Hi Everyone,
We hope that you had a fantastic weekend. We were here in the sun and warmth of London this weekend. Ann made it back safely from South Africa on Friday, so it was great to have her back home. She took some great pics in Cape Town, and had some fun and unique experiences, so I will make sure that she blogs about her time there.
As you can see from the title, we had a really active weekend and took full advantage of the sun. We went for a great long walk on Friday evening just around the Kensington area and discovered some other little quaint pubs and cafes that we had yet to see. Saturday morning, we were up early and had to get our 2012 Olympic ticket application submitted. Since we are now official residents of London, we are able to get first dibs on tickets for next summer. They have set up a lottery process so you request the events that you would like to attend and then hope that you get tickets. It is just a random allocation process. I was hoping to throw around Ann's Sr. Director title, but it looks like that is not going to carry any weight with the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland. Do they know who she is? The downfall of the system is that you have to pay for whatever you get allocated, so you need to think about that when you are requesting events. Anyway, we have requested tickets for the Opening Ceremony, 2 Swimming Events, a Beach Volleyball Event, and finally a Tennis Event at Wimbledon. We are keeping our fingers crossed. How lucky that we ended up in London for the Olympics as well. Well, we may be saying lucky now, but when we are trying to get to work next summer on the Tube amidst 10 million extra visitors in London, luck may not be the first word that comes to mind.
We used the inspiration for our Olympics ticket purchases to fuel our own mini olympics in Hyde Park after that. While we did not set any distance records, we did have a nice run and mix in some wind sprints to boot. Ann also had a co-worker in from Minneapolis, so we met him for lunch in an area near Covent Garden/SOHO called Neal's Yard. I had discovered it last week with some co-workers and it is an awesome little outdoors area. One of the buildings, now turned restaurant, was the home of Monty Python for about 10 years. I have posted a photo above. Anyway, we had lunch with him and then walked him around Central London and showed him some sights. We ended up walking about 3 or 4 miles, so by the time that we finished that on top of our morning olympics, we were exhausted.
Sunday led to some more activity outside, albeit this time, a little more "mad." We did start the day with a nice walk around Notting Hill, but then our aspiration for physical activity took a turn for the less rational. So, all over the city of London, there are these small automated banks of bikes where you can rent a bike and then just return it to any other bike station. It is really a great concept and super convenient. We have also been wanting to find another tv series on DVD to watch when we are around and there is nothing worth watching on British TV. I had the genius idea that we would rent bikes and bike to a DVD store in Central London. We could get some exercise, be out in the beautiful weather, and accomplish something. Well, I am not sure if I have mentioned in a previous blog, but you really need to be insane to even want to drive a car in London. The traffic is horrendous, people are just lunatics behind the wheel, and they are on the opposite side of the car and road. Furthermore, you are not allowed to ride a bike on the sidewalks here. So, here we are on rented bikes, with some useless little bell, trying to manuever down Oxford Street, maybe one of the busiest streets in London. What in God's name were we thinking? At one point, I am following Ann and she turns down the wrong way on a busy street. This was definitely worthy of a Seinfeld episode. We luckily escaped unscathed, found a new TV series on DVD, and needless to say, WALKED HOME.
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