Ode to Our Gnome (RIP)

One of the things we'd planned to do on our trip was take pictures in different locations with our Sounders Gnome.

This went very well during the London part of our trip, with the Gnome traveling with us and getting his picture snapped at a number of iconic London locations.

Alas, Gnome was in one of the suitcases stolen when we arrived in Barca, so no photos of him in Spain.  Sad.

Enjoy the pics we did get of Gnomie:

Good to Be Home!

September 27 was a looong day of travel...but we were looking forward to being back home.

It was easily midnight before when we got settled at our hotel near London Heathrow...and our wake-up call was for 6am. The "Hotel Hoppa" bus left hourly for our airport terminal, and we didn't want to take a chance on a final conquista (or whatever the British version of conquista might be) to make us late.

At the airport we had access to American Airline's large business class lounge, where we had a nice breakfast from the fruit, yogurts, breakfast sandwiches and beverages provided. There was even a coffee machine that made a good cappucino. There were outlets for some recharging of our phones and such, which had been tough to do since the thieves got away with all of our charges.  

A little nap before our flight

Best part were nice comfy chairs, where Ally got to curl up and nap. She is still battling the cold that's plagued us all, and the pressure of the night before's landing on her sinuses was not a lot of fun.

The flight home was on a 767, not a 777 like our flight over. While flying in the business class section was still a treat, it wasn't quite a spiffy as on the 777. Since there wasn't three-across seating, Jorge was not able to sit near Ally and I.

Even though the plane was older, the crew took great care of us and the food was excellent. Since we were flying in the daytime, there wasn't a lot of sleep to be had, but we did get to watch several movies/TV shows. Once we saw Chariots of Fire was an option, Ally and I both knew we had to watch it to compare to the stage version we'd seen in London. We also watched the pilot of the new series Nashville (great!) and the first two episodes of the comedy Veep (hysterical!).

Another nice perk of the business class was using the "fast track" line through customs. When we left the plane, a representative was there with our boarding passes for the Chicago-to-Seattle flight and the special bright orange folder that got us through the fast track line.

Our only travel hiccup of the trip was on the final leg in Chicago. We were an hour late taking off because of some minor problems that needed to be fixed. I was finally able to grab about an hour of sleep on this flight.  Poor Ally was battling the sinus pressure again on our descent, and was surrounded by tissues at landing (blowing her nose seemed to bring the only relief).

We landed in Seattle about 6:15pm, got our luggage, and Tia was waiting at the curb to take us home. We tried to stay up as late as we could to get back on local time, but I don't think any of us made it past 9pm.  So good to be home!

The Tube & Other Travel Gems

Truth is...I love the "tube" (aka the London Underground). You can get absolutely anywhere on it for little money, and there's no hassle driving on the crazy London streets or trying to find nonexistent parking.

One thing that struck me while spending time in tube stations is the sheer number of different languages you hear around you. It's almost impossible to pick out what they are because there are so many going on at once. Even English, spoken as they speak it in London, sounds foreign.

We were lucky to have a tube veteran like Ally with us, because even it you know the right train to take, you still need to get on the correct side of the platform for the direction you want to go. It didn't take her long to get back into tube mode, and soon we were zipping around the city.

London has several different tube lines going in all different directions. Which line you take determines how far down you go in the subway. For example, the District Line is closest to the surface and at some points is even above ground. The Piccadilly Line is the deepest, so if you take those trains, you'll be taking stairs and (if you're lucky) loooong escalators down into the deep of the tube station.

The Piccadilly Line connected through our station at Earl's Court, and went all the way out to Heathrow Airport. So that meant that when you rode the Piccadilly Line, you were sharing the space with lots of people traveling with lots of suitcases. Depending on the direction you were traveling, they either looked excited to be coming into the city for vacation, or exhausted and ready to catch that flight home.

Tube stations were also interesting. Outside of the city, most were just a place for the train to stop with maybe a ticket machine or two. They got bigger and nicer in town. Earls Court was a typical one, with ticket machines, a souvenir shop, and several cafes and sandwich places outside. South Kensington was bigger, with more shops in the station. You could grab some food for dinner, some flowers, buy lotto tickets and such. The Fulham & Broadway station (by Stamford Bridge stadium) was nearly a mall, with a grocery store, clothing stores, food court and more. And when you get to regional stations like Paddington or St Pancras, it's a full-fledged shopping center. From these stations, you can connect to trains taking you just about anywhere in the UK.

