A Reputable Journal

Well last night a bit of Dublin had a taste of some Jim Croce music. I’m not sure where it came from but we were enjoying the musical pub crawl that started in Tower Square. Our two guides for the night were Eugene, who played the Irish banjo, and Steve who was a guitar player. After a couple of pubs and a lot of good Irish Jigs and Reels, and some history of Irish music and instruments were were walking between pubs and I started up a conversation with Steve. Steve also plays a Taylor guitar and it is the same model I have at home. That was the kiss of death. “What is your name?” asks Eugene. Brad, I say. “Now we’ve got you” says Eugene, at this next stop you’ll have to play a little for us. Uh, I don’t think thats a very good idea I said. We talk a little more about what kind of music I like to play and where we are visiting in Ireland and where we have already been. Steve mentions that he is a fan of Prairie Home Companion and how some of the things that Keillor talks about on the show remind him of Ireland and I’m thinking I’m safe and the whole sing for us thing was simply a fun idle threat.

After we get to the next pub and the duo works through a couple more songs Eugene starts in on a long story about how its an Irish tradition to join in on a session and it doesn’t matter how good you are or if you even just sing one verse or whatever, its all in good fun. The next thing I know Steve is handing me the Taylor and a pick I’m I’m thinking what the heck am I going to play!? Roller Derby Queen is Jane’s suggestion and I think I can probably remember the chords and the words, so I start to strum a little bit to see if I can recall the right chords and pretty soon I’m singing. I make it through a couple of versus without too many mistakes and finish up to the applause of the rest of the pub crawlers. Thankfully they all had had a few pints of Guinness by now so they were not an overly discriminating audience. Anyway, it was great fun.

So now that its the next morning and I’m thinking about it, I realize that I really have quite an international performance background. I’ve played in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. I’ve played with a group of Tahitians sitting in a plastic lawn chair in the South Seas. And now I’ve played on an Irish pub crawl in Dublin. It makes me wonder where I could go if I practiced some more!

After the pub crawl was over, we found a little Italian place that was still serving pasta at 10:30 at night and finished off our first day in Dublin. The day had started out very early, in Stockholm with a train ride to the Arlanda airport. We flew SAS from Stockholm to Dublin and then took a bus from the airport to the city center of Dublin. Here in Dublin we are staying in one of the StayDublin.com apartments. Its a bit sketchy and in need of paint and a good cleaning but the apartment has two bedrooms a living room a kitchen with one of those funky european washer/dryer units. If anyone can tell me out to operate one of those things properly please send me an email. We cannot get the dryer to work for anything.

After unloading our stuff at the apartment we started to explore the area a little. We found a restaurant called Boojum, right by our apartment that is operated by a man from Philadelphia. If you are looking for your fix of Chipotle right here in the heart of Dublin then Boojum is for you. It was a nice lunch, and I think Josh was really happy with the food. We took a tour of Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. This is an amazingly old illuminated version of the four gospels that has been preserved by the Trinity library, its a really interesting exhibit, and we had a great guide who is a student at Trinity and works for Ark.com, Ark sells clothing and the idea is that every time you wear an article of Ark clothing you perform An Act of Random Kindness. Thats where the Ark name comes from. The library at Trinity was also extremely interesting to me for two reasons. First it is the largest single room library in Europe. Its just beautiful to see books and bookshelves stretched out for a city block. But the second reason is interesting to my twisted computer science mind because of how the books are organized in the library. The books are sorted by SIZE! In order to find a book in this library you must know the exact dimensions of the book to get you to the proper shelf!

After the tour of Trinity we just walked around and enjoyed the street performers and the shops of Dublin. Josh wanted to go to the Leprechaun museum but he was out voted 3 to 1. So we went back to the apartment to rest our feet and find an internet cafe to catch up on email and Facebook before the pub crawl. Today we are doing a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city and plan to take the tour of the Guiness Brewery and the Dublin Gaol.

