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| Under the English Channel in the Chunnel |
After receiving a special invitation from the Queen, we drove (for you geography majors, yes, we drove) to London last weekend. We left on Thursday afternoon January 20, and made the 6.5 hour trek through Belgium and France to London. Ryan and Matthew were psyched because they were able to play Nintendo DS for the entire drive until we reached the English Channel. To get from France to England we took the Euro Tunnel, AKA "Chunnel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel The Chunnel is an underground tunnel that is actually a train for cars. We arrived in Calais, France and boarded the train, in our car! The under channel journey took about 25 minutes and voila...we're in England! Driving on the left side of the road was quite an experience (it helps to just follow everyone else). We stayed in the Westminster section of London, within walking distance to most of the sites. Our first night entailed eating dinner in at Sole Mio, an Italian restaurant. Italian is always a Feriancek favorite no matter where we are.
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| Big Ben |
Friday morning began with a run for me to stretch my legs out and scout around for the day. A sunny day in London! My run took me past Big Ben and the London Eye, what a way to start the day. I arrived back at the hotel for a quick shower, breakfast and off we went! We walked along the Thames river which disects the city. Our first major site was the Houses of Parliament. A huge gothic structure that was actually built in the 19th century. Big Ben http://www.visitlondon.com/attractions/culture/big-ben is attached to this building and is quite an imposing site. We arrived just as the bell tolled 11:00. Really cool!.
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| The Lion King |
Next we moved on to the London Eye, but it was closed for the day, the last day of a two week maintenance period. This site would have to wait until Saturday. So we moved on to the hightlight of the trip for Ryan and Matthew. The video arcade. We actually visted the arcade on Saturday as well. Motorcycle racing was the choice of the day. Next we went on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of London. We were able to purchase a two-day pass (Ryan did admit that he really liked the bus tour as well). We rode through London on the upper deck of a convertible double decker bus. It was about 40'F so it was a bit chilly but what a great way to see London. We saw the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London (nearly 1,000 years old!), Buckingham Palace and many other great sites. Our day was capped off when we attended a live theater production of The Lion King. An outstanding show that all five of us enjoyed thoroughly.
After our big day on Friday we slept in a bit on Saturday and then made our way to the London Eye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Eye. The entire wheel takes between 30-45 minutes to perform one rotation, so we had plenty of time to take in the beautiful views. It was really high! (I am a bit afraid of heights...). Our next stop was the video arcade...then back on the bus to continue our tour of London. The highlight of the day was our tour of St. Paul's Cathedral www.stpauls.co.uk/Cathedral-History. Not just your average church! St. Pauls was built in 1703 and is the second largest domed structure in Europe (St. Peter's cathedral in the Vatican is the largest). It was beautiful. We toured the entire cathedral and went to the top of the dome on the outside of the church, an area called the Golden Gallery. Once again, I was a bit nervous as it felt like we were on top of London, this time without plexiglass between us and the ground. We all climbed the steps both on our way up and our way down (the kids, especially Matthew did great!).
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| The Golden Gallery at the top of St. Paul's Cathedral |
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| Ryan's meat pie |
We ended our day by eating dinner at a traditional English restaurant, where Ryan discovered "meat pie." He loved it! It's a little known fact that Ryan's 2nd favorite food is meat. Jen and I are going to have to learn that recipe.
On our last day we departed the hotel early in the morning to see the Royal Naval Observatory in Greenwich, England, the site of the Prime Meridian www.nmm.ac.uk/about/history/royal-observatory/. It contained some very neat history and we can now attest to having had one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and another in the Western Hemisphere at the same time! We then traveled back to London to meet a colleague of mine (Keith) from AMS and his family for lunch. Keith and his family are also American expats living in Europe.
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| Straddling the Prime Meridian |
We enjoyed our stay so much that we did not arrive back in the Netherlands until 11:15pm Sunday night. Bella missed us but she had a great time staying with our neighbors Sylvie, Cecelia and Nicolene. Despite the last night, everyone rallied the next morning to go to school/work, proving that we are getting quite good at this European travel thing.
Oh and one last bit of exciting news...Allison will be starring in one of the lead roles in the upcoming International School of Amsterdam production of "High School Musical!" The show will be put on by the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders of the school and Allison will be playing Sharpay Evans. So go out and rent the original movie so your prepared for my blog about the show in April!
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| London Calling |
Best wishes to you all,
John
