Epic Vacation Part 4

Off to Germany.

We hitched a ride on Ryan Air and made our way up to Hannover.

A number of years ago, Hubby and I did a relocation cruise out of New York to Miami on a Royal Caribbean ship. Our dinner table mates, Heike and Andreas, were around our age, super nice and cool, and from Germany.

They've been to our house in N. Van to stay with us before they did an Alaska Cruise - now it was our turn to stay with them in Germany.

They are childless and their place is filled with almost priceless artifacts that they've collected from around the world while on their travels. We have two BOYS and our place does not have priceless artifacts...unless you count the old container of chocolate milk found under the couch from Gawd knows when (I clean there...I really do) that was hardened SOLID!!!

So I spent five days stressed beyond normalcy praying that no "brotherly love" would start up resulting in something broken that I could never replace unless I travelled to Egypt....well on second thought I'd actually love to go there.

Heike and Andreas toured us around Hannover and another close town called Hildesheim where Heike's brother works.

I had my first schnitzel in Hildesheim at the above restaurant and it was damn good. The portion sizes are HUGE and I could never finish anything.

We drank LOTS of wine, Ouzo (can't do Ouzo), and ate tonnes of cheese because it's cheap. Well actually, the marathon stuffing our faces with cheap cheese Olympics started in London and just kept rolling merrily along throughout the trip. I mean, what I would pay CDN $8.00 for a wedge of brie, you would pay Euro 1.92 or less for the same size. Holy cheese balls I ate my body weight.

Hannover portion of the vacation ended and we rented a car and drove ourselves up north to visit relatives. Hubby got his "speed on" driving the Autobahn.

Thank you Heike and Andreas for sharing your home with us. We had a great time.

*Thank God hubby speaks fluent German because I had no freaking clue what ANY conversation was about the whole time. It was sort of like being on one of those "quiet retreats" where nobody talks, only I was the only one participating!

Epic Vacation Part 2C

How to get Internet in St. Andrews

When I asked my Mom if there were Internet cafes in St. Andrews, Scotland and she said no. I kind of didn’t believe her. I mean, come on, it’s 2011. Who doesn’t have an Internet cafe?

St. Andrews, Scotland doesn’t. She wasn’t kidding!

The FEW places who did have WIFI (and I mean I can walk faster than their WIFI speed), were temporarily “not working right now”.

How the heck do people send emails in this town!!

We needed to get onto Internet somewhere because we needed to do some online booking for flights we were taking for the remainder of the trip (you can only do this a certain amount of days ahead).

We eventually found a place, The Victoria Bar and Cafe. Slower than a snail moving at high speed, but we’ll take it. We went in once, ordered beer and used their Internet, but for the remainder of our stay in St. Andrews, Internet went something like this…

• Hubby races into town with the car and looks for a spot in the pay parking.
• Hubby pays for one hour of pay parking.
• Hubby races to The Victoria Bar and Cafe.
• Hubby plonks his derriere down on the rock wall opposite The Victoria Bar and Cafe
• Hubby holds laptop up in the air and waits for a signal.
• Hubby finds signal and types away as fast as he can before he loses it.

This is hubby “using the internet” in St. Andrews. Gotta love it!

Epic Vacation Part 2B

...we hit a bird.

So we're driving back from Edinburgh to St. Andrews after a day of climbing all around the Edinburgh Castle, walking down the Royal Mile, having a peek inside the Edinburgh Dungeon (we didn't go in cuz we don't pay for stuff like that, too 'spensive), checking out the haunts of Detective Rebus (Ian Rankin books).

We get over the Firth of Forth bridge, no problem, pretty views. Kids are quiet (could be the slogging around behind Mom and Dad that has done them in).

We're on the motor way, and I'm dozing as I usually do when hubby is driving, when BHAM!

I got jolted awake *thinking to myself, we're in a rental car, that my parents are paying for, what the fuck was THAT!!

