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Published: April 14th 2008
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Hey everybody!
Thanks for coming to check out my travel blog. I meant to get this started earlier, but then preparing for and going on this trip has been a series of things I meant to do a lot earlier than I did. So I'm here in London on about the fifth day of the trip posting my first entry. I'll start with my trip from Denver to Los Angeles:
Denver to Los Angeles
I left Denver on Tuesday April 1, at about 6:00 pm after spending the whole day doing the final packing and cleaning out of my duplex. Thanks to Stace and Andrea who helped with the whole packing and storage process. I now own a lot fewer possesions then I did a month ago, but that's good, because storage and shipping to SoCal is pretty expensive.
Anyway, I drove to Grand Junction and spend the night there, not much to say about that. The next day I headed into Utah and after having lunch in Green River I got off the interstate and drove south. I visited Capitol Reef National Park which has amazing geologic sites and some petroglyphs. Then after leaving CR you
drive through some pretty impressive canyons with steep walls. The next day I visited both Bryce Canyons and Zion National Parks, which were both amazing. I know that's a lot to cover in one day but I'm sure I'll be back someday to spend more time and do some real camping and hiking.
The day after that I drove down to the Grand Canyon and spent several hours there seeing the site. Again, a really amazing place and I'm glad I got a chance to see it. Then I drove to Las Vegas where I left my car with Drea's brother (thanks Chris!) and hopped a flight to Los Angeles (no gambling for me, that would have cut the trip short by several months). When I arrived in LA I showed Drea my way overstuffed pack and we decided that we should take a third piece of luggage on the trip since I couldn't manuever in small spaces with a pack that stuck up two feet over my head. So we immediately drove down to San Diego to pick up a smaller pack for Drea (it was in her mother's storage space) and then the next day I bought
a smaller Eagle Creek travel backpack that I'm really happy with. So we spent the next couple of days getting ready and doing a lot of shopping for small miscellaneous stuff for the trip. Then Monday night the DGA had a going away dinner for Drea at Morton's in Hollywood at which we had a wonderful time with good food and lots of well wishes for our trip. Finally on Tuesday, after getting my final Hep A&B shot, we headed out to LAX to catch our flight to London!
London at Last!
After an uneventful, direct flight to London, we landed at Heathrow around 10am GMT. We had a bit of a odyssey finding our way to the place where we picked up the keys to Drea's friend's flat and then making our way to the flat with all of our luggage. The very nice girl who brought the keys to us gave us a great deal of encouragement after seeing all our stuff saying 'You're never going to make it!' But we showed her and after getting settled in the flat we hit the streets to do some sightseeing.
I'll summarize our general activities rather than
give a minute-by-minute account because a) I don't want to bore you and b) I can't remember the exact sequence of things after being here for five days. We've visited a number of museums including the Tate Britain, the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery. We saw a lot of great British and European painters, including a good number Turners which I've been looking forward to. We saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, we rode the London Eye ferris wheel, and have passed by/through Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, the Tower, Trafalgar Square, the Fire Monument (shrouded in scaffolding) and many other famous buildings and statues. On Saturday night (4/12) we met up with Drea's friends Gigi and Iris for drinks and dinner at a great chinese restaurant near Leicester Square in Chinatown. On Sunday (4/13) we headed out to Finchley in north London to visit my friends Eric and Jean Unger who are spending a few years in London for Eric's job. We went to a local Turkish restaurant with them and had a great meal and a lot of fun there.
Despite the talk of restaurants above, we haven't been spending much money on
going out to eat because everything's so expensive here. If the prices were in dollars they would be reasonable but the pound is worth two dollars so everything is twice as expensive as it seems. We've actually been eating in a lot so we're very lucky to have been staying at a friend's flat. Today we had to leave that flat because Alex has paying customers coming in tomorrow (so much for our freeloading there) but once I finish this post we're heading over to Gigi's to spend the rest of our time in London at her place.
There's still a lot to do here in London before we head to Paris on Friday (4/18). I've got to get to the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone (among many other things) and we're hoping to make it out to Stonehenge). So I'll say goodbye for now and try to upload some pictures.
Hope everyone is well and I'll try to post again soon!
Mark
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Matthew
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Bon Voyage!
Good luck Mark, and have a great trip! While travel blogging, remember two things - your pictures are always better when Drea is in them, and your stories are always better if booze is in them!