Blogs from Kensington, Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe

I said to the bartender tonight, after watching a match on ESPN. "Of course you do," he said, "you're American." Which is the kind of anti-American joke I appreciate. It's funny, it's not mean-spirited (after this, he did answer my question), and I had walked right into it. I won't say it fits us, because I was friends with plenty of people on the women's rugby team at Hamilton (undergrad), so I know plenty of Americans who understand the game. Still, funny. The kind of culture-banter I appreciate. Even though I'm American and we don't understand sarcasm (see what I did there?). Anyway... Twice now I've landed in London at night, and both times the pilot has circled directly over the city before going into Heathrow. Maybe there's some complicated pilot-reason why they need to loop ... read more

Well, we arrived and I remember why I loved London the first time I ever visited back in 2001. London is magical. Even with a third of the city buildings covered with scaffolding due to the “sprucing up” taking place for the upcoming Olympics, London has an exciting pulse. Jim and I tried to pick up on that pulse when we arrived on Wednesday, but to be perfectly honest we dragged ourselves around from the time we arrived at 6:30 am until 1:00 pm when we were allowed to check into our room and threw ourselves fully clothed onto the bed for a nap. We walked over to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, but the palace is being remodeled for the Olympics this summer and the Public Rooms are hosting modern art exhibits, so we skipped ... read more

Here we are getting ready to go to London dreading our arrival there because we just heard that the customs agents will all be on strike when we arrive. Thank goodness we booked a driver to pick us up! They emailed to let us know what to expect. Up to 8 hours wait at the airport to go through customs! Yuk!... read more

The Natural History Museum is one of those wonderful Victorian buildings, so abundant in London, that draws your eye before you even get close. The architecture itself makes the museum a truly remarkable place before you have even stepped into the main entrance. Of course, when you do step in, you are greeted by a diplodocus, or at least the carefully welded-together bones of a diplodocus that probably died around 150 million years ago. The bones don’t stop there though; a huge section of dinosaurs contains dozens of nearly perfectly preserved dinosaurs and fossils, and by the time we were through the ‘blue zone’, maybe a quarter of the whole museum, it was approaching twilight outside, and once again we sacrificed the completeness of the visit for moving on to somewhere new. The Natural History Museum ... read more

After my theatre class today we walked over to the Gore Hotel for a British afternoon tea. I was really excited for this because I had been told to bring an appetite and to dress up a little for this. Anything that I can get dressed up for and have some food is an automatic win in my book. The hotel was gorgeous! It was a large, dimly lit room with elaborate wall paper and furnishings. Very comfortable velvet chairs and the table was quite beautifully decorated as well with a large cylinder candle in a large vase and white table cloths. The first thing they brought out of course was the tea and coffee. You can pour milk in the tea and sweeten it with either white or brown sugar. So of course I did ... read more

Monday was the first day of class! Well I only have class in the afternoon so it isn't bad at all. The theatre class is going to be great fun. It seems as if all we do is watch plays and write reviews and maybe read a review here or there. We don't have an actual class for another 3 weeks because we are going on tours and just watching plays for the weeks in between. This is such a wonderful relaxed place. The actual place that we have our classes in is actually quite nice. There's a nice garden that you walk through in order to get to the classroom which is surprising once again especially because you go from a street which is building after building and then just go through this building a ... read more

Arrived to a warm sunny summers day in London yesterday. Fed the squirrels in Hyde Park. Watched the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace this morning and had a look through the Queens Gallery. ... read more

Flying premium class is always better when you know someone else on the same flight who is flying economy. And they are stuck in a seat where it's so small and doesn't recline very far they bitch about not getting any sleep on the flight. (when you slept 5 hours). and are pissed that the only good movies to watch were on the first three channels of the flight which are available to premium class only. And they didn't get enough food on the flight. Arrived safe and sound, and decided to pay to take Karen (a former co-worker who was on her way to holiday in morroco) with me to the priority pass lounge at the sofitel hotel at Gatwick so she could get some of the sorely missed food on the plane she was ... read more

Friday 25th to Monday 28th March Friday morning saw us on an early-ish train from Exeter to London. John managed to get some work done during the two and a half hour trip while Ali enjoyed the scenic views of the countryside. In London, we stayed in a private hotel (essentially a B&B) in Kensington, quite close to Kensington Palace and Gardens (and Peter Pan). It's a very attractive area and nearly every house is 'three (or four) up and one down' and painted white. This gives the streets a very light and airy feel. Interestingly, in nearby Notting Hill, the houses seemed to be painted in contrasting colours (often pastels). Another thing we found interesting was the numerous shared (but private) gardens. These are enclosed (locked) gardens, only accessible to the residents of the adjoining ... read more