A Bird's Eye View of London...

When we were in London in December 1999, we visited a month too early to go on the London Eye, which you may recall was built for the Millennium Celebration. We were excited about having the chance to go on it this visit and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I've included this photo from the top so you can see how great the view was. On the right you can see Parliament and Big Ben and on the left you can see an approaching storm, which luckily didn't last long. The flight lasts about 30 minutes and is incredibly smooth. Unlike a traditional ferris wheel, it can hold 800 people at a time but only needs to stop to help the disabled on/off. It's definitely a technological marvel and an interesting addition to the London skyline.

More London Sightseeing...

No visit to London is complete without a visit to the London Eye, as seen here from one of several pedestrian bridges over the Thames. We also managed to visit the National Gallery (which was wonderful and had a great audio tour for the kids) and the Tate Gallery (too modern for our tastes). To make the most of the dry weather, we had several picnics from Marks & Spencer (it's amazing how finally having an assortment of wraps and salads available could make us all so happy). We also swung through the infamous Harrod's, which has just begun offering $7,000 weddings for dogs complete with a horse-drawn carriage for the bride's arrival proving that some people just have too much money.

Although I had previously said I was finished with big city holidays, we had so much fun over the weekend in London that the girls and I trained back in twice from Huntingdon while Jimmy worked during the week. We really enjoyed touring Buckingham Palace (the Queen was conveniently in Scotland while 1000's of tourists tromped through her home) and exploring the British Museum.

Mudrucking in the Thames...

After we finished at the Globe Theatre, Jimmy noticed that there was a group down on the beach along the Thames River. Being a curious guy, he wandered down there to see what was happening. Turns out it was low tide and this group was "mudrucking" (looking for treasures along the river's edge). We couldn't resist joining in and soon had a collection of Tudor and Victorian pottery chards. Luckily Jimmy noticed that the tide was coming back in and we made it back up the stairs before the entire beach was back underwater as shown here. We had so much fun, that we went back the next day; it's often these unexpected activities that are our fondest vacation memories. Be sure to check out our collection when you visit.

Fun in London...

We had a great weekend in London. Our hotel was near an outdoor organic market, which was perfect for lunch and had the best chocolate brownies we've ever had. We splurged and took the girls to see the play "Mary Poppins," which we all loved. Veronica will be studying Tudor times this term in school, so she was excited about touring the Globe Theatre (although, Shakespeare had been dead 380 years when this one was rebuilt). Our timing was perfect because we got to see a dress rehearsal of a play in modern English.

It's a Success!

Hadn't planned on doing another entry about the bottles (or posting a photo of my bum--by the way, we're learning lots of new words from our British friends, but more on that later) but got our 2nd response last night from another Dutch couple summering at the beach a little more than an hour north of where we live. Looks like Jimmy did a good job sealing this bottle because they had to break it to get the message out. Of course, Jimmy's already plotting to try this again on a longer ferry ride perhaps to Scotland or Denmark. Bummer, I'll have to drink more champagne.

It Worked!

At the halfway point of our journey, we went to the back of the ship with the bottles to toss them into the North Sea. I was paranoid someone would stop us and ask what the hell we were doing, but no one even noticed us. It was quite windy so it was a challenge to launch them so they didn't just fall directly into the wake of the ship. We were thrilled when we'd catch sight of them bobbing along. Jimmy figured if we got 2 responses out of 11, he'd consider the experiment a complete success. Looks like we're already half way there since he received the 1st response just a few days after we returned. He got an e-mail from a retired fellow in Northern Holland that was walking along the beach with his wife and found one of our bottles. This confirmed that the bottles would be travelling north. Veronica's hoping Santa finds one.

Start Looking for Those Messages in a Bottle...

While the family might look like they're up to no good in this photo, they're actually getting ready to launch a science experiment. As soon as Jimmy realized that someday we might take a ferry to England, we started saving champagne bottles (as you can guess, I didn't complain about my participation in this part of the project). Once we booked our tickets, he and the girls started getting serious about how best to do this. They ended up with 11 bottles each containing a letter of introduction with Jimmy's permanent e-mail address, a map showing the approx drop point per his GPS, a Dutch stamp, a Dutch coin and a rock from North Carolina. The tops have a cork, epoxy, wire and aluminum foil in an attempt to keep them watertight for years to come.