Quinnsgate || London || Amsterdam || Berlin || Wolfsburg || Nürnberg || Plzen || Praha


London
1 Pound = 1.87 USD

We ended up missing half a day in London because of our plane difficulties but we still made the best of it. Bonnie, the folks and I took a walk from our hotel and saw the Marble Arch and the speakers corner, where on Sundays people can take a turn on the soap box and say, yell, or debate about any subject they want. Since we were there on a Tuesday, it was pretty quiet. That first night, after dropping the parents off at the hotel, Bonnie and I headed out to a local English pub where we watched a football game, drank Guinness, and mingled with the locals.

On the second day we got to see the typical sights like Big Ben, the Changing of the Guard, Buckingham Palace, the Tower Bridge, and Piccadilly Circus.  By the way, the picture of the football player, the coke ad, and the Samsung ad are all HUGE digital screens that played all kinds of things. We also went into the National Gallery and saw some awesome works of art. Piccaso's Sunflowers was on display which was really cool to see upclose.

Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the body we saw in the river under the Tower Bridge. While we were on the bridge, we saw a police boat turn on its lights and head out into the water. We looked down and there was this guy just floating on his back. At first we thought he was dead but when the rescue boat arrived, we saw him move his legs a little. Apparently, Tower Bridge is a common place for people to make suicide attempts.

So since I didn't get a picture of that, I give you me in an authentic London phone booth and a picture of Bonnie and me together under the Irish Guards plaque.

We liked London as a starting point for our Europe adventure because everyone spoke English. It wasn't too difficult to figure things out but still different enough to remind us we weren't in the States anymore. London was expensive though so we were ready to get on the bus to Amsterdam.

The bus ride was almost an adventure in and of itself. Bonnie and I thought that you could drive through the Chunnel but actually you and your vehicle are loaded onto a train which takes you across. So it was fun to be in the bus, in the train, in the Chunnel. Now when you use the Chunnel you have to go through English customs and French customs. The English guards glanced at our passports and quickly waved us through to the French sector. The French inspectors did more than glance at everyone's passports. They pulled one man off the bus and interrogated him for 30 - 40 minutes before allowing him, and the rest of the bus, access to the loading area. Unfortunately, because of the interrogations, we missed the midnight train and we had to wait for the 1:30 am train. While waiting in the French sector we noticed that all the vending machines took your money but rarely gave you anything for it. Bonnie and I joked that us missing the train was a French scam to raise revenue through crooked vending machines.

Eventually the time came to be loaded on the train and across we went. The rest of the bus ride was uneventful enough. We didn't get as much sleep as we'd hoped for but we didn't care, we were ready to get to Amsterdam.


On to Amsterdam