The long and winding road....

The long and winding road…..

Well, it’s time to return home. Sunday has come all too quickly, and now the fun must end…Boo Hoo! It has been fun but it has also been somewhat exhausting! Yesterday was a great day, though jam packed with things to be doing! Picking up from yesterdays post, we headed out last night to the theatre. When we arrived, we had a quick look around and mingled in the foyer with everyone else. I introduced James to the concept of ordering your interval drinks prior to the show, which is an old tradition in London theatres. Basically you pay for your drinks prior, give them your name and when the interval begins, you come out to the foyer. There on a shelf is a whole row of drinks with little tickets attached to them. It’s an honour system, and I have never had anyone swipe my drink before. It still works in 2009 which is fabulous. Anyway…best not get ahead of myself…

Armed with a bag of Fruit Pastilles (candy) and our program we headed into the Dress Circle of the Comedy Theatre. The theatre dates from around 1850 or so, and is quite small. We took our seats and marveled at the set on the stage. This was a re-worked version of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical of Sunset Boulevard. It had mixed reviews when it opened in the 1990’s, and ran for about 3 years in the UK and about 3 years in the US and then disappeared. It was revived last year with a newly orchestrated score and a leaner production. I had never seen the original so I can’t really comment on the changes, but this show was really excellent. The leading lady was off sick all this last week, so her understudy was performing. She did a very good job considering and it didn’t detract from the performance at all. A great show!

We rushed out of the theatre at 10:10pm and headed on our way to dinner. Having never been to Langans Brassiere before, I wasn’t really sure how to get there. I had asked the concierge at the hotel for directions. Well, he sent us in totally the wrong direction, so it took us a little while to get there. But get there we did, and we arrived in the nick of time for our 10:30pm reservation. Langans was wonderful. We both had Spinach Soufflé with Anchovy Sauce to start, and the James had Bangers and Mash, a British specialty, while I had the Fillet Steak with green peppercorn butter. Yes, we had a bottle of wine too….surprise! We kept our eyes open for famous people, but alas there was not a Spice Girl in sight…….heading out at 11:50pm we leapt into a taxi and returned back to the hotel and collapsed into bed at 12.30pm, which, considering the clocks went forward in England today was really 1.30pm. Yikes! Thank heavens for packing earlier!

I have to admit that this morning came all too quickly. We were up at 6:45am and showered, checked out, and in a taxi to Victoria station. The Gatwick Express train at 7:45am delivered us to Gatwick airport at 8:!5am where a holy dragon from Delta Airlines informed us that our preselected seats from 3 months ago had been reassigned to someone else. Now, I can put up with a lot of things, but I have a short fuse with the airlines. Having been shunted into the middle section of the plane from our window and aisle seat was not good for my spirits. Still, realizing that dealing with these people is often one of the world’s most futile past times, we just left it at that and headed for coffee, duty free, newspapers and ultimately our gate. On board and on our way at 10.45am!

The flight? Well it was what you expect really. It’s Delta. Ever moving down-market with their service levels, paid for by us as the public buying tickets, with not a hint of performance related pay for the people who work their flights. If there were, then they would all be penniless by now…..’nuff said, methinks…. I managed to get through some of my images on the plane and will continue to work on those tomorrow, hopefully for a print deadline of around Wednesday of this week, if not before. I hope I have enough!

So now we are back home again! Cats are all well, we are unpacked, laundry is in, British grocery shopping is put away, James has sorted the mail, and I have just spent the last two hours cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming and washing floors. Now it’s time to relax! A martini is calling followed by the ultimate treat……Dancing with the Stars from last week! Yay!

Thanks for keeping up with the blog and for all your messages and comments! We will see you all this week!

Big love,
D&J

Friday and Saturday

Dear BlogFans!

Well, it's Saturday afternoon. How time is flying! Sorry I did not get to post last night, but the day was just a whirlwind, as has been today! These short international trips are fun, but jolly tiring!

