Sunday 22 October 2006

Went to bed early Saturday night (which was REAL easy after our mini-pub crawl), set the alarm for 1:00 am, woke up and watched the first game of the World Series. My first live baseball game since I've been here. It was the International feed with no commercials so it was odd listening to the between innings "commentary" from a British perspective.

I swear... I need to apply for that job.

This channel also shows Monday Night Football live (at 1:30 am), but there is no way I'm doing that during the work week. However, most Sunday evenings I've been going to one of two places I've found that televise the noon NFL games. That's 6:00 pm here so it's not too bad keeping up with my football fix.

Saturday 21 October 2006

This afternoon we took a walk through Green Park. We found a spot in the sun and just enjoyed the sunshine and people watched. After watching me in action acquiring new photos for my new hobby Amy decided my works should be entitled “Ray’s Imaginary Friend”. On the walk home we dodged rain showers and did a mini-pub crawl adding a new traditional pub to my other hobby.

Friday through Sunday 13-15 October 2006

Amy is between business trips this weekend (just back from Copenhagen and off to Hamburg, Germany next week) so we decided to take a relaxing weekend to the seaside city of Brighton. Just an hour train ride south of London, Brighton is more of a summer destination for its beach, but we checked into a spa hotel and took advantage of a weekend of great weather.

We watched the sunset over the ocean, walked the beach to the boardwalk, spent one morning in the hotel spa, and even did a touristy visit to the Royal Pavilion.

The Royal Pavilion is the royal residence built by King George IV in the early 1800’s. The big difference compared to the other palaces we’ve toured is that this one was created to resemble an Indian style building (think mini Taj Mahal). The most spectacular room was the grand dining hall with its huge chandelier weighing over one ton utilising several snakes and dragons within its design.

The Chinese style decor in the Royal Palace was beautiful. This was a smaller palace than most that we've visited, but it was a worthwhile tour. Brighton was a great weekend escape and we couldn't have had better weather on Friday afternoon when we arrived. The sunset was amazing and the cool, crisp breeze from the ocean was great. It was a nice and relaxing weekend between business trips.

Thursday 12 October 2006

Things I've climbed. I'll keep the distances in feet for the metrically challenged.

Arc de Triomphe, Paris - 165 ft.

The Monument of the Great Fire, London - 202 ft.

St. Paul's Cathedral's Dome, London - 280 ft.

Eiffel Tower, 2nd Level, Paris - 377 ft.

That damn "hill" in Kent on a bike ride I did there. Not sure how high, but it needs to be included because it kicked my butt.

Saturday 6 October 2006

Quite the busy day.

Tonight we celebrated my birthday with tickets to see Spamalot at the Palace Theatre which was built back in the 1890’s. While the show doesn’t officially open until 16 October, we were able to get tickets to one of the preview shows. It was interesting to see how they converted the movie into a musical using different story lines (Lancelot was gay? Who knew??), and even incorporating “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from The Life of Brian. The bonus was that the role of King Arthur was played by Tim Curry. Good stuff!!

Earlier during the afternoon we were hosted by Amy’s work mate Jamie at our first rugby match. We watched a good match up as the Sale Sharks defeated the NEC Harlequins 28-27 as the Quins missed a late conversion. It was pretty cool, especially since the Harlequins rallying song was “The Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann. Amy still hasn’t made up her mind if rugby players’ butts are better than baseball players.