The trains themselves are functional and plain. They aren't that big, and have just one row of seating along each side. I found it interesting to observe that young women were more likely to offer their seat to an older person than young men were. And when entering or leaving or train, you were warned to "mind the gap" between the train and the station. Sometimes the gap was pretty large.

Speaking of gaps, there wasn't much of any gap between the sides of the trains and the walls of the underground. Two inches max. Guess they didn't want to do any more excavating than absolutely necessary.

We did witness one close call on the tube. Somebody getting off got their leg stuck in the door while it closed. The train was starting to pull away and there was lots of yelling and pounding on the car and it finally stopped and opened the door. Yikes!

Once onboard a train, the recorded announcement tells you the name of the station, and then the final destination of the train. My favorite was the Piccadilly, which went like this: "Earl's Court. This is a Piccadilly Line service to Cockfosters." Had to smile every time that perky British voice said "Cockfosters."

We did figure out that our neighborhood of Earl's Court was not named for some minor royalty, but the large Earl's Court arena that sits just behind the tube station. That was the location of the indoor volleyball competition at the Olympics.

In Barcelona, the tube is called the metro. Same basic principal as in London, though the Barca stations had escalators only for people going up, not going down. Not a huge deal, unless you're "going down" journey included heavy suitcases. The trains were much wider than London's, accommodating 2 rows of seats on each side and plenty of space to stand in the middle. I noticed a lot more space between the trains and the walls of the station, too.

The Barca stations left a lot to be desired. Most just had ticket machines and maybe a couple of vending machines. A few of the larger transfer stations had a tiny booth with snacks. Also gone was the clean white subway tiles of the London tube stations. Barca was into bare concrete walls.

The London stations were home to more entertainment. It wasn't unusual to find street musicians playing inside the stations; some playing instruments, some small groups and others playing an instrument along to a karaoke tape. The Barca subway, though, did have an Elvis impersonator in full white costume, lip synching to Elvis recordings. Priscilla Presley would have been appalled.

We were fortunate in Barca to be fairly close to a couple of main bus lines. In both cities, your metro pass was good for either, and while the underground can often be faster, the bus is far more scenic.

Barcelona Day 8 - That's All, Folks!

Sorry to skip Day 7, but there wasn't much going on. We went to the Picasso Museum, where the wait in line was 40 minutes. Would have been much less, but for some reason they opted to go with just one cashier regardless of the length of the line. Conquista!

Picasso's art is weird. There was an entire wall of line drawings of horses dying, for example. Then there was his ceramic phase, where his plates looked like the stuff kids make at those ceramic parties. We had hoped to take a bus tour of Barca after, but we were too late. Conquista!

Day 8 was spent packing, then we took a final trip into town for lunch and some final souvenir shopping. We found a little cafe in a street off the Ramblas, where Jorge and Ally both had the Spanish take on pizza; Ally's was topped with sliced hotdog wieners, Jorge's with Canadian bacon and a fried egg. I had one of the best green salads of the trip, with a ham sandwich.

Churro heaven

Dipped in chocolate

The topper was dessert - churros dipped in warm chocolate. Ally and Jorge had been waiting for this, and it didn't disappoint.



After, it was back to our nice apartment for the final time. As we were near the Plaza Catalunya, it got quite windy...almost like a little cyclone. Ally was very glad of her last minute decision to change from that short skirt to jeans otherwise that skirt would have been up around her head!  We saw our bus up ahead and made a mad dash for it.

Front door to our building

We decided to take a cab to the airport, rather than giving the asshole thieves another shot at our stuff by going downtown to catch the Aerobus. Learned a valuable lesson that regardless of how easy the transit connection seems, it's better to spend the money for a cab from the airport to your destination to keep your belongings safe. In this case, a 25 Euro cab fare would have saved us the easily $3000 (if not more) it's going to cost to replace our stolen goods...not to mention the inconvenience and the just plain being pissed off about it.

We get into London late tonight, and our flight home leaves at 10 in the morning. Been a trip, for sure!

Barcelona Day 6 - Getting Our Groove Back

First, I need to explain the concept of being "conquisted" (cone KEES tud). It's a new term coined by Jorge that basically means getting screwed in Spain.

