi driver who wanted to make some extra cash at the end of his shift; finally we just went and purchased our train tickets from a human –what a concept.

Got into a massive airplane-hangar like train station and were confronted by chanting ‘football’ fans enroute to the evening’s game. Wow, because I’ve never been to Europe around world cup time, I was slightly taken back by the soccer fans’ behaviour.

Our hotel was about a 7 min walk from the train station. Apparently were staying in the Turkish part of town. Interestingly enough there is a large Turkish population in Munich. I’m told that the Germans would prefer to leave more service-oriented jobs to others…

Once we’d settled into our 90’s-style hotel room, we headed into town to have dinner with Nathan’s work associate. He took us to a great thai place and then out for mohitos at a swanky German hotel whose bar is on the top floor overlooking the city.

Day 2
Woke up at 5am because of the time change repercussions and ended up talking to our friends dave and steph in Korea via skype.

Went to Nathan’s work associate’s house for breakfast with his family. It was cool to see typical German house ‘in the flesh’ and see what type of architecture/interior décor they gravitate to. Was very nice.

For breakfast we ate: mango pieces, strawberries, an assortment of buns and pretzels, muesli, curd (like thick yogurt), cheese, meats and tomatoes. After chatting with the family (with two young kids) over breakfast, we were chauffeured around the city to see major areas/tourist attractions until about 3pm. I can’t remember the names of anywhere we went. One highlight was seeing Munich’s amazing soccer stadium which lights up at night according to the colours of whatever team is playing.

In the mid-afternoon we met up with my friend Rachel whom I met at Rockridge this past August. She is aupere-ing there for the year. It was so great to hang out with her. She was a fabulous tour guide as well. We did some touristy things like climb a billion stairs to the top of a cathedral to get a bird’s eye view of the city.

Saturday night we went to a Granville-island like food court and watched a free concert by the eddy miller band (a German bad who sings English songs) and grooved the night away to favourites like “Isn’t she lovely” by Stevie Wonder and “Sex Bomb” by Tom Jones. Germans really like their English music, but I think we were the only ones in the crowd who knew all the songs. Hilarious. Great people watching venue.

Day 3
Woke up at 6am today. Grrreat an hour extra sleep….Today I ate a lot and participated in a long-time German pastime called ‘the beer garden’. Picture this scene:
-Went to a beer garden in a location called “English Garden” (scroll down to see chinese pagodat I talk about below) - a large park in Munich….
-Sat out in 3-degree weather drinking a beers mixed with lemonade and eating a giant pretzel
-Listened to the music of a Bavarian band performing from a 4-tier Chinese pagoda……
I love the irony! I told Rachel and Nathan that I felt like I was at Disneyland because as sad as this is, my only knowledge of a German beer garden-like environment is from Disneyland……

Later that day we went to an international church with Rachel and then went out to dinner with some other internationals to an Irish Pub….

Interesting observations of Germany:
1. People actually wear leh-der-ho-sen in public
2. Most restaurants don’t serve ice with drinks…Nicole S would die…..
3. Have a great underground rail system. You don’t need a car if you live in the city
4. Lots of people have bikes and every sidewalk in the city has a bike path….if you get in the way of the bikers, look out. They travel on their bikes at the speed of light and they take no prisoners….actually, I think they take prisoners…..
5. Because of the bike-riding phenomenon, everyone parks their bikes at train stations and no one locks them…….
6. DOGS ARE ALLOWED EVERYWHERE…even in grocery stores and on the underground
7. Amazing ‘to go’ style bakeries everywhere
8. Underground train system really nice, clean and safe
9. No retail stores are open past 8pm and all shopping (even grocery stores) are closed Sunday
10. Not allowed to do any outside work like mowing lawn on Sundays
11. Favourite place – main train station in Munich. Drank coffee from a coffee shop on second floor and watched interesting German people waltz by..get it? 
12. Here are style trends I noticed some German women embrace: a) really blond and tanned b)orangy hair c)older women with short white hair with a streak of black d)short hair and boyish clothes
13. COLD – it was freezing. Climate is a lot like Kelowna’s because they are inland. Can get to 40-degrees in summer is COLD and windy in winter. Doesn’t rain much.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Mind the Gap, Instant Coffee and Harrods

Day 1
After what seemed like a long flight on British Airways from Seattle to London, we arrived in the bustling city slightly tired, but were soon woken up by needing to stay alert in terms of navigating to our hotel.

British Airways was a bit of a joke because nothing worked, here’s a funny synopsis:
-none of the reading lights worked in our entire section
-all of our audio had the worst static noise coming though the speakers making it challenging to hear the amazing selection of oscar-winning movies they had on file
-my little travel pack they give you for oversees flights came opened, with parts broken and missing.
Ultimately the flight attendants were nice, so what was I going to do about it.

