We don’t really celebrate the holidays around my house, but if we did, there would be pasta! I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season, however you choose to (or not to) celebrate it.

A few months ago, I decided that I would like to spend my 40th birthday in London, so I got to planning and searching for things I would like to do while there – keeping in mind that there is no way I would be able to pack in as much as I would like and still enjoy it. Still, I researched and consulted Google Earth when I wanted to see what places looked like and I planned and planned. I love doing that. Somewhere in the planning stages I decided that I would also like to go to Cardiff. And I am glad we did. So, anyway, I got the trip all planned out and booked and then we waited….for what seemed like an eternity for the time to come to travel.

Before I get into the details of our trip, I would like to say a few things about the weather this trip. We spent a week in London and Cardiff and not once did it rain while we were out and about. In fact, there was only one incidence of rain the whole trip and it was slight and while we were napping one afternoon in Cardiff. It was truly amazing. We could not have asked for more beautiful weather. It was sunny and the temperature was perfect for short sleeves for the majority of the time. We could not get over just how amazingly perfect it was.

After forcing myself to concentrate at work all week, our holiday finally began. We got to the airport early and had time to relax with a beer or two before making our way to our gate to depart. We had hoped to get at least some sleep on the plane so that we could enjoy some of Friday in London. We did get a little bit, thankfully, but not a lot, so Friday was definitely going to be a light day.

We departed the aircraft and went through the familiar immigration, baggage claim and customs before heading to the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station. I had purposefully booked us at the Hilton London Paddington so that we wouldn’t have to even leave the station to get to the hotel. For our last trip to London, we stayed at the Hilton London Tower Bridge, which is a gorgeous, modern hotel with fantastic views of the Thames and Tower Bridge. It was also a 10 minute walk to the nearest tube stop, which, with luggage, is less than fun. This time I was willing to sacrifice the views and new looking/feeling hotel for the convenience of having the train and the tube so close by. And I am very happy I did.

Anyway, we got checked in and headed up our room. The room itself was nice enough. Nothing special, really, the hotel is showing its age. The air conditioner in the room never did work quite right, so it was always just a little warmer than either of us liked. We were told that the next several days was going to be unseasonably warm and sunny in London, so we both figured that air conditioning just wasn’t used as heavily as we rely upon it at home. Even still, I would stay there again just because it is so damn convenient and the staff was friendly and helpful.   So, we unpacked and got showered and headed out to, hopefully, enjoy a London Walk. We chose the “In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes“, which was guided by Richard IV (there are apparently 6 Richards that work for London Walks, so they number them).

It was a fun and informative walk. For those that have done the tourist thing in London but have not taken a London Walk tour, you really should. We happened upon them by accident the last time we were in London and it is such a wonderful way to see the city and learn of the history and lore that London has. Their guides are superb! Unfortunately, I was starting to really feel the effects of travel and little sleep and I did wish I had opted for a nap and one of the evening walks instead. Richard was fantastic. I, however, was having a hard time concentrating and, while I had intended to take pictures, I just put my camera away. I just could not do it.

After our walk, we headed back to the hotel to nap. It was necessary. We awoke in time for dinner and headed to one of the many Indian restaurants within a couple blocks of the hotel. We chose Flavours of India. It’s a really tiny restaurant with ornate decor and the food was fantastic. If you find yourself in London, in the Paddington area, I do recommend it. We decided to call it an early night so that we could enjoy my birthday without feeling exhausted.

On my birthday, I woke up quite early feeling mostly refreshed. Today, I had a couple things planned – a ride on the London Eye and an afternoon at the British Museum. After breakfast, we headed to South Bank and walked for a bit and took some photos of the area. I remembered the area quite well from out last trip, but the weather was so much nicer this time. Just perfect, in fact. Ya know, in case I have not mentioned that.

I had booked the Fast Track tickets for the London Eye; We’re not Time Lords, so for us, time is too precious to spend it in a long queue. We basically got the tickets and then went to the Fast Track Queue and withing 2 minutes we walked into our capsule on the Eye. Also, getting there early ensured that there were fewer people in the capsule. The views you get as you traverse the wheel are amazingly spectacular. I think every major city should have one of these. It was lovely.