Location:Dublin, Ireland

Today we heard the name Gustavus Adophus quite a lot. With apologies to my friends in St. Peter I must say he didn’t know much about ship building. In all truth it really wasn’t his fault from a technical point of view, but he did pay the bill. I am talking about the Vasa of course. It is the largest ship to be recovered and salvaged and conserved in a museum. This is definitely a must see sight if you go to Stockholm. The Vasa was built in 1628 and was the largest ship in the Swedish fleet. Unfortunately she sunk on her maiden voyage out of the harbor! The reason she sank was because there was not enough ballast in the ship to counterbalance the forces on the sails in the heavy breeze. This seems like an incredibly dumb mistake for a ship builder to make, but there you have it.

The ship lay submerged for 333 years until an amazing recovery operation in the 1960’s brought the ship to the surface. The Vasa is amazingly well preserved due to the water conditions in the Baltic. The museum is just as interesting for the story of how the ship was raised to the surface and preserved as it was to learn about the building of the ship in 1628.

The Vasa Museum was our first stop today in Stockholm. Our day started early as we had to debark from the vision of the seas by 7:40. The sailing in to Stockholm was once again beautiful and very reminiscent of Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. We are all very lonely for our cabin at the sight of water, boats, rave trampolines and all the pine trees. The rest of the morning we wandered around stockholm enjoying the shops and the old town. We did a little shopping. I got an official USA soccer jersey to wear for the game today.



After walking around all morning we returned to our hotel to check in and rest up a bit. We are staying in the Rica Hotel on Gamla Stan in a wonderful part of stockholm. The streets around here are narrow and cobbled and there are restaurants and bars and little shops everywhere. We hunted around a little bit to decide where to have a late afternoon dinner and watch the USA versus Algeria match. We found O’Leary’s, a boston themed restaurant owned by a swede who spent time in Boston. They had the England match on upstairs and the USA match on down. The American fans were many and much louder than the brits. In a funny small world moment I recognized one of the other fans in the restaurant as the same person we had watched football with when we were in Balestrand! They were originally from Minnesota but had moved to Boston.

To catch up on our activities, yesterday we were in Tallin Estonia, and the day before was a day at sea. Tallin was a really nice city, it has the oldest medieval walled city in Europe. The city reminded us a little of Italy and of some of the walled cities we had visited in Tuscany. The city is an interesting mix of scandinavian and Russian influences.



Jane had a walking tour of the city that we got on the internet and we followed that plan around the city for several hours. After that we returned to the ship for our last night on board.

We are having a great time, but we are all very tired today. We just didn’t have a lot of energy for many touring activities. And the USA victory took a lot of energy as well. Early to bed tonight, but up again early tomorrow morning for our flight to Dublin.

Location:Stockholm, Sweden

After days and days of using our feet to get around european cities it was time for a change, and what better city to try two wheeled touring in than Copenhagen. Copenhagen has more bikes than anywhere else in the world. They make the people of Portland look like a bunch of slackers. There are literally bikes everywhere. At the train stations there are bike racks two stories high, there are bike racks everywhere and people riding their bikes everywhere.

Jane found Biking with Mike on the internet, he is a lifelong resident of Copenhagen who left his job as a director at a large company to do what he loves – bike and tell people about his city. There is no fancy signup procedure as each days tours are first come first served. If the weather is horrible there won’t be a tour.

We left the ship at 9:30 and headed straight for Mike’s bike shop. We knew the tour was not until 10:30 but we wanted to make sure we got a spot on the tour. We arrived by taxi 5 minutes later, but the shop did not even open until 10:00. So we walked around the area a little bit and decided to get a coffee at the cafe up the block from Mike’s. One minor problem was that we hadn’t taken the time to find a cash machine and get some Danish Kroners. After preparing our coffee we discovered that the credit card reader in the coffee shop was not working properly, and so we were unable to pay. In Decorah, this would not really be a problem, go find some money and pay me later. Who would have guessed that we would find the same attitude in a big city? This appears to be the Danish way. The proprietor of the coffee shop was perfectly happy to have us go on our bike tour, get some cash, and pay him later in the day.

