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  • Day 4 (Thursday, 11.27.14): Cozumel – Jon’s Neighborhood, Final Thoughts

    Day 4 (Thursday, 11.27.14): Cozumel – Jon’s Neighborhood, Final Thoughts

    It is now actually Friday morning, around 11am Central Time. I’m writing this in the American Airlines lounge at DFW. Because flights into and out of Cozumel are so limited, in both directions we’ve had an overnight in a DFW hotel. In a way it made it more relaxing. We had a nice dinner last night at the hotel, breakfast in the lounge there this morning (traveling with Dan has its perks), a workout in the hotel gym, and now here with all the free drinks and snacks we could want. Not a bad deal. The best part? More electrical outlets than you can shake a stick at – eight just in this little corner we’re sitting in. No problem getting things charged up here.

    Terminal A Admiral’s Club, DFW

    But I digress. Yesterday was just another day in Mexico since there is no Thanksgiving there. We all got up sometime soon after 6am and took our time getting into the day. I finished the blog I was working on and got that posted for whatever day it was. Tuesday’s I think. Before we headed out for breakfast I took some shots of Jon’s place.

    Downstairs is dining, living and kitchen area, in that order. This is the 2nd half of it after you enter.
    And here’s the first half.
    From the couch, you see the TV area and the open ceiling that looks up to the 2nd floor landing between the two bedrooms.
    From the landing looking into the guest room.

     

    Looking down from the same spot I was standing in the above picture.
    Dan really enjoyed playing with Chai while we were there, but couldn’t get him to look at the camera….
    …so Jon stepped in to assist.
    The courtyard you walk into from the street. Nice and private. Also Jon’s scooter, his primary source of transportation when he doesn’t want to walk. This is definitely a scooter island.
    Jon looking fabulous on one leg at his front door.
    Looking down the street to the left from his front gate….
    …and to the right.
    Several of the main roads are boulevards that look just like this.

    We went back to the market we’d gone to on Monday for breakfast to try out one of the other eateries.

    See what I mean about scooters? These are all parked in front of this market.

    This met Dan’s criteria for determining authenticity: the menu outside was NOT in English also, and there were no Gringos in the place. Jon’s observation that the help was plump (seen in the background) made it a winner.

    And it was! I’m usually not one to take pictures of my food but I thought this was just pretty. Chicken enchiladas with mole. The white is pure cream. Californians take note: in 4 days I saw no black olives, nor any sour cream. That’s the way it oughta be.

    Pink condos across the street from the market.

    Dan had been saying for days he should get a haircut while here. So when we happened across this barber with the single chair – empty – and had time to kill, he figured why not. This guy who had chatted us up earlier as we were walking to breakfast ran into us again and talked to Jon and I while Dan got his haircut. She did a really nice job despite the language barrier – Jon helped translate. After we’d walked away Dan goes “Uh, I think she was a man.” We were like “Uh, yea, how long did it take you to figure that out?”

    We ventured into a couple of farmacias looking for anti-itch cream for Dan – he got bit by something in the cenote – but ended up not getting anything. We made it back to Jon’s, finished packing, said our goodbyes to Jon and Chai and took a cab to the airport.

    It’s a pretty small airport. This is the entire waiting area for all gates.

    A seating area (that’s Dan right of center) around a food court where we killed some time. We weren’t that early, it went pretty fast. But this is pretty much the entire airport. We were at our hotel in Dallas (technically Irving) by about 5pm.

    As Dan was going through the photos on his phone he came across this. If you look closely at that little blur in the air between the hut and the palm tree just left of center, that’s me parasailing on Monday. He could see me from where he’d stayed back on the beach.

    FINAL THOUGHTS

    For my first ever trip to Mexico, I have to admit several things surprised me.

    1. Speed bumps, aka topes. They are everywhere, including where you wouldn’t expect them along freeways. Jon says the entire country is that way. It was just so odd. We got surprised by them a few times.

    2. For all the jokes/cautions I got about “don’t drink the water” coming into this trip, while here it wasn’t that big of an issue, but it does have a way of lingering in the back of your mind when you learn that even the locals don’t drink the water. The closest I got to tap water was rinsing my toothbrush off. We never got sick so must’ve done OK. And we ate in some pretty local places, which is our tendency. Jon assured us even in family-owned hole in the wall places, which is our preference, they’re not going to risk getting their customers sick and are well prepared to deal with the water issues.

    3. There’s definitely a difference between the resort areas – which is where most of the people I know who’ve come to Mexico on vacation, at least recently, go  – and the neighborhoods where folks live. I guess this is true in the USA too but the gap here seems more dramatic. That said, we were very glad to have stayed out of the tourist areas, because the whole point to us is to get a feel for what it would be like to live wherever we are.

    4. Dogs. I can’t remember that last time I saw numbers of stray dogs roaming around. Maybe never, at least not this much. Flashbacks to childhood perhaps in the south side of San Antonio. But it’s so obvious here it was striking. And it was everywhere we went, not just Cozumel.

    5. On this trip more than any other we’ve done, I was struck by the randomness of privilege. Especially when we were in Chemax, all I could think of was: these folks may have no idea how bad this is if it’s all they know, and certainly no idea or perhaps even means to get out of it. And the stray dog issue was rampant there, and they were sick and sad. It was very depressing. We are so blessed on so many levels and usually completely unaware of it until we encounter something like this.

    6. Still, all of the locals we encountered everywhere were very friendly to us and seemed happy and content with their lot in life. Of course there’s no way to no if that’s true for sure. But even the guy who talked to Jon and I while Dan got his haircut had an interesting story about living in the states as an illegal for 10 years, following his mother – did well in high school and even got a sports scholarship to college – and that was when his problems began because the school needed his social security number to arrange for the rest of his financial aid. He ended up not being able to go there, and got deported after a random traffic accident in a parking lot with an off duty cop. Now to hear his side of it, it wasn’t his fault and the odds were all stacked against him. No way of knowing if that’s true or not – he certainly seemed the type who could get himself into trouble! – but what I really noticed about this guy is how happy and content he seemed despite his tale of woe. He didn’t see himself as a victim and had decided he was going to be happy no matter what. “Look at this beautiful place I live in! It could definitely be worse.”

    By the time I had landed on Sunday, Dan and Jon had already talked about us coming back next year, and spending some time in Belize. So we will see how all that turns out!

    As always, thanks for coming along for the ride.

  • Day 3 (Wednesday, 11.26.14): Chichen Itza

    Day 3 (Wednesday, 11.26.14): Chichen Itza

    After a really good night’s sleep for all of us, we headed down to breakfast at 7am.

    We are at the very beginning of “high season” in this region – Jon says it really starts to pick up the weekend after Thanksgiving so we’re getting out just in time. So there weren’t a lot of people at the hotel. The weather was beautiful – high 70’s, no rain, relatively low humidity; very different from the day before which was very humid and mid-90’s. We were very grateful that all worked out!

    The dining room was beautiful. The woman in black talking at the table behind us, Lucia, is the hotel manager. She stopped at our table and asked for our room numbers; based on that she asked “which one of you is Mr. Haas? Is that how you say it?” A lovely woman with beautiful green eyes and white hair – probably not Mayan native – she was extremely gracious and pleased that we were happy with our stay.

    If you look closely, you can see a red bird perched on a ledge just left of center. The next two photos provide better shots.

     

    The rooms were nice although we spent very little time in this, which isn’t all that unusual for us. Shower, sleep, go!

    The view onto the balcony from the room Dan and I had. Jon’s room was down the hall and around the corner; his balcony was just on the other side of the left wall. In his room you actually entered from the balcony.
    It’s a jungle out there!
    I loved this room – the main lobby off the front entrance, with a grand staircase. That’s Dan in the middle fiddling with his phone.
    Long outside hallway to the dining room.

