Money

Its strange how diverse and divided things are. You see it some back at home, how the fancy old houses near Brookside fade into well, the projects. But nothing prepares you for the disparity you will see here. Since most of our travel is below ground I guess it never really hit me, but got lost riding home last week, half of London was closed for a triathlon or parade or something, that's not the point. Anyway ended up riding through knightsbridge, past the $100 million apartments, and designer stores. Literally five blocks away is a Council Block where people are living for free. The amount of money spent in the shops in a couple of minutes is probably more than the entire council block makes in a year.

This is an example of the craziness. As a waited in traffic in the span of five minutes saw, two Ferraris, a Lamborghini, and this monstrosity.

Apparently owned by Yazeed Al-rajhi, some super rich bank owner' son. Just one of the 4 or 5 cars he brings to London in the summer to escape the heat. Knightsbridge has to be just about the only place in the world where you have to paint your Bentley bright pink to not blend into the crowd.

Fullers Brewery

Bob's friends are in town, and he took some vacation to play with them.  I guess now I know the things he really wanted to do all along, as I wouldn't have picked the tour as an exciting event, but at the end of the day it was a good time. 

Fuller's was founded in 1845 at the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick.  Beer has been brewed on the site of the Brewery for over 350 years. The partnership of Fuller, Smith & Turner was formed in 1845 by John Bird Fuller, Henry Smith and John Turner, whose families are still involved in the business today.  You will probably only see Fuller’s best known beers London Pride, and ESB.  Fullers now owns and operates 363 pubs throughout the UK as well.

Our tour went all through the brewery, and got to see the whole process from start to finish.  They were even brewing London Pride while we were there.

 They said that they were brewing enough beer that day that I could drink 3 pints a day for my life and not finish it all off.  Bob looked like he wanted to jump into it and try to drink it all while we were there.

There wasn't much that was really cool in the brewery, and there was no question everyone was waiting for the big finish in the tasting room.

We finished the tour, of the brewery with a tour of all of their beers.  8 different cask ales (not carbinated, you have to 'pump' the barrel) 1 beer in a keg and another only bottled.  They were not shy in their pours either.  Needless to say, things got a bit more fun during the tasting.

If you see these two behind the bar.......run!!!!

If you ever make it to the UK and end up in a Fullers pub then I suggest the Red Fox, everyone else seemed to be a fan of the Bengal Lancer.  By the end of the tour everything tasted pretty good through. 

We saw this on the way home, clearly living right next to the sidewalk close to a dog park has ites disadvantages.

Furry Friday

Not sure why this dog is the way she is but........

Not sure if she thought we were going away without her, and she wanted to pack herself or what.

Hampton Court

In honor of Hampton we have had the royal palace at Hampton court on the list for quite some time now. It actually took us two trips to see everything, and considering the fact that you have to take the longest bus ride in the history of man to get there, it was quite an accomplishment checking it off the list. Anyway, Cardinal Wolsey, took over the site of Hampton Court Palace in 1514, and over the following seven years, built the Tudor portion of the Palace. In 1528, knowing that the King Henry VIII was angry for Wosley's inability to get the Church to approve his first divorce, he passed the palace to the King. Henry expanded the palace further, and called it home to he and his court for much of the time till his death in 1547.

It wasn't until 1689 when King William and Queen Mary II took the throne that much changed at Hampton Court. Within months of their accession they embarked on a massive rebuilding project at Hampton Court. The intention was to demolish the Tudor palace a section at a time, while replacing it with a huge modern palace in the Baroque style retaining only Henry VIII's Great Hall. When Mary died in 1694 William lost interest in the rebuilding, and the result is what you see today. Essentially, two seperate and distinct palaces, Henry VIII's Tudor style and William and Mary's Baroque style.

The main entrance to the Palace

Looking from inside Base Court back at the main entrance

Kristen not enjoying the English summer weather

The kitchen and the roasting oven, today I called it the heater

They had a big fountain that poured wine which they gave away. This guy was very popular

Fountain Court, in the Baroque part of the Palace

The formal gardens, not a bad view from your bedroom

This is my kind of decorating!! Kristen has already said no for when we get back, but I bet she will come around.