Shortly after 10 Mike arrived. Bright green stocking hat, bright green shoes, a yellow and black livestrong vest and fashionable glasses. His bike matched his cycling outfit. Mike took us on a tour for a little over 3 hours. We saw the palace, the castle, the parliament buildings, the house where Hans Christian Anderson was born, the new opera house, a couple of parks, and a little lawless place called Christiana. We would bike for a while and then stop and mike would give us a short lecture on what were were looking at, Danish politics, Danish culture, local gossip, you name it and MIke knew about it. He is an excellent story teller. As we were riding there was no talking, the idea is to absorb the local feeling of the place as you are riding rather than chatting. It worked. It was fun, we saw a lot of the city.

Christiana was the most interesting stop on the tour. We had coffee in the moonshine cafe. It is the safest coffee house in Copenhagen. Why? The sign on the door tells the story. More than 6000 police inspections since 2004. Christiana is the counter culture area of Copenhagen, Mike discouraged us from taking any pictures in the area because you never know when you might accidentally capture a deal going down, and they don’t like that.

We learned one word of Danish that really sums up our Copenhagen experience. The word is Hygglite, it is difficult to describe exactly what it means, cozy is one possible translation while fantastic is another. Internet people might translate it as “A Good Thing.” Its a word they use in Denmark to describe when something is just right and good. Our bike tour of Copenhagen with mike was definitely Hygglite.



At the conclusion of our tour we paid mike and headed, on foot, back through the park on the way to the ship. When we emerged from the park, there was Mike on his bike. Hello he said, I wonder if you might have a few minute to talk to a reporter from the paper Politik? Its the largest Danish paper and they are doing a story about touring copenhagen on bike. It seems that the reporter for the paper was planning to go on Mike’s afternoon tour, but because of the oncoming rain Mike had cancelled the afternoon tour. So, we agreed to spend a few minutes talking to the reporter and then we got our picture taken by one of the photographers from the paper. So, if you speak Danish you can read about the Miller family and our bike fun in the city of Copenhagen!

Location:Copenhagen, Denmark

This morning we got to sleep in, have a relaxing breakfast, catch up on some email and reading, and then we started our long day’s journey. As I’m writing this its 10:45 and we are still an hour out of Oslo. Of course it is also still full daylight outside, and we are hopeful that it will still be light for our short walk to the hotel when we arrive.

The first leg of our trip today started with the same Sognefjorden ferry that we arrived in Balestrand on yesterday. Only this time we rode it for only 45 minutes. When made a mid-fjord transfer to another ferry, this one was actually a passenger and car ferry, which took us down the “Narrow Fjord” This is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is the narrowest fjord with boat traffic on it. It is spectacular! We stopped counting waterfalls because there were simply too many. The steepness of the cliffs coming down to the water was just beautiful. We passed three tiny villages that have no roads leading to them, the only way in or out is by boat. The natural scenic beauty of this part of the world really is stunning. Along the way in the fjord I had a quick glimpse of two porpoises as well!

Our final destination for this ferry was Gudvangen, this is a tiny little town on the other side of two very long tunnels from Fløm. There is not much here except for some souvenir shops, a small restaurant, and the ferry landing. We had about an hour and half to wait for our bus to Fløm. The bus stop was literally a wide spot in the highway from Bergen, but our bus was right on time to take us to Fløm. Right outside of town was the first tunnel, it was 11.4 kilometers long. We had a short break and then another 5 kilometer tunnel. After this tunnel we were in Fløm, and the railway station.



The final legs of the journey are by train, we started off on the Fløm railway. Which goes up into the mountains 20km, at about a 55 degree slope! It is the steepest non-cogwheel railway anywhere. Again the scenery and waterfalls were marvelous. We spent the entire trip looking out the windows of the train and snapping pictures as fast as we could. We were not quite sure about this train trip when we first boarded as a hoard of toga clad norwegians got onto the same train car as us. They were quite loud and all carrying a can of the local brew. They were on the train for less than 1 km before they all got off the train, in the middle of nowhere. For all we know they are still wandering around the hills near Fløm celebrating some strange holiday we don’t know about.