    After breakfast we walked over to the Chichen Itza entrance which was towards the back of the property. One of the reasons I picked this place to stay is it’s the only hotel in the area that backs up to the ruins, so when you’re ready to go you just walk on over. And, the price was actually beyond decent. Found it on Booking.com.

    After we got our tickets and were walking in, we got asked if we wanted a tour guide. We initially said “no”, but as we started into the park we realized there wasn’t a lot of explanation provided with what you were seeing. Dan and I really enjoy the history behind stuff like this so we went back and got the guide. Meet Blario. The Yucatan is his home but he’s lived all over and speaks 6 languages. He was a tour guide for 27 years before he went to school to be an expert on the Mayans – a 3 year education required by the government – so he could give tours here. We were very glad to have him around. We learned a lot, he was very pleasant, funny, and patient with all of our questions. And he usually had an answer.

    Blario is standing in front of our first sighting of the pyramid, from the south. This side is completely unrestored, pretty much as it was found in 1922, with the brush and stuff cleaned up. The picture below is one I took from this photo album he was carrying around – in fact on the page that’s open above I just noticed. This was how it looked when it was discovered.

    It’s estimated this pyramid was built around 900 AD. There’s a smaller one inside built around 600 AD. You used to be able to walk up it but they shut that down on 07/07/2007 to help with preservation. Blario said people would complain that they couldn’t get a good picture on it because there were too many other people there! Well, duh.

    Chicken Itza was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is considered the best representation of the Mayan culture and also one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

    This is from the east. Notice the left side looks different from the right – the difference between “as found” on the left and “restored” on the right.
    Blario went into Great Detail about what skilled astronomers the Mayans were and how there are actually three different calendars represented in the pyramid. I’m not even going to attempt to repeat it. Let’s just say you got a deep appreciation for how advanced they were for their time, at least when it came to understanding the solar system. Dan asked a direct question – did they understand that the earth revolved around the sun? We never got a straight answer to that question. It reminded us of something Jon had said earlier: in this culture, the men in particular have a hard time with “I don’t know” so you can never quite trust that you’re getting the right information.
    Part of the Temple of the Warriors, the sight of, among other things, human sacrifices to the sun god.
    More Temple of the Warriors.
    Part of a large area called “the market place”, and also something about 1000 columns. This is just a small slice.
    These were once faces, but erosion has left only skulls. Each represents a warrior who died and is literally based on their actual face. The skull would be sculpted first because it’s easier to paint the face on top of it to make it more realistic.

    The ball court. Other than the pyramid, this is probably where we spent the most time, and it was a fascinating story. I’ll try to do it justice.

    Although we never got the name of the game, this ball game is like a cross between soccer and baseball; eventually we decided it was most like volleyball. The ball is bouncy, in size between a tennis and baseball. 6 players on each side carry a 2 foot thin stick in their left had, used as defense, and a 1 foot thick stick in their right, used as a bat. Umpires up on the high platform drop the ball onto the field and the teams have to keep it in the air, with the goal of getting it up on this lower platform – about 5 feet high and 5 feet wide – where the team’s captains are. Once the ball is with the captain, the captain can place it wherever he wants, with the goal of bouncing it and hitting it through the ring in the middle of the wall. In the photo above, you can best see the one on the right. The two photos below show the ring on the left.

    This is also the platform where the captain’s play. If the captain gets the ball through the ring, the game is over. Games can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 days, with a max of 2 hours per day. Any time the ball drops to the ground, the dropping team gets negative points. If a captain never gets the ball through the ring, at the end of the 20th day, the team with the most negative points loses.

    Here’s where it gets interesting. This game is played all year long by various teams in the region. At the close of the season, at end of harvest, umpires pick the best players from all of the teams to play in this championship of sorts. This group of umpires also determined which team would represent the underworld, and which would represent – I can’t remember his exact language now – but essentially good and evil. Now a different set of umpires would actually run the game, and they did NOT know who was who on the field in terms of good vs. evil.

    This final game of the season was a great ritual with significant symbolism attached. If the winning team was “good”, it was considered a predictor that next year’s harvest would be good as well, and everyone celebrated. If the winning team was “evil”, it was considered a predictor that next year’s harvest would be bad – and the captain would be beheaded in sacrifice in order to appease the gods of the underworld, his blood soaked into the ground to make it richer.

    For regular games throughout the year, people can climb the stairs in the back of the court and watch it from the top platform. For the final game after harvest, the top platform is reserved for umpires. The general public is not allowed to watch the game, in case there’s a beheading required at the end.

    This culture believed snakes were good, there are LOTS of snakes represented in their iconography.

    This is a snake that begins the captain’s platform.

    This was essentially a planetarium.
    The full building, with people in front for perspective.
    This and the remaining shots were the first buildings discovered, and have not been restored at all.
    This was a place of worship.
    Blario could explain in great detail every meaning of every symbol in these building. I won’t even attempt :)
    The planetarium from the front steps of the hotel.
    Jon & Dan in front of the hotel as we were leaving.

    Although we let here about Noon, there really wasn’t much to the rest of the day. We went to a little town called Chemax where the plan was to have lunch, and then go to another cenote after. This was a very small, poor town and not very developed. To say that there weren’t any restaurants we were comfortable eating at is an understatement. Lots of sad, stray dogs though. We did stop for water and snacks and pushed on to Tulum where we would have lunch instead. Tulum is a big tourist down at the bottom of the Mayan Riviera so there were lots of eating options.  By the time we decided on a place and ordered, it was already 3pm. Short version – we realized we just weren’t going to have time to do it all, so took our time eating and walked around Tulum some more after.

    We headed back to Playa del Carmen to catch the ferry to Cozumel. We made it in time to get the 6pm ride. Playa is also very touristy and 5th Ave was lit up and vibrant as we walked from Alamo Rental Car to the ferry station. Lots of people, including guys with monkeys and other animals we couldn’t identify! to have you pay to take your pictures with them. We passed.

    A northern storm was kicking up and the waves were very choppy, making for a very rocky ferry ride back home. It didn’t seem to bother Jon and Dan much but I was nauseous for a good 2 hours even after we got back to Jon’s. Kept it down though, and was able to eat a couple of tacos for dinner :) Jon rode on his scooter over to the place we’d gone to the other night and brought them back. Jon went to bed about 9pm, Dan went to bed around 11 I guess. I stayed up to do homework (working on a masters online with Golden Gate University if you don’t know that) and work on the blog.

    And that was Wednesday!

  • Day 2 (Tuesday, 11.25.14): Valladolid & the X’keken Cenote

    Day 2 (Tuesday, 11.25.14): Valladolid & the X’keken Cenote

    Yesterday, Tuesday, felt like a really long day because by the time we got back to our hotel I was beat, pretty much went straight to bed and slept 8.5 hours, very rare for me. Hence, no blog update yesterday.

    We got an early start again, leaving Jon’s place around 6:15am and walking to the Cozumel port area to catch the ferry, a little over a mile away. Destination: Playa Del Carmen.

    The Disney cruise ship in front was in the process of turning around. There were about 5 cruise ships coming into the port at around 7am. That’s a bunch of tourists headed into Cozumel for the day.
    Looking back on the port area from the ferry. Love the huge Mexican flag.

    We sat on the 2nd level in the open air section of the back of the ferry. You can barely see me (just back of my head in the green shirt) and Jon (profile sitting in front of me) about the middle of the picture.

    We were unprepared. Thanks, Dan!
    All there was to look at in the 40 minute crossing.
    Playa Del Carmen from the ferry.

    Playa Del Carmen started out as a fishing village but once the ferries to Cozumel were put in, tourism became its major industry. Founded just in 1937, it’s now almost 150,000 people.

    Sculpture at a park on the beach. The rings represent a ball game that we learned about at Chichen Itza later.

