Pub Food

We really enjoy dining in pubs when we are in London. The food has been quite varied from the usual shepherd's pie and fish & chips to wild boar, venison, lamb, salmon, and, one of our favorites, arugula with crayfish, pine nuts, avocado, capers, and olive oil. That was one tasty salad. Typically you find a table at one of these establishments then go up to the bar to order and pay. They will then bring your order to your table when it is ready. We like this because when we are finished, we just leave instead of waiting around to pay.

One thing we learned this trip was there can be a difference between the time they open and the time they start serving food. I guess they open their doors early to start serving drinks.

Our favorite pub is Pride of Paddington which is catty-corner to the South from the paddington station. The food is good and the people are friendly.

Oyster Cards - The best deal for getting around London by transit

Although you can still use cash to get around on the transit system in London, an Oyster Card is really the best deal. There is a nominal charge to purchase a card and you can "Top Up" your account with cash. When you use the card on the transit system, the charge is automatically deducted from your account. The good deal is that they discount the fares for card users. What would normally be a 4 pound tube ride is only 1.6 pounds on the oyster card. Buses which normally cost 2 pounds per trip are 1 pound on the card. Another feature is that when the fares reach a certain amount during the day, you aren't charged any more because the Oyster card then becomes a day-pass. That amount varies depending upon where, when, and how you have traveled, but is less than buying a day-pass up front. This way you don't need to figure out your travels ahead of time to determine if a day-pass would be more economical.

What I have done is run the balance of my account low toward the end of my trip and add cash as I need to during my last day (there are machines at every tube station) and try to end that last day with a zero balance. So far I have been successful. If you don't want to do that figuring, don't worry: the money left on your account does not expire and you can us it the next time you are in London.

Getting to London from the Airport

It is very easy to get to London from the airport these days. Many years ago I took the tube in. That can be difficult especially with lots of luggage since navigating most of the tube stations involves stairs. Now there is a Heathrow Express train as well as a Heathrow Connect train. If you are flying into Gatwick, there is the Gatwick express. The Heathrow trains go to Paddington station and the Gatwick train goes to Victoria station. Heathrow Express is non-stop and takes about 20 minutes. Heathrow Connect has a handful of stops and takes about 45 minutes. It also costs less than the express train. The Gatwick express is non-stop and takes about half an hour.

We took the Heathrow express for its simplicity and speed. It leaves out of Terminal 5 which is the same terminal where our flight arrived. The Heathrow Connect leaves out of Terminal 4, but both the Connect and Express go to the central area of the airport (Terminals 1, 2, and 3) so you can transfer there to whichever train you want there (the trains are free within the airport).

The place where we usually stay in London is a few blocks from the Paddington station so we just walk. If you stay much farther away from wherever the airport train arrives, I would recommend taking a bus or a taxi. As I mentioned earlier, the tube stations can be hard to navigate with luggage. The bus system is extensive in London and with a little homework it is possible to figure out how to get there on the bus (feel free give me a call if you would like some help.) Taxis of course go anywhere and are easy to pick up near train stations. Of course they will be more expensive than taking the bus.

Getting to Heathrow

We usually fly out of Seattle. Once we flew out of the Vancouver, BC airport and really enjoyed it. There are a couple of flights out of each airport to Heathrow, all on British Airways. Northwest used to fly, but It looks like that flight has fallen victim to cutbacks. The flights are non-stop and about 9 hours long. The in-flight entertainment is on-demand and there are lots of choices. On our last flight, I watched Star Trek, Frasier, The Madness of King George, The Simpsons, and Monsters vs. Aliens. I didn't have much time to sleep. On the flights that we have taken, they start out with a hot meal and toward the end of the flight they serve a cold snack. They periodically come through the cabin with water or juice to keep us hydrated. We typically order low-fat meals, which have been fairly tasty. It is usually some sort of chicken or fish dish.

Helpful Hint:
I learned something new during my last visit to Heathrow. They have bollards and gates near the train stations to prevent people from taking the airport carts onto the trains. This also makes it difficult to get larger suitcases through. I saw a woman ask an airport worker about that and he unlatched one of the fgates and enlarged the opening so she could get her suitcase through. If you reach one of these barricades, look for a latch on the underside near a bollard, probably near one end of the entryway.

London

We just returned from three weeks in London. We had a wonderful time and will be posting some of our experiences and observations on this blog. Stay tuned for more.

Petra Rocks!

Petra, Jordan (N 30º 19.352', E 35º 27.091')

We woke up well before the crack of dawn in Jerusalem and boarded the bus after breakfast. We drove to Jericho and crossed the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. After waiting for a couple of hours (that is what customs and immigration usually takes there) we headed toward Petra. On the way there we stopped by a little restaurant which had large serving trays of Hummus, Tubule, and Pita bread…I would have been happy to spend the rest of the day there, but we had to move on. We stopped at Ain Mousa, the spring that formed when Moses struck the rock (and got into trouble see Numbers 20:11.) Since the Mosque was under construction, we were able to go inside and see the spring. We got to Petra in the early afternoon. It is a bit of a hike through the siq to the stone structures, but we took horses led by some locals there. That is also the place I learned that I was allergic to horses. It is one of the most magnificent places I have been to. Unfortunately we only had about 45 minutes to walk around. We did get to see several of the structures including the Treasury, which you might recognize from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Roman Amphitheater in that short amount of time.
We hit the road for the long ride back to Amman. It was a two-lane road that went from the port at Aqaba through Jordan to Iraq. The Iran-Iraq war was going on at that time and since Iraq had no port, the supplies had to go through Aqaba along that road. The poor little road was getting pounded pretty badly. It was being rebuilt into a four-lane highway at the time we were going through. That evening, while we were still on the road, the road workers had to do some blasting so the traffic was herded to a large open area out of the way. An ice cream truck was stopped right next to our bus! One of our group asked our guide (Mohammed) to see if we could buy some ice cream from the driver of the truck. Mohammed went over there and talked with the driver for a while and they both came back with a box full of ice cream bars. He started handing them out to us and Mohammed explained that the compressor broke on the ice cream truck and it was all melting anyway so we got the ice cream for free!!! After the blasting our bus driver (Ahmed) was able to thread our bus through the crowd and got us back on the road ahead of a lot of the other traffic. He saved us a lot of time. Finally, about nine at night, we got to our hotel in Amman. They had a large buffet dinner waiting for us. It was a good day!

Cruising

In 1990 George took his first cruise with several friends from church. He found out then that it is a very relaxing and fun way to spend a vacation. He booked his second cruise within a week of his return and have been hooked ever since.

Mark Twain took what was probably the first pleasure cruise aboard the Quaker City in 1867. He describes cruising quite well at the beginning of his book Innocents Abroad :


It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry-boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean; they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts and laughter -- or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks, or watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon-dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies for constellations that never associate with the "Big Dipper" they were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of twenty navies -- the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples -- the great cities of half a world -- they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold friendly converse with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed lords of mighty empires!