Being conquisted was first recorded on our first full day here. We were at Playa Catalunya, trying to find some clothes for Jorge that weren't designer label. We decided to have lunch in the cafe on the top floor of this huge department store, El Corte Ingles. The service was really snooty...but the worst part was getting the bill and seeing we were charged 2.25 Euros for each piece of bread eaten from the bread basket that was voluntarily put on the table. Ally was particularly incensed: "you can't put bread in front of Barreras and not expect us to eat it!" So that became being "conquisted" or effed over by Spain.

The very first episode of conquisting was of course our stolen luggage. Others include more snooty servers, and the fact that people here just aren't friendly; you try to talk to them, and they just aren't interested.

Just today, we were dealt a couple more conquistas. We were going back to the Ramblas and then onto the Barri Gotic to look at more old buildings. We walked up to the metro station and found that our 5-day metro pass no longer worked. This is day 5, but since we purchased our pass around 9pm we assumed it would be good until 9pm tonight. Wrong! We were just conquisted again. 

So we bought the 3-day metro pass and joined a fairly large crowd of folks down below. Jorge noticed that instead of the schedule of upcoming trains, the readerboard had a message that said the metro was on a 24-hour strike. Crap! Don't know why all those people were still standing there; we waited for a while and there was no whiff of a train, so we left. Double conquista!

Heading out on foot

We decided that if we were going to go anywhere, we'd have to walk. So we did. We found that our apartment is a block away from Barca's large Central Park which was crowded with people because it was a holiday in Barca. They were celebrating Catalunyan independence from Spain, which is a bit premature since they have yet to become independent from Spain. Perhaps they are just practicing for when/if that ever happens.

Side street

We strolled down several of the side streets during our walk and checked out little shops with cool and less expensive souvenirs (okay, we checked out a couple of stores because they had air conditioning as it was quite warm) and eventually worked our way through the Barri Gotic to the Ramblas. Thank heaven Jorge had downloaded all of those IPhone apps that provided us with detailed street maps, so we were seldom lost.
 

Cathedral

We did stop and tour an old cathedral so Jorge could take some more pics of cool church architecture...teasing him that for someone who has no interest in religion, he sure likes to spend time taking photos inside churches. We weren't sure if the guard would let Ally in wearing her shortish shorts, as we'd seen him turn some people away in booty shorts. She made it in without problem.

Automatic candles

We did notice something cool and progressive inside the church; instead of having votive candles that you can light after giving a donation, there was a large bank of electric candles that automatically lit when you deposited a coin.

 

Burger King?

Every little square we passed seemed to be set up for a concert...all part of today's holiday. When we got to the Ramblas, the big parade was underway with lots of large figures dancing down the street...one even looked a bit like the Burger King. Incidentally, both BK and McDonald's had large presences in both Barca and London...and just like at home, you would often find a BK within a block or so of a McDonald's. Kentucky Fried Chicken was also a big player on the fast food side.


After a lot more walking around, we decided to try the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. I know what you're thinking - why would we go all the way to Spain just to eat at an American restaurant? Well, so far the food we've had in Spain has been less than inspiring...and really overpriced. I also thought that maybe the Hard Rock menu might have a salad or something that I could eat. Best. Decision. Ever. Not only did the menu have lots of good options, the food was actually very good. Jorge said it was the best meal he's had in Barca.

That good old American meal did more than satisfy our hunger...it seemed to give us our spunk back. From now on, we'd be the ones doing the conquisting! It didn't take us long; we went to the bus stop in hopes we could catch the #41 which runs right past our apartment. The stop was packed with people all with the same idea because the metro wasn't running. The buses here aren't huge, so it wasn't a given that we'd get on the bus and the next one would probably be another 30 minutes or longer. We were nowhere near the head of the line, but when the bus came it stopped, for some reason, right in front of us (the first stroke of good luck we've had in this city). An old couple pushed their way in front of us; he had a cane, but when that bus door opened, he practically used the cane as a pole vault to get past us and get in the door. We got our revenge, as the old people had to leave their seat to go back and run their ticket through the machine and we took their seats. Now before you go thinking that we were mean for taking seats from old people, you've gotta understand how screwed we've felt by this city. Turning the tables on some grumpy old people felt good - we had our groove back and were finally giving out conquista rather than getting conquisted in the rear end all the time.