On our way home we stopped at the Riverside Brasserie, just across the street, right on the Thames river. I have been eyeing the place for quite some time as I ride past it all the time. The weather was just about perfect, (I know, wouldn't have guessed I would say that) except for the sun in Kristen's eyes. And when they say 'on the water' they really mean it. Probably not more than 3 feet from the river where we were sitting. The food was just about as good as the atmoshere, although I think Kristen might have overdone it on her huge bowl of pasta. The lack of waiter service may have been the worst ever, even for London. A good 20 minutes after our meal to finally flag someone down to get the bill, and another 20 for them to drop it off. Thank goodness we had cash or we may have been there all night trying to get our credit card swipped. Even with that I would say it would go on our list of favorites, but don't know if we will ever find another excuse to make it out there again. Any takers?

Tour of Britain

Awesome day, only way to have made it better was to miss the rain during the final 2 laps.  Final stage of the Tour of Britain today in and around London.  Short time trial in the morning and then a circuit race in the afternoon, taking in some of the best sights the city has to offer.  I was like a kid in a candy store all afternoon, Kristen was a trooper and stuck it out all day long. 

With the TT going on all the teams had set up camp right near the start/finish, and gave a front row seat, and an all access pass to just about everyone and everything all day long.  We steared away from HTC, because pretty much everyone in London wanted to see Cav, but that kept the crowds down around all the other teams.  Would have been great to have more big names racing but was still super cool.  Pro Tour races a couple miles from your front door is where it is at!!

Tons of bike porn to see.  Everyone was running electonic DA.

Leopard Trek must have done something right with their sponsers this year.  Benz station wagons as team cars, nice!!  Thier set up was sweet too.

TT Pics

 Thor seemed super personable, signed a bunch of autographs and talked to just about everyone around.  He was a bit concerned the battery in his Garmin was low though. 

 Road race pics....started raining with 2 to go, which split the race up a bit, but as expected Cav came through and smashed it for the win.  We watched the finish from 100 meters out, was insane how fast they were going coming up to the line.  

 



Choo Choo!!

So the sushi train pretty much derailed right in front of my seat!! When they set the price for the buffet I am sure they weren't planning on me coming through the door.

Oxford

Went on a tour company trip to Oxford back when we had company visiting. It was mixed with Windsor and Stonehenge, but since we have covered those before we won't get into it again. Wasn't super interesting from a things to see standpoint. Lots of old buildings but nothing that really stood out. Highlight was the dining hall at Christ Church College. It is the inspiration for the dinning hall at Hogwarts, from Harry Potter, minus the magic flying plates, and ghosts and such.

Christ Church College

See the resemblance??

 

Other cool thing was that the dinning hall inspired the book Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll's (The author of the book) father was the headmaster at Christchurch, and wore a robe everyday with white rabbit fur around the collar. Would watch him go through a small door at the end of the dinning hall into his private office, which Lewis wasn't allowed. Thus the rabbit hole was born!!

Characters from the book are built into the stained glass of the hall.



 The trip was pretty cool from an educational standpoint though. Found out a lot about the British education system and lost a lot of respect for an oxford education. Explains a lot about Clinton! No I take that back, we could only be so lucky to see him back in office. I digress...so Oxford isn't one university, but made up of 38 separate ones. Each only teaching one specific subject, and only having something like 100 students. So when you decide you want to go to "Oxford" you have to be super selective about what you want to do. The rumour is that a lot of people just want to say they have an Oxford degree so they just apply at the school with the most graduating students the year before. Now I know what you are saying....that sounds crazy to pick your major that way, but don't worry it doesn't matter because apparently nobody gets a degree in the field they want to work in, its just expected that if you need specific knowledge to do your job your employer will either teach you or send you to school to learn it. That is why the accountants I work with are an engineer, a political science, and a psychology major. Anyway, so you are now in a college at Oxford, whatever you do don't change your degree. You would have to reapply to another school, and since you only studied one subject everything you learned is useless. And did I mention there is no class? Yeah, you read a book and meet privately once a week with your professor.









Now I am sure that my account is full of inaccuracies, but that is the story I got!! So I will let you make your own inferences and judgements, but thought it was very interesting none the less.