    We rented a car at Playa and drove about 3 hours to our hotel, Mayaland. Yucatan is one of five Mexican states (along with 5 other countries) where the Mayan civilization lived from about 3000BC to 1500AD. There are many, many references to the Mayans in this area. As we were driving from Playa headed to Cancun before we turned into the mainland, we passed resort after resort. The Caribbean side of the Yucatan Peninsula is referred to as the Mayan Riviera.

    For some reason I’ve been surprised to learn that much of Mexico – as least this part of it – is covered in jungle. I can’t say I’ve ever been in one before. It’s a very different experience – sights, sounds and overall feel – from being in a forest or merely woods. The Mayaland Hotel is essentially in a jungle, just cleared out enough for habitation.

    A portion of the back yard of the hotel.
    Looking back at the hotel from the back. Our rooms were on the 3rd floor.
    That’s Dan on the 2nd floor outside hallway. The balcony to our room is just above him.

    We checked in and dropped off our things, and headed to the town of Vallodolid for lunch. This town is known for its longanisa so Jon and I both had that, and it was excellent. We had a leisurely lunch and walked around town a bit.

    When we were at the corner up by the church, we saw 3 army pickup trucks pass, all painted in green camouflage, with machine guns mounted on the cabs and soldiers standing behind them in the beds of the trucks. Just driving through town. Certainly not a sight you see every day. We thought it best not to take a picture.


    That green building in the back is essentially a food court. We sought refuge there in the early evening – first just to get some coffee, but as we were sitting there a huge thunderstorm struck. It was a great place to watch the lighting over the park and the church and listen to the thunder and the heavy rain.

    We headed back up the same road we’d come from to check out a cenote. (se-note) I had never heard of this before but Jon and Dan were very excited about the prospect, although neither of them had been either. We discovered over the next couple of days this area has a ton of them. Essentially a cenote is an underground cave that collects rain water, and are popular places to swim, and even snorkel and dive in. We went to one called X’keken. We had understood it would be lit, but it wasn’t – although we could see the lights at first, they just weren’t turned on. So we used the flashlights on our phones to make our way down. This first picture I took with the flash of my phone so that’s as good as it gets, but figured it would get the point across. It was a beautiful cavern with a hole in the top that let light in. There was a literal busload of teenage girls down there, too, so it was kinda crowded and loud what with all their screaming for the sake of screaming :) But we braved the water anyway – a little cold at first but you got used to it. There were lots of catfish in the water, and lots of bats flying around up top. The place smelled of bat guano.

    At one point all of the girls left at once and suddenly it was just the 3 of us. Amazing. It was so quiet, and the water so peaceful, we couldn’t believe we had the whole thing to ourselves. It was an incredible experience. Then, out of nowhere the lights came on. One of the workers came down to start closing up. We asked why the lights were off in the first place but it was a confusing answer – we believe it was related to government budget cuts. It did allow us to get a better picture where you can clearly see you are in a cavern.

    We went back to Vallavolid after this and that’s when we got caught in the storm. Eventually that let up and we went out for dinner. We had gone back to this place we first stopped at for lunch, but they only had the buffet going at the time, he told us the dinner menu took effect at 5pm and we should return after 5. We got there about 7 – they were closed already, at 6:30! We couldn’t believe it. Maybe they thought no one would go out in the rain? It was just very odd. But Dan talked to the hostess about where to go that tourists wouldn’t normally go, and she made a recommendation that we ended up really liking. We had a nice dinner (something, something, tortillas, chips, habanero sauce, something something) and got back to the hotel after 9pm.

    Today was Chichen Itza. More about that tomorrow!

     

  • Day 1: Cozumel

    Day 1: Cozumel

    So technically this isn’t Day 1, more like Day 1.5. And it depends on who you ask. It’s Day 2 or 2.5 for Dan. We were both traveling last week – me to Ohio, Dan to North Carolina. I got home on Friday, left on Saturday to come in this direction. But since you can’t get same-day connections coming from the west, I spent the night in a DFW airport and got here yesterday, Sunday, about Noon. Same day connections from the east are not a problem; Dan went from RDU to Miami then here – just took a little over 3 hours in the air total, which is why it didn’t make sense for him to go home first. And why he got here on Saturday. Confused? Try being us for a month :) We do have interesting travel schedules. (The worst part was figuring out what to do with pNut when Dan’s last minute trip to NC came up, but that’s a whole other story. Thanks to Mary Lou, Jo and Laura for helping out!)

    Yesterday seemed to go pretty fast. Dan and Jon had been walking around the island all morning. They walked to the airport to meet me; Dan was pretty tickled by this. “I’ve never walked to an airport before!” I was standing in front of the airport and was certainly surprised to see them, I was expecting a Jeep. We took a cab to Jon’s place, had a time getting there because of a bike event, lots of streets were closed off.

    Jon has a very nice 2 bedroom condo. Will have to remember to get some pictures before we leave. We went out for lunch to a seafood place. We got to pick the fish we wanted to eat from an ice chest! Jon and I had grouper, Dan got snapper. The whole fish was fried, showed up on your plate completely intact, eyeballs and all. It was very good, very fresh.

    We went to a little resort area after and played in the water a little bit. The water was very clean (although not according to Jon – guess it depends on what you’re used to) and cool but not cold. Very different from the northern Pacific that’s for sure. I’ll have to admit I didn’t realize that we were in the Caribbean. Not sure what I thought it was – the Gulf of Mexico probably, which would be true if we were on the other side of the Yucatan Peninsula. But this side is definitely in the Caribbean. And it’s beautiful.

    First sighting of the Yucatan Peninsula from the plane.
    Cancun! We won’t make it there this trip. I hear it’s very touristy, not really our scene anyway.
    First sighting of Cozumel from the plane. Pretty pretty!
    Amazing water. Yes that’s a runway in the background.
    The temperature upon arrival. A nice balance to the 12 degrees I had in Columbus earlier in the week!

    We had dinner last night at a local taco joint and it was excellent, then Mexican ice cream after for dessert. This morning we got up early to drive to the other side of the island so we could catch the sunrise at 6:01am.

    There were only a few other people on the beach with the same intention; they’re behind Jon under those huts.
    No one on the other side of the beach at all. We were near a restaurant that wasn’t open yet, but Dan found its swings, see far right and below.
     

     

    We had breakfast here, a little eatery in an open market. I had the pozole. Dan and Jon both tried it; we all agreed it was probably the best we’ve ever had. Dan had a chicken and veggie stew with a little habanero on the side!, and Jon had what I’d describe as a breakfast tostada – eggs, beans, cheese on a flat crunchy corn tortilla.

    The natives have a very distinct look about them: short bodies (Dan says he feels tall here!), round faces, sharp features, sometimes exaggerated – like really big eyes or really wide smiles. Almost caricatures. Jon says its the influence of the Mayan genetics; this side of Mexico looks very different from the western side which has more Spanish blood in them – taller, lighter skin, green eyes, etc.

    After breakfast we came here for a lazy rest of the day. Were here from roughly 10am – 3pm. The water was beautiful, even Dan went in finally and did a little snorkeling. Neither of us are big beach people; one day was enough :) If Jon hadn’t moved here, I’m not sure it would have ever occurred to us to come.

     

     

     

    The best part of that location was, being a resort that receives lots of visitors from cruise ships, it had ample things to do – including para-sailing, something I’d hoped to be able to do while here but hadn’t really done anything about it. We just lucked into it. We learned at the last minute Jon could go on the boat with me (Dan had stayed back on the beach thinking neither of them would be able to) so away we went, and he got some decent pictures.

    This guy has been doing this for 20 years. He did not prepare me at all for what was about to happen, just started strapping things on me.

     

    “Sit all the way down” he says. Shortly after this my ass begins to hang off the side of the boat and I ask “Is this really supposed to be happening?” Or something to that effect. He just laughs and flaps his arms like a bird. “Relax and fly!” he says.
    And away I go….

