VIRGINIA

Stafford, Virginia

Currently we are hiding out in a little place called Stafford, Virginia in the home of one of Debby's cousins. John and Lisa are great to be with. Their oldest son had unexpected eye surgery and Deb and I were free enough to adjust our non-schedule to come help them out.

Stafford is a small, Deer infested bedroom community south of Washington DC. Chocked full with curvy roads, wild drivers, and meaningless stop signs, a Kansas boy could get motion sickness faster'n a teenager can text! If I don't use my GPS, I could be lost in a heartbeat! If I do use my GPS, it takes me all over Stafford creation and makes me THINK I'm lost! I had purchased a couple of Deer Whistles to mount on my little van to alert deer that I'm coming down the road, so they won't target my grille! So this afternoon I put those things on my grille. Now we'll see what happens! Hopefully, NOTHING will happen!

John and I went to Oliver's baseball game last night. It was a great evening. We hear tell there's a storm coming from the southeast. Last night the sky was glowing red and was a very beautiful sunset. It didn't look like any storm was coming to me! In fact, we were reminded of the saying: "Red sky in the morning, sailor takes warning. Red sky at night, Sailor's delight! So we delighted in the nice cool evening breeze and dry weather.

There were a lot of Cub Scouts camping out around the ball field at the City Park for their annual Camporee. Amongst them was a Civil War reenactor, portraying Confederate Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg who was killed at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. The reenactor was reliving history in the first person, to the Scouts, doing his part in keeping the spirit of history alive. Reenactments are a lot of fun and I'm certain the Scouts will enjoy the history lesson.

We went to two more of Oliver's baseball games this morning and then came home. Deb and I readjusted our storage containers in the Sienna and made things much more useful and neat.

We will be here helping out the family until next week sometime. Other factors depends upon "Frankenstorm", or Hurricane Sandy, that is projected to be the mother of all storms. It is predicted to hit the New Jersey shore head on by Monday. Virginia will also get some of it but probably, mostly, only rain. Some increased winds are expected, as well. I suggested to John and Lisa before they left us for a neighborhood party, that I could start boarding up the windows while they were gone. Lisa suggested that in the spirit of Christianity I should first start on their neighbor's house! Hmmmmm....???

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ

Atlantic City, New Jersey

After driving most of the day from Meridan, Connecticut where we got to visit with Marlaina (formerly) Frunk and her new baby girl, and Leanna her Mom and Jasmine her sister out here from Portland, we drove down through New York (white knuckle driving most of the way!) and ended in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

We are very close to the Boardwalk and have been there twice already! The first thing I did was to get a 20 minute back massage! It sure felt great after fighting traffic and construction and NYC traffic!

We are staying in a two bedroom condo at Wyndham Resort. This Las Vegas style little town has big money scraping the sky! The Donald built the Taj Mahal just across the street and apparently spared no expense! There are other casinos equally as lavish, if not more so. Debby and I ate dinner in one of them tonight and that's all the gambling we will do!

The Wyndham is beautiful! They messed up our reservations but promptly took care of us and gave us a beautiful two bedroom condo on the 27th floor. Our balcony faces towards the northeast and overlooks the city. It's all lit up tonight and is beautiful. Our condo is spacious and teases us to spend more time here than only one night. We shall see..... With our time share membership, we can rent this for $65/night! I think it regularly goes for $475/night for regular people. Not bad!

Life really IS good!

New England States

We are busy traveling around the New England States. We picked up our van in Virginia and headed north. We were in Bennington, Vermont the first night. From there we went to Portland, Maine and went to church there on Sunday.

For lunch we visited the Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. I enjoyed a lobster dinner while Debby had a cheeseburger.

From there we headed for upper Maine and spent the night a few miles away from Bar Harbor. We drove up to Acadia National Park and enjoyed seeing a national wonder, indeed! It's a very beautiful piece of Earth that's worth seeing!

We didn't spend a lot of time running around Bar Harbor because a couple of Cruise Ships were in harbor and tourists were everywhere!

Tonight we are spending the night south of Portland, Maine. Tomorrow we head towards Connecticut.

THE QUEEN'S YACHT

Yacht Britannia

October 11, 2012

For more than 200 years, kings and queens of England have owned Royal Yachts, and Elizabeth is no exception. It is a beautiful three masted steam powered dual engine vessel, capable of doing 20 knots. It was the honeymoon cruise vessel for Charles and Diana and others of the Royal family. the ship cruised for more than a million miles, which was equivalent to once around the world for every year it was commissioned.