The final stop of the Fløm railway is at Myrdral which basically consists of a train station up in the mountains. When we got off the train it was actually snowing! We had a short wait for the Bergen to Oslo train to come along and we jumped on. We have been riding in Coach 2, which looks to be the student car on the train. It seems that many students from Bergen must be returned home to Oslo for the summer.

Tonight we will check into the Thon hotel in Oslo, and I suspect we will all sleep in again tomorrow morning.

Location:Norway

After the late night heavy metal concert in Bergen, we were all very ready for some peace and quiet. We found it in Balestrand Norway. To get to Balestrand we took the early morning Ferry out of Bergen, and came up through the Fjords to get here. The Beauty of the Fjords is beyond describing in words, so here are a few pictures. First, leaving Bergen on the Ferry:

From Bergen, we travelled North, between the coast, and all the little islands that protect the coast from the North sea. After about two hours we turned inland into Sognefjord, The longest and deepest fjord in Norway. From here on, it was just one beautiful sight after another. Here’s a typical picture from the back of the ferry:




All along the fjords you see these nice houses either up on the hillside, or tucked down near the water. Sometimes there is a boathouse right over the water as in the picture above. Notice how still the water is, and the contrast of the green of the trees on the shore with this stunning blue water is just great.

When we arrived in Balestrand we were met by our host, one member of the family that owns and runs the Balestrand Hotel, which is in my mind the nicest and friendliest place we have stayed yet. The rooms have an amazing view out over the fjord, as you can see from this shot out off the deck of our hotel room. If you go to Balestrand, you should definitely stay here, and don’t be afraid to upgrade to the fjord view, it is worth it.



The rooms here, have no TV in them, but who needs a TV when you have a view like this? We did go downstairs to the lobby area where they have a breakfast room, a reading room, with computer, and a TV area. We enjoyed watching some football with a very international crowd. Its interesting hearing the perspectives of the other people on the games, and of course its different to watch the football match when the announcers are speaking in Norwegian. The truth is its kind of a welcome relief from the English announcers. All they do is talk about England this and England that… I suppose the American announcers are the same way, and they probably talk way too much. The truth is you don’t need an announcer telling you much when you watch football.

Balestrand is not a very large town, we were able to walk everywhere from our hotel, and see just about everything. There is a small aquarium that shows you some of the sea life living in the fjords, a couple of small lunch places and one other hotel called the Kviknes. Hotel Kviknes is the largest wooden structure in Scandanavia. We ended up having supper there last night and it was quite good. I had a wonderful veal, Jane had risotto, Kaia pasta, and josh had a triple decker club sandwich. While were were seated we struck up a conversation with an older british couple and had a very nice chat. It is interesting to hear the English perspective on what is going on with the BP oil spill in the gulf of mexico. It is clear that although the british people have been supportive of Obama in the past many are taking his anger at BP somewhat personally. Of course football is alway another good topic to take up with the Brits, luckily this couple were very sportsmanlike about our competition.

This morning we were able to sleep in and have a nice breakfast in the hotel. At noon we board the ferry again, and head for Oslo. Today is a travel Odyssey, we’ll be on two ferries, a bus, and two trains to take us to Oslo. We won’t get in until after 11:00 tonight, but of course it will still be broad daylight so we aren’t particularly worried. I’ll leave you with one more image of the fjords and beautiful Balestrand.

Location:Balestrand, Norway

Last night after we ate our dinner at the Ship Inn we came out to this sight.

The tide had gone out and left all of the boats stranded on the sand.







This morning we flew from Aberdeen Scotland to Bergen Norway, the landing was absolutely spectacular. I’ve never seen so many small islands in my life. Plus, the sky was perfectly blue for the first time in many days, and so the whole scene was amazing. Getting through customs and the rest of the airport went just as smoothly as you would expect from a scandinavian country.