After we disembarked the London Eye, we hopped back on the Tube and headed to the British Museum. Once we got there we decided to start with some lunch. The British Museum has a really nice restaurant called The Court that is under the glass dome of the Great Court of the museum. Unlike the cafe style places elsewhere in the museum, this was fine dining. We had a lovely birthday lunch with drinks and then set off to enjoy as much of the museum as we could, knowing that we very likely would not see it all. The last time we visited the British Museum was 1997 and we both looked forward to having another look.

We started on the top floor and worked our way down. We spent 5 hours walking though the exhibits and we still managed to miss some rooms I would have liked to see. Next time, right? We definitely exhausted ourselves, but it was such a lovely way to do it. On our way back to the hotel, we discovered that there must be a football match in London because we encountered hordes of people – quite a lot of them wearing jerseys – going somewhere. And walking down the street looking for somewhere to have dinner, the pubs weren’t as crowded as we thought they would be.

Sunday’s agenda included 2 things — a hop on/hop off bus tour, that we figured we wouldn’t do much of the hopping on and off, and another London Walk, the topic this time being Jack the Ripper. I actually got a little bit of sun on the bus tour. Go figure; we spend a week in Mexico and I come back more pale than I left, because I wore industrial strength sun block the whole time, but I come back from the UK – where rumor has it the sun doesn’t come out – with sun! It is a lovely way to see the city, though, and I recommend it. Next time, I think we will choose some sites to disembark and explore more thoroughly. The one place we did want to get off the bus was at the Natural History Museum. It is a gorgeous museum – very ornate. We did not spend much time there this trip, but will spend more time next time. It’s quite large, but we had already been doing quite a lot of walking and we wanted to make sure to save enough energy for the Ripper walk later.

The walk was guided by Donald Rumbelow, who is an historian and has researched Jack the Ripper for pretty much my entire existence on this planet. Wow. What an amazing walk. Donald is very descriptive when telling the stories of how life was in 1888 when the Ripper murders took place. He also, very graphically, describes the murders themselves and they were gruesome. The Ripper’s identity was never determined and not much physical evidence has survived, so we may never know who he was, but one thing is clear – he was a very sick person. The Jack the Ripper walk is, undoubtedly, the most popular walk available. Apparently even more so when Donald guides it. At the Tower Hill Tube stop, there were about 80 people, which split into 2 groups – some going with another guide, Molly, and the majority going with Donald. Donald’s group grew during the tour, too. I think there were over 100 people by the time the tour ended. I do hope that at least some of those people paid after the fact. This tour takes you to some dodgy parts of London, but even still I didn’t feel unsafe like I would have in some parts of DC or New York. If nothing else, there is safety in numbers, right? We also got an autographed copy of one of Donald’s books on Jack the Ripper, which I look forward to reading.

Monday we aimed to solidify our geek cred somewhat by taking a trip to The Who Shop. It’s a bit out of the way, but we really wanted to go and we’re glad we did. The folks that run it and work there are quite lovely people and they have put together a small museum of Doctor Who memorabilia they have been collecting for 30 years in a back room, which is worth seeing. My goofy husband posed for some silly pics while we were there.

After our trip to The Who Shop (where we did buy a few things, of course) we headed back to Paddington Station because we had a train to Cardiff to catch. I just love how so many things are accessible via subway or train in the UK. It is most convenient to not have to drive to get to places.

The trip to Cardiff was about 2 hours and a lovely way to travel. Once we got to Cardiff Central we got a taxi to the hotel. It was a short ride from the train station to Cardiff Bay. We stayed at St. David’s Hotel, which overlooks Cardiff Bay. It’s a gorgeous hotel inside and out. We found out that just about 3 months ago, they renovated their bar and restaurant. The staff says that before that it was looking a bit shabby. Now it is quite beautiful. We opted for a Junior Suite there and we got a corner room with floor to ceiling windows lining both outer walls with a view of the Wetlands Reserve and the bay. It was breathtaking. We unpacked a few things and changed clothes and headed to Mermaid Quay, on the bay, in search of a pint or two. Not exactly hard to find, I might add.

Mermaid Quay is a picturesque waterfront area. Shops, restaurants and bars line the streets and we looked forward to a relaxing couple days to complete our holiday. Cardiff has quite a different feel than does London. Everything slows down to a reasonable speed. And being Torchwood fans, it was neat to see Cardiff in person. Doctor Who is also filmed in Cardiff, with the difference being that in Doctor Who, they make Cardiff into other places most of the time. Torchwood is set in Cardiff, so things are far more recognizable. I’d like to spend more time in Cardiff, I think. We didn’t explore the city centre at all while we were there and there is more to see. Monday evening, we went back to the hotel to have a pint in the hotel bar before setting out again to see Cardiff at night. It didn’t quite go as planned, actually, which as it turned out was just fine. We sat down to watch one of the pre-World Cup matches — England vs Mexico and met a couple other people that were in town on business and sat around talking to them and drinking until about 1 in the morning. We had a fantastic time getting to know them.