Yeah, baby....we're back!

Barcelona Day 5 - Unfinished Business

Unfortunately, after our late night at the soccer game we had to be up and early Sunday morning to make our tour time back at the Sagrada Familia.

Sagrada Familia

I mentioned before that its designer, Gaudi, was odd. Make that Odd. He put together these detailed, extensive plans for this magnificent church. Construction began in 1886, and it is nowhere near complete. Right now, they estimate it will be done in 2026. I wouldn't bet on it. And Gaudi croaked in 1926, so he doesn't care.

Inside church, looking up

It's taken so long because the design is so intricate. Carvings, mosaics, stained glass...you name it. The choir loft is three stories up from the church floor and can seat 1000 singers. Really, Gaudi? A thousand singers? The Mo-Tab Choir doesn't even need that much space.

Just a couple of turistas

It's really an impressive undertaking, funded now by the admission paid by tourists like us to see the inside and take funky photos. As Jorge commented, once they finish the construction, it'll probably take another three years to wash and clean it all up to get ready for the grand opening.



I had to laugh when one of the animals carved beneath the nativity scene on the outer church wall was most definitely a turkey - that "so American bird" that you can't find on the menu anywhere over here. So I guess they have heard of turkeys...they just don't know they are delicious to eat, apparently.

We decided to skip the bus and walk back to our apartment, taking the opportunity to see more of the city as we strolled. We wandered across Barca's answer to "auto row" and stumbled across the only gas station we saw during our entire visit. Just where DO they gas up?

A few words about our place - it's great! Like our London place, Ally found this via the Airbnb website. Or landlady is Gloria, who even bought us bread, cheese, ham, salad and a bottle of bubbly knowing that we were arriving late in the evening from London and would likely be hungry.

This place is much larger than the London flat - we have two bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a large living room with a comfy sofa, nice kitchen and a terrace. It's a longer walk to the metro station than we had in London, but having wi-fi more than makes up for it.

The only drawback is there are only Spanish language stations on TV. The Discovery Channel is the only channel we've found with any English language shows, so we have watched a lot of "How it's Made" shows...amazing what goes into making the cones for ice cream cones. 

Oh yeah...before I forget...it is really nice to have two Spanish speakers in the group. So far we haven't met a sign or a menu they couldn't decipher. 

Barcelona Day 4 - The Game!

Jerseys were on, scarves were safely in the backpack...we were ready for our adventure at Camp Nou!

We took the metro toward the stadium, with more and more FCB jersey-clad fans getting on at each stop. We'd gotten on the metro in daylight, but darkness had fallen during the trip. The stadium was all lit up, and excitement was in the air as we made our way down the street toward it.

A few things about Camp Nou. First, it's capacity is just about 100,000...which makes it the largest stadium in Europe. Our gate number was 95...the gates went all the way up to 105. Our seats were in the 400 level; before you feel sorry for us, there was a 500 level. There was no roof above us as on the lower floors, which made for better viewing...and it was a lovely evening so no worry about rain.

Reppin' at Camp Nou

We got to our seats early, and the first order of business was getting all of the photos taken to prove we were there. Ally is wearing the joint Sounders/FC Barcelona scarf that was issued for the 2009 "friendly" match FCB played in Seattle. Not many people in the stands, but it was still early and (like in Seattle) it was a late arriving crowd.

Our view

We were right behind one of the goals, and we had a great view of the action. Since Barca dominated possession, the majority of the second half was played right in front of us...including both dramatic goals.


With such a huge capacity, I was expecting lots of noise from the crowd. Not so. The Spanish audience was more subdued...no yelling and constant chanting and singing like we have at Sounders games. If someone made a good play, there was polite applause...the kind you'd hear at a symphony concert. We also didn't get constant chatter from the stadium PA announcer (not that I would have understood any of it if he had) that we're used to in the US. He intro'd the starting lineups with little fanfare, the teams walked onto the field, shook hands, and the game started.

So excited to be here!

Gotta admit...it was quite thrilling to see our favorite team playing in this magnificent venue. We'd been talking about and planning this for so long...and here we finally were.

