excuse me while I check my app

I am going to continue my travel saga but first I want to share information about two apps I heard about recently. Now, I admit there are some useful apps out there.  I appreciate school closing alerts and storm warnings but,,,earlier today a weatherperson said that we could use her station's weather app to check if it's raining before we go outside tomorrow morning. Really?  Couldn't we just open a window or look out the door. Do we really need an app to tell if it's raining? And how about this? While riding on the bus around the English countryside last week, our tour guide proudly announced that her company now had an app that we could download to our phones that would tell us where we are at that very moment in real time. Really? I was right there, sitting on the bus.  I didn't really need an app to tell me that.
Day two was spent touring around London. By the way, London was founded by the Romans in 46AD. In the morning we visited Buckingham Palace and then Kensington Palace.

I'm pretty sure that this is a picture of Kensington, the front side where tourists visit. We saw a fairly casual changing of the guard there, also floral trubutes to Diana. William, Kate and the children live at Kensington, as well as William's brother and a few other royals. A friend expressed concern tha the noise of tourists roaming all around the front rooms of the palace would bother the family, but she was assured that, in a house with 800 rooms, the noise really didn't carry to the back regions of the palace where the family live. 

During our lunch break some of our group visited Harrods, the famous old department store. Last year I had tea there which was very nice. The story is told that once, some years ago, because Harrods claims to have everything you need, a gemtleman went into the tea room and ordered an elephant sandwich. The flustered waitress coundulted with the maitre de who solumnly informed the man that "Unfortunately, we are out of elephant today." 

the first pictures

Well, so far so good. I have managed to download all of my trip pictures on to my computer and delete the blurry ones (not too many, happily).  Our first adventure, after arriving in London and checking into our hotel, was to visit the Tower of London.  As you may gather from this picture, it was not a cheerful place.  If you were hauled off to the tower, especially if you were accused of treason, the outcome was not likely to be good.  We had a wonderful guide through the tower who told us lots of fascinating stories about the people who were executed there. 

 

It seems that treason was the most popular crime.  Essentially, a king or queen could accuse anyone of treason if they happened to disagree with them on any subject.  When a person was executed at the tower (by beheading) he or she was marched out to the grassy hill outside the tower walls where a crowd of townspeople would be waiting to watch the spectacle.  The condemned would make a final speech, then offer his executioner a bag full of money to buy a swift, hopefully painless beheading.  Sadly the executioner wasn't always as skilled as one might hope and our guide regaled us with tales of botched executions. It reminded me of the Harry Potter character "Nearly Headless Nick".  On the up side, the Crown Jewels are stored in the tower and they are quite amazing.  The crowns, scepters, etc were quite amazing but I was also itrigued by the huge (3-4 feet across) gold platters and matching chalices. So many of these gold pieces seemed to have been aquired in the 1600s. This made me wonder what was going on at that time historically. I finally got an answer from one of the guards.  It seems that during that era the Spanish were bringing back lots of gold from the new world and the British pirate Sir Francis Drake was stealing it from them. Isn't history interesting?

the play's the thing.

Sorry, no travel pictures yet, but I did see the most hilarious play this evening. If you have nothing to do next weekend go see "Baskerville" at First Presbyterian Theater. Thr best way to describe it is slapstick Sherlock Holmes. Pratfalls, sight gags and not so subtle scene changes and costume alterations kept everyone laughing. My favorite bit was the prolonged unlocking of the mansion doors. I absolutely recommend this play. 7:30 next Friday and Saturday.

I'm back from my travels;

I returned yesterday from a lovely trip to England, Scotland and Wales. I've been in England and Scotland before but everywhere we went (we being the bus tour group) I saw things I had not seen on previous trips so it was very enjoyable. This tour was organized by Collette and I have always been impressed by their guides. This time was no exception. Our guide, Christina, really knew her way around. She was a font of historical, economical and statistical information, very little of which my brain retained. I was on vacation after all. In the next several posts I will be sharing some pictures (as soon as I remember the process) and more specific information but for now I'll leave you with a joke:  A Scotsman, an Englishman and and Irishman were trying to get into the Olympics but they didn't have tickets so they cast about for another way to get in.  The Englishman saw a long stck, picked it up, walked to the gate and announced "England, pole vaulting" and the guard waved him in.  The Scotsman picked up a sewer cover, announce that he was a discus thrower and was also waved in. The Irishman, observing these successes, looked around, spotted and picked up a roll of barbed wire and walked up to the guard. "Ireland," he announced, "Fencing."  I know it's a groaner but I couldn't resist.

Information you need

I won't be able to blog for the next several days so I've decided to share some information I'm sure you'll be excited to have. Did you know that Saturday was World Beard Day and yesterday was Pet Rock Day? I sincerely hope that not knowing about these two earthshaking events did not in any way dampen your Labor Day Weekend celebration. But now, looking forward, plan for these events.  September 7 is Buy a Book Day (I like that one), on the 9th we have Wonderful Weirdos Day, the 10th is Grandparents' Day, and on the 11th, Patriots Day. Then comes Fortune Cookie Day on the 13th and Eat a Hoagie Day on the 14th. I will leave it to my readers to assign the appropriate level of seriousness to each of these days. For me Fortune Cookie Day is way up on the list, not only because I like fortune cookies but also because that date happens to be the birthday of my firstborn. I will have to tell him what an auspicious day he was born on, although I have a snealy suspicion that Fortune Cookie Day hadn't been invented 46 years ago. 

making potato salad again

I'm having family over for a casual, picnicky lunch tomorrow in celebration of the fact that a niece I haven't seen for three years is coming to visit.  I decided, in keeping with the casual theme, that I would make Hot German Potato Salad following the same recipe I used a few months ago. I chopped and fried and boiled and mixed and the final result is waiting in the refrigerator to be baked tomorrow.  I love a dish that can be made ahead. I haven't tasted it yet but I've had a wonderful bacony scent wafting through the apartment all afternoon and evening. I've got to stop writing now. I'm making myself too hungry. The quandry now is do I hope the family loves it and eat it all up or do I hope they leave me lots of leftovers. I think this is a win win situation.  Wouldn't it be terrible if I turn out to be a sleep walker/eater? 

sensible shoes

I remember saying to my mother, at the wise onld age of 16, that I would never sacrifice style for comfort.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Today I went shoe shopping for some brown shoes for fall, and I bought a pair. Were they cute, strappy, high heeled pumps? No! Are they snappy little dressy flats? No! They are good, sturdy brown walking shoes. Very comfortable, very plain, very boring.... Ah well, I did at least buy some fun multicolor socks. Of course, no one will see the socks under the shoes and long pants but at least I'll know I have something cute and jazzy going on. Stylish? No. Conforable, oh yes. How my mother would laugh.