Travel Log

Back to work, but first….

3 Comments / Cupcake Toppers, Family Funk, Foodie, Friends & Family, Memories, Travel Log /

Some tidbits from the trip home to Charleston:

Jenn’s new apartment is nice. Fewer stairs but too many for my taste (and my knee.) She’s following in her aunt’s footsteps and has a bedroom for the cat.

Riverview Holiday Inn was fun to stay in since I’ve wanted to stay there since I was tiny, tiny, tiny. (It’s a round Holiday Inn and it makes me think of Melissa and “North Carolina” now, which kind of messes with my head.)

The restaurant in the Riverview Holiday Inn, not so good since most people actually like to enjoy their food when they eat. I think they should go back to the old name (which was Prioleau’s) and maybe that will help the quality of the food.

Business sure is booming over there in West Ashley. Sheesh. It’s almost as “bad” as the north area! I do not like getting lost in my own home town, or feeling like I’m lost because NOTHING looks the same.

Cupcake was cute and interesting and fun to FINALLY find but my goodness what a lot of icing! I don’t really LIKE icing anyway, heh. If you like icing and a really sweet cupcake then you must track them down when you are in Charleston. (wrong end of King St! Don’t walk toward Broad, walk away from Broad) Pst… to the owners of Cupcake, your website is too hard to find. Whoever created it for you needs to do something about that.

I successfully avoided the dumb new bridge, though I did have to look at it from the hotel restaurant several times. And, I had to listen to a lot of touristy people and my dumb ex husband talk about it.

Jenn living West of the Ashley is going to cut our driving time. Taking 17 is much faster than going all of the way up to 26. If I can just avoid having to stop at my ex inlaw’s house… ah well, at least it will cut the trip in one direction. A visit to the lake is a requirement, my ex mil would be sad if she didn’t get to hang out with TW for a bit.

My new nephew (OK fine, ex nephew) is damn cute but his mother should not be old enough to have a baby. That stuff makes me feel old and people need to stop doing it. No more babies! No more nephews growing up. None of that. I’m done with it.

Gas is too damn expensive in Florida. I’m considering forcing Michelle to go to college in either Georgia or SC just for the gas prices.

Yarn shops are fascinating places. Even if they have very social dogs wandering around inside of them. If you’re a knitter and you are in Charleston, go to Knit. They’re nice people and the yarn is interesting. (I never thought I’d be talking about yarn shops on MY blog.) FYI there’s a parking garage right next door. How convenient is THAT?

OK enough with the Charleston recap, back to the real world.

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Harrods and Flamingos with Koan

5 Comments / Family Funk, Friends & Family, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

Heh.  I met Koan, I met Koan! In person! Heh.

Koan met us outside of Harrods and graciously wandered around with the amazed Americans and helped us “herd the cats” that are our children.  She also made the children’s day by purchasing truffles for them.

After Harrods we went back to the Hotel Chocolat for a couple of gift items we had decided to purchase and bring home for friends and family.  And then, we found the Kensington Roof Gardens and THE FLAMINGOS!  It was sort of cool to take Koan somewhere that she didn’t know existed in her homeland.  😉

It was a fun little half-day and now we’re working on packing things up and restoring the flat to its former condition.

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Books, Books and Surrealism

1 Comment / Bookstores, cookbooks, Family Funk, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

First stop, after Cafe Nero for breakfast, was Foyles on Charing Cross.  OMG – better than the Tattered Cover in Denver because it’s well lit and modern and the books are new – except of course for the antiquities which I missed but TW saw – and bought… We spent a very long time there and could have spent a full day if we had left Master J at home.  E asked to go back at 5:30pm – even after a full day out.  It was that good.

Then we went back across town and walked down Portobello Road, without getting pickpocketed though someone else did while we were there, and got to Books for Cooks just in time to get a table for lunch.  I enjoyed the shop, and the lunch, so much that I PURCHASED COOKBOOKS.  TW also purchased cookbooks.  And, I bought one for RJ too but I don’t think she knows that I did.