Although it is not as plush as it could have been, it suited the Queen and that was the important part. It has a garage on board that keeps a 1960 black Rolls Royce Phantom V in it. The Queen's Barge is a luxurious "Taxi" that takes her to shore and back again. It, alone, would make a sailor's mouth water! The woodwork is gorgeous!

We toured the whole boat and had tea in the tea room. My lemon cake was amazing! They made it on board in the Royal Kitchen. The Bloodhound, the Queen's racing yacht was also a piece of work! Don't know if it ever won a race or not, but it was beautiful to see!

Today, the Queen's Yacht is decommissioned and parked in Edinburgh where it's being cared for and open to the public.

The remainder of the day was spent shopping and looking around The Royal Mile area. We ate lunch at a baked potato cafe and sipped coffee at Starbuck's when it started raining!

We were like drowned rats by the time we walked back to our apartment! We fixed supper, washed clothes, watched TV and packed our suitcases, preparing for morning's departure to London.

Scotland was very interesting. We have enjoyed it immensely. There is still much to see that we don't have time for.

Perhaps another day!

AMERICA

America - USA

I must say, it's sooo good to be back in the USA! We landed about noon yesterday in Newark NJ. My Niece, Andrea, picked us up and we spent the night with her. She cooked a great meal and we felt like pigs! That was the first home cooked meal we have had in 6 weeks! It was great...especially the Cheese Cake with fresh Raspberries!

We hopped on a city bus from nearby where Andrea lives in Queens. It dropped us off where we caught the Subway to Times Square. We sat down on a bench in front of Bubba Gump's and just looked. The Good Morning America show was playing in the big screen.

We walked the 10 blocks to Penn Station. We are heading to Fredericksburg, Virginia where we will spend the night and take care of a few things before we start our East Coast road trip.

London

LONDON -The Final Day

It seems strange to come to an end to our Europe trip. But it meant we had to fill our last day as full as we could. We packed our suitcases last night in preparation for this day. We left the apartment about 9:00 and walked to the Tube. We wanted to ride the underground for the thrill of it all!

It was above ground at the station so it just seemed like any other commuter. As soon as we got on, it dove underground, resurfacing at every stop, then going back down again, like some kind of worm or something! Well, that was fun.

We made our way to a Hop On Hop Off station and hopped on a tour bus. We got off down around Hyde Park and went to he largest, most expensive department store I've ever seen......HARROD's. I would like to say that we bought all of our friends and relatives Christmas gifts here.....but I can't. The prices were so high we couldn't even afford the free catalog! I was looking at a cool looking plastic, hard shell roll around carry-on suitcase? I turned over the tag and looked the £349 price tag right square in the eye! The American exchange rate is $0.60 the British Pound! You do the math! Okay, I'll do it for you. $558.75!!! For a dinky CARRY-ON??? Most plane tickets are cheaper than that!

Debby was looking at some purses there. She couldn't decide. Finally she figured if she bought one she wouldn't have anything left to out IN it! We did buy a Christmas ornament. We can't afford to get a tree until 2013.

We made our way over to a Cafe for lunch. I had a mystery meat club sandwich and potato chips. Have you ever thought about something to eat, thought about it and in your mind, it looks and smells fantastic? And your mouth is watering just thinking about it? Well, don't do that in Europe because it never works out! It's NEVER what you think! I had the Smoked Salmon club. It had a Pesto spread on it, shaved cucumbers, bitter lettuce and Salmon that actually looked like it had never been close to a smoker......unless it was the Fisherman cleaning it!!

We made our way to the Tube, again and popped up near the Abbey....no, THE Abbey. Westminster Abbey. Remember in the song? "....Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben...the rosy red cheeks of the little chil-dren". (Now don't keep singing that inside your head all day like me and Ron did!)

The Abbey was pretty cool. It was where Kate and what's his name got married. It was not as impressive as I thought it would be; what with unlimited funds, slave labor and all, one would think it would be very gaudy! It was done up in Gothic style, built over several centuries. They don't allow photographs to be taken inside the main Abbey so I can't show you much. There were many crypts inside the Abbey. All the dead Kings, Queens, Royal Ladies, etc. even William Wilbur Force , the man whom the movie, AMAZING GRACE was based upon; the man who lobbied Parlament for years to abolish the African slave trade, and finally won. He is buried there and has a memorial statue there, as well.

