(A couple of odds and ends about our hotel: the plates on the side of the doors to the bathrooms had “Hollymade” stamped on them. Also, there was a piece of yellow paper on the dresser in my room that caught my eye. It was a form for reporting bomb threats.)

Friday, July 21, we set off for London. We were planning on parking at the naval base in Ruislip, then taking the tube to London city center. We got to the town of Ruislip fairly easily, but it was another odyssey of turning around and feeling lost while trying to find the naval base. After a long while and many circles around the town (including a stop to ask for directions that turned out to be utterly unhelpful), we gave up and parked at the tube station’s parking lot. It cost 2.20 pounds and was monitored by video.

I had borrowed an umbrella stroller from my next door neighbor, Denise. It turned out to be a lifesaver. While navigating the tube and the metro, most times there wasn’t an elevator, so having a stroller that could be fairly easily folded up and/or carried with Ryan in it was imperative. It was interesting getting all our luggage AND Ryan down and up stairs and escalators and on and off trains. JoAnna was so great and took my big, heavy suitcase with all of my and Ryan’s stuff in it, as well as her own luggage and purse. I took Ryan, the stroller, and diaper bag, etc. Thank goodness for two things: one, that generally people were very helpful and most times when we were loaded down the heaviest, someone helped one or both of us, and two, that there is handicap/stroller access through the turnstiles in the Underground and Metro. (Luckily we only had to lug ALL our stuff going to and from Paris. The rest of the days we just had our purses and the diaper bag. Even just that was challenging, though. After a while, JoAnna and I developed a sort of system where we would take lifts (elevators) when we could – which wasn’t very often, then failing that, escalators. I could handle Ryan in his stroller going up, then JoAnna would grab the bottom of the stroller and we’d both carry Ryan in the stroller for trips down. Ryan got to see a lot of the Underground and Metro’s ceilings! JoAnna would do the same for stairs, grabbing the stroller and helping me carry it. There’s definitely no way I could have negotiated the tube and metro stations with Ryan without help. I have to mention that my mom gave me this wonderful bag for Christmas that I could put everything in, then hang from the stroller’s handles. It was great since the umbrella stroller didn’t have any place to store stuff.)

To make our journey even more arduous, it was very hot and muggy. The tube ride from Ruislip to London was stifling. It was also about an hour long. We were dripping with sweat by the time we emerged on the streets of London. We popped out at the Piccadilly Circus, since I remembered that was pretty much in the thick of things. The first thing we did was stroll through a small market in front of St. James church. The next thing we did was almost get run over by a bus. Oops. I wouldn’t have mentioned our lapse and lucky miss, except that a woman with green eyes approached me and admonished me to be more careful. I admit I was a bit rattled – though I think more by the woman than by the bus! I do believe in messengers though, and while I would never purposely endanger myself or especially Ryan, we all lapse now and then, so I took her admonishment to heart.

We needed some refreshment, so we stopped for a drink and a snack at a little café called “Fait Maison.”

Unfortunately, by the time we had driven from Alconbury to Ruislip, then taken the tube to London, over half our day was gone. However, JoAnna was content to just be in London, so we wandered around a bit. Our wandering led us to Waterstone’s (a bookstore), which was having a sale on “holiday reading,” (aka, “beach books”). We both bought a signed copy of a book called not that kind of girl, by Catherine Alliott. We needed something to read on the tube and at night. The book would prove to be a very fun element throughout our trip. JoAnna and I both read it at the same time, and it was fun to compare notes and chat about the characters and the story.

We decided to check out Leicester Square. We had some ice cream and took in the scene. As we were walking around, a polite young man asked us if we liked hip hop. Turns out his name is Zuby and he has a cd. It was only four pounds, so I bought it – and had him sign it! You never know. That cd might be worth something someday! (I added Zuby as a friend on MySpace.)

Larry had gone to London last year before Ryan and I moved to England. He said the Globe Theatre was something good to see. I hadn’t seen it in my previous trips, so JoAnna and I decided to check it out. After a tube ride and a long walk, we found we missed the last tour of the day by seconds. *sigh* Oh well. We took some pictures of the Millennium Bridge and walked back towards Piccadilly.

At this point it was high time for dinner and we were all hungry. JoAnna suggested the Rainforest Café, thinking Ryan would enjoy the restaurant’s rainforest theme. It’s a loud, fun place to take a family to eat. Every half hour a “thunder storm” breaks, complete with thunder and lightening. The place has a very Disney feel to it. We had a good time. The food was decent, and JoAnna got some very cute pictures of Ryan.

After dinner, we took the long tube ride back to Ruislip. Once at the station there, we walked back to the car, only to find someone had thrown up on it! EEEEWWWWW!!! It was completely disgusting. It was on the driver’s side window. It was also half dried and hard to get off. I made an interesting discovery though. We stopped at the nearest gas station to clean the car. Apparently British gas stations have free plastic gloves for patrons to wear so they don’t get their hands dirty while fueling or window washing. Very cool. I was grateful for those gloves, let me tell you! It took a while, but I got pretty much all the barf off the car. I mean really, who throws up on a car?!?

London Day One

Here are links to my previous London trips: https://hkvlayman.tripod.com/id11.html

https://hkvlayman.tripod.com/id35.html

(I don't know why, but for some reason this blog building utility isn't letting me rename the hyperlinks like it used to, so that's why they look like that.

I am sad. JoAnna left today.  I can't believe how quickly the time she was here flew. We had such a great time!