Took the 15-min Heathrow express to Paddington which happened to be our hotel’s stop and after walking the wrong way for 3 mins, got our bearings again and arrived around 2pm. I was a little worried about our hotel because its price was good and I’d read some sketchy comments about it on Trip Advisor; however, at the time I decided to take them with a grain of salt and I’m glad I did. I think the bulk of the comments were written pre-renovation.

Everything is pretty new in our suite and it has a very tasteful colour scheme. There were even fresh flowers (albeit some carnations) greeting us as we walked in. It’s actually a two-level, loft-style suite with our bedroom upstairs overlooking the main sitting area complete with tv, wireless and mini kitchen.

After two hours of napping, we forced ourselves out of bed to try and acclimatize to London time. Since Nathan really wanted to see the Lion King, we decided to stroll into the city and see if we could get last-minute tickets for that evening. Our hotel is pretty central, about 3 blocks from Hyde Park and about a 20-min walk to Marble Arch. We walked through a spring flower-filled Hyde park and then made our way down to oxford in search of Leicester square to look into cheap theatre tickets.

Although we knew we couldn’t get Lion King tickets at the TKTS booth, we wanted to see what was available for Thursday. Since we had no map, my trusty directional intuition kicked-in and I was somehow able to navigate us with particular ease (who knew I’d remember so well) down oxford, right at regent, through Piccadilly and straight to the ticket booth! Since we weren't into the available shows, we continued to navigate our way, again sans map, to covent garden to inquire about tickets at the Lion King theatre.

We got tickets for the top row which was a little bit of a different experience than my 3rd row seats from last time, but that worked just fine for us. We even met a young London couple beside us who when we asked for directions to the tube station, offered to give us a ride. So far people are very polite and genuine here!

Day 2
Woke up early and walked in Hyde park for awhile. Wow, lots of people have dogs in London. The weather is great - about 12-degrees and sunnyish.

Random thought 1- the instant coffee in europe is my new love.
Random thought 2- I love the 'to go' section at Sainsbury's grocery store. It has such yummy, well priced and healthy items.
Random thought 3- sewers are gross. Their scent likes to rise from the streets in London.

After an instant coffee with milk (that doesn't seem to need refrigeration - weird) in our hotel room, we heard from Dave and Steph that Camden Town was worth seeing, so off we went. Camden is kind of old school mixed with early-90's lofts, lots of punk stores and markets galore. Got a beautiful knock-off Chloe bag in brown and some pashminas! Then we grabbed lunch from Sainsbury's and ate it on the bank of the Camden river watching the river boats raise and lower in the various 'river locks' scattering the brownish water. Slightly tired from that little adventure, went back to the hotel and sipped on yet another instant coffee. Decaf of course. Need to bring a bunch of packages of that stuff home.

The rest of our afternoon was relatively uneventful because we both fell asleep in separate rooms. When I woke up I wondered "what the hell am I doing sleeping in London?" Who sleeps in one of the coolest cities in the world? Me = looser I guess.

In light of our accidental slumber fest, we got up really quickly and headed into town because I was interested in seeing the London Museum - a museum all about London's history. Not so ironically, by the time we got there we looked at my watch it was too late to get in. So we forged on and took the tube to Harrods.

Harrods is crazy; I can't get over all the little sections which make up the store. The food section alone blows my mind. Harrods even has its own brand of ice cream. I really liked the home decor section --particularly the bathroom section where we saw some crazy sinks (a sink made out of wood) and double soaker tubs with enough jets to launch a space ship. Really, it's like a giant museum. It would take days to navigate each floor. I wonder what the staff discount is there?

Decided we wanted to eat dinner in Soho. I don't really see the big deal with Soho, but maybe I haven't seen enough of it, or seen it in all its glory. Found a cool little tapas place for dinner called "Aperetifo." The atmosphere was great, but it lacked in the taste department --except for the pana cotta I wasn't planning to eat but ate half of. Oops.

Now I'm drinking my 4th or 5th instant decaf coffee in our hotel room as I reminisce about the day. Cheerio.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Blood Diamond

Just saw the movie Blood Diamond.

Over the past few years I've learned more about the concept of blood diamonds, but the movie seemed to confront me with the harsh reality that existed in African and other parts of the world and that still exists today.

Sometimes movies can change or renew your opinion on a subject. In this case, blood diamond has done both. If I ever buy or am given diamonds in the future (hummm, that would be nice) then I want to make sure they are legitimate. To further try and ensure their authenticity, I think I'd like to support Canada's diamond industry versus getting a diamond from out of country.

I'd pay more for a conflict free diamond.