Afterwards, we headed for the Thames River and had a boat ride from the London Eye to the Tower of London. The river appears to be running a bit high; very brown and trashy. But the boat ride was fun!

We grabbed a taxi and headed back to the apartment. It was about 5:00 or so. We called for a 5:30 taxi to take us tithe airport. Our little old man taxi driver was from Bangladesh and had been driving since the late 60's. It was a long ride to the Airport hotel where we wanted to be in order to get to the airport by 5:30 AM. The old timer had a GPS and hotel address, yet still managed to drop us off at the wrong Ibis Airport Hotel. We had to get another taxi to take us to the right place! Hey! It's all good, right?

We made our flight okay. British TSA turned out to be fun, too. They thoroughly checked her bag and confiscated a small metal cheese slicer from Debby.....yes, again! This one was a legal size and all, but the TSA clutz cut his finger on it while digging around inside Debby's bag! So he condemned it as a dangerous weapon and hauled it off to the pokey!

Anyway, we are towards the tail end of our 8 hour plane ride to Newark NJ, anxious to step foot on American soil!

We landed in Newark NJ at 12:05! Yea!!!

STONEHENGE

STONEHENGE

Way out in the middle of a place called nowhere, our tour bus stopped in the only place for miles where other tour buses and automobiles were congregating. Out there in the pasture where, nearby, grazing sheep and cattle moved about, paying no never mind to scores of tourists looking towards a pile of rocks, the only thing standing taller than the cable fence that circled the strange rocks. I seriously doubt the steel cable could successfully contain the huge rocks if they really wanted out!

Hundreds of tourists walk around the great pile of rocks like Indians circling the wagon train. Debby and I moved right in there along side them hoping to catch a glimpse of something heart stopping. Apparently, it must have happened earlier today, as we saw nothing.

Stonehenge, apparently, predates God. No one knows much about it unless they make it up. Huge rectangular stones have been stood on end and others have been placed across the top of them. There is a ditch which circles Stonehenge. In it they have discovered broken pieces of deer antlers in and around the ditch. Carbon dating techniques indicate these antlers are quite old! Traces of Gopher Wood have caused some to believe they may have been on some sort of ship or something! Brits believe early stone age residents used antlers to scrape and dig the ditch. I believe it's just as possible that prehistoric deer dug the ditch themselves and used their own antlers.

As some of these stones are quite massive, how they were moved into place is more of a mystery than the rocks themselves. It is believed the huge rocks were brought over from Wales on barges and floated upriver about 30 miles away. One of the rocks is as large as seven full grown elephants! Now that's BIG! One can only speculate how spear chuckers ever figured out how to lift a 5 ton rock 25 feet into the air! But a bigger question is on the menu: WHY? Why did they stack some of the rocks and arrange others in a circle?

I have a few theories:

1. One theory is that they had no other place to put them.
2. Could be that early ancestors of Ami Vensel happened by and felt compelled to arrange them.
3. They were the original weather rocks where early Stoners could predict the day's weather. If the rock is wet, it's raining. If its white, it's snowing. If its only wet on one side, it's windy. If you can't see the rock, it's dark.
4. There is the Alien theory that a huge Spaceship landed in this flat area and upon leaving, small pieces of stone and gravel imbedded in the huge landing gear, came loose and were left behind.
4. Another ill conceived theory is that these early builders knew that I would be visiting this very site to see the sheep and cattle 7,000 years later and erected this as a birthday gift for me.

As today really is my birthday. I believe the latter is the most probable!

WINDSOR

WINDSOR, STONEHENGE and OXFORD

Our Tour stopped at Windsor Castle. It was very crowded! I don't know how the Queen can put up with so many tourists at one time! It took more than half an hour just to get to Security. I texted the Queen to see about having tea but the place was so big I couldn't find her! There are more than a thousand rooms in Windsor Castle. We had less than two hours to see everything so there was a lot we missed! My apologies to the Queen for standing her up!

A raging fire began in the Lantern Room a few years ago and caused millions of Pounds of damage. They did a magnificent job of reconstructing it.

The Queen's flag was flying today, which meant she was in residence there today. It was an awesome feeling to be virtually rubbing shoulders with Royalty! I'm certain they were feeling the same warm fuzzies knowing we were on site, too!

Stonehenge was cool. By the time we got there most of it was a pile of rubble, but we enjoyed the wide open countryside and the large crowds congregating in a 3 acre spot. The highlight was a small food stand where I consumed a hot tomato and mozzarella sandwich.

