Hyde Park

We spent the day in Hyde Park.  We ended up walking a lot further than I had planned because I misread the map right at the beginning.  Oh, dear. 

We walked around both the Serpentine and The Long Water, stopping at the Italian Gardens, the Peter Pan statue, the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, and then the Lido Café for lunch.

The weather was extremely changeable.  It was cooler than I had expected, so I had to open the you'll-not-need-this-stuff-until-much-later suitcase to get out the fleeces.  Then we put those fleeces on and off several times during the day.  We missed any rain, though, thankfully.

We're finding London (or at least this part of it) to be extremely multicultural.  Hardly anyone speaks with a British accent, except for the Parks Dept staff.  ("Can you help a poor tourist?" I asked one.  "You don't look like a poor tourist to me", he replied.  "You look like a rich one!").  And the number of different languages we heard on our walk through the park was amazing.

And on another subject  ...  The hotel is an old one and has no ramps for walkers.  Instead  ...

Jolly Old

There was a rainbow arching over our Victoria to Vancouver plane today as it sat on the runway waiting for us to board.

Sometimes, everything just goes right.

There was an attendant waiting with a wheelchair in Vancouver to take us to our connecting flight.   We had great seats in Economy Plus on the transatlantic flight, close to the exit and the bathroom.   We even slept (some)!

At Heathrow there was another attendant waiting to take us on the hundred mile trip to baggage claim.   All our luggage arrived on time and intact.  The Princess rep was waiting, too, and drove us, alone, in a comfy Mercedes, to our hotel.  The traffic was quite congested in London,  so he had to detour through Hyde Park (sigh) to reach the hotel.

We're staying in the same hotel we stayed in on our first trip to London,  some 20 years ago.  Even the view from the window of our room is the same as the first time!

Off to bed ...

I'm Not Really a Waitress

Bags are packed and sitting upside down like exposed turtles, flattening the contents and taking pressure off the zippers.

The carry on bag is bursting at the seams.

Banks and credit card companies are warned, and coffee money is available in six different currencies.  

The fridge is almost empty.

Bryan has had his walk-through.

Toes and fingernails are clipped, filed and polished.

And, tomorrow, off we go!

That small town feeling

When we  moved to Napanee in 1981, I had never before lived in a small town.  I laughed - affectionately (and probably condescendingly) - at some of the small-town idiosyncrasies: stopping the car in the middle of the street, rolling down the window, and passing the time of day with another driver, similarly stopped; taking two plus hours to grocery shop at the A&P while visiting with everyone you knew in town.

By the time we left in 2006, we were part of that scene, and I loved it.  I never thought we would find this small-town-feeling in a big city.

But we have.

Yesterday I ran into Allison and the Baby Grands outside John's greengrocer and, later, our server, Bradley, from Tea at the Empress.  Today I ran into our upstairs neighbour outside Russell Books, and another neighbour outside Cobbs Bread.  And we run into Bryan everywhere!

But what really brought that feeling home was the local evening news. We watch the Vancouver Island CTV News at 5 with Joe Perkins.  Now, we've run into Joe twice: once on the ferry from Vancouver, and once outside our condo as he jogged past on a Sunday morning.  Both times we've stopped and had a conversation with him.  He remembers us.

The 5 pm newscast is very casual and friendly.  The various contributors - Joe, Adam and Louise -   engage in a fair amount of personal banter, like good friends.  The studio faces Pandora Street, and we can see pedestrians and cars passing by behind the anchors.  Tonight, Joe tells us that the cameraman saw, through the window, a man putting money in the wrong parking meter - the space behind his car - so the cameraman ditched his post to run outside to help (in the middle of the newscast!).  Turns out the guy knew it was the wrong meter, but someone had fed his, so he was paying it forward.

What a guy.  What a crew.  What a city.  What good neighbours!

New tricks

Tom is texting.

I never texted much myself before Bryan and Allison moved to Victoria,  but it seems as if that's the preferred method of communication for their generation.   After struggling to text on a flip top phone,  I bit the bullet and bought a smartphone.   Since Tom only used his phone for emergencies,  we switched out his even older flip top for mine.

Fast forward a year:  Tom is practicing calling me from his cell phone every day, so he is familiar with the phone if a real emergency occurs.   As he struggles with the unintuitive keyboard,  we muse on how much easier it is to use a smartphone.  Yes! we say, and get him a smartphone!

And so he discovered texting.

