London, day 3

Everyone else was pretty beat by the start of day 3, so I headed out on my own while everyone else slept in a little. I first went to St. Paul's Cathedral and hung out there for a while (remember my love of old churches). I then went to the National Gallery and stared at paintings for a couple of hours. I don't know much about art, but I do love looking at paintings.

Stace and the kids finally caught up with me at the British National Museum. Stace wanted to see more of the Tower of London, so she went back there while the kids and I hung out at the museum. It deserves an entire day all its own. We spent most of our time looking at the mummies, but there's lots of other stuff to see there.

And then, Tanner and I decided to take our chances at Wimbledon. They have very orderly procedures for getting in there. Most of the tickets for Centre Court and the other show courts are sold well in advance, but if you want to camp out, they make a few available each day. Keep in mind that this picture is taken on a Saturday night and that there's no play on the first Sunday, so these people are camping here to get to Centre Court a day and a half later.

The queue becomes its own little city with temporary food stands and restrooms brought in.

The Wimbledon queue is a cultural experience all its own. We knew there was a good chance we wouldn't make it onto the grounds that night, but we decided it was worth sticking around anyway.

Against all odds, we made it in. We didn't see anyone famous, but it was fun for me to be there since I grew up watching Wimbledon with my parents.

This is probably the closest I'll ever get to Centre Court--the outside.

Faithful readers, you are now up to date with all of the Wood family's travels over the past few months. Whew! We're now starting to think about where to go for the October break. I think we've narrowed it down to Stockholm or Barcelona. (Everyone back in Minnesota thinks we're in Sweden anyway, so we might as well visit there, right?)

Matterhorn interlude

I've still got one more day of pictures from London, but we'll interrupt that program with a few pictures from my trip to Zermatt and my ride on the Glacier Express.

I didn't know this until I got there, but the quaint little hotel I reserved for my night in Zermatt was actually designed for a romantic getaway. Hotels.com called it "Hotel Julen," but it was actually called the "Romantic Hotel Julen." Oops. I felt a little odd checking in all by myself. (There was even a complimentary condom in the room. I left it for the next lucky fella.)

At any rate, it came with a nice terrace, and the room was charming.

I had a view of the Matterhorn from my room. As usual, the famous peak was playing hard to get, but I did get a few decent glimpses. I was feeling a little tense for some reason when I first got there, but it didn't take long for me to decide that the perfect cure for stress is a hotel in the Alps with a view of the Matterhorn.

In my earlier posting from Zermatt, I mentioned that one of the most interesting features there is the Matterhorn graveyard. It's a risky climb.

And, of course, no trip to a quaint little Swiss ski resort would be complete without the obligatory alphorn.

However, sights like this make we want to cry:

The rest of the pictures are from the train, so you can see some glare because I took the shots through the windows.

Not a bad way to end the day, eh?

London, day 2

Our day started with a visit to the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, which is where Shakespeare staged his plays. It was interesting to learn about the theater-going experience back hundreds of years ago. Now, when Tanner starts studying Shakespeare's plays, he'll be able to visualize how they might have looked on the stage.

We spent the whole morning there and then started to look for lunch. For some reason, Stace was quite amused by the restroom door at our restaurant.

It was a nice day, so a lot of the workers were out and about during the lunch hour. A crowd gathered in a plaza to watch the action from Wimbledon on a big screen.

We then worked our way over to the former site of the London Bridge. They had a kind of walk-through exhibition where people acted out some scenes from life near the bridge, but we could have skipped it. (This proves that not every experience while traveling turns out to be worth the effort.) They did have the coolest haunted house I'd ever been in, though. Stace and Lindsey decided to skip that part, but Tanner and I had fun.

Then, it was off to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

The Tower of London is actually a complex of several different buildings, one of which houses the Crown Jewels. (No pictures allowed.) Stace has read a lot of the history of Henry VIII, so it was interesting to her to see the places where the characters she's read about were imprisoned.

Tanner was thrilled, too.