We went home and dropped off our books and took a 15 minute breather and then headed across town in the other direction for a walk past Big Ben and a visit to Dali Universe.  Not enough paintings, a lot of sketches and watercolors but the sculptures… fabulous.  If we could combine Dali Universe in London with the Dali Museum in St Pete… now that would be a Dali museum! The kids enjoyed the trip more than I thought they would.  Surrealism is always interesting and at the end of the musuem they have a gallery with Dalis (and Picassos and Chagalls) for sale.  We all picked out one or six that we would like to buy.  Ah to own a Dali.

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Harry Potter Day

4 Comments / Family Funk, Harry Potter, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

The little children are huge Harry Potter fans so we had to visit Kings Cross aka Saint Pancras to see Platform 9 3/4 both the plaque and the platform where the scenes were filmed. Not only did we see these and take pictures there, the children insisted on acting out some of the scenes. And STICK TO YOUR TICKET became the phrase of the day.

From there, we went to Diagon Alley aka Leadenhall Market which was gorgeous. We arrived early and there were very few people there, which was nice. In London it can be hard to find tourist stops that are not crowded, heh. We had some very good hot chocolate and some really excellent orangy gingery biscuits there.

Then hours and hours at the British Museum. The Reading Room was a hit. The girls would have stayed there all day, Prince J was not as enthralled by it. We didn’t manage to see it all but we did see everything on the ground floor and about 1/3 of the upper level, maybe still a good bit. Unfortunately two of the rooms we really wanted to see were closed. Pout.

Another good, full, day – and an incredibly crowded subway ride home, which was good because we all should experience the madness of a London rush hour home.

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Tubes, Tea and Shakespeare

1 Comment / Coffee & Tea, Family Funk, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

The tubes at the Tate Modern were excellent.  If you are in London and thinking about ignoring the “get there early to get tickets” advice – don’t.  Underground slowness this morning put us about 45 minutes late and we got there just in the nick of time.  Our tickets were for 11:30 and by 11:30 they were sold out til 3pm.  They are well worth the wait.  I only did Tube 3 and it was a smooth and easy ride, not nearly as bumpy as I was afraid it would be.  I was going to do Tube 5 but decided not to push my luck and instead stayed with E while the others did Tube 5.  The kids, they had a blast.

The modern art, also a hit but not a huge hit.  They were most interested in the light board in one of the last rooms we visited.  Prince J was interested in Guerrilla Girl art, which was cool.  They all liked Dali’s lobster phone.  E was thrilled to see the Pollacks and explain all sorts of things about his work.  She also spent a lot of time plotting out future art projects of her own.  Mixed media seems to be her primary interest.  Nobody but me really enjoyed “The Kiss”, hmph.

The Cofee & Tea Musuem was a nice and easy 3 aisle walk with a full tea afterwards.  Cucumber sandwiches, crumpets, tea cakes, scones and cake – and several pots of tea.  We actually did the tea thing after the tubes and went back to the Tate for the bulk of the art after the Globe.

Everyone we had talked to said the Globe was the best but I was skeptical.  They were right, it was excellent.  The kids had a great time in the exhibit area.  There are booths that allow you to read lines of various plays and then they’re played back.  You can practice or you can just launch into it.  RJ did Hamlet, E was Juliet, Prince J was Lady MacBeth.  It was fun and they’d have been happy to stay there and keep reading lines over and over again.

When we got off the tube at Earl’s Court, some big “to do” was happening with red carpets and papparazzi and celebrities and limos.  I have no idea what we walked into but we were there, lol.

A full, full day – and a pretty nice Valentine’s Day, too.

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The Toys of London

2 Comments / Family Funk, Kid Talk, Toys & Games, Travel Log /

If you ever find yourself in London, you should DEFINITELY visit Pollack’s Toy Museum.  It is apparently off the beaten path because there were almost no people there – like two other families and that’s it.