Friday dawned with our usual breakfast trip to a local cafe. Then I sent about working on my surprise English paper. I had to read the play and write a mini paper, that was not so mini it appears. I didn't get out of the hotel until 12pm. I headed off on several missions, and also to try and take some more photographs. A dash into a few shops to pick up some supplies, a crap picture here, a potential good one there, and of course a stop for lunch, though this time at Wagamamas Asian restaurant. The day was whizzing by! After lunch I headed off to St Paul's cathedral as it was on my list. I had a similar "large building" problem with my shots here, and I am still not sure that I got anything really usable. These big buildings are a problem! Next stop was Tower Bridge, another difficult shot, chiefly because it has been shot so many times before. I fear that my shot here will actually be just quite ordinary, but we shall see. All of my work has been carried out with the lensbaby again, so perhaps that will have worked some magic on the image. A final sunset looking back up the River Thames, and I was done. I have no more time for images, so now the process of editing and working up the images will begin. I am planning on spending the flight back to the USA on Sunday to do that, as I have to print this coming week and be ready to hang at Starbucks by next weekend! Eeeek!

Back at the hotel, it was a shower and change and then off to meet David & David for dinner. We had such a super time with them, and both James and I wish that we got to see them more often. It's good to have friends that you just seem to be able to pick up where you left off. D&D if you read this, we love you both! After dinner, James and I decided to talk a walk back to the hotel so that James could see what the Soho area of London was like at the weekends. It was certainly busy, and we popped into a bar called Village for 20 minutes for a drink. It was really packed, and we didn't stay long at all. We were both ready for bed....talk about feeling old! Everyone looked like they were 12 years old, so we shuffled onward, taking a brisk walk back to the hotel to help walk off dinner.

Today we were up early again and off to Sainsbury, a large grocery store in nearby Camden Town. We had supplies to buy to bring back to the US with us, chiefly food products that we just can't buy in Cincinnati. We had a blast running up and down the aisles with our baskets, though this time we are more limited as to what we can bring back. Still, we managed to stock up really well on foodstuffs, so we are happy. A jump on the train and back to the hotel once more! A quick shower, change, and we were out again 45 minutes later on the way to Covent Garden to meet Margaret and Shirley and their daughters, Maria and Sarah for lunch. These are more friends of ours that we know largely through our times in Menorca. They all live just outside of London so we try and meet up whenever we have a chance. We went to Porters restaurant, which is a famous Pie shop in London. We filled up on Steak, Mushroom, and Guinness pies, Vegetarian pies, and washed the whole thing down with wine, and topped it off with some really heavy hot sponge desserts. Afterwards we felt so bloated I felt like I was going to burst. Lets hope I am ready for dinner tonight!

Now we are back at the hotel again, and James is taking a nap while I do the packing. Tonight we are off to see Sunset Boulevard at 7.30pm, and then we have dinner at Langans Brasserie at 10.30pm. Then to bed, and we leave tomorrow morning. The clocks go forward in the US tonight, so we will also lose an hour of sleep. Still, at least we should get a rest on the plane!

So there we have it. I doubt whether I will get a chance to post tonight, or tomorrow, and then we will be home. So I'll try and post when we get back home on Sunday afternoon.

Hope all are fine and dandy!

Big Love,

D&J

Rainy days and Thursdays....

Greetings from BlogLand on Thursday,

Hello all! I hope you are all well....it's quite late here (12.25am) and I am getting ready for bed. Today has been a long day! We managed to sleep all the way through the night yesterday, awakening to the alarm at 8am. A quick shower and brushing of the teeth and we were on our way to breakfast. I had spotted a place yesterday that I fancied trying. It was called the Victory Cafe, and it reminded me of the kind of place I would sometimes be taken by father when I was a little boy. Well, all I can say is that I probably didn't have particularly refined taste buds when I was a boy! It wasn't too bad, but I can say that I have now done it and that memory is dealt with!

After that, I headed out with camera bag while James did the conference thing. I felt a little sorry for him as I gamboled around town....well, I only gamboled for about 30 minutes as then the heavens opened forcing me to duck in and out of shops. I was working my way down Oxford Street at the time, so it wasn't really too much of a chore as there are plenty of nice shops to spend time in! I was thrilled to find the latest re-issues of 5 Thompson Twins albums on CD that I had been wanting to buy in HMV, so that made up for the fact that it was raining and that all the pictures I had taken so far were crap.