We immediately found our SAS Airbus to take us downtown to our hotel. We are at the Hotel Thon, it is on the end of Byrggen Street, right across the road from the harbor. Its a very nice location, except that it is next to a huge city park. What is wrong with that you may ask. Well, it turns out that we picked the wrong night to stay at the Thon hotel next to the park, as tonight is the night of the Rammstein concert. Who are Rammstein you may ask? After a little internet searching I quickly learned that Rammstein are a German industrial metal band.

We are actually on the opposite side of the hotel from the concert but at the moment it is making no difference. We are trying to watch the world cup, but the sound from the concert is so loud it is drowning out the Brazilian national anthem. I would much prefer the sounds of those dumb world cup horns to the sound of a german industrial metal band. We can only hope that the concert will wrap up at a respectable time. Josh just found a view of the concert and said it looks like a bunch of black ants (yes all the concert goers are dressed in black T-shirts) streaming toward a rotting apple.

OK, enough grousing, Bergen really is a nice city. We started our tour of Bergen by meeting one of Kaia’s facebook friends named Thomas at our hotel. Thomas had visited Decorah with a group of Norwegian students a couple of years ago, and volunteered to get us oriented to the city when he saw Kaia’s Facebook status. He showed us around the area including the wharf and the fish market and the central park of Bergen.

Jane and Kaia spent some time shopping around the city for a sweater for Kaia. They were successful, and so Kaia can proudly celebrate her heritage at concord, and at Christmas time.

We took the Funicular up high above the city this afternoon and the view is amazing. We took Thomas' recommendation for a restaurant for supper tonight and went to Egon’s. It is a Norwegian chain restaurant and the food was OK. I think we have officially reached the point of vacation where choosing a place to eat for supper and dinner in a new strange city has become somewhat of a chore. We miss the home cooking.





Tomorrow morning we have another fairly early morning, as we must be on board our ferry boat at 8 AM for the trip to Balestrand, of course early morning takes on a whole new connotation at this time of the year at this latitude. We are now far enough north that there is only a couple hours of darkness at this time of the year. Darkness is only from midnight until a little after 2 AM. The Ferry trip tomorrow promises to be a beautiful trip through the fjords, we are all looking forward to it very much.

For now we are resting and watching Brazil and the People’s Republic of Korea play some football.

Location:Bergen, Norway

Can you possibly imagine a better way to top off a trip to St. Andrews than with a hole in one? Well thats what I did!! Josh and I were playing this morning, and it was on the 16th hole. I hit my drive perfectly straight, just a little left of the pin, right where I had aimed it. It rolled, broke to the right and dropped straight into the cup. Here’s where the story gets really weird, two holes later, Josh also got a hole in one. Thats right, on number 18 at St. Andrews. He hit his drive past the hole, up the hill, and it rolled straight back down into the cup. A truly amazing shot. You may be wondering which course we were on. Well unfortunately it was not the old course. It was a course called the Himalayas and it is the official putting green of the old course. They have 18 holes laid out, and you can rent a putter and balls. No, silly clowns mouths or windmills allowed, this is just a very challenging, and highly rolling putting green. In fact we had to wait until 11:00 this morning to tee off because they have a ladies putting league that plays before that. It is complete with its own clubhouse and everything. Here I am in my fashionable St. Andrews argyle sweater, getting ready to tee it up!

We arrived in St. Andrews yesterday afternoon, after visiting Castle Edinburgh in the morning. The castle was very interesting, and we again learned some interesting Scottish history. We stayed in the hotel Rusacks' which looks right out over the 18th Fairway on the old course. We could sit in our room and look out at both number 1 and 18 fairways. They have already done a lot of work getting ready for the Open. This is the last week that the public can play on the course until afterwards. So there are lots of grandstands under construction. The great thing is that the course is closed on sunday so the public can walk the course. So we did.

We’ve talked a lot these last few days about walking where other famous people have walked. We’ve walked the same rooms and stairways as Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and many others. Now we can add to our list Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklas, Old Tom Murray, and even Tiger. The room that we stayed in at Rusacks is the same room used by Arnold Palmer, and other golfers. In addition Mick Jagger also stayed in our room. I don’t know that Mick cares about golf but he was on the list. I’m sure they will be adding the Miller family to the list any day now.

