Day 3: Super Bloom and Super Hot

 A/B/O bought our octet tickets to the SuperBloom and entrances to the Tower of London for today, so at 10am, we showed up at the tower, ready for action. The SuperBloom is a huge amount of flowers planted in what used to be the Tower's moat, and we started our visit by circling the tower, in the moat (which was devoid of shade on this scorching day), marveling at the flowers and the busy bees:

Our own busy bee decided to record her memories by sketching some of the flowers!

After the SuperBloom, we walked along the Thames and then spent a few hours inside the Tower. It's as described - a tower, in the center of London, full of historical artifacts.  Castles, weapons, chapels, armor, ravens, dungeons, and ice cream!  We saw perhaps a third of it before we called it a day, grabbed ice cream for the girls, and hopped a water shuttle to London Eye.

We had hoped to pick up tickets to the Eye, but by the time we got there, we had run out of time. So, we headed for home!  Me on foot, and the rest of the octet on the Tube.  My overland walk took me past Big Ben, Parliament, Scotland Yard, Parliament Square, and Westminster Abbey:

Once home, we cleaned up (this was definitely a two-shower day) and headed to proper pub for a proper dinner.   Dinner was swell (A & I particularly enjoyed their G&T's), and we all returned tired to the house to get the girls ready for bed.   After they were zonked (which took a record short time), C and I headed to the corner pub for a pint and a chat.  This was my favorite beer of the evening (for taste, brewer's name, and graphic design reasons):

Tomorrow is an early morning for an early adventure!

Day 2: London: Settling in and Culture!

Our first morning in London was reasonable.  S and I slept in (ish) until 7.  The girls got up around 4.45, but only ended up waking B.   Thanks for taking one for the team, B!  C&D landed on time and got to the flat a bit before 10am.  We let them get settled in, then grabbed lunch at the Italian joint from yesterday before hopping a couple of cabs to the West End. We tried using Bolt, but after a few drivers cancelled, we found hailing a cab much more successful.

Our first bit of culture was The Lion King.  I had never seen it; neither had most of the family.  We all loved it, though S (who had seen it in NYC) noted that the production was much smaller than on B'way. Plus, I think that there were a bunch of swings performing today (including followspot and A1).  Still, great performances, and it's easy to see why it's still going strong 25 years later.

After The Lion King, S and I split off from the rest of the group and had a nice walk through town.

Then we took the tube across town to see the new Punchdrunk show, The Burnt City.  If you aren't familiar with Punchdrunk's work, I won't go into detail here except to say that it maintained their aesthetic (dark, sexy, moody).  We had a great time, though the ending was a little less climatic than Sleep No More.

After the show, we grabbed a quick bite at a local brewpub and then headed home.  On the advice of a local (by way of Oregon) we met at the restaurant, we headed for the river taxi for an evening cruise home but when we got to the dock, the last boat had already left.  Alas. We still got some nice photos:

And, in case you're thinking of taking your e-unicycle on the boat, sorry. You can't.

Summer Vacation: Day 0 & 1: LA to London

After a hard year at school and almost 6 weeks separated from my fam, we packed up and headed out for a family vacation! Covid cancelations meant that we all had wanderlust, so we're starting out celebrating S's parents' 50th anniversary in England and Spain! Stay tuned to this page - I'll post updates here. Mostly it's a travel journal for me, but it's also nice to share what's happening. 

H and I got up at 5am on Monday morning to start to acclimate to British time. We took a morning walk in the nature preserve to get our blood pumping. 

When we finished up packing and got to the airport, we discovered that the airline wouldn't let us check into our flight. We had done our online checkin and had boarding passes, but a glitch in the computer made it looked like I bought two tickets for myself (which is a no-no). We had about 15 minutes of not knowing what was happening (the clerks at LAX weren't communicating well with either us or each other, and when S got on the phone with Delta/Virgin customer service, the hold time meant that she wouldn't get service until after our flight took off. Fortunately, a little bit of assertiveness paid off, and a genius-bar-level clerk helped get us sorted. 

 Through security, onto the plane! I think it was the first time traveling Premium class (which is not-quite-first but still pretty fancy) for us. 

The flight was fine. Service was good. Sleep was hard to come by. S got 3 hours. I got around 4. H got 6-ish. But, we all made it safe and sound to Heathrow and then to our flat in Pimlico. 

Our trio was the first to arrive, and we got into town before the housekeeping staff had the flat ready. We stowed our bags and then went for a nice Italian lunch (O Sole Mio) in a nearby shopping/dining area. I asked H if Italian food sounded good to her, and she asked if she had ever had it. I told her what kind of foods that entailed (spaghetti, meatballs, ravioli, lasagna, artichokes, etc.) and she quickly deduced that she did, in fact, love Italian food. She had spaghetti and meatballs, and while she was exhausted, she declared the day one of the best days ever.  After lunch we went to St. George's Square while we waited for B/A/O to get in from Heathrow. 

Once they arrived, we settled into the flat. H and O had a great time playing, and the grownups got a chance to put our feet up. We ate dinner at 5.30, the girls were asleep by 7.30, and the adults started moving towards bed at 8 ish. C/D arrive tomorrow, and the fun'll really get going! 

On the cab ride from the airport, H and I started a LIST OF THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT BETWEEN LONDON AND CALIFORNIA. Here are today's additions: 

• money shape/color/currency 
• driving on the other side of the road 
• accents 
• steering wheel on the other side of the car 
• age of the city

Stay tuned!

I've been silent on this page for a while, but I'm about to go traveling again. Stay tuned for some fun stuff!

Keeping my head down.

The thing is, I'm not sure what the purpose of this blog is on a daily basis.

I use Facebook for keeping up with friends and sharing day-to-day events.

I use Twitter for general snarkiness.

I contribute to the UCI Sound Design blog for UCI-related news.

I keep a blog on my professional website for other work-related news.

I share family photos using Notabli.

It occurs to me that the times when I've used this blog the most effectively have been times when I have a lot of text and media to communicate.  Usually, that's a travelogue, but sometimes there's a longer piece of text that I need to expand on.

So, even though it's been over a year and a half since I last posted here and it will probably be a while before I post again, I think I'll keep this, for two reasons:
* long-form memory-keeping
* the list of links on the right-hand side of the page, which I check every day.