Hubby saw this pterodactyl fly up past the driver side, couldn't swerve because we're doing 100 on the motor way. Car still sounds okay, no weird noises coming from engine, so let's pray to GOD that there's no damage and continue on our way.

We get back to the house and survey the damage.

ACK. Round bit on the bumper is missing next to the license plate along with some bird blood.

So hubby comes up with a plan. He phones a BMW dealership in Dundee and orders the round part and matching paint. We go the next day to pick the parts up (and pop into the shops - Primark specifically - because we just happen to be in the area).

Hubby fixes up the parts, takes pictures for an insurance claim he's going to file when we get home. Then we drop off the car back to the rental place and...

Hubby to the rental agent: "yeah dude this piece fell off so I'm putting it back into place now...see there, it's back in place, all done"

We didn't let on about the accident because then they'd start looking for more damaged parts on the bumper.

£40 for parts vs. the messing around we'd get from the dealership had they known about the bird, not to mention extra money being handed over to them.

*Damn them Scottish birds are big

Epic Vacation Part 2

To Scotland we went...

From London we hopped on a British Airways flight to head north up to Edinburgh. From the airport we rented a car to be driven up to St. Andrews Scotland.

So I'm not sure how my hubby does it (probably his smile) but whenever a lady is at the car rental booth, he always seems to snag a nice car. In Long Beach, CA we somehow ended up with a Mercedes C300. Nice car and we felt special.

Hubby posing with 'the car' next to my parents Peugeot.

In Scotland, he manges to snag a BMW something or other for the same price as a regular compact car (Toyota, etc.). However I digress into the world of cars.

The whole purpose of this trip was so that my parents, particularly my mom, could take us all back to the ol'home town of St. Andrews, Scotland. The home of Golf! I've got a lot of history there on my mom's side. My Great Grandfather was the mayor. Much of what you see on the ride through the golf course to the West Sands parking is all because of another relative who was the Burrough engineer.

Both my grand parents, who moved to Canada 20+ years ago, both died in North Vancouver. However my mom and aunt brought them back to the family plot in St. Andrews, Hence, yet another reason to bring us all back to St. Andrews, to "see" my grand parents and other relatives buried there.

It was very peaceful to see the grave site (where my mom wants to be buried - another trip to St. Andrews for me whenever the time comes). I love old grave yards. They are creepy, magical, mystical and romantic all at the same time. In the above picture, my grand parents' engraving hasn't yet aged so it's not quite readable like what's above it.

*in a creepy kind of way, I was hoping to see or feel a ghost.

Epic Vacation Part 1C

Hamleys toy store London - where no sane parent should ever take their child unless that parent has a secret wish to die a slow death by nonstop pestering.

Licking dirt off the floor is more appealing that listening to non stop nagging children demanding you purchase everything in site, then listening to the whining because you said "no"! (I hate you, you don't get me anything...!)

Multiple floors, packed wall to wall with everything you could ever imagine if you're 13 or below, and two or three sales people per floor demonstrating different gadgets to catch the eye of your child and keep them mesmerized and "I want that, it looks cool...please mom, please!!!!!!"

I knew the instant we made the decision to seek out the store on Regent Street that we'd regret ever using the brain cells to form that momentary thought and act on it. We've been to toy stores before - Walmart, Toys R Us, even FAO Schwarz - and we've dealt with the nagging and demanding. All parents do. It's in the job description.

But I believe the sole purpose of Hamleys is to go far beyond that realm of toy-store-nagging; it takes you on a journey to the Twilight Zone of hell on floors 1 through 5 with no exit in site.

Parents walk around like possessed robots with their arms outstretched and a credit card pinched in their fingers, a look of terror in their eyes but they're unable to snap out of the evil trance that has been placed upon them by their children.

You get sucked into a vortex that places you on another planet seen only on SciFi shows. Before you know it, your credit card has been charged and your child is walking away with a purchase and you have no idea how it happened.

...Wait..what the...who...where am I???

And then you walk out of the store pinching yourself - wake up, c'mon, wake up, it was just a dream...right?