     

    Flying low…
    …higher….
    That you can’t see me gives you a clue how high up that is. I forgot to ask him how long the line was. But I was clearly higher than the 10 story buildings on the beach. We’re guessing about 200 feet.

    It is very quiet up there. It got pretty windy and choppy at times but didn’t feel unsafe. Mostly it was peaceful, just sort of floating, and of course stunning views of the Sea and the island. Definitely recommend it.

    The touch down at the end included a nice little dip.
    Three dips in the water in fact. I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. And I was thankful for the life vest!

     

    We took a drive around the island after that. This a bit farther down where we were this morning for sunrise, on the east side of the island. Waves are very choppy, beach very rocky. Very different from the resort side. Big areas of this are completely undeveloped. Across the highway from us is very thick jungle.

    We stopped back in town for a two taco snack from a taco truck. And I don’t mean like you’re used to at home – I mean a literal pickup truck with a camper, some tupperware and a heating apparatus. It was good. Hot sauce was habanero again. I stayed away from it. Dan didn’t. And loved it while being in pain.

    We came back to Jon’s to rest a bit. And we needed it. I think everyone took a micro nap. Headed out again about 7:30. Had dinner at another local joint. Jon learned his lesson after taking Dan to someplace sorta touristy on Saturday, and has sought out the authentic stuff from there on out. Jon got a quesadilla, and it was different still from those I had ordered at the last two places. Each of mine were different and clearly intended to be appetizers; this was a full on meal, easily 3-4x the size of what we’d seen so far. I got huaraches, Dan got chalupas. All good. (OK, so I’m fascinated that Google’s spell check recognized huaraches but not chalupa!)

    It looks empty but it was pretty crowded by the time we left. We were the only gringos in the place, always a good sign.
    On the wall behind us.

    Dessert was at the same little ice cream chain we went to last night. A different location for me, but Jon and Dan came to this one Saturday night.

    And that’s a wrap. It was a full day and we have an early start again tomorrow.

  • It’s getting real

    It’s getting real

    On Sunday, July 27, 2014, we met with the architect, Chris Ridgway, to review the first set of plans he drew up. These were based on plans we (mostly Dan of course) had come up with, which Dan had done a very nice job of drawing up in Sketchup, an online cad program he’d taught himself to use.

    We had shared those plans with the architects we interviewed back in March, and one of the things we liked about Chris was the first thing he said was: “yes, I’ve looked at them, they’re great, but I’d flip the top floor so the view from the living area was towards Devil’s Slide.” We were like “well of COURSE that’s how it should be.” Dan spent some time after that trying to figure out how to accomplish that while NOT flipping the bottom floor, a challenge because of the stairs. So that was one of the problems we’d ask Chris to solve for in his first set of drafts.

    We sat down at Gherkin’s again, the sandwich shop, and looked over what he’d prepared. I may have gotten a little choked up when he first laid them out. It was a revelation to see our ideas drawn up professionally, with several tweaks made – in some cases major, like flipping the 2nd floor kitchen to the front of the house – that not only solved the problems we’d asked him to address but overall made the entire design better. There were only a couple of things he did that we knew wouldn’t work for us – like an actual master bath, which we don’t need or want – and he got out his pencil and ruler and made changes there on the spot as we gave him feedback.

    He showed some sketches of what the exterior could look like, 3 of them, one in particular which Dan Really Liked. It will be a modern look, but not too modern. We spent over 90 minutes there talking about all kinds of details, always incorporating what views would be available in each room. Chris is very good about making sure we are bringing the outside in. We then went over to the property and looked at the views again in the context of the design we’d been discussing and it was pretty exciting. It was cloudy that evening with the fog cutting off the tops of the mountains; Dan just couldn’t get over how pretty it was. Neither of us could get over that we’re going to live here one day.

    Here’s where we are after that day.

    This is the first floor. It’s about 700 square feet. It will be a rental for sure. We keep going back and forth on whether or not it will be long-term or vacation. We could theoretically make more money on a vacation rental, but it will also require more up front costs in furnishings, plus managing regularly changing tenants, which will be more work. We’ll see.

    The first front door is the entrance to the 2nd floor; the entrance to the 1st floor is set back on the left side of the house.

    2nd floor, which will be initially some combination of secondary residence/vacation rental. Eventually, it is where we will live full time. About 1000 square feet.

     A nice color sketch of the exterior front. Those slats in the front staircase on the right are windows. He’d originally put them on the left; my contribution was pointing out that the mountain view is on the right if you’re looking out from the inside; the other side is just street and houses. We eventually landed on a wrap-around glass concept so the whole staircase will be windows, which is the sketch below. Either way, I’m going to have a cool balcony from the office.

    Since then we’ve finally found someone to survey the land – I just put the deposit for that exercise in the mail today. It was harder than you’d think – we kept getting turned down because everyone was too busy. But Chris needs the topographical data to be able to complete the blueprints so some of his work will stop until he gets that. We continue to tweak the design – he just sent the most updated drawings today based on our feedback, but they’re PDFs so probably won’t upload well here. They are not substantially different from what’s above.

    So yea, it’s getting real.

  • The Road to Montara

    The Road to Montara

    On May 5, 2014, we closed on a lot in Montara, CA, where we will build a property that will serve as investment income and a secondary residence before becoming our permanent place of residence when we retire at some unknown point in the future. It is a couple of blocks from the Pacific Ocean and some of it will have that ocean view, along with a view of the Montara mountains. This will fulfill a longtime dream Dan has had of building a house from the ground up; that it’s a coastal property makes it that much sweeter. We left for an amazing 17 day trip to Europe the next day (Paris, Edinburgh, London). A life beyond my wildest dreams? Pretty much.

    Getting to this point has been quite a journey. Dan said recently that the idea to build a coastal property first really struck and held when he watched the movie “A Single Man” the first time. (It’s one of his favorite movies, he’s watched it several times since.) Let’s call it January, 2010. Had he accepted a different New Year’s Eve party invitation for 12/31/09, we would have met that night. But that’s a different story. Let’s just say we were both in a period of transition during that time. He went to SF that evening instead and later that weekend saw this movie. The seed was planted.

    Fast forward to December, 2011. We had been dating for about 6 months. We’d decided in September to commit to building a relationship, but I asked that we put off any discussion about living together until January. Life had moved very fast for me in 2010 and 2011 and I just needed some time to catch up. We spent a few days and nights before Christmas in Santa Barbara, spending Christmas Eve day in LA, in particular Venice Beach. It was the first time either of us had explored the canals. We were completely charmed. We were lodging at a Santa Barbara B&B; Dan stayed up that night doing the math on what it would take to buy something in Venice Beach and live there at some point in the future, checking out things that were for sale and doing the investigatory stuff he does so quickly and thoroughly. It was the first time I’d seen him in this mode – what was to be the first of many times – and frankly it terrified me. When he first pronounced “we could do this – a $1.2 million house isn’t out of reach” – I was floored. Not 18 months before I had bought a $180k house by myself and thought that was a big deal. This was mind boggling. We started talking weather, neighborhoods, investment property vs. living there, what it would be like to live in LA, how would I feel about leaving all my friends?, what would he do for work since I could work anywhere in my present job, etc. Whoa, whoa, whoa. My head was spinning. I could barely process it all. I had known since I met Dan that my life was going to be different if this relationship worked out, but this frankly had never crossed my mind. This was a whole different scale for me that – in my wildest dreams, maybe – I’d never given any serious thought to because it never occurred to me that there was any realistic possibility of it.