After a sandwich from Marks and Spencer (where else!) I arrived at Marble Arch, one of the places on my list for photographing. And I was faced with the same problem here that has stumped me at so many other sites. How to take pictures of something so big? I didn't want to do just small detail shots, from which you would never really know the bigger scene, and all the other kinds of angles I shot just looked silly. So instead I shot it in 5 pieces and I will try and do some kind of montage thing after the fact. Who knows if it will work; I have never tried anything like that before!

Next I headed off to Hyde Park, which was really quite lovely post rain. I wandered around, took some dud pictures of daffodils and then settled for some hopefully nice scenic views of walk ways and couples who had stopped for a quick snog on the paths. I have high hopes for these; snogging always adds a little something, don't you think?

By this time, the gorgeous James had finally broken his bonds and was heading to meet me. Through the wonders of cellular communications, he emerged from Hyde Park Corner tube station to meet me at the Wellington Arch. Then the heavens opened again. With that we headed off down toward Buckingham Palace to see if Liz Windsor was there. I am guessing yes, as her flag was flying from the roof. After realising that we had not been invited to tea though, we headed off in the other direction with as much flounce as we could muster - pretty difficult when you look like a drowned rat. After heading up the mall to Trafalgar Square we decided that enough was enough, and that shopping would be the antidote. A quick train ride and we arrived at Marks and Spencer's clothing store in Marble Arch (seems like a circular tale, eh!) James busied himself in the underwear department (bet you really wanted to know that) while I picked out two nice pairs of flannel pyjamas. How middle aged are we! Those of you who thought that this blog might get a little racy can switch off now!

Next on the agenda was dinner. James had wanted to try an Indian restaurant so we went to Veeraswamy off Regent Street, England's oldest Indian eatery. It's been there since 1926, and I thought that would mean it was either going to be terrible or fabulous, with little middle ground. It turned out to be quite fabulous, although with scary prices. I had a chicken, James had lamb and we washed the whole thing down with a Martini each and a bottle of wine (between us, not each!) Back on the train (pic attached!) and now it's time for bed!

Tomorrow I have to do more photography (getting a bit nervous now...have to shoot some good stuff or I am in trouble!) and I have to do an unplanned English paper, thanks to my professor changing the syllabus. It meant that I had to buy a book tonight to read tomorrow, and then write. So I am not a happy bunny about that. But such is life. I can't really grumble can I!

So that, dear readers, is today. Tomorrow night we are heading out for dinner with two dear friends, David & David who are coming up to town to meet us. I can't wait!

I'll post again as soon as I can. Hope all are well!

Big Love,

D&J

Wednesday with a vengeance....

Hello all,

Well, it's the end of Wednesday for us here in London. It's been a long l o n g l o n g l o n g day! We woke this morning at about 5am due to the wonders of jet lag. I was starving, and my stomach though that I had missed dinner due to the time change. So, after lurking under the covers for another 30 minutes trying to go back to sleep we got up and got dressed and went for a walk! Roving the streets of London at 5.30am showed a very different side to that which I am used to. The streets were being swept, the air was crisp and clear and the loudest noises to be heard were the birds singing, punctuated by the odd diesel engine in a taxi passing us by. We spent a pleasant hour walking from Euston up to Camden Town and back, just in time for a cafe to open and serve us breakfast! Egg, Bacon, Sausages and toast were the order of the morning, all washed down with a jolly good cup of coffee. After that, a brisk stroll back to the hotel and the day began proper.

I had a project to do - my anthropology paper. Lets just say that I did it and leave it at that, okay? It took me until 1pm, much longer than I had thought or wanted. James had headed off to his conference leaving me in the hotel to work. Once I had the paper completed, I headed off into the outdoors once more. First stop was lunch, a cheese and onion sandwich, bottle of cola, and a bag of chips/crisps from Marks and Spencer. Such bliss! All this was eaten on the move while ducking in and out of shop windows to avoid the odd shower of rain. Oh, and in between all of this I took a bunch of pictures, though nothing very inspiring I may add. I had a picture mission today, and nothing was going to stop me!

