England and France

I am trying to get the hang of a French keyboard again, so please bear with any mistakes. I can't imagine what Kyrgyz keyboards will be like...

I am on my second day in Rouen, and am enjoying it muchly. But first will just explain the remaining pics from London.

I think I mentioned in my last entry that Estella and I caught Othello at the globe? Maybe I didn't. It was excellent; Iago was perfectly evil, and the murder scene gave me shivers. So there's me at the Globe. Afterwards, we had a dinner to go to around 7 with Mike and some of his friends, but as we strolled down the Strand we passed one of those sushi places with a conveyor belt and since I'd never had conveyor belt sushi before, we thought we'd better stop in for appetizers. It was much fun, although we probably disappointed the waitress as we didn't order very much. After that, we kept walking towards Charing Cross (for our rendezvous) and found the Somerset House. I wish I'd known it was there before, as I'd love to take a look at its galleries sometime. But the fountains were lovely; all of you who know how much I love water won't be surprised to see me standing in the middle of them. And there is Estella holding up a new 20 pound note that is very different from the old ones.

We had second dinner at the Charing Cross Pizza Express with Mike and a few of his friends. It was lots of fun and the food was very good (esp the toffee fudge glory I had for dessert). Then back to the hostel, packing, talking, and off to bed. We went our separate ways in the morning, Estella for Glasgow and me for Northampton, but we had a whole lot of fun for those two days!

I don't have any pics of Northampton and Julia and Paul's baby yet, but will get them tomorrow when I'm back for a day before heading off to Asia.

The weather has also been great in France (I'm not sure why I've been so lucky with beautiful sunny days in both France and England). I met up with Julia and Ludo in Paris, and we wandered around, had a very good lunch (yes, with me everything revolves around food), found a patisserie for the French sorbet (rhubarb and blood orange is an EXCELLENT combination) and managed to play some UNO by the Seine before it started to rain. It was sooooo good to see them after about 2 years; we'll have to do better than that!

And finally Rouen. It has been great seeing the Guerins again. And I'm up in the room I stayed in 3 years ago, a little deja-vu. The first picture features Pierrot, Camellia, Veronique and Tiphaine, and hopefully I'll manage to get a whole family picture before I leave... We had a good walk downtown and I got to see the city under the grime that was there a few years ago (they've spent a lot of time and money since then cleaning it up) and have included a picture of the astronomical clock for Mark. Vero, someone I trust completely, tells me that an astronomical clock tells the time, the phase of the moon, and which sign of the zodiac is current. If you can't trust me not to stretch the truth, you can at least trust her :) I also got in a game of "foot" in the alley with Nico and the neighbours; I lost, but not too badly.

That's all for the time being. I still have another half day or so in France, and intend to go soak in the rays and get to know the rest of the city again!

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