    I’d asked Dan in September to give me until New Year’s to make a decision about moving in with him. We’d already decided that if we did combine houses it would be in Davis; since I worked from home and he worked in Davis it made no sense for him to pick up a 25 mile commute. Plus his house was bigger, nicer. So on January 2 he’s like “OK, when’s it going to be?” My head had just barely calmed down from the Venice Beach panic. Not panic about Venice per se, more in a “this will now be your life” sort of panic. Was I ready for that much change? I was still adjusting to the realization that life with Dan was going to be way bigger than I’d imagined would ever be possible. But if we’re going to do it, let’s do it. So I moved in MLK weekend.

    Sometime that Spring Dan started looking at potential investment properties in Midtown Sacramento. I could make all of the next 2 years or so a really long story but the details really are not that important, so let’s see if I can frame it this way.

    1. Dan was itching to do another remodel. He loved the process he deployed in the Burlingame and Davis houses and was ready to play again. He loves the creativity, exploring the possibilities, and the execution. And if you’ve seen either of those houses, you know he’s excellent at it. His ultimate dream was to build something from scratch.
    2. Dan was also trying to diversify his investment portfolio by adding a real estate element. His focus was on multi-unit; duplex a minimum, but we’d looked at a 6 unit apartment building once, too. 
    3. Dan is also much better at having an eye on the future than I am. After years of practicing one day at at time, where future tripping used to be debilitating for me, I had to learn to keep up and do what he does so effortlessly: plan without attachment.
    4. All of the above put together resulted in an endless number of possibilities based on whatever property we were looking at at the time. Is the potential pure investment income, IE rentals? Would we ever want to live/retire there? That would impact the way we approached remodel of at least one unit. Was the area good for potential vacation rental instead of long-term? Was it just a lot we could built a rental on now but retire to later? What was the rate of return for rentals in the market? If we couldn’t get more than 7% overall (and Dan has a snazzy spreadsheet he built to figure all that out each time), it didn’t make sense. Here are the various neighborhoods we looked at applying these questions based on each specific opportunity:
      • Midtown Sacramento 
      • Land Park in Sacramento 
      • Orinda 
      • Rockridge in Oakland 
      • Lake Merritt area in Oakland 
      • Various spots in San Francisco (ruled out pretty early because the rental return wasn’t there – could never figure out how to get more than 2%) 
      • Bodega Bay

    In December, 2013, he came across a property in El Granada, an area we’d never heard of, just south of Pacifica. Again making a long story short, the importance of that property is that it got us to investigate an area we’d never considered but eventually fell in love with – these little towns between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay: El Granada, Moss Beach, and Montara.

    We’d put in a bid on a very narrow lot in Montara that we didn’t get, but we loved the neighborhood, how close it was to Montara State Beach (a couple of blocks), and the sound of the waves from the street. There was a twice-the-size vacant lot next door and we’d said “too bad THAT’S not for sale” because it would give us so many more building options. A month later, Redfin sent Dan a notification: it was on the market.

    It was a lengthy closing process because we were waiting for San Mateo county to issue compliance certificates that would confirm the building process would not require review by the Coastal Commission, a whole different layer of review on top of the county process we wanted to avoid if possible. We had interviewed architects the first weekend in March thinking we were closing any time; it didn’t close until May 5, 2014. We left for Europe the next day.

    We returned from vacation with busy work and travel schedules, and didn’t make it back down there to meet with the architect we’d decided on, Chris Ridgway, until June 28. He lives in Half Moon Bay, knows the San Mateo planning process well, designed a house on the same street we bought on, and has the skills and personality to be the collaborative partner we were looking for. We spent 2.5 hours with him at Gherkins, the little sandwich shop in Montara where we’d had lunch once before. It’s quirky and we like it.

    We had dinner that evening at La Costanera, a Peruvian place right there on Highway 1 across from 2nd Street, where you turn to get to our place. Beautiful views, which is probably what you’re paying for. We thought the food was good but a bit over priced.

    Here are the first pictures of the lot.

    The orange mesh is the “storypoling” going on with the lot next door – the one we didn’t get. The new owners are going through design review now, and this process shows the neighbors where the boundaries of the house will be. Notice the roof line will block the ocean view from the street. But the lot directly in front of you is where we will build. Those trees are in the property behind us and will stay there, thankfully. We will not only have an ocean view from the 2nd floor, which will be our unit when we retire, but those trees help shield the direct sun. We came back this evening and noticed at this time of year, the sun is setting right in the middle of this view. Pretty stunning.

    All this brush will eventually go. The first floor unit will be about 700 square feet, and our intent is that it will always be a vacation rental; perhaps a secondary if we want to be here and the upper unit is occupied. The 2nd floor will be about 1000 square feet of living area once you back out what you lose with the stairs. It’s where we will eventually retire, and will be our “primary secondary” if you will. And if at some point the stairs are too much for us, we can simply switch. It’s a pretty good plan. 

    That peak left of center on the end is Devil’s Slide. Landside used to close this section of Highway 1 several times a year, but they’ve built a tunnel through the mountains so that’s no longer an issue. Here’s more on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Slide_%28California%29

    Montara Mountain. This will be the view from my office!

    And so it begins. We’ve got a long way to go.

  • Final Days: Home via NYC

    Final Days: Home via NYC

    We left London early Saturday morning on May 24. And I mean early: out of the flat by 5:30am. We took a bus then the subway to Heathrow for an 8:30am flight to NYC. This was our 3rd time in Heathrow on this trip and I still didn’t take any pictures of the lounge! We had breakfast there and boarded shortly after we got there, although there was enough time for Dan to take a shower.

    You can tell how early it is by the completely empty subway!

    The New York City stop was part of a strategy to manage jet lag. We would have had a layover anyway, we just decided while we were here we’d make it a really long layover, play some in the Big Apple, and ease our way back into our regular time zone. We landed in NYC about 11am Eastern at JFK. Getting from the airport to the hotel took awhile. The airport trains took us to Jamaica Station, and from there we took the E subway. We quickly learned once we departed that this wasn’t going to drop us as close to the hotel as we thought, but we were committed at that point so just rode it out.

    It dropped us at 42nd Street and 8th Ave. We were staying at the Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central, which was at 42nd Street and Lexington. Technically this was only 6 blocks, but in this direction they were the long NYC blocks, not the short ones. (If you’ve walked Manhattan before you know what I’m talking about!) And, we’d completely forgotten that it was a holiday weekend, but were reminded of that as we navigated the ridiculous crowds on a Saturday afternoon around Times Square. We had contemplated the thought of seeing a show that evening, but were wondering if we’d be able to stay awake through it. The throngs of people made our decision for us. We just glanced up Times Square as we crossed Broadway and were like “no way.”

    By the time we got to our room we decided we were hungry so turned around and went out again; it was about 2pm by this time. (Yes, despite the 11am arrival, everything took a long time! I wasn’t even off the plane yet by 11:20, and the subway ride took over an hour…)

    Yelp found us a place called Udon West not too far from the hotel. We took a left up Lexington right into an open market with the street blocked off. I didn’t realize they did this in NYC. It was probably 6 blocks long. Not a ton of variety – mostly food vendors and crafts stuff. Lots of gyros and grilled corn. The restaurant was on 46th and we found it easily. Nice hole in the wall Japanese, it was nice to have good old Asian food again! (Europe has lots of Asian food, it’s just incredibly expensive there for some reason, plus we try to find things we can’t get at home.)

    While playing around with Yelp, Dan realized NYC had a Koreatown down in the low 30’s, something else we didn’t know, and we decided we would go there for dinner later. We wanted to walk in Central Park, which starts at 58th. Even though those are the short blocks in that direction that’s a heckuva lot of back and forth, and we’d left the Metro cards we bought at the airport in the room. So we went back to the room to get those and use the free coffee coupons the hotel gave us. We’d walk to Central Park and hang out there for awhile, then take the subway down to 32nd, then walk back to the hotel. That was the plan anyway. Didn’t quite turn out like that!