I had been thinking about what I wanted to do for my photo project while I was here. After all, I have a show to put up at Starbucks next week, so my deadline was really here. Suffice to say that I started work on the idea that I had. It involves focusing on one particular landmark in London and the plan is/was to spend the next two or three days photographing it. After about 3 hours of work, I think I may have 4 good usable images. But I have to admit, I am not sure how many more things there are at this landmark. So we shall see how it goes tomorrow and in the meantime I will collect images for plan B! James joined me after his presentation at the conference (which went very well) and we had some more walking and sightseeing to do!

We headed down toward the Houses of Parliament, as it just seemed a nice place to be going. The sun was out, it was late afternoon and the light was just lovely. We spent a pleasant 2 hours walking around, covering Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the South Bank and some of the bridges. I took a bunch more images for Plan B and, surprise surprise, we ended up in the pub around 7pm. It was a welcome pint of beer after all this walking and photographing!

Dinner was a short walk away to a Fish and Chip shop of all things. It was okay, but not wonderful. My tolerance for large amounts of fish and chips has faded as I have become older, and I have to admit that I felt like a beached whale after eating it all. And, truth be told, I still do, 2 hours later.... We walked back to the hotel afterwards, and are now just sitting in the bar chilling with a glass of wine each before heading to bed.

I am sorry that I don't have any images for you all yet, but I haven't had chance to download yet. I'll do them tomorrow morning and maybe work up a few images to post to Flickr. Then it is back to the streets again!

After all, tomorrow is another day!

Big love,

D&J

Day One - Part Two.

Greeting all.....Your friendly BlogMan here!

Well, the first day is at a close. You caught our early adventures in the previous post, and now we are ready for bed. It's 10pm London time here and we are POOPED!

I forgot to mention earlier that we had a super surprise when we arrived at the hotel. The owner of the hotel in the Lake District where we are having our Civil Partnership ceremony next year had delivered a bottle of Champagne to the hotel for us. We had originally planned to meet him for a drink, but he was called away back to the Lakes so he left that instead. I am a sucker for good Champers, and will do anything for a good bottle. So Nick, name your price.....lol. By way of return, you can check out this fabulous mans hotel at http://www.winderhall.co.uk in case you ever need somewhere to stay in the Lakes.

After we left the hotel, today we went and had a sandwich for lunch and carried out a few errands. First order of the day was getting second sim card for James' cellphone so that we were both contactable. So, for those of you who collect phone numbers, here they are:-

David +44 7950 185 421
James +44 7904 614 970

Make a note of those if you want, and you can add them to your phonebooks. We keep our cellphone numbers in both Spain and England alive all the time, so you can always contact us when we are over here/there.

Next stop was to wander over to the Comedy Theatre, just off The Haymarket. We had booked theatre tickets to go and see Sunset Boulevard this coming Saturday. James has always wanted to go to the theatre in London, so we needed to pick our tickets up. Although it's called the Comedy Theatre, Sunset Boulevard is a revival of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical from the 1980's. With a completely re-worked score and staging, it has proved to be a big hit on the London stage second time around. We go this Saturday evening and cannot wait!

After that we headed to Alfred Dunhill, hallowed ground of my favourite clothes designer. Alas, this time we were just looking as the prices are now so far out of reach it isn't funny. We checked out the old store on Jermyn Street, and then trekked over to their new store on Davies Street. For those of you interested in their stuff, which includes luggage, clothes, suits, pens, cuff links, leather, watches and just about everything else, you can see more at http://www.alfreddunhill.com/ Ah to be filthy rich. We have some clothes from them from our previous lives, and it seems that we will never have anymore unless someone adopts both of us and gives us an allowance.

Next up was a leisurely stroll around parts of Mayfair on the way to dinner. By this time we were quite tired, but as it is the first jet lag day, we really needed to keep going until about 10pm tonight to get sleep equalized. We meandered our way around, eventually ending up at Pizza Express on Dean Street, home of London's first Pizza restaurant back in the 1960s and also a jazz club where many luminaries have and still play. Fabulous pizza, great salads and just a super atmosphere. Of course it was also accompanied by a nice bottle of wine. What more can we wish for.

Then we began the walk back to our hotel, where we are now in bed. I hope we sleep well tonight. Tomorrow James has his presentation at the University of London, and I have to tackle the next part of my Anthropology paper in the morning. So it's not all glory! I aim to get the paper done early so I can be out and about working on my pictures. No idea of what yet, but I'll get there!