One topic that came up over and over again when we talked to the people that lived in the UK was the recent health care legislation here in the US. Every single person we talked to there brought it up and every one of them could not believe just how much resistance it got here. That’s quite a different picture than was painted by the opposition here. The way they told it, people in the UK and Canada hated socialized health care. By and large, they don’t. Their systems do have their problems, for sure, but the people are not without medical care and they recognize the importance of that. But I digress. Back to our holiday.

While in Cardiff, we had two things planned, aside from sampling the local beers and eating way too much food. A trip to Cardiff Castle and a visit to the Doctor Who Exhibition at Red Dragon Centre. One of the gentlemen we met at the hotel bar used to work as a broadcast engineer for the BBC and after finding out that we were big Doctor Who fans, he tried to get us a tour of BBC Wales. He wasn’t successful, because of the short notice, but I was floored that he would even try. He was a lovely gentleman that I hope we run into again in the future.

We took the Aquabus taxi sevice from Cardiff Bay to the City Centre to visit the castle. I much prefer the Aquabus to regular taxi services. It was fun. We got to see quite a lot of birds, mainly swans, with their young and it was adorable. Once dropped off at the City Centre, we explored the castle grounds and had some lunch and explored some more. There is a stone circle in the park beside the castle and the castle itself is very ornate on the inside. We got a tour of the castle apartments and wow. Just wow. Not my style of decorating, but wow.

The Doctor Who Exhibition is small, but worth seeing. I enjoyed seeing Dalek’s close up and, of course, a TARDIS. There was a lot more there, too. It was most fun. If you find yourself in Cardiff and like Indian food, I highly recommend Moksh in Mermaid Quay. Mermaid Quay has quite a variety of restaurants, actually. There’s a pan-Asian buffet (Cosmo) that’s not bad, although it is very popular with groups and was very loud. There is also a Cantonese/Thai place that we really didn’t care much for – bland. There is also French, Italian, American and general cafe type places and, of course, some pubs. I wouldn’t mind spending enough time there to sample all of them, but alas, there was not time this trip. Before we knew it, it was time to catch a train back to London for our flight home. I am usually ready to come home after 5 or 6 days of a holiday. This time I wasn’t ready to come back. I could have easily stayed a while longer.

Someday, I would like to take several weeks to a few months and take the train from city to city, spending 3 or 4 days in each city we go to and see and experience new places. Someday.

And now for the photo’s…I haven’t labeled the pictures yet and some of them will undergo further editing.  I kind of wanted to be done with this for now and take a break and at the same time I wanted the pictures to be available for all those folks that have been asking me for them.  SO, I do hope you enjoy!

The British Museum, London – May 2010

Ancient Greece & Rome

44 Photos

Assyria

24 Photos

Aztek

10 Photos

China & India

39 Photos

Egypt

83 Photos

Japan

27 Photos

The Library

26 Photos

Misc

11 Photos

London – May 2010

London - Misc

47 Photos

South Bank

27 Photos

Museum Of Natural History

29 Photos

Jack The Ripper Tour

16 Photos

Sherlock Homes Pub

10 Photos

The Who Shop Museum

11 Photos

Cardiff, Wales – May 2010

Cardiff Bay

56 Photos

Cardiff Castle

104 Photos

Doctor Who Exhibition

56 Photos

Finally a cause I can get behind!

Yeah, I used this graphic last year, but it still makes me laugh.

I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday filled with people and things you enjoy and nothing you don’t!

Unfortunately, the fun pics of the Big Bad Wolf making scary gestures toward Little Red Riding Hood are on someone else’s camera, for now, so you’re stuck with this one.  Still, it was fun!

Happy Halloween Everyone!

This is the coolest looking TARDIS cake I have seen yet. Even with all the “in process” pictures, I do not have the skillz to pull that one off. I might have to try and find someone who does.

We got tickets on the lawn so that we could bring our cooler and snacks and beer.  Took some camping chairs so we wouldn’t have to sit on the ground.  We got there about 90 minutes prior to the show and we had our picnic and a beer and then sat back to enjoy the show.  And good stuff it was.