    On our way, we stopped in Grand Central Terminal (when did they change it from Station?), which neither of us had been in before. And you know how we love train stations :) This was definitely grand!, and mall-like like some of the bigger ones we’ve seen in Europe.

     

    This was in the lobby of the hotel. He’s easily 15 feet high. Dan was like “how did I miss that when we walked in?” I had no idea. There was another one over by the reception desk!

    We got our cards and coffees and walked up 5th Ave. I do enjoy the window shopping even though I would never buy anything. We stopped at The Plaza for a quick photo opp. Dan has a $10 print of this from the last time he was here – over 20 years ago – hanging in our bathroom; it looks pretty good.

    There were crowds of people coming out of Central Park. I don’t know if we had just missed something that was letting out but it was a flood of people crossing 58th in our direction. But, by the time we actually got into the park it wasn’t that bad. I’ve only been there once 3 years ago and had forgotten how beautiful it is. I love all the natural rocks and cliffs amongst the trees. And Dan kept saying “hey look, that’s where they filmed (fill in the blank).” It’s got to be the most famous park in the world.  We were happy to be there and just enjoying watching the people and the various performers.

     

    I don’t think that tall building in the back was there the last time I was here. Anyone know what it is? It would be around 7th Ave and 58th.
    I’ve always loved the high-rises that line the park.

    And then, out of nowhere, rain. Lots of it. We’d stopped to watch a street magician putting on a pretty good show with a pretty good crowd around him, and just as he was finishing the big drops starting hitting. We should’ve picked up the umbrellas when we got the metro cards! But we’d checked the forecast and thought we were OK. As we were running for cover Dan’s like “hey, this would be a good shot – and there’s no people.” So here’s me looking like a drowned rat but sure enough, it’s an empty Central Park behind me.

    And where were all the people? Well about 70 of them were standing under the same bridge we found. We hung out there a good 20 minutes while Dan was checking Doppler on his phone. Most of the people had decided to brave it by then, it had slowed some but wasn’t going to stop completely. But, somewhere along 5th Ave, a nasty cold set in for me out of nowhere; I’d even lost my voice (which, over 48 hours later when I’m writing this, I still haven’t gotten back). So we were trying to keep me out of the damp cold. But there was no way out and we were at that point more than 20 blocks from the hotel.

    Long story short: after spending some time in an Apple store with lots of other people trying to get out of the rain, we hopped on a bus and went back to the hotel. It was about 5:30 at that point and we decided we were just done for the night. Whatever hit me hit me hard and I was not going to be fit to do anything else. Later in the evening we went to the food court in the train station and got me some soup for dinner; Dan wasn’t hungry. I was in bed before 9pm.

    And that was how we ended our amazing vacation :)

    Sunday morning we flew back home, landing in SFO; rented a car and were home by 3:30. And no matter how glorious a trip like that might be – and it was – there really is nothing like being home. We unpacked, started laundry, and went and got pNut from Art & Mike’s.

    Some final musings from this trip:

    1. Once again, we never encountered any real language barriers. We are so lucky that English is such a major language, at least in Europe. Most people we encountered could speak a little, or had someone on their team who could and they would get them for us. That happened twice – once in a German restaurant, once in a French restaurant. Still, knowing some of the language would be even better. I was supposed to learn some French before this trip but with work and school I couldn’t really dedicate the time to it. But I’m almost done with school so I should be able to fix that for next year.

    2. We expanded our perspective on what WWII was like in Europe, and always appreciate that. It makes me realize how much I’ve taken for granted living in this country. And we definitely got a sense of how much France and England in particular love Americans – we are the heroes who brought victory to WWI and WWII which they couldn’t do on their own. They suffered unbelievable losses, especially in WWII. There’s a picture of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower that gives me chills every time I think about it. It was all just so wrong. And Americans had our losses as well, as we saw in the American Cemetery in Normandy as an example. Timely stuff to muse on since it’s Memorial Day today.

    3. Our travels give us a different sense of the world then we had before, for sure. There are many differences to take in and we seek them out. But we also seek out “normal”, what would it be like to actually live there? And in doing that, there’s something I noticed both last trip and this trip that’s hard to put into words, but it goes something like this: despite the differences in culture, habits, food, language, etc., if you just sit back and watch, what you see is that they’re all just people. You see lots of the same stuff you see at home: some are incredibly generous, some are incredibly self-centered. People go to work, stop at the favorite coffee shops, walk their dogs, jog, go out to lunch and dinner with friends and family. Most people are friendly when you engage them nicely. All areas have homelessness to some degree. And toddler tantrums are a universal thing. (For Dan: “But it was supposed to be MY day…”) I guess my point is there’s this place where none of it feels foreign to me at all from the perspective that in the day-to-day we really are all a lot alike, and for some reason that always surprises me. I’m sure that perspective will shift again if I were to go to the Middle East or Africa; one day we’ll find out maybe.

    But for now, we’re dedicated to Europe while we can take advantage of attaching a vacation to a business trip of Dan’s. Next year will be Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. Better start brushing up on my Spanish…

    PS: This year we used AirBnB for all of our lodging. In Paris and London in particular, these apartments really gave us a local feel, way much more than we’d ever get from a hotel experience. All of our hosts were gracious and helpful. And the AirBnB system is very easy to use, and takes steps to verify and protect the identities of all parties. We will definitely use it again. Check it out if you haven’t and have an upcoming trip. We highly recommend it.

  • Day 16: London, Part 4: Wimbledon; Kensington Palace

    Day 16: London, Part 4: Wimbledon; Kensington Palace

    The last couple of mornings I used my morning time over coffee before Dan gets up to finish the blog. And that was true this morning as well. I got up about 6, he was up after 7 sometime. We fixed breakfast focused on finishing the groceries we’d bought the other day and accomplished that. We left about 9am to get lunch items to pack from the grocery store, then headed in the direction of Wimbledon.

    Anyone that knows me knows this is not an idea I would have come up with. But when we were planning this trip 6-8 weeks ago, Dan was looking over the options available on the London Pass and was very excited to learn that a tour of Wimbledon was included. He played quite a bit of tennis in junior high and high school, and watched lots of tennis on TV until about 2009 when he gave up cable. This was the one thing on the trip that was totally his and I was happy to join him.

    We took a bus again to Clapham Junction, and transferred to another bus to Wimbledon. While crossing the street I noticed this sign on the side street next to me. Here’s one for the other Harry Potter fans out there:

     

    That first bus ride was just about 10 minutes, and it was only about 15 more to Wimbledon. Wimbledon is actually a town, used to be a suburb of London but now the metro area has grown all around it. Wimbledon as you know it – tennis championships – rose up through the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, a private club that’s been around since 1868. As tennis became more and more popular, venues were needed for championships and the AELTC provided its facilities for the first time in 1877. Those facilities were located a couple of miles away from the present location, which has been in place since 1922. The AELTC still exists, only 375 members, all invitation only. It’s essentially a country club; fees are relatively low (although the tour guide wouldn’t say what they were) – membership is about being able to play tennis and connections. Openings typically only occur upon death and there’s a long waiting list. You have to be referred by 4 different current members to even get on the list.

    We only spent about 20 minutes in the museum itself, the time we had between when we got there and when the tour started at 10:30, which was scheduled to be 90 minutes long. And it was!
    Standings from the last championship still up.

    We are standing at the top of what’s been referred to as Henman Hill for awhile, referring to the most successful Brit to win at Wimbledon, three years a row in the 30’s. For the first time since, a Brit named Andy Murray from Scotland won last year and some are starting to call it Murray Mound. During the games, a huge screen in the space against the stadium behind Dan’s head projects games live for those who were lucky enough to get in that day but can’t watch from Center Court. There’s a whole thing about getting in and it’s very complicated so I’m not going to try here. Suffice it to say, it ain’t easy. Luck and willingness to get there early and literally camp out in the golf course across the street has more to do with it than money or connections.