Our final stop was at Oxford University. Just knowing that half the English Royalty and men like C.S.Lewis were educated here made me feel a lot smarter. I think if we had more time, I could have finished my Philosophy degree. I did manage to buy a stocking hat that had "Oxford University" printed on it. I figured I could probably finish my degree through osmosis.

An hour and a half bus ride and we find our way back to Victoria Station, only $24 from our apartment!

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

EDINBURGH

For all you golfers out there, St Andrews, Scotland boasts as the birthplace of golf. Golfers from all over the world come here to look, to dream, or to play the game. Those who come here are sure to brag about it, while those who have never been here, dream of coming.

Yesterday morning we took a tour bus out to St Andrews to see what all the fuss is about. Rabbis Tours was great! Our driver was great and there were only 12 of us on board. We had to head out past Queens Ferry and cross the long swinging bridge into Fife. The bridge was built in 1964. At that time it boasted to be the longest swinging bridge in Europe. Our driver said that it apparently handles twice the capacity as it was designed for but that it had been inspected and was in great shape. Next to it is another, more sturdy bridge of non-swinging design. It has been in existence for a long time. It is next to an island that has a Monastery on it. It was the home to Monks during the war. Apparently, fearing the bridge would be targeted during the war, they disguised the island as a battleship to deter enemy planes from approaching. It worked!

As we traveled on, we crossed rolling hills and farmland dotted with baled hay or sheep and cattle. We stopped in a fishing village for a break. We walked amongst the small shops and stopped into a small cafe for scones and coffee.

It was a sunny day in St Andrews. We were excited to go to the St Andrews golf course and touch the grass. There were many tourists coming to see the course; some to play, some to use the putting green to say they played, and some to stand on the grass to get a photograph. That's what Ron did. He would have liked to play but a walk-in single player is near impossible to get a game.

We did enjoy the day around St Andrews. We walked part of the course, bought a couple souvenirs and had lunch in the club house restaurant. I had Venison sausages and mashed potatoes with brown onion gravy. Very tasty!

Afterwards we hung around the clubhouse and bought some more souvenirs. We walked across the road and took a stroll on the beach along the North Sea just because we could!

As a golfer, Ron enjoyed the course. In fact, he played all 18 holes.....in his mind! And as he stood at the 18th hole watching all the great names in golf finish their under par games, he dreamed of beating their scores and they coming over to shake his hand! Well.....maybe not all that.

On the way back to Edinburgh we made a stop at Falkland Palace and toured the still used fortress. I watched a couple of Paragliders jump off of a nearby mountain and sail down past the Palace. It reminded me of Gimmelwald!

Tomorrow we visit The Queen's Yacht, The Britannia.

SCOTLAND

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

Scotland has been an amazing country to visit! There is so much to see; so little time to see it! Edinburgh is only one city and many days could be spent here just trying to sort it all out! We have thoroughly enjoyed what we have seen and heard about the history of Scotland. It is amazing to see buildings older than anything in our country (except maybe some Redwood trees). The magnificence if some of the Cathedral and Gothic structures is amazing! Architectural and engineering accomplishments are beyond the realm of today's building. No one takes that kind of pride in their work today.

The Edinburgh skyline is a sight to behold! It is different than any other place we have visited. Much of everything we have seen has been within walking distance of our apartment in Regence Terrace. The mountain Ron and I climbed is so close that we can look over from our apartment window and watch hikers on its top. From its top, the city scape is awesome!

The Royal mile is a street that runs between the Palace and the Castle, that is filled with shops and places to eat. Many shops sell products made from wool, like scarves, hats, mittens, shawls, blankets, etc. Trinkets abound in every store! If you want to shed your money, this is the place to do it!

The Castle was fun to tour. The city views were great from its top. Just knowing the Queen of England still visited and stayed in the Castle made it all the more intriguing. In its day, it must have. Even a beautiful sight. It was hundreds of years old and still being used. It's defense cannons were still in place as if continuing to guard its walls.

Debby and Nancy wanted to visit the Palace which is still used and is much more plush than the Castle. The difference between a Castle and a Palace is a Castle is a fortification and used for defense. A Palace is used for show and to demonstrate royalty. Ron and I really didn't want to see the plush richness so we decided to take a hike up to the top of the nearby mountain. It was rocky and steep but doable. So we did. The view was awesome!