A couple other things about the stadium. The name "Camp Nou" literately means "the new stadium." In this case, "new" seems to be a relative term. It was built in the 1950s, so you do not see elaborate snack bars built into the stadium. Instead, there were small kiosks selling hot dogs located around the concourse. It didn't hit me as odd until later that people were buying hot dogs and beer and it was like 11:00 at night. At halftime, Ally and I went to the restroom. As we stood in line, I started looking around and you could see from the exterior that the restroom was not very large. Ha ha ha - it was just two toilet stalls! And there was just one toilet paper dispenser, and it was mounted on the wall outside of the stalls...so you have to grab a hunk before you went in. I will never again complain about the line at halftime at Century Link field!

The game was scoreless until the very end, when FCB scored twice to win...so we left happy. We were lucky enough to get on one of the first metros leaving the area, though we were pretty well packed in. We passed fans at other stations who weren't able to get on, so we felt pretty good. It was 12:30am at this point. 

Things were moving along until we had to change trains. Every train that came through was already packed with drunken loud kids, teens to early 20s. We waited through three trains and couldn't get on. The longer we waited, the more kids showed up on the platform trying to get on trains. Turns out there was a big concert last night at the beach, and apparently every young person in Barca was heading there.

We finally managed to push our way onto a train. It was brutally hot and what little air was circulating was full of cigarette smoke and the smell of weed. The kids were loud and obnoxious. At each station, huge crowds waited to get on the train, and even though the train was full, they shoved their way on. Never so glad to reach our station and get off the train. It's now close to 1:30am. It was the perfect storm of thousands of returning soccer fans hitting the metro at the same time as thousands of concert-bound kids.

Barcelona Day 4 - A Very Gaudi Day

The FC Barcelona game wouldn't be starting until 10pm (yes, you read that right...10pm), so we did some more sightseeing early in the day.

Sagrada Familia

Our first stop was the Sagrada Familia church, the masterpiece by odd artist Antoni Gaudi of Barcelona. This church has been under construction since 1882...and is scheduled to be finished in 2026. More on this tomorrow, as we arrived too late to get in and will return for the tour. Needless to say, Ally was not impressed.

We continued on to Park Guell, another Gaudi project. It was originally meant to be a well-to-do community, but nobody bought into it so Gaudi just said "WTF...I'll make it into a park." It does offer nice views of Barca out to the sea, but unfortunately it's not the part of town with the cool architecture. 

Posing at Park Guell

The park does have a great town square that is surrounded by bench seating all made using Gaudi's signature ceramic mosaic. This place was crawling with tourists, all jockeying to get photos of their companions sitting on the benches. It was fun to just observe how rude and clueless some tourists are about stepping in front of others to get photos. We took a few, and a nice fellow snapped this photo of the three of us.


This was so far the hottest day we've had in Barca...blue sky, bright relentless sunshine and more than a little muggy. We decided to walk down from Park Guell to the metro stop rather than take the bus, and the sun was so bright that even with sunglasses you couldn't  distinguish what was in the windows of the shops we were passing by.

We got back to our apartment and had about 90 minutes to chill and nap before heading out to the soccer game - the highlight of our trip!

Barcelona Day 3 - Rebounding at Las Ramblas

So what do we do on our first excursion out after taking care of all the suitcase theft stuff? We head out to stroll Las Ramblas, one of Barcelona's well known areas for thieves and pickpockets. Those assholes weren't gonna beat us! We only took our bus passes, ID and money, and those were zipped in pockets in our shirts.

The Ramblas

The Ramblas is a mile-long pedestrian boulevard lined with bars, cafes and all kinds of artisan booths. Everything is in sections; you'll walk through a souvenir section, a jewelry section, a flower section, fruits and veggies section, even a pet bird section, then it all starts again.


It was an interesting stroll, with several side excursions down streets to look at the cool old architecture.

There was also a huge farmers market, rather like our Pike Place Market but bigger and, shall we say, more direct. For example, if you wanted to buy some ham, the vendor simply sliced it off the large leg of ham that was hanging in the stall.

We had lunch at an outdoor cafe, where Jorge and Ally tried the local paella. Me? It was another plate of grilled vegetables. They'd been waiting to try paella, but were disappointed in this one...thought it tasted like an instant dish made for tourists (which it likely was).

After we'd finished the Ramblas, we took the metro out to Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona. We exchanged our receipt for our game tickets, visited the team megastore, and Jorge observed a training session at the FCB soccer school with their younger players.

Tickets!