    This is Court 1. Since I’ve never watched the games, the significance of this was lost on me but apparently it’s a big deal :) It seats about 11,000 and is constructed so that there isn’t a bad seat in the house. By 2019 I think the guy said, there will be a retractable roof on it as there is in Center Court. Wimbledon is known for its lawn courts (I didn’t know that!) and apparently rain is a huge problem during the games.

    The Press Interview room.
    Everyone got their star moment :)

     

    This is Center Court. The only time this and Court 1 are used is during the Championships. There are I think 18 other playing courts, 22 practice courts and others total ling 50 courts on the 42 acre complex. The area framed in wood is the Royal Box. Center Court seats about 15,000.

    The white is the retractable roof.
    Dan was very glad he came. Although most of the tennis stories the guide told Dan knew, because he’d watched them while they were happening.

     

    Guys up there preparing for the games which start in 2 weeks.

    I doubt I’ll ever be a tennis fan, but I really enjoyed the visit. I appreciate history and tradition and respect for both and this place has tons of all of that. It was fun to see Dan be excited about it, too.

    We headed back to the city and made our way to Kensington Palace where we ate the lunch we packed. That’s sort of been our thing in London: lunch in or in front of a castle or palace, 3 out of 4 days.

    Kensington Palace is on the western edge of Hyde Park, technically in Kensington Gardens but they all run together. It is the current home of William and Kate, and where Princess Diana lived from 1983 – 1997. With Alnwick Castle in northern England, they are the only two we’ve visited that are still used as a residence. In both cases, we didn’t get to see the spaces we are most interested in – actual living quarters – but I guess that’s understandable. We were told at Alnwick that they wouldn’t be interesting because they’re completely modern. I think that would make them more interesting, but I understand the need for private space.

    All that said, the parts of Kensington that are open to the public is completely meh. We’ve decided that apparently we’ve become palace snobs! This was built by King William of Orange, same guy who did one of the wings at Hampton Court, and it was completely obvious in style, especially his state rooms which was actually the best part of the tour. There was a section on Queen Victoria that should have been interesting but wasn’t really. And this odd focus on fashion, which I guess you have to be a fashion person to appreciate. We were completely underwhelmed by the whole thing, but Dan did snap a few pictures.

    Me being underwhelmed.
    They had an odd fascination with mobiles which we thought were tacky as hell. Clearly not a palace original!
    Again with the tacky mobile. We asked what this was supposed to represent and the story itself made sense – the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary – but certainly they could have found a more compelling wait to do it.
    One of the current queen’s gowns. Rooms of this stuff.
    This pictures doesn’t capture what this was, which was a series of overhead cut-outs you walked through to create the image you were in a building.

    By the time we got out of the palace, it was cold and drizzly, despite the 2 forecasts we’d looked at that predicted zero rain and highs of 65. I had gone out without my jacket and we left the umbrellas behind, too. Oh well. We were either going to do a canal boat ride or a movie next so this shifted us to the movie. But it was still a good walk through Hyde Park to get there. But it never did more than drizzle so we were OK.

    This was a tribute to Prince Albert, Victoria’s husband, across from Royal Albert Hall.
    Royal Albert Hall

    Today’s’ movie, still on the London Pass, was Two Faces of January with Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. We saw it at the Curzon Mayfair just on the opposite end of Hyde Park. We liked it; and anything would have been better than that one the other day! It was over about 6:30; we stopped  for Indian “take away” in our neighborhood and had dinner at the flat. We are packed, alarms are set for 5am. We leave tomorrow morning for NYC and have one night there before we head home.

    We are ready to come home.

  • Day 15: London, Part 3: Classic London 2.0

    Day 15: London, Part 3: Classic London 2.0

    I was telling Dan this morning that this past Tuesday might be my favorite day of the trip: classic London sites like Westminster Abbey, Parliament/Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, with the Churchill War Rooms and a show with Dame Angela in the West End as the big events. Kindofa perfect tourist day for my particular tastes.

    Today was a continuation of that.

    We took the bus into town; what would normally take about 20 minutes took an hour in rush hour traffic. We are staying in Zone 2, for those of you familiar with London. We picked this apartment because it was one of the few actual apartments we found for the price we were willing to pay. Most others, while may have been closer to the center, were much smaller and studios. When we’re looking for places – especially for longer stays of 3 days or more (this one is 5 nights), we focus on spaces with separate living space from sleeping space, because we’re on different sleeping schedules. We knew we were a 20 minute bus ride from most places we would want to be when we booked it. This morning that strategy just backfired on us!

    We got to the Tower of London around 9:45. All I knew about this Tower was that people had been imprisoned here, and that the crowned jewels were kept here. I literally thought it was a single building with a turret maybe. I was completely blown away by the history and the size. It dates back to William the Conqueror, 1070-ish. Some of that is still standing, much has been rebuilt, refortified and/or added on to over the centuries.  It was originally built as a fortress. While earlier kings did spend time here and there were living quarters, they wandered around a lot in those days – lots of peoples to conquer I guess! – so they were never here very long, and the living spaces were not elaborate. Definitely more fortress than residence.

    New across the Thames from Old. The tall building on the right is The Shard, just opened in 2012. It is 87 stories and the tallest building in the European Union.
    Tower Bridge from the Tower of London. Picture taken by random blue-haired girl. Blue hair is somewhat popular here. And bright fluorescent tennis shoes are hugely popular everywhere we’re been. Nothing to do with this picture just throwing it in.
    This is inside the complex and gives you a better understanding of size. The white-ish building towards the left is the White Tower, a big building in the middle of the complex. This space encircles it.
    More new/old juxtaposition. That’s the HMS Belfast in the background.
    Luckily it wasn’t loaded!
    It looked like people were living here! We meant to find out more about it but forgot to ask.

    We did get to see the crown jewels. It was all really beautiful and words won’t really work here. Too bad they won’t let you take pictures. It included video of the current Elizabeth’s coronation. All very majestic.

    This was in the White Tower, which we jokingly called Ikea. Once you were in, you couldn’t get out. It was big, multi-floored, and they herded tourists through all moving in the same direction. Each building in the complex was that way, and for the most part we appreciated it because traffic flowed much nicer. But in this building it was annoying because there were So Many Children.
    Henry VIII’s suit of armor.
    Can you imagine being a child that small and going into battle?
    A torture device we hadn’t heard of: Scavenger’s Daughter. The drawing gives you and idea of how the person was in it, then it clamped down and crushed them. It was invented by a guy named Skeffington, and was considered the perfect complement to the rack, which was known as Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. The name morphed.
    The rack.

    We stayed at the Tower of London about two hours. Next we were going to something called the London Bridge Experience. (You can start singing the song now if you like.) We had to cross Tower Bridge to get there so, while we hadn’t planned it, spent about 45 minutes there on the way. How could we pass up “the most famous bridge in the world”?

    East view from the upper walkway.

    East side of the upper walkway. Both walkways had lots of things to look at – bridge history, lots of info on other impressive bridges around the world, more London history or what you were seeing on the skyline before you. The west walkway had an interesting “London in the Sixties” walk which I really liked.

    View from the west walkway.
    The nicknames for the building on the left is the Walkie Talkie; the building on the right The Gherkin.

     

    This interesting thing is City Hall.
    Really nice complex of buildings next to city hall.

    We found a little market and picked up some sandwiches and ate on a park bench on the river promenade. Next was the London Bridge Experience. This was the most expensive item (if we were paying full price) in the London Pass, so we felt compelled to check it out to make sure we were getting our money’s worth. This definitely goes to the top of the list as one of the more unusual things we’ve experienced. It was part museum/ part house of horror / part amusement park ride / part theater. One thing I learned that I found interesting was that London Bridge used to have businesses and residences on it. I found this rendering showing what it might have looked like in the 1200s.