Back to walking the course, it was really fun to walk along and remember seeing some of our golfing hero’s and where they hit great shots and where they got in trouble. We found lots of deep bunkers to take our picture in too. Here is one of me on the Swilcan Bridge:


This blog entry would not be complete without a little culinary update. Last night we ate at Nahm-Jim a Thai restaurant right in the heart of St. Andrews. We had some delicious curry, and Josh claims he had the best Pad-Thai of his life there. Very good stuff. After dinner the tide had gone way out, so Josh and I hiked out on the beach, we got a great look back at St. Andrews. You can see the Golf museum lit up on the far right, and some of the temporary construction they have stared for the open, also on the far right.




After a very light lunch in St. Andrews today, we finally gave in to Josh’s urge to have a Subway Sandwich, we drove to Stonehaven. Stonehaven is a small town outside Aberdeen, its probably about the same size as Decorah, but its right on the North Sea. Our Bed and Breakfast overlooks the town harbor and is really beautiful. We took an Awesome hike out to Donnotter castle. This castle is all in ruins but it is such a great setting, its was really amazing. This is the site where they filmed Mel Gibson’s version of Hamlet. This picture gives you a sense for how isolated the castle is.


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Location:St. Andrews, Scotland

One week after watching our Decorah Vikings take third in the state soccer tournament we were back watching futbol again. This time we were in Edinburgh Scotland watching USA play England. Now before you get too worried about us cheering for our side on the home turf of our opponent let me just clarify that when England is playing the Scottish will cheer very loudly for the other team! As soon as we arrived in Edinburgh Josh. Changed into his USA jersey, and as we were waking around Edinburgh he got lots of comments from the locals. “nice top there son”

So it came to pass that we found ourselves in a hotel bar with lots of support for USA. On one side was a group of about 20 younger scottish men, and on the other were some additional tourists like ourselves. We had hoped to experience the game in a pub, but unfortunately they do not allow minors after 8pm. It was great fun to watch the game here, but I must say that I have grown used to the expert commentary of my friend Jim, who is leading a group of Luther alumni on a trip through Germany at the moment. I am sure Jim found a good place to watch the game there with some German support. You see all kinds of people when you watch the game in a hotel bar. At one point an Asian man came in, and stared at the screen for a couple of minutes before asking “what half is it?”. One of our scottish compatriots replied, well I don’t know where you’re from mate but when the clock says forty two minutes here you’re in the first half. It sounds even funnier when you hear it with the accent. Needless to say that particular fan did not stick around to watch much of the game.

When the Americans scored (yes it was an error on the English keeper) the whole bar erupted in cheers and then a chant of USA USA started up. The bar manager looked like he couldn’t decide what to do. He clearly wanted to calm everyone down and was obviously worried that a riot was going to break out in his bar. But he had no idea how what the right strategy was. In the end order was restored by some humor. After the cheers erupted and the chant had started one of the scottish fans came running back into the room to see what all of the commotion was about. As he had been in the toilet, he made a great show of zipping up his zipper which put everyone to laughing, including the manager. Although I was disappointed to settle for the draw, I think it is a good result for the American side.

Earlier in the day we did spend some time walking around Edinburgh, we walked the Royal Mile, and checked out Holyrood House. We have now seen all the royal residences except for Balmoral. The big story of Holyrood is that this is where Mary Queen of Scots spent a lot of time, and it is also where her young son was killed right before her eyes by her husband. Nice guy, who wanted the throne bad enough to kill his stepson. Here is a picture of the Abbey.

Our hotel here is great, we are right in the middle of a bustling area, and have a awesome view of Edinburgh castle out our hotel window. Here is a night shot I took after the world cup game was over.





Today we are going to visit the castle, then pick up our rental car and head for St. Andrews, birthplace of golf!