The exterior of the stadium was nothing special, certainly not as stunning as the Chelsea field in London. Just a large beige stadium. We got the tickets, which saved us having to stand in the will call line the night of the game. Big smiles all around when the tickets were in hand!

Hello, Xavi!

The team store was two floors of everything FCB. As you walk in, you're greeted by mannequins wearing the uniforms of the FCB starters. Ally took a moment to get to know her favorite, Xavi (#6). We had fun looking at all the stuff. Jorge even bought an FCB shoulder bag to replace his suitcase.

The Messi "shitter"

The big surprise was finding a display of ceramic figurines of the FCB players...with their pants down taking a crap (and with a sizable pile of poo to prove the point). Who could resist? Jorge asked the clerk about the figurines, and she explained they are called "shitters" and are (believe it or not) part of the Catalan nativity scene! We later looked this up on Wikipedia, and found these "shitters" (Catalan name "caganers") represent the common man in the nativity scene, and it's even a game for the kids to find the shitter hidden in the scene. It is considered a high honor to have a shitter in your image, and the local company that makes them has a whole slew of world leaders, sports figures and even cartoon characters to choose from (read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-120599690).

Then we wandered out to the FCB Escola, the training center for the youngest players, and watched all these little boys in their FCB uniforms doing their training. So cute...and some were so tiny. First thing Jorge noticed was a player doing a cartwheel; he was happy to see that even the FCB school deals with short attention spans.  We watched them train, while unknowingly the mosquitos were attacking Ally and I.

Barcelona Day 2 - "Not Nice, Barca!"

We're skipping over Day 1 in Barcelona (aka "Barca") because it sucked. 

Thieves stole two of our suitcases - Jorge's and our carry on - at the metro station after we'd just arrived in downtown Barca. Jorge lost everything - all of his clothes, toiletries, his Kindle, the nice Bose headphones, and sadly his Seattle Sounders jersey and his classic FC Barcelona jersey; Ally lost her laptop, and I lost all of my medicines. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky, as other people we saw at the police precinct were assaulted during thefts; we just had the suitcases grabbed while we were buying train tickets.

We had been so careful and watchful of our stuff throughout the trip, but it just took a couple seconds for them to grab the suitcases. We were fortunate that they didn't get our credit cards, passports, phones, which we carried on us. And thanks to a last second decision as our plane was landing, Jorge's iPad went into my backpack instead of back into the carry on, so we still had it. But we lost all of our chargers and voltage adaptors.

Once we got situated at our apartment, we started the process of changing passwords, shutting down accounts, and notifying our insurance agent. 

The neighborhood pharmacist felt sorry for us, and refilled my prescriptions without requiring any paperwork from my doctor, which would have taken a couple days to get while dealing with the time difference. 

Jorge got another pair of pants and a shirt, some socks and underwear. This wasn't an easy as you might think, as the big department store was very high-end and only carried name brands - even in underwear! We were having no luck finding any waist sizes under 42, and wondered if we had stumbled into a big and tall section...but then we figured out the sizes were in centimeters and not inches...so we'd been looking at the right sizes all along.

There was a humongous Apple store in the downtown area, so we were able to get a charger and a photo uploader for the iPad so we could keep blogging.

We weren't feeling great about Barca, but were determined to make the best of it. We also swore that if we saw someone wearing a Seattle Sounders jersey, we'd take the bastard down.

London Day 5 - A Very Busy Day

We had several things left on our London to-do list, and got most of them accomplished today.

Sounders at Stamford Bridge

First, we went out to Chelsea’s home field at Stamford Bridge. Unlike US stadiums, this one is tucked into the middle of a neighborhood. You get off the tube, walk less than a block and turn down a driveway…and there it is. It is a lovely-looking facility…and we brought along a Sounders scarf for some photos.

Oh, hello!

Ally was yelling “Fernando!” as we walked in.  We didn’t see the real Fernando, but he was a big presence in the Chelsea megastore and she took the opportunity to make his acquaintance. There was some disappointment that the Torres! Torres! Torres! T-shirts didn’t come in size small, but she did buy a pair of socks with his face on them. The store sold just about everything you could think of…with the Chelsea logo – toothpaste, candy (Chelsea Chews) and even bath loofahs.  I do have a photo of Ally giving the bird to a John Terry poster, but we’ll save that for private viewing.