Ryan and I were sort of lost today. We'd gotten so used to being on the go and traveling, and being outside almost all day every day. It's been raining and windy and almost cold the last couple of days, so Ryan was getting some serious cabin fever.

It felt so weird not to have JoAnna here today.

I will try to have the next installment of our trip up tomorrow. I have a good portion of it written. I just need to finish it up and make a photo album for it.

I would like to wish Rebecca a very happy birthday today!

Hope everyone's week is going well.

Hey Paula! Best wishes for a fabulous birthday!

Much love,

~Holly and Ryan

I thought I would reassure everyone that barring any natural disaster or illness, I plan on continuing to post about JoAnna's and my adventures in London and Paris starting tomorrow night. Stay tuned!

I would also like to comment on the drawing in my previous post. Besides being relevant to the post's subject matter, I included it for another reason. I love family and friends. That's the most important thing in life to me - being surrounded by loved ones. The drawing captures that feeling of love and celebration, and I wanted to share that.

Happy birthday JKR and HP!

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:8906

(Drawing by PrettyAnnaMoon.)

Happy Birthday Shelly! Hope it's wonderful!

Love,

~Holly and Ryan

Happy birthday to Larry Sr.! Hope it's a great one, Dad!

Love,

Larry, Holly, and Ryan

Day Two

Our trip definitely had a soundtrack. JoAnna’s husband, Mike Gehring, has an EP out called, “Six Down.” (Mike is on My Space.) It’s very good. We listened to that and James Blunt quite a bit. I highly recommend both cds!

To start the day, JoAnna treated us to beverages at the Daily Grind, the RAF’s little coffee shop. Our destination for the day was Ipswich, JoAnna’s dad’s home town. It’s about an hour and a half or so east of Alconbury (which is a couple of hours south of Harrogate). JoAnna had a map of all of her father’s old stomping grounds. Unfortunately we had the worst time navigating. Ipswich is a relatively small city, but is filled with tiny, curving streets, roundabouts, and one way streets. We spent what seemed like hours going the wrong way, not finding the right streets, and turning around. However, we still managed to visit the train station, Ipswich Football (soccer) Stadium, see the area JoAnna’s dad had his first paper route in, the area where he had his first real job, his grandparents’ old house, and his parents’ old house.

Navigational woes aside, it was quite an experience for JoAnna to see her dad’s past come alive in the places we went.

On the way back to RAF Alconbury, I managed to miss an exit and overshot the base by 12 miles. Oops. When we did finally get back, we smelled something really good. It turned out to be Mongolian barbecue. We had some for dinner and it was quite tasty. (I’d never had it before.)

(JoAnna took this photo one of the evenings we went for a walk on the Stay.)

(I've decided to post our Ipswich/London/Paris trip one day at a time, so I won't take too terribly long to get the whole thing up.)

Day One

JoAnna and Ryan and I set off for our grand adventure on July 19, 2006, at 12:43pm. We’d spent the morning finishing our packing, and doing last minute errands (such as running around town looking for cat litter, which I’d forgotten to pick up at the commissary the day before).

On advice from my friend Sarah, we planned on staying at RAF Alconbury, driving to a naval base in West Ruislip (pronounced “rye-slip,” in case anyone was wondering), then taking the London Underground (or, “tube”) into London. I’d printed out Map Quest directions to everywhere we’d be going. With the car stocked with drinks, snacks, and music, we were on our way.

Everything went pretty smoothly until we got to the village of Alconbury. Map Quest wouldn’t find RAF Alconbury, so I put the town in instead. We hadn’t seen the signs for the RAF, so it took us a little while to find it. If there ever was a theme for our travels, it was getting turned around. Unfortunately, ever since I picked JoAnna up from the airport, it’s been one direction-related snafu after another! Oh well. We did find the RAF and got checked in.

I realized that I’d forgotten a few things. Ryan’s sippy cups full of milk and juice were sitting in my fridge at home. I also forgot a couple of other minor things. Nothing big, thankfully.

We stayed in the temporary family lodging area. Our room was aging, but nice. The front room had its own bathroom, and a sofa bed, along with a coffee table and dinning table. There was a stocked kitchenette in the middle, then a bedroom and another bathroom. The hotel provided a crib for Ryan. There was a play area right outside our building, so in the evening I let Ryan run around and play for quite a while.

After we got settled, JoAnna and Ryan and I explored the base a bit. It was small, but nice, and had the usual military post amenities. We wound up getting some pizza for dinner after picking up some things at the BX and commissary. It was nice to have our own kitchen to work with.

Around bedtime I gave Ryan a bath. He seriously objects to having baths not in his home tub. He hollered the whole time. He calmed down once I got him dried, lotioned, and into his jammies. He fussed a little bit and I had to cuddle him a little extra, but after a short while he fell asleep. The rest of the nights we were there, he went to bed without any fuss at all. It was great that I had a separate room to put him to bed in, so JoAnna and I could stay up and not keep Ryan awake.

One downside to our room was that it wasn’t air conditioned. The weather was really hot and muggy, and the air wasn’t moving through the windows much. We didn’t realize we had electrics fans we could plug in until the next day. Those helped!

Here is a photo album from Flamingo Land and Harlow Carr.  Enjoy! (I forgot to mention that the Monday before we went to London and Paris, we had lunch at Betty's, a mandatory stop during a visit to Harrogate!)

Flamingo Land and Garden Harlow Carr