Wonderful Days in London

I love this city. I can’t really explain why. Maybe it’s the buzz of big city life, which exist in big cities in Germany as well, I know. But it’s different in London. There is just so much to see and do. I had a looong list of things I wanted to see and do this time and only managed about half of it. Or maybe 2/3. Anyway, I have to get back. Sooner than later :-) Until then here is a report of my latest trip to London. If you want to take a look at my photos while you’re reading this and not just afterwards (I’ll post the link at the bottom of this entry as well) , you can find them in the London, April 2010 album at ipernity.

The weather was mostly really nice. Sunny and blue skies except for Monday, where the sky was rather cloudy. But it didn’t rain, at least not around where I was roaming that day. It was still pretty chilly in the mornings and evenings, but it was around 15-17 °C during the day and that’s not bad for an April vacation. I got to London without any problems on Thursday and reached my hotel around 2 pm. Checked in, unpacked and was off to Little Venice, from where I did a boat tour on the Regent’s Canal up to Camden Lock. Strolled around the lively and colorful Camden Markets for a while, before I went to the West End. Had some very good dinner at Wahaca and saw “Private Lives” with Kim Cattrall and Matthew MacFadyen at the Vaudeville Theatre afterwards. Great play, great performance and I really enjoyed watching it.

On Friday I went to the Natural History Museum, which is a really great museum. (Is there any not-great museum in this town?). I really loved the wide range of topics covered in this museum and that it’s all very educational without being boring. I have no idea if the Dinosaur exhibition really was worth waiting for over 30 minutes to get in, because I refrained from joining that queue. For Dinosaurs? No, thanks. I had bought a ticket for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 exhibition and there were some incredibally wonderful pictures on display.

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Back from London

I came home just a couple of hours ago and quite a lot of these hours were spent with catching up with mails and all kinds of online stuff. This internet is quite distracting indeed :-) I’ll spent the rest of the night catching up with Brothers & Sisters, maybe even Life Unexpected and most of all… sleep :-) Some of the folks who follow me on twitter wanted to see visual proof of the wonderful weather in London on the weekend. Sadly my smartphone didn’t let me post photos via twitter in London, even though it works in Germany. So here is one proof and some more photos will probably follow tomorrow. Or on the weekend…

London Calling…

I didn’t plan to be so busy on the days before I leave for a short (4.5 days) trip to London. But I was busy nonetheless and once again didn’t manage to write the blog posts that I contemplated writing during the Easter weekend. :-( Anyway… the suitcase is packed, the mobile phone mailbox is turned off, the autoresponder for the work-related mailadress is set up, cellphone, iPod and camera are charged. I think I’m ready to go in the morning. I still need to do the dishes tonight and then I’m off to bed. I actually planned to watch LOST tonight, but for once I’m acting as a reasonable adult and not put off going to bed, just because  I want to watch a TV show. It will still be here for me to watch when I get back.

If you follow me on Twitter you might be able to read updates from abroad. A lot if the data roaming works. Just a few if I’m only able to be online with the free Wi-Fi at Starbucks or other places :-) I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I was so busy today that I actually can’t quite believe that at this time tomorrow I’ll be at the Vaudeville theatre watching “Private Lives”. The whole trip still feels like so far away. But it’s not. At all. And now it looks like my brain is already to tired to come up with a decent blog post. So I’m off and will be back here in a week…

London Calling (Once Again)

One of the things that distracted me from the stuff I should have been doing, was figuring out the details of the London trip I want to take in April. To coordinate vacation plans with my co-worker. To find a nice and reasonably priced place to stay. To get one of the London special offer tickets for the train ride (which in the end led to push up the trip a bit, because the return tickets for the dates I actually wanted to go were not as cheap as I liked them to be. Yes, I’m taking the EuroStar again, despite the problems the trains had recently. These were caused by the snow and the low temperatures as far as I remember and there will be neither of that in April. I hope :-)

I’ll be in London from 08 April till 14 April, staying in a hotel in Paddington this time (not the Royal Norfolk though *g*) and as of right now I don’t have any specific plans how to spend the 4 and 1/2 days in town. But I’m pretty sure I’ll find something to do. Musical, theatre, movies, museums, palaces, theme walks and so on. There is so so much to see and do. That’s why I wanted to go back there in the first place.

Another wonderful thing to look forward to… Yeah!

Photos From London And Glasgow

I haven’t taken many photos in London, because I did that when I was there last year :-) And there wasn’t honestly not much to take a picture of in Glasgow, at least not to my eye. But here are a few.

In front of the British Museum there was a huge garden with an Indian landscape. It was supposed to show all the various vegetation in India and it looked really really nice.

Hello From Sunny Scotland

This entry is brought to you with courtesy of the Belgrave Hotel, Glasgow, which provides computers and free internet access in every room. At least I think it’s in every room. There is one in my room anyway. But its keyboard is a nuisance, because some keys have to be pressed very firmly, which slows down typing quite a bit. I decided to try an update anyway as long as I have internet so easy available.

The trip by train to London last Friday didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped, but for once this was no fault of German Rail, but due to some track problems in Belgium. I freaked out a bit, when it was clear, that I’d miss the EuroStar train I was booked for. But it was no problem at all to take the next one, and I wasn’t the only passenger headed to London on the delayed train. So I got there an hour later as planned, but I got there after all :-)
And my first thing was to buy an Oyster Card for the tube and busses. Whoever invented that thing should get a medal, because it’s so much easier to use than the Travelcard. My hotel wasn’t close to the city center, which I didn’t mind. What I did mind, that I happen to get a room on the groundfloor, next to the 24 hour reception and on a rather loud street. Even with earplugs I obviously didn’t sleep too well, because I was pretty exhausted after four nights. Thank God this hotel in Glasgow is located in a rather quiet neighbourhood.

Scotland, Here I Come…

I should be working on my termpaper at the moment. And I will continue to do that later tonight, because I really really have to work on that. I started working on it yesterday and this afternoon and realized that it definitely will take quite some time to finish it. I’ve still got two weeks, which should be enough, but it won’t write itself.

Actually I had planned to write this blog post already yesterday, but then I decided to spend some time at the White House and the watching just the 2h season premiere of season 4 turned into watching the first four episodes in a row. I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed watching it and how much I love this show and it’s characters, but I’d risk boring most of you, so I won’t do it. Just some keywords for my fellow West Wing Fans: Donna in charge in Indiana, CJ on the Rock the Vote stage, Sam’s hockey talk with Mallory, Charlie being a “Big Brother” and even Debbie Fiderer. I liked her a lot when we first met her and I’m sure she’ll be a great addition to the staff. Oh, well there were so many things…

But back to the original purpose of this post. On Wednesday evening I booked aprox. 90% of my summer vacation. Rather spontaneously now, although its basic had been planned or been thought of for a while now. I wasn’t sure if I could actually go on vacation this summer or if it would clash with some work stuff and Greens stuff, because we’ve got elections at the end of August. A few weeks ago I also considered getting a bigger apartement and even started to look around and then I thought maybe I should spend my money (and time and thoughts) on moving and not on vacationing.
Until I realized that both ideas seem to have stalled each other. I suddenly wasn’t sure which one to pursue first and thus seemed to not really act on any one of them. When I realized that though I just spent a short time thinking about which was more important. Or better which could be carried out later this year as well. And that obviously was not the vacation. There will be suitable apartements available later this year. I don’t have to start looking now and miss out on a summer vacation because of that.