Oldies but Goodies

Picture of Covent Garden on a Saturday afternoon....LOTS of people

No we didn't make a trip to Washington DC this cherry blossom is in St James Park in front of the palace. This park also features some crazy looking birds and ducks

PAELLA!!! We went to a Taste of Spain festival on Regents Street where they made two enormous dishes of paella over open fires.

Gardens at Kensington Palace

This is a picture of Neal's Yard near Seven Dials. A really neat hidden pedestrian Street in central London which has local coffee and art shops. I had a great fresh juice from a shop in the small square mmmmmm :)

Advertising 101

the three of us on our pub crawl... great beer, great live music, and great company :)

Above are two advertising techniques used by Four Star Pizza in Dublin

#1: Price inflation only to lead to drastic price cuts.... 32 euros for a three topping pizza!!! no wonder they needed to lower prices WHO would ever pay that much??

#2: Sex Appeal... I have never seen this much cleave on a Domino's ad haha. Plus keep in mind this is a 6' high poster not a flier haha.

In our quest to find the pot of gold we tracked done some local leprechauns at their hangout... they did not give out any secrets however so the search is still on

My Goodness My Guinness

We started off with a picture in front of St James's Gate Brewery..entry to the factory. Factoid #1: Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease in 1759 at a rate of 45 pounds a year.

This is me playing in the barley :) Factoid #2: Guinness is made only from 5 ingredients... water, malt, barley, hops, and yeast

Sarah doing a Guinness Beer Bong...too bad we forgot the funnel...messier this way. Factoid #3: 10 million glasses of Guinness are enjoyed around the world every day (only a small percent through a beer bong)

We made it through the tour and got to taste our prize... a Guinness fresh from the factory with an amazing view. Factoid #4: The gravity Bar is the highest bar in Dublin at 46 metres off the ground!

Some more fun facts...

#5: At an angle of 45 degrees it takes 119.5 seconds for the perfect pint to settle

#6: The ancient harp symbol was initially used as a symbol for Guinness, registered in 1876, and later adopted by the Irish government as the official symbol

#7: Back in the day doctors actually prescribed it to patients and even women while breast feeding

#8: The Guinness Factory is AWESOME

Jail House Rock

image of the main prison area in Kilmainham Gaol (Jail) in Dublin. This is were many leaders of Irish rebellions were imprisoned and some executed in the prison by the British and later in 1923 by the Irish Free State.

This is me inside my cell shivering since there was no heat in the jail. Good thing i had my scarf .... but no mittens :(

This is John in his cell, he was not allowed to open the door even for visitors so had to take a picture through the key hole. Sarah and I convinced them to let him out on good behavior so we could go to the Guinness Factory!!!

Where are the marshmellows?

So with no 4th of July to shoot off fireworks they use Guy Fawkes Day as the official fireworks and bon fire extravaganza holiday. It was so different wearing a coat and scarf while watching fireworks....but we did get mulled wine!!!

In case you are not up on British History Guy Fawkes was part of the plot to blowup Parliament and restore a catholic monarch to the throne in 1605 and is where the saying "remember remember the 5th of November" come from. Since then they burn an effigy of Fawkes on a Bonfire each year to remember the event.

The Fireworks show was GREAT and set to music (they did not play the usual firework classics...god bless america or star spangled banner however)

Now We Can Move Back....

Well we finally made it to a Chelsea Football (Soccer) match and John's UK goals have been achieved...

The game was part of the Champions League (separate tournament from normal season, where best teams from all the European leagues play. It goes on during the normal season and takes months to complete) Chelsea played Spartak Moscow and won 4-1 !!!!

John might want to go to another game (delaying our return home) since he had to sit next to an extremely roughty fan even by British standards, who knocked him about a hundred times as he got in an out of his seat to swear at the opposing fans, other fans, refs, players...and probably a baby or two.

SHANEXers Y2K10 Reunion Details

You just got RATTED!!!!!!!!

This ratting was made possible by Notre Dame and all those who leave their trash laying around outside the church. This thing was huge...use the fanta for scale reference.