Tower Bridge

Next, we put together a picnic lunch with sandwiches, salads and fruit and rode the tube to Westminster where we took at 30 minute boat cruise on the Thames.  We had just emerged from the tube station when a short rain shower hit, and everyone (us included) scurried back inside the station like rats when the light comes on.  It was over just as quick, and we went onto the boat.

The cruise was enjoyable, and we had a deck hand doing funny commentary and pointing out the landmarks. We got to float by that giant photo of the royals from a couple days ago.  The ride ended at the Tower Bridge, where the boat did one of those Queen’s Jubilee circle spins so we could all get a good photo view of the Tower Bridge.  Jorge was reppin’ the Sounders jersey all over London today.

Turd on a stick

It was a little cool and breezy on the boat, so nothing sounded better than a hot cup of tea.  And of course there was a Starbucks located right by the dock.  This Starbucks was huge, easily 5-6 times the size of the stores we know in the states.  We got quite a kick out of some of the items in the bakery case, including porridge and something called a marshmallow twizzle, which actually looked like a turd on a stick.

 

The friendly barista managed to get Ally and Jorge’s name correct on their cups, but somehow I became “Garl”.   Of course when our order was ready, they called for “Yor-gay” so I guess we’re even.

 Tower of London

Following our tea break, we wandered around the Tower of London, which to my surprise isn’t just a tower but a huge castle complex.  Ally had been there before, and neither Jorge nor I had any interest in going in, so we just looked from the outside.

Cashier's line at Primark

From there, we journeyed to Primark, the clothing store that Ally favored when she lived in London.  This place had to be Jorge’s worst nightmare – not just a store, but a humungous store.  Imagine the biggest Forever 21 store you’ve ever been in times three or four, packed with people shopping in a Nordstrom anniversary sale frenzy…and that’s every day.  Yep, that’s Primark.  But you can’t beat the sheer volume of clothes and the reasonable prices. 

Primark shopping

Ally wanted to look for a coat, and Jorge wanted to look for rugby shirts. Men’s stuff was on the second floor, coats on the first…so we made a plan that if we couldn’t find each other (a very likely possibility) we would rendezvous at the front door.  No sooner did Jorge leave us than I turned away to look at something and turned back and Ally was gone.  No sign of her anywhere in the crowd.  A moment of panic, and I decided to just yell her name.  She did hear me and backtracked.  After that, we stuck together. She found two coats, then we went up the escalator to try and find Jorge.  Luckily he was done and had decided to wait at the top of the escalator for us. Then we just had to wait while Ally stood in the world’s longest checkout line.  There were easily a dozen cash registers going, and a Disneyland-like queue to get to them.  We finally made it back outside, purchases in hand.

Krishnas in hoodies

There was an odd site outside of Primark, Hari Krishnas.  When was the last time you saw Hari Krishnas?  As usual, you hear them first and you think "Seriously? Hari Krishnas?" But these weren't your father's Hari Krishnas...they were wearing hoodies and the leader had a headset mic to help boom out the "Hari Hari Krishna Krishna chants.

Up top the doubledecker bus

Next, we cross another item off our list – a doubledecker bus ride. We’d been wanting to do this since we got to London, but could never figure out which busses went where.  The tube was just easier to understand. But we found a bus near Primark that said “Earl’s Court” so we thought “why not?” We got seats on the top deck and thoroughly enjoyed the ride.  It went through Ally’s old neighborhood of South Kensington, and it was cool to see everything from the bus. When you’re walking, your busy figuring out where you’re going and remembering to look right and left at crossings, so you miss things. Here we could just sit back and enjoy looking at everything.

The bus dropped us off at a stop right by the apartment (now we know where all of those busses go).

Futbol at the pub!

We dropped off our bags, picked up the laptop and headed down the street to the Blackbird pub to cross another item off the list – watching soccer at a pub.  They were showing the Real Madrid v Manchester City game, which gave Ally a chance to root against Ronaldo.  We had a nice pub meal and I got to write today’s blog entry while Ally and Jorge were engrossed in the game.

We had been trying to think of something cool to do on our last night in London, but I think we did so much cool stuff today that we won’t need to.

London Day 4 - Theatre Night

After our rest, we put on our nicer clothes and went back to Piccadilly Circus for Chariots of Fire.  This is one of the city’s theater districts, and when you looked down the street all you saw was marquee after marquee for all of the shows.  It was a great atmosphere with all of the people out, on their way to shows.