For those that don’t what type of show this was, they basically showed clips and segments from video games from the last 4 decades on big screens and the orchestra played the themes or sound effects right along with the clip.  There were a couple vocal performances and several other side item performances, like Martin Leung who became popular on YouTube for playing video game themes on the piano while blindfolded.

The thing I really found cool and interesting was how they combined a few genre’s of music.  They had someone playing an electric guitar right along with the orchestra and at one point that guitarist was jamming with the standing bass player – nice touch.  There was also a choir, an opera singer and another vocalist.

There was also a Guitar Hero challenge for one person in the audience (who had won a skillz contest ahead of time) to complete Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” on hard with at least 200,000 points.  If he managed it, he won a $2500 Dell Laptop.  Not only did he win it, he did it on expert and only missed one note.  He had a streak of 609 notes, which looked pretty amazing to me.  Of course, the orchestra played along as well.

This was a show that celebrated the artistry and culture of video games.

The only thing we honestly didn’t enjoy had nothing at all to do with the show.  There was a small group of college age kids sitting next to us on our left that talked the whole time as if they were in their livingroom.  Everyone talked a little bit, which was part of the enjoyment; but these folks simply did not shut up.  The louder the music got, the louder they got.  Also, one of them had a camera and kept taking flash pictures.  It was an outdoor show at night.  That built in flash has a range of about 15 feet.  The only thing it accomplished was to blind everyone near her.  I did finally ask her to stop, which she did.  Sadly one of her companions took up the picture taking after she stopped.

Thankfully the group of 12 year old’s in front of us and the group of college age kids on the other side of us were really enjoying the show and were not making asses of themselves.  The group to our left really was in the minority in that regard.

If you enjoy video games you should really check out Video Games Live if they come to an area near you.  It was a lot of fun.

Here’s a YouTube clip to give you an idea of what it is like:

I’d been racking my brain and going through the closets for things to sell to go to London TAM, but it just wasn’t happening.  With it being sold out, at least I don’t have to fret over it.

Damn.  I’m severely jealous of everone that gets to go.  But, I look forward to reading all about it.  Plus, I will make it to a future one.  Damn it.

Yesterday, we took a trip to visit 4 wineries. Village Winery, Lost Creek Vineyard & Winery, Hidden Brook Winery and Fabbioli Cellars. I linked to the Virginia Wine pages rather than the individual winery websites here because the info given is consistent and compact. The individual winery websites can be found at the end of this post.

Our first stop, Village Winery, wasn’t much to look at. The building is weathered and the barn next door looks like a strong wind would knock it down. The owner is in the process of restoring the farm buildings.  For wine, he specializes in apple and elderberry wines, but he also make some more typical cabernets and merlots.  Both the apple and elderberry were quite delicious summer time wines.  They both had a very casual feel to them and were sweet without being desert wines.  We marked this winery for future visits and recommend it.

The other 3 wineries we went to were all practically next door to each other.  This allowed us to visit more wineries than we normally do in one trip.  Lost Creek Winery is very modern and has a large tasting area and a gift shop.  Their wines were quite good, particulary the Chambourcin and their two desert wines – Late Harvest and Courtney’s Christmas Blend.

Next door to Lost Creek is Hidden Brook Winery.  It was opened by one of the children of the Lost Creek owners.  It’s in a log cabin building and is fairly modern.  This winery was the most bland (ie uninteresting) we went to.  And the only one where we did not purchase any wine to bring home.  Their wines were good, but nothing really unique.  They also seemed a bit unorganized.  I don’t think they had a system worked out for paying for tastings because unlike every other winery we’ve visited in VA, they asked for payment before the tasting and then as we were leaving they stopped us and asked about payment again — and then realized that we had already paid.  That was just weird.

And lastly, we headed down the road to Fabbioli Cellars.  It’s run out of the finished basement of the family’s home.  Of the 4 wineries, we enjoyed the atmosphere of Fabbioli the most.  Also, we liked every wine we tasted there.  It was actually difficult to choose which ones to buy — well we are on a budget, so we couldn’t really buy one of each.  The people that run the place are all nice and personable and love a good chat.

I love this time of year.  It’s finally warm and there are so many wineries to visit.

Winery Websites:

Village Winery

Lost Creek Winery

Hidden Brook Winery

Fabbioli Cellars