It’s a tiny little museum but full to overflowing with fantastic toys.  Really great stuff.  My “new step-father” would be in heaven there.  It was full of everything he loves.  If you go, look closely because every corner of the place has something to see and it’s easy to miss something behind you or above your head because you don’t expect there to be MORE or something hidden under a stairwell.

The gift shop, also fun.  Lots of tiny little toys and wooden toys and miniatures and just fun stuff.

After that, we headed to Piccadilly Circuse to the “biggest toy store in London” – Hamleys.  Huge.  Much better than FAO Schwartz in either NYC or San Francisco.  The kids were beside themselves.  The young folks who are paid to demonstrate the toys are very good at their jobs.  I was impressed with their enthusiasm.  So impressed that we bought a UFO and I’d have bought more of the goods they were hawking but these darn kids prefer their old stand by faves – Sylvanians and Game Boy games.  Boring!

Toy day was a hit.

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We need a wii!

5 Comments / Family Funk, Toys & Games, Travel Log /

Yep, we do.  We didn’t think we needed one until we visited the Game On exhibit at the London Science Museum today.  5 minutes of playing wii tennis and we were hooked.  All five of us have said “we need a wii”.

Game On was a huge hit.  Too many games, not enough time.  All of the old commodore and atari favorites we know and love.  Not to mention Activision and Pong!

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Rain or shine?

2 Comments / Family Funk, Kid Talk, Travel Log /

Our first full day in the UK – London to be specific. We’ve walked more in the last day than we have all year and we’ve done a good bit of that walking in the rain. Damn weather! It’s a little annoying to walk with an eight year old who loves the rain. She’s a nutcase, but we knew that before this rainy walking started.

We’ve explored a multitude of grocery stores – Tesco, Costcutters and Sainsbury – plus a good many mini grocery convenience stores. We’ve been to several pharmacies and a few hardware stores.

We’ve purchased our special oyster cards and explained, or attempted to explain, the phrase “the world is your oyster” but I’m not sure the children actually “get it”.

We’re playing some gameboy, surfing some internets and reading some books before we head out to Holland Park for an afternoon stroll before “tea time”. It will probably start raining just as we walk out the door. hmph.

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Making Hotel Reservations

1 Comment / Review, Travel Log /

Life is funny.  I just finished making hotel reservations for a trip to Charleston after Christmas and now I find an email asking me to review HotelReservations.com for ReviewMe.  I wish I’d gotten this paid review request earlier in the day.

The first thing I noticed about HotelReservations.com was the $100 Rebate button.  I clicked.  Not a bad deal.  If I had booked my brief trip to Charleston through this site, I could have had a $20 rebate on top of a rate that is $2 per night lower than booking straight through the hotel’s website.  That, my friends, is a deal.  Which makes it worth going to a website that has a typo right on the front page (Advence should obviously be Advanced). 

Another thing I noticed, when searching for a hotel in Charleston, SC for a few days after Christmas, is the ability to sort by a lot more variables than other reservation sites.  You can choose from a huge list of landmarks and ask for hotels close to those.  That would have come in handy for me on a few trips to south Florida and a trip to Atlanta where we found ourselves a little bit further afield than we’d originally hoped. 

I went surfing around the vacation packages, too.  I almost bought a package and that never happens.  Actually I was torn between two and I may still go back and grab one, if I can decide between them (and choose a date that works for us, and scrape up the money to pay for the trip).  I have no idea how the site managed it but they showed me TWO hotels that I really love in NYC in the first page of results.  That simply never happens because neither hotel is a top pick on the other reservation sites I have used.

I haven’t had any problems using the search.  The site moves quickly and hasn’t returned any odd results.  I might actually give this one a try the next time I book a weekend.  If I do, I’ll come back and blog about it again. 

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