He loves texting.

Coffee, anyone?

I've been trying to figure how much cash to take with us on the cruise next month.   The decision has been complicated by the number of currencies in play: £ in the UK; € in Rotterdam;  NOK in Norway; ISK in Iceland; good old American dollars; and, yes, Canadian dollars, too.  It's not like we need much, just enough to cover those items that are too small in price to use a credit card - postcards or coffee.

So, I decided to use a basic common denominator - the cost of a cup of coffee.

A cup of coffee costs about $2 in Canada.   In London, it costs about £2; in Norway,  35 NOK; and in Iceland,  350 ISK.  For $100 CAD, I can buy 50 cups of coffee in Canada; 30 cups in the UK; 18 in Norway;  and 25 in Iceland.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this information,  and I still don't know how much cash to take, but I'll know if we're overcharged for coffee!

(Bonus!  I found  €50 left over from a previous trip in my travel chest!)

Moving on

I miss Facebook.  I miss the immediacy of the contact, of being able to share what's happening right now with friends and family (and posting pictures of Beacon Hill Park :-)).  I've always considered Facebook for for the quick and short postings, and the blog for the longer, more philosophical thoughts.  Looks like I may have to change that thought, and adapt ...

So, here's what's been going on:

Lis
Had a great visit with my youngest sister in June.  She had never been to Victoria before, and her only other visit to the west coast was when she was 16, so we packed in the activities.

She saw the Butterfly Gardens, Moss Rock Park, Fisherman's Wharf.  She ate fish and chips at The Fish Store, Tea at the Empress, Legendary Hamburgers at the White Spot, and the buffet on the Spirit of British Columbia.  She went to a Harbour Cats baseball game, the Royal BC Museum, and the Hop On Hop Off Tour.  She visited with Allison and her family, Bryan, Chuck and Jacquie, and a friend in Vancouver.  She took the ferry between Victoria and Vancouver three times!  And she shopped ... and shopped ... and shopped.

We're hoping that she had such a good time that she'll come back!

Retired again
I have retired from my job as a travel agent.  It's been a great three years, and I have learned a huge amount of stuff relative to the travel industry.  I will miss hearing about all the great places to visit, and the friendship of my colleagues.  I won't miss waiting on hold for 40 minutes to talk to the suppliers, fielding calls and emails on my days off, nor the responsibility for making sure nothing goes wrong with your trip.  Now I'll leave all that to my travel agent. 

Trust me:  You really do want to find yourself a good travel agent.

Thuli
One of my (former) clients arranged, through me, to bring a young woman they have been sponsoring for many years to Canada for a visit.  Thuli is from Lesotho, a land-locked country surrounded by South Africa <http://wikitravel.org/en/Lesotho>.  She is such an engaging young woman, and she and my clients were so appreciative of my help with their travel requirements, that she came in to the office to thank me personally. 

Thinking that she might want to meet some people who were more her own age, we hooked her up with Bryan.  Ever the gentleman, Bryan bused up to Royal Oak, picked up Thuli, and then took her around Victoria, introducing her to his favourite hangouts.

And just the other week, Bryan took Thuli, Tom and me out for dinner to the Steamship Grill, where we introduced Thuli to an assortment of seafood that she had never tried before, while Tom made creepy, crawly crab gestures, to her delight.  It was interesting to eat with someone who had never seen a prawn before, asking how much of the thing she was supposed to eat.  (We stopped her from eating the tail :-)).  And she adored the lobster ravioli.

Christmas in July
The Steamship Grill was also the setting for dinner with Allison and John this week.  At Christmas we told them that we would take them out for a grown-up dinner, just them, when the time came that they could spend some time away from the kids.  They had both poured over the menu in anticipation of the event, and came to the table ready to enjoy themselves.  We even convinced Allison to try raw oysters!

Both Tom and I were very impressed that they both refrained from checking in with the babysitter all through dinner.  Word has it that the kids were not at all pleased to find that the parents had skipped out when they weren't looking.

Those McNeil kiddies just get cuter and cuter.  The other day we were waiting for the McNeills to meet us at the corner of Park and Cook so that we could join them on their walk to the park.  Hudson saw us from a block away, and started running, arms outstretched preparatory to giving us hugs, yelling, "I'm coming, I'm coming!"  Doesn't that just warm your heart.

And little Quinn is walking!  Instead of "mama" or "dada", her first word is "HI!"  That charmer will go places.