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Location:Edinburgh, Scotland

I am writing this on the train from London to Edinburgh where they have just announced the breakfast options. I don’t get the concept of “English breakfast.” I would like to meet the chef who came up with the idea of serving baked beans and eggs together! My guess is that if I did meet him I would learn that he was also the inventor of the “Pudding Menu.” At every hotel the included breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, and baked beans. I don’t like baked beans under the best of conditions, and certainly not first thing in the morning. I guess it must be one of those things you need to grow up with in order to appreciate. In the meantime I will just stick to having tea.


Anyway, now that I have addressed the breakfast issue I will praise the train system. This is really a the way to travel. We have four seats facing each other in coach, tons of legroom, a table in between us, great scenery, free wifi, and a very quiet ride. No long hassles of getting to the station 90 minutes ahead of time, and no long security lines. Just walk to the platform, get on your train, stow your luggage and take a seat. As we reevaluate travel the US I really wonder what it would take to get this kind of convenience. I, for one would travel this way whenever possible.

I also want to say how much I love traveling with my iPad! This thing is great. It’s small, light, the battery life is awesome, I have a bunch of books to read on it, a couple of movies to watch, the current season of Merlin, and games to entertain me when I am tired of all of the above. Other than if I really needed to write a program I can not imagine why I would ever need to travel with a laptop. In fact I think this is really the start of something new. I don’t see myself needing a laptop. My setup would be a nice big desktop machine for programming and writing in LaTeX, and my iPad for the times I am not at my desk.

Finally, as long as I’m rambling on about products and travel I have to say that I love my ScotteVest. (www.scottevest.com). Its a vest designed for travel, that includes zip pockets for just about everything. I can carry camera lenses, glasses, iPod, phone, and all kinds of things. I think it has 20 pockets in total, so there is a pocket for just about everything. It keeps me warm at the temperatures we are traveling in at the moment, and with all the zippers and inner pockets I feel pretty secure.

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Today’s travel adventure involved the Tower of London. No, we were not arrested and tortured by the English royalty. We were on a tour of the tower of london. We had just finished the guided tour with one of the Yoman Warders (cool title eh?) and we decided to go in and check out the Armoury. (yep I’m converting to british spelling) Just after we got in the door an alarm started to go off, and a woman steward came hurrying buy and told us that we had to evacuate the tower. We were never able to to find out why we had to evacuate but Jane overheard a couple of them talking about a fire alarm. The tower of London is also the site where Henry VIII beheaded several of his wives, including Anne Boleyn.

We started our day by taking the tube to St. Paul’s Cathedral. After walking around the sanctuary we resumed our european stair climbing tradition. We first walked 257 stairs to the whispering gallery. This is a cool balcony where you can face the wall and whisper. The person standing directly opposite you across the circle, over 100 feet away, can hear you perfectly clearly. I’d like to explain the physics of this but I’m told that my readership will decline if I include any equations. I guess all three of you are safe and will remain loyal readers. After the whispering gallery we continued another 266 stairs up to the gold gallery. From here we had a very good, but slightly foggy view of all of London.

Next we walked across the Millennium bridge and toured Shakespeare’s Globe theater. This is a slightly modernized version of the original, but still true to the spirit of performing plays in daylight where the actors and audience are face to face. It would have been really fun to try to watch a show there, but Macbeth is being performed at the moment and it seemed a bit dark, and long given our schedule for the day.

Now we are chilling at our hotel, the Luna Simone, watching Mexico and South Africa play futbol. South Africa just scored and are up one nil. Very exciting for the South African side. We have been researching whether or not we dare show the american colors during the game tomorrow. Research has indicated that the scottish people will cheer for ANY opponent of England, so we feel pretty comfortable about watching the game in a pub in Ediburgh tomorrow. Maybe some nice scottish people will buy us a pint if we win! (darn, Mexico just scored)

Kaia is waiting patiently for her phone call from her Concordia advisor to do her registration! Then we’ll grab a quick dinner and head out to see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theater. We had three shows that we wanted to see while we were in London and this one won out since we walked right by the box office last night. We also wanted to see Stomp, and We Will Rock You. Yes, a Queen musical, featuring Bohemian Rhapsody and of course We Will Rock You.

Location:London, England