London, day 1

Our first day there wasn't much of a day for pictures, although it was an interesting day. We spent time underground in the Churchill War Rooms. We were there for quite a while, and even the kids got into it. It was interesting to see where Churchill and his staff were hunkered down for the war. We then went to Westminster Abbey, where you can't take pictures. I could spend days on end in old churches like that. It's always interesting to see the tombs of famous dead people. We then went to the Imperial War Museum, which was cool, especially for Tanner. And finally, we went to the Lion King that night, where you obviously can't take pictures.

But here are a few:

And, as you all know, no trip abroad would be complete for our family without the traditional Subway Sandwich shot:

Ethan's day in Lugano

The week before I went to Warsaw, I finally got around to visiting Lugano, a city in the Italian part of Switzerland. That's been on my radar since we got here, but it can be quite hot in the summer. I finally found a good day. While there, I went up to the tops of two mountains, Monte Brè and Monte San Salvatore. I ate lunch on a restaurant terrace that overlooked the whole valley. It was a bit hazy that day, so the pictures aren't as clear as I would like, but they're still pretty good.

I did manage to find a few friends up there on the mountain.

As all of my friends know, I love a good Harley as much as the next guy, so I was thrilled to learn that there was a Harley convention going on in Lugano. (Is it a convention? A mob? A conference? A Harleyfest? I'm not sure what you call it when several hundred Harley lovers get together.)

Ethan's day in Zug

A few weeks ago, after Stace and the kids had left for Utah, I spent the morning hiking around the Zugerberg, which is the local mountain that's up behind our house. The hike turned out to be a little more strenuous than I had expected, and I wasn't always sure of where I was. Just about the time I was wondering how long it would take them to find my body, though, I suddenly burst out onto a playground at a boarding school at the top of the Zugerberg, and I was in the clear. It was just a quick cogwheel train ride back down the mountain at that point. Here are some of the pictures.

Later that day, down by the lake, they were setting up for the Zugersee fireworks show that night. They launch the fireworks from these barges sitting out in the lake. It's the most impressive fireworks show I've ever seen.

And here's one more shot, a couple of weeks later, of a storm moving across the valley as seen from our terrace.

Warsaw, day 2

My second day in Warsaw was much more enjoyable than my first. I knew the town and the bus system better, and the sites I wanted to see were closer together, so I didn't have to hoof it as far.

I started with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a nearby park:





I mentioned that Chopin is a national hero. All throughout the city, they have interactive benches like the one below. If you push a button, it starts to play a piece composed by Chopin.



In Paris, there's a street named after FDR. I guess the Poles hold Hoover in similar regard.



And of course, Pope John Paul II was Polish, so he's a big deal in Poland.



I spent a good chunk of the day in the Old Town and the New Town. (The New Town isn't new; it's just newer than the Old Town.) You have to remember that after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans razed pretty much every building in the Old and New Towns. Almost everything there was meticulously reconstructed after the war.



This is the Royal Castle. It was rebuilt in the 70s. They used fragments and artwork from the original castle where they could.

After I finished my tour of the castle, I went to an organ recital in the Cathedral of St. John.

Later in the day, I visited the Warsaw Uprising Monument (which is in a different location from the Uprising Museum). If you enlarge this photo, you can get a brief history of the Uprising.

This part of the monument shows the soldiers entering the sewers, which they used to travel around the city.

As I mentioned earlier, by that evening, I was getting pretty desperate to spend what was left of my money. My plans were dashed when I went back to the New Town, where a bunch of food vendors were set up. If you're traveling somewhere and you see a bunch of locals lined up to buy something, you absolutely must get in line and buy something, too. It's so much more interesting to do that than to find the local Subway. I ordered this. It cost about $4.

I can't tell you the name of this dish other than it starts with a "k" followed by about 25 more consonants. It isn't actually a sausage; it's like a sausage skin with some kind of potato mixture inside. I can't say that it was the best thing I've ever tasted, but it was interesting, and after I ate that (plus the accompanying pickle), I was completely full.

As I mentioned before, it was shortly after this gastromical experience that I followed the large crowd and saw the laser fountain show. I finally hopped a bus close to midnight to get back to my hotel, but I didn't feel unsafe at all. I'm not sure what the overall crime rate is in Warsaw, but the parts I saw were nice.

The next morning, I ate my fancy breakfast from room service and hopped a city bus to the airport, which is very close to the city. All in all, it was a very worthwhile visit.