     

    The whole “experience” was definitely not worth what they were charging!, but it was entertaining enough. We were out of there about 2:30pm. Weather and bad timing kept rearranging what we did the rest of the afternoon, so I’ll condense it to this: we did see some of Hyde Park from the bus (was too wet to get out in it at that moment), but the rain quit quickly and we took a really nice walk through portions of “The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea”. How’s that for a fancy name? This included a stop into Harrod’s. Neither of us are very impressed by high-end retail stuff – and OMG the perfume smell everywhere was overpowering, especially to poor Dan who is very sensitive to smells and got a really bad headache from it. We were there mostly to check out the “food halls” we had heard about and it was worth seeing. Areas for fresh “take away” of just about anything you could want in lots of different ethnic flavors, chocolates, coffee and tea, meat/fish/poultry, a caviar bar, etc. The store also had a nice memorial for Diana and Dodi.

    Eventually, we ended up back in the West End and had a nice sidewalk dinner at a French place that was offering “pre-theater” 3 course dinners for pretty reasonable prices. It was packed but we were able to snag the last table on the sidewalk.

    After dinner was our 2nd show of the trip, the Lion King at the Lyceum. This 2100 seat theater was built in 1834. The Lion King has been running here since September 24, 1999. Although it is my favorite Disney movie, for some reason I never had any interest in seeing it on stage. But the reviews I’ve read have always been very good, especially around staging and costumes. Just how do you do a stampede of wildebeest on stage?

     

    We were first balcony, 3rd row. I was worried that Dan wasn’t going to be able to enjoy it because of his headache and had offered to go back to the flat, but he pressed on. It had mostly gone away by this point and it was fun to watch him react to the opening number. I learned at dinner that he’d never seen the film before – I had just assumed, and a very bad assumption! – so he had no idea what the story was. I’ve always thought the opening of the cartoon is some of the best animation ever put on film, and it always chokes me up a little. So did this. It was fun watching Dan literally move to the edge of his seat – especially when the elephant came into view walking up the center aisle – and watch his expression be complete amazement. The opening number hooked him and he really enjoyed the rest of the show. So did I, but I was really thrilled that he did. Made up for me dragging him to see Angela :)

  • Day 14: London, Part 2: Hampton Court Palace & Gardens

    Day 14: London, Part 2: Hampton Court Palace & Gardens

    Same morning routine: simple breakfast in, get ready to go. This morning we also stopped by Sainsbury’s, a UK grocery chain which we used in Edinburgh as well, to pick up some picnic items for lunch. They had a “meal deal” for 3 pounds – fresh sandwiches, chips (as we know them, not fries) and soda, so we got that and stuffed it all in the backpack.

    We took a bus to Clapham Junction station and took a train to Hampton Court Palace. It was about a 30 minute ride but you never really left the London metro area. We had never heard of this place before but it was highly suggested by the London Pass and had great reviews on TripAdvisor as well. Since we’d just done Versailles (exactly a week before) we figured it would be a fun comparison. We got there about 10:45.

    Hampton Court was built by Henry VIII, another historical figure I’ve always been fascinated with. It was built in the early 1500’s, and added onto by other monarchs as the years went on, especially in the 1700’s. Architecturally it is not as grand as Versailles, but still interesting and beautiful. What made it very different from Versailles was atmosphere and presentation:

    • Not nearly the crowds
    • They really want you to get a feel for life at court
    • Depending on what area of the palace you’re in, there are actors in full period costume hanging about the palace in full character, interacting with visitors with never going out of character, and they’re playing real people – including Henry VIII and George I.

     

    The main entrance.
    The first of 3 courtyards, this one referred to as Base Court.

    These 2 started talking – yelling really – at each other as if there were not about 100 other people in the courtyard, so we got to eavesdrop on their conversation. He is playing Thomas Culpeper, a favorite of Henry’s until the alleged affair with the girl became known. She is playing Catherine Howard, currently lady in waiting to Anne of Cleves, wife #4, and soon to be Henry’s 5th wife. About a year after her marriage she is executed for adultery, the only other wife executed after Anne Boleyn.

    I never did catch this characters name but her and Catherine above were seen gossiping about the palace all day.
    This was the entrance to the section added by King William and Queen Mary, who ruled jointly in the latter part of the 1600’s.
    You can see how crowded it is!

    In a different wing, the guy on the right is supposed to be King George I who was King from 1714-1727. He was a distant relative of Queen Anne, but the 50 other or so possible successors were all Catholic and that was against the law! He was actually from Hanover, in current Germany, and spoke little English. The monarchy’s power diminished during his reign, shifting to the model we know today, where the government is lead by a Prime Minister. I didn’t catch the character’s name on the left, but we chatted with him for a bit. When he asked us where we were from, without missing a beat he leans over to the King and says “they’re from the Colonies.”

    George Prince of Wales on the right, who will become George II in 1727, killing time playing cards in the drawing room. I learned here the term is short for “withdrawing room”, supposed to be a place of refuge in the palace.

     

     

    An entrance to another wing but I don’t remember which one!
    Weapons room in this same wing.

     

     

    You get one guess.
    The kitchens from the Henry VIII wing, which served the whole palace.

     

    Wine cellar.
    Clock in the Clock Courtyard. There was also a Fountain Courtyard but we didn’t get a photo of that.
    The dining hall of Henry VIII. There were all kinds of cute saying and rules of the King on the table cloths.

     

    A cute bird who joined us for our picnic lunch in the gardens. We think he’s been conditioned to being fed!

     

    These gardens were not as extensive as Versailles, but in some ways were prettier.
    This was the private garden of King William.

     

    The original plan was to go to Wimbledon next, which was a stop on the same train on the way back, but we didn’t leave the Palace in time to make it for the 3:30 tour we scheduled. We’ve re-booked that for Friday morning.

    Instead we went to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. Pictures were not allowed inside; yesterday’s entry has a picture of the outside. An impressive collection of art, we focused on 17th-19th century. The 17th century rooms were filled with Flemish and Dutch painters and we recognized quite a bit – in style and subject – from our Netherlands trip last year. A full room of Rembrandt plus others spread out. Lots of other big names spread throughout. This visit I think really confirmed that 19th century art is my favorite. They had some of Monet and Van Gogh that I had never seen that I really liked. And one from our new favorite from Paris, Paul Signac.

    From there we headed into the West End/Soho area, got a quick bite to eat at a little Chinese joint, and went to the Curzon, a movie theater we would call an art house, focusing on independent films. The London Pass give us entry for free so we decided to check it out. We picked a film that looked interesting in description – Japanese animation, a story about an aviation engineer designing airplanes to be used in Germany and Japan in the build-up to WWII. Just our subject, right? And an 8.0 on IMDb. What could go wrong?

    It was bad, bad, bad. It was actually more of a love story than anything, sweet in it’s own way, but painfully slow and just soooo not what we were expecting. Thankfully we didn’t spend any additional money on it! Afterwards we walked about the neighborhood a bit more, including London’s version of Chinatown – just a block or so really and almost but not quite as touristy as the one in SF. It was mostly restaurants with workers standing on the sidewalk trying to get you to come in. At least there wasn’t the schlock for sale everywhere you see in SF.

    We do like that much of this West End area is closed to vehicles.

    And that was pretty much the day. In a way it didn’t feel like we did much but it sure went by fast! I just noticed we didn’t take any pictures of the West End. I think we’re getting tired :) Last year we did 18 days, I swore I wouldn’t do that again for awhile. And technically we didn’t – this year it’s only 17 days! But something in the 12-14 range is probably more reasonable. It takes so long to get here and get back you want to make it worthwhile. The pace we keep wears on us but we like the pace so I doubt that will change much. Especially when I look at what we have planned for Thursday! We’ll see if we can fit it all in.