Inside the theatre

Our theater was on the small side, and in the round for Chariots. This is the only photo I could get before the usher descended on us with a warning about no photos.  So you’ll just need to use your imagination. The round stage was also a turntable, which was quite helpful when staging the many slo-motion running segments. Admit it now…you’re starting to hum the Chariots of Fire theme, aren’t you?  The play was quite good, and it was fun to watch the scenery changes since there really wasn’t much you could go when working in the round but they were quite clever about it.

After the show

Afterward, the street was filled with folks coming from their plays and it was quite a festive atmosphere and a lovely evening to boot.  Of course that meant the tube ride home was packed with the theater crowd, but it was worth it.

Now we’re trying to figure out something neat to do tomorrow night, on our final night in London.  We’re planning on a daytime cruise on the Thames, probably with a picnic lunch.  We still need to see the Tower Bridge, visit the Chelsea megastore at Stamford Bridge, and Ally wants to do some shopping at her favorite London store Primark.

London Day 4 - Olympic Park Fail

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Our neighborhood S-bucks

It’s become our morning routine in London. Get up, have breakfast at the apartment and then pack up our laptop, iPad and cellphones and head down the block to Starbucks for some coffee and free wireless.

Today was no different.  Jorge takes out the iPad to check on his fantasy football team. Ally takes out the laptop to post the blog and photos from the day before. Gail takes out her iPhone to download all the Twitter tweets she’s missed.  Since she’s trying to limit her data roaming, she doesn’t get to look beyond the 140 character tweet…so today she was trying to piece together the Seahawks game story in short bits.

Tickets!

We were also researching possible shows to see tonight.  We’d talked about going to a play while in London, and we needed to see what the discount ticket place was offering for tonight. Les Miserables was our first choice, but there didn’t seem to be any tickets available.  Wicked was an option, along with several others.

We took the tube to the TKTS booth in Leicester Square, and decided on Chariots of Fire because we were intrigued to see how they’d handle all of the running on a stage. They did have 3 tickets available together, so we’ll be heading back later for the show.

Traditional Mexican favorites

Tickets in hand, we decided to have lunch at Chiquitos, the lone Mexican restaurant we’ve seen in London. They had an interesting take on Mexican food. One signature dish was the “Chilli Chicken and Chorizo Dog” which was your basic American hot dog made with skewered chicken and chorizo in a hot dog bun. We had the spicy chicken burrito, which wasn’t “hot spicy” but rather chicken that had some spices on it.  It was still good. The hot sauce that came with the chips was more like diced tomatoes from a can, but once mixed with a few liberal shakes of Tabasco sauce it was quite fine.

One other food note.  When you ask for mustard, they give you yellow English mustard…which we know better as hot Chinese mustard. A little goes a loooong way.

Meditating before the Tube directory

"Uh...duh.  It's closed, nimrods!"

After lunch, we were off to tour Olympic Park, after figuring out the many tube changes it would take to get there.  We arrived only to find out the park wasn’t open to tourists, and wouldn’t be until November.  Major fail, Rick Steves, who’s guidebook mentioned nothing about the park not being open…and major fail, City of London, for having all those directional signs in the tube stations to Olympic Park, yet not one sign saying “oh by the way, don’t waste your time…it’s closed.”  From the tube station, we were able to see the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Center…but Ally was not impressed.

"Not impressed."

So it was back on the train to central London, where we went to see St. Paul's Cathedral and then walked down to the Thames.  And what greeted us but a giant photo of the royal fam that stretched across the entire back of a building.  It was obviously taken many, many years ago by looking at the Queen and Prince Chuck.  Probably posted for the Golden Jubilee this past summer.

"Oh, hell-oooooooo"

St. Paul's

Decided to end our exploration and head back to the apartment for a little rest before tonight’s play.  Chilled out watching some TV, and got hooked on the Japanese game show “Ninja Warrior” (Ally says best gameshow ever).  It’s basically an obstacle course with strange and unique obstacles, like the “rolling escargot”. Most of the contestants were former gymnasts, so now we know what happens to all those gymnasts who don’t make the cut for the Olympics.  Why Ninja Warrior is not an Olympic sport, I do not know.