Coal mine, cathedral and shopping London

I think I have to write a little bit today. Not that really much happened and you all might already be tired of reading my geocaching adventures. But yes, we did another one. "We" in that case means not Dave and I, but part of my hardware development team here at the office. As Christmas is approaching we decided to organize a team event. And since we are all engineers loving technology and within the multimedia industrie with the devices we develop I thought it might be a good idea to do this GPS based treasure hunt called geocaching also as one part of the team event. On the other hand I wanted to combine this with some cultural things from this area, the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr valley) and so we decided to hunt for a cache at the "Zeche and Kokerei Zollverein" in Essen, an old and very well known coal mine and coking plant.
http://www.zollverein.de/index.php?f_categoryId=3&f_menu1=3&lang=en
And since there are two caches there we devided the bigh group of 14 into two teams. And what shall I say: both teams were successful! And as a reward we went to the "Dampfbierbrauerei" ( http://www.dampfe.de/ ) , a local brewery, to have dinner there.
I spent the weekend in England again. Flying becomes routine, like commuting home after a week of work. But because of a major car accident somewhere on the English motorways Dave stuck in the traffic and I had to wait for, well, maybe 1.5 hours until he finally picked me up at London-Stansted airport.
Though we came home late on Friday night we managed to get up early on Saturday morning and drove to Epping. Epping is the first stop of London's tube (central line). We left Dave's care there on a parking lot and entered the tube for some London sightseeing and Christmas shopping. The sightseeing part took place in St. Pauls cathedral. First we were a little bit reluctant to paying 9pounds just for visiting a church, but it was worth it. The church has the seconds largest dome after the Petersdome in Rome and we were able to climb to the top to have a fantastic view over London city. We also visited the crypt to see Nelson's gravesite.
By the way, this catherdral is used for all kind of official services like Queen mom's funeral or also Prince Charles' and Lady Di's wedding (long, long ago....)
After the church tour we visited Harrod's. It is a well known store, not only for the Christmas market and decoration. Well, for me it was very crowded and honestly, I think I can do better Christmas shopping in Essen, but this is just my opinion.
After some Sushi in Soho (no, not the restaurant where they found the radioactive material) we headed home again.
On Sunday all we did is sleep in, went to the DIY store and visited a Christmas tree sale in Elveden (a tiny little village between Thetford and Lakenheath). And then I had to fly home to Germany again....