Where's the horse and buggy to take me to the review?...AIA Charrette 2010

Never a better time to get involved with AIA (American Institute of Architects) than when you move to a foreign country haha :o) I was the co-chair for the AIA Student Charrette this year in London where we had ten teams of students from across the UK come together for the one day event. This is also the reason my blog took a bit of a break, so thought fitting to post it :o)

The students were given a three acre site in central London(right near British Museum) which included an old list chapel and facade that needed to be maintained, all the free printing and paper they wanted, and about 7 hours to come up with a design. The event was CAD free so they had to do everything "old school" which was fun :o)

..... the team I mentored (added helpful guidance and kept them on track) ended up winning the event too :o) I had nothing to do with the voting we brought in a team of jurors :o)

Professional Photoshoot ******

We asked a fellow traveler to take our picture, we set the camera up told her where to stand all set right? Well she obviously thought the picture would be better about twice as far back and capturing all the other people taking pictures :o) don't worry we did some profiling and as always found a very helpful young asian man with a nice camera to take our picture **Perfection** We then kindly returned the favor :o)

I took a TON of pictures since we had such a clear day :o)

I won't bore you all though no worries... when you come to visit us once we move back though I will have a mandatory slide show featuring a differentancient greek monument each time you come over :o) I will make microwave popcorn though--side note I can't wait to buy a costco pack of microwave popcorn in two weeks when we come home !!!!!!!!

Leprechauns in Athens!!!!!

We got to go to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens which was excellent. Sitting at the base of the Acropolis you get views up to the Parthenon while looking at all the original (and replicas for those things in the British Museum...allot) sculptures and frieze pieces. This museum like many new construction projects sits over an excavation site and they have glass floors and openings so visitors can see the work still going on excavating under the building.

John found himself a friend in Athens ... good timing too since this was around day ten of our trip together :o) jk lol

Me at Hadrian's Library...this was basically me at the pool everyday since i brought all my testing books with me to read and nothing else(to force myself to read them, which i did).

on one of the last days we had about two hours of rain (only rain the entire trip luckily) but not all was lost since we then saw an amazing double rainbow from our balcony!!!! I wanted to go looking for the pot of gold but john said no since that hill looked really far away :o)

Leopard Colony

We over looked the once Leper Colony on Spinalonga (or as I say the Leopard Colony since way more exciting) from our hotel. The island was originally a Venetian fortress and then was used as the last leper colony in Europe from 1903-1957.

The views were great from the island and we had a nice time hiking up into the different crumbling buildings(always keeping our eyes and ears open for leopards). I couldn't get over how BLUE the water was in Greece every place we went!!!

John decided to help out and make some pizza for lunch :o)

Swimming Lessons

Our room had a private pool on the patio so we figured we would take advantage and teach john to swim while we were on vacation.

At first he was scared and tried climbing out of the pool...i saved the ladder lesson until later to prevent this reaction.

He then had fun splashing around and making waves for the rest of the afternoon and even made it across the pool underwater in one breath a true test for any recreational swimmer.

CRETE and Barrel

Look how organized we were :o) We are also big dorks taking a picture of this...

Breeze Cafe in Plaka = my favorite lunch spot

The greek salad from here was the best...I think because they walked across the street to the fancy restaurant(also own by same family) with an empty bowl and got it from their kitchen haha. I would count this as a scambo as I am sure I paid less than advertised over there.

me at Breeze Cafe with my pina colada...it came with two sparklers in it which was awesome i didn't get the camera out fast enough so this is post sparklers

Sunrise from our patio area

Our tour guide at Knossos gave two people on the tour an olive branch as a sign of fertility. John got one of the branches...my theory as to the reason is that everyone knows Americans leave the biggest tips and she was trying to butter him up :o)

Say CHEESE!!!!!

Turn up the Jock Jams and Pomp it UP we are in the house !!!!!

John and I visited Sarah in Switzerland and ate our fill of chocolate and cheese mmmmmmmm cheese :o) Here we are eating fondue at the Maison de Gruyere after getting the grand tour on cheese making.

The town leading up to Gruyere Castle was right out of Beauty and the Beast...I could almost see her reading at the fountain ;o)
Strangest wall painting i have ever seen....birds sitting on a telephone wire at the historic Gruyere Castle which was built longgggg before telephones.