My Stuff

Read below for short recap of adventures! Scroll up or down. Individual picture highlights at the end.

2007 - We started our 3 week journey on Oct. 1st by stopping in London to visit my old friends, Murray from London, and Jane from Wales - of which I have not seen either of them in person in 24 years. We, of course, all look exactly the same too - tee hee. Thanks to pictures, computers and email, it has been like we have still been close thru the years tho. I knew Jane from my rugby tour to the UK in 1983 (plus she lived in San Diego with me for a few months prior), and Murray was our bus driver the whole two weeks! He says he's never had a fun bus group like ours before or since! Those little old ladies knitting clubs from Luxembourg just are not the same. I've followed Murray's antics and Jane's marriage and kids thru the years.

Murray, of course, gave us the full tour. It was a blast seeing all the old sights in rainy London (wouldn't have it any other way!) again. He took us all around London to see the Parliment buildings, 10 Downing Street, Scotland Yard, Big Ben, the Tower of London, the 5000 yr old roman wall that was recently discovered, over to Windsor Castle, and then he proceeded to drive us out to Somerset, England - where Jane now lives (west of London, and south of Wales) - about a 3 hr. drive. We stopped in Avebury (a new spot for me, as I had never been there or heard of it before), which was like a little mystical mini-"stonehenge" with all these huge druid-like rocks all in a circle round the town, with sheep and sheep-sh*t all over the place. We drove thru Bath (now a college town) and Cheddar Gorge (yes, where cheddar cheese got it's name) and on. What a sweetheart. Murray is so darn funny, and still the same hilarious, entertaining guy he's always been. And of course, Berndog and he got along like old friends.

We get to Jane's and she proceeds to make this huge, lovely dinner for us. We met her daughter Lauren (her son was in college at Bath) and her hubby Farshid. Berndog soon gave him the name of "Fazz-Daddy" and I swear, he is soooo funny also. He reminds me of Peter Sellers. Him and Berndog hit it off, right away too. Then they took us to a local pub, in the foggiest night I have ever seen! Again, England is just living up to its stereotypes for Berndog... as he's never been before, and what would London be without rain, or England be without fog? It was like it was storybook ordered! The pub was cool too - typical short ceiling, low doorways. Those English were really small in the old days from the oh-100s.

The very next day was sunny and gorgeous. Jane made us a delicious, traditional "English Breakfast" (yummm!) and then we were off for the local sights and Stonehenge, as we had to be back to our hotel that night for our very early flight out the next morning to France. Fazz-Daddy is "retired" and owns his own Taxi (van), so we had our own personal taxi all day long, taking us everywhere. We went to a local "beach town" called Lyme-Regis, and had some great ice-cream and checked out the local fossil shops. Apparently, the cliffs have been breaking away a bit, and revealing a lot of dinosaur fossils and that area is known for its archeological discoveries.

We arrived at Stonehenge at a pretty time of the day, and I got pictures from just about every angle. It was just gorgeous. The mind has a hard time grasping around the fact that THAT place even stands there as it does and how old it is. But then, we have a hard time dealing with the concept of God, or that the Universe possibly goes on and on forever. Today, we tend to live for the here and now. I mean, where does it end? Do you know? We can't even agree on the start! But I digress. Off to France! (There's gotta be some irony in there somewhere.) It was 3 days of jam-packed fun that seemed like 3 weeks already! Important UK fact = our U.S. dollar sucked there. It was basically two to one, against us. For example, a $8E(euros) fish & chips lunch per person in a trendy touristy college town of Bath (not that bad, but not cheap) was REALLY $16U.S. dollars to us, PER PERSON! How's them there pomme de terre? (apples of the earth = potatoes).

PICTURE HIGHLIGHTS:

E13 - Notice how young the Palace Guards are! Babies! And then off to Iraq War!

E16 - Stopped at a Pub and met a typical English gent that your Dentist would love to get ahold of. Got a funny video of him - maybe I'll add later.

E28 - Notice how short Caesar was (as most were). This is where the 5000 yr old roman wall was recently discovered.

E39 - "Paul" is both our dad's names.

E42 - Church where Diana & Charles married.

E50s - Windsor Castle takes up like 4 or 5 huge city blocks. We were only outside the main gate. It would have taken us hours to walk all thru it. The Queen still does visit and do bizz there. The river Thames has small tributaries all the way from downtown London to other areas, such as Windsor (where you see us with swans).

E60s - Avebury town and pub. Notice height of ceilings and doorways, and the height of the stones, compared to people.

E90 & E107 - I was trying to catch how the roads have the trees cut so symmetrically and perfect for cars to go thru. Murray said "lorries" take care of that. Lorries are = trucks.

E91 - Soil in this area under the growth is sandy and white, so they've cut this "white horse" into the hillside.

E94 - Roman town of Bath, which is now a college town. We got the best Fish & Chips there.

E103-105 - Notice the sign. It's some company. Dunno what it stands for? Something like Finch Crombie of the UK, for ex.

E108 - Cheddar Gorge - water inland travels under- ground cutting thru the mountains, creating under-ground rivers and the gorges...out to sea.

E129 - At Lyme-Regis, notice beach is not sand, but small rounded stones (common for England).

E138 - How do you like our

postcards of Stonehenge? Look like that, don't they? If it weren't for Berndog being in the pics, you would not even know that I took these pics and they were not really postcards.

E170 - What Stonehenge ORIGINALLY was set up like, before it decayed. Back in the 80s they would let you walk right up and touch Stonehenge. Today, they don't - it's roped off and you have to stay away.