*holy cow, that store was amazing

Epic Vacation Part 1B

Tower of London...and I pull a stupid that nearly gets us kicked out of the castle.

So it went something like this. You're pretty much able to take pictures everywhere around the entire attraction, inside and out, with the exception of the room where the Crown Jewels are kept.

Just before you enter the Crown Jewels room, you walk through another room first with writing on the wall that states basically "you are about to enter the room where the Queen's Jewels are held..." or something like that. Also on the wall is a sign that states "no pictures in the Crown Jewels room". Okay, so I kind of knew that you're not supposed to take pictures of the Royal Bling, check. So I thought I'd take a picture of the sign (IN A DIFFERENT ROOM) that stated we were about to enter the Royal Bling room.

Bad move.

Two...(I don't even know what the hell you'd call them, Tower of London employees, Royal Bling guards...whatev) sprang out of nowhere to very nearly confiscate my camera. Oops! The one said please delete the picture(s) you took. ?? I only took one of words on a wall.

So technical gadget illiterate me hands the camera over to hubby cuz I don't know how to delete pictures. He deletes the picture all the while one of these vultures is hanging over his shoulder, pulling at the camera, demanding to see before and after shots and generally making a public scene with us as the main stars.

"It's a picture of words on a wall", hubby says "I don't see what the big deal is, we haven't even hit the Bling room yet."

Vulture is still tugging on the camera trying to get it out of hubby's hands. My god, what a scene and SOOOOO embarrassing. We managed to convince the vulture that there was only one picture and it's now gone and we put the camera away and continued on our way with her evil eyes lasering holes into the back of our heads and turning our brains to mush.

Holy crap, my entire body was the colour of a red rose from embarrassment and I was actually shaking. The rest of the tower was cool and I managed to refrain from making any other moron moves.

I manged to get a few pictures tho...

Attack in the fortress is a real danger. This is where you might be stabbed, impaled or slashed if you wear a speedo

This is Henry VIII's armour. It's hard to see in the pic but his peepee had it's own protector that juts straight out at crotch level. It was kind of funny

Inside the Tower of London fortress

Epic Vacation Part 1

Vacation is now over and it's kind of a bummer. This was a pretty epic one - 5 weeks away. I've never done this before and truthfully felt a bit guilty taking this much time off work at once. This one was about three years in planning. But thanks to my parents for taking care of our round trip flight from Vancouver to Europe and back, and the two weeks in St. Andrews, Scotland, we had ourselves a fabulous trip that took us to 5 different countries (once you're over there, inter EU flights are dirt cheap with Ryan Air and others).

So yours truly, along with hubby and boys, started our trip in London, England, my birth place, to do some sightseeing. I also wanted to show the boys where mother dearest was born.

So we did the usual touristy stuff - St. Pauls Cathedral, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, Covent Garden, Underground rides, Trafalgar Square, Double Decker bus ride, and trips to the local Tesco Express for food (£2.50 for a sammich, chips or chocolate bar, and drink - seriously can't beat that!).

Tower Bridge

The boys at the Olympic Countdown Clock in Trafalgar Square

The best part, tho, had to be the city squirrel being chased down city streets by vehicles (refer back to Frogger for additional proof that squirrels are dumb). Where the heck he came from in the middle of the concrete jungle I don't know, but amusing he was. He headed down one lane being chased by a VDub, only to turn around and get chased down another lane followed by a Black Cab. Was able to make a sharp left only to be met by a bus, did a phenomenal 360 flip two feet in the air to avoid said bus, and bolted in the opposite direction down the street and around a corner, being chased by the bus, never to be seen again. The whole time, we're standing at the bus stop with three other people, and we're all watching this action unfold and exchanging "oooh(s)", "aaahhh(s)", "watch out(s)", "run little squirrel, run(s)" wide eyed to each other.

It was awesome.

*I like to think the squirrel got away

**I tried to pay a visit to the Queen but she didn't accept my call

***I very nearly got kicked out of the Tower of London cuz I took a picture "near" the crown jewels...faux pax!!