So that, my fabulous friends and BlogFollowers is your lot for today. We will write more tomorrow!

Sweet dreams and Big Love,

D&J

London Bound

Greetings Blog Pickers,
Well, It’s Tuesday morning (8.55am) and we have just arrived. As I type we are sitting on the Gatwick Express train whizzing our way toward downtown London. The train takes about 30 minutes, so I thought I would take the time to dash off a quick post.

We left Cincinnati bang on time last night at 8pm. The taxi ride was a little alarming as the driver was texting constantly, AND talking on his phone, AND using his two way radio to communicate back to base. Consequently, after whizzing through check-in we headed straight to the bar…where else! After the taxi-ride from hell, a beer was definitely in order. One thing that surprised me was how quiet the airport was. Back in my corporate days, 6.30pm would have been a very busy time with people heading back from meetings etc. I know that when I was travelling around, I would always try to be on the flights that would get me back into CVG at around 6pm or so. Not now though it seems. The airport was a shadow of its former self. Could it be a mixture of the recession and also the fact that people have wised up to the shitty service that the airlines are dishing out? After having been told that if we wanted a once free plastic bag for our checked rucksacs we would have to pay $5 each, it seems that there is no end to the nickel and diming on the skyways. Ah well….bitch bitch bitch.

Finally on board, we settled in for an uneventful flight. The flight attendant sitting opposite me was a dental hygienist by night and a trolley dolly for Delta by day. “In the event of an emergency landing follow the gleaming white teeth to the exit doors please…” After dinner and a drink, I shut my eyes for a sleep. Normally I am not able to sleep for more than 2 hours on airplanes (no idea why that time seems to be my limit), but this time, after waking up after my two, I feel back asleep again for another 3 hours. Quite a record! Arriving at London Gatwick was uneventful, and in full possession of our bags, if not our faculties, we headed out through customs after dashing through immigration. Just think, next time we do this will likely be when James has his marriage visa for when we get hitched in the UK next year. What fun! After a quick stop at the Marks and Spencer “Simply Food” for some water and chocolate biscuits (cookies in American…Chocolate biscuits? ick…..) we headed for the train.

So here we are. James has just leapt out of his skin as a train going the other way passed on the next door track. The dour lady sitting next to me just laughed at him. Perhaps I will smack her in the back of the legs as we get off the train. For those of you who love to know these things, we will be staying at the Hilton Euston, which is on Upper Woburn Place I think. I am sure you can find it online if you must. Once we get to London Victoria on this train, a quick change onto the tube will see us on our merry way. Perhaps a nap and then out into the big city! I’ll write later!

Big love to all!
D&J

PS, we just woke up from our nap, showered and are off to find some lunch. I’ll write soon!

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.....

Hello to all!

Welcome back to our travel blog for those of you who have been here before. For those of you who haven't been here before, then welcome anyway!

James and I are getting ready to head off on a mini-trip next week. We will be heading to London for a few days, so we figured that it was time to dust off the blog and crank it up again. James will be in a conference at the University of London, while I will be taking the opportunity to explore my home city and hopefully make some amazing images...no pressure there then!

We will be staying at the Hilton in Euston which will be quite a novelty. Other than staying for 2 nights in Claridges back in 2005 (which was the most amazing experience ever, by the way) it will be the first time that I have spent an extended period of time in Central London. I'm looking forward to the photo opportunities that it will bring. While James is in his conference I will be roving the streets! In the evenings I am sure that we will be getting up to all kinds of fun stuff, so we will keep you posted.

I'll be posting images on Flickr as before, and then perhaps using some of those images to kick off a blog post here. If you want to access my Flickr pages, you can do so by heading to :-

http://www.flickr.com/davidnmartin98

When I makes a blog post here, I will also make an update to my Facebook status to let you all know that something is going on here. That way you won't have to check multiple places to see what we are up to! Anonymous commenting is turned on for this blog, so if you want to comment here you can, or you can just use Facebook. So many electronic places to go! For those of you who are new here, then you can also read all the archives from our last big trip, our journey to Spain in 2008.

Exciting stuff! We leave on Monday evening, so get ready to travel with us through this blog as usual!

Cheers!

D&J