Vancouver

Here I am again. It seems like I really travel a lot this year. This time it was a business trip to Vancouver. Everything had to happen on short notice, everything is always urgent and so I tried to rearrange all the private London flights and get my business flight to Canada booked in that way that the whole trip covered my London flights as well. This is a very interesting thing: If I book the flight to Vancouver from London, I mean: London - Vancouver - London it will cost almost twice as much as a flight Duesseldorf - London - Vancouver - London - Duesseldorf. Even with a stop over in London for the weekends. I will never understand how these airfares are calculated. Anyhow, Nokia now paid for my England trips on two weekends plus the parking fee at the airport. All in all this saved me almost 400 Euros!!!! Well, not really that much. The British Airways flight they booked for me went to Heathrow. That meant I had to take the bus to Thetford. Heathrow is appr. 3 hours away from "home" and so Dave didn't pick me up there. Anyhow, what I wanted to tell you is that last week I spent some time in Vancouver.
And I tell you, the weather was nice, warm and sunny when I arrived. Yes, we had meetings during the day, but in the afternoon I drove to the mountains went for some short hikes with another colleague from Germany. It was very nice. We even saw a black bear next to the road. It almost felt like being in Alaska ;o)
The whole meeting was scheduled for three days, but I was done after two days. Wow, I thought, that gives me time to explore the town a little bit before going to the airport and fly out at 17:45. My hotel was located downtown (by the way, a very nice one which I probably will never be able to afford to stay on a private trip) and so I walked to Stanley park. I found a geocache on the way and decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium. Around lunchtime I got a phone call from BA, telling me my flight will be late. Actually delayed until next day 1pm and I should call their hotline. I did it immediately and had to wait for 15 min before I got connected to a real person. And that all from a German cell phone (that means a 800 number is not free!). They didn't give me any reason for the canceled flight, but they tried to book me on the same day late evening flight. Even with this booking they asked me to show up at the airport early to make sure I can fly out on that night, because everybody wants to be rescheduled to that flight rather than to the next day one. So I decided to stop the sightseeing and take a taxi to the airport. I waited in line for maybe 2 hours, I don't know. It felt awefull long. But I was lucky, they booked me on the same day flight and after 4 more hours at the airport (which by the way is very nice) I was able to board. Of course I missed my bus in Heathrow, but that was no big deal neither. They go every two hours and I made it home to Thetford only a little bit late.
Let me also complain a little bit about the weather. It is cold! It is wet! It is definetly not summer, even if the calender tries to tell me so. My backyard is a mess with all the weeds and grass growing and I am not able to cut it or do anything against it. Yesteday I clipped the hedge, which was enough work, but I am not really satisfied with the way it looks. I wanted to do it fast before the next rain started. I really hope that England has some nicer weather during this weekend. I need some sun.
Dave subscribed for a Scuba diving class! So he will start going underwater in three weeks. Maybe I am even more excited about it than he is, but I can't wait to go diving with him. Hopefully he likes it.
So, I am ready to leave again. I am almost on my way to the airport for the usual England trip. Just wanted to let you know what was going on. Take care!

Weekends with visitors

The last weekends were really full with activities like sightseeing and having dinner in nice restaurants. As mentioned in the last entry Dave's parents were visiting from Kansas City and while they spent the weeks exploring England and Scottland the weekends were reserved for activities with us.
One highlight was the long weekend in London. I don't know why, but I love and hate this town. I am always very excited going there and I make plans what I want to see and do this time, but as soon as I am there it seems like there are too many people and especially too much traffic. This is the time I would like to go to one of the nice parks and stay there until we can have sushi and go home.
But this time we had a very full schedule. I arrived on a Thursday night. Dave just got promoted to Lt.Col. and we wanted to celebrate this during this weekend. They all picked me at Stansted airport and we drove to the hotel. The place we stayed was located in East London, which is kind of colorfull area with a lot of immigrants from every culture you could think of. The hotel itself is located in the soccer stadium of Westham United, which was fun. It was only a 5 minutes walk to the next underground "tube"-station. We had almost three full days in London, but this never seems enough. On Friday we did a bus sightseeing tour. Then we had "High Tea" at the Savoy hotel. Well, not a place to wear jeans and sport shoes, and not a place to expect a lot of food for 60$ per person ;o), but a very high society atmosphere, tea of all kinds (even if I don't think they know how to do it properly) and some nice little bits and bites of different things. After this we went to a show: Billie Elliot, the musical. Have you seen the movie? It is mainly about a 12 years old boy who comes from a workers family and instead of boxing he became interested in ballet. That was hard to exept for his dad who was on strike for keeping the coal mines in this area open and therefore had to fight every day for surviving. Really, it was amazing what the 13year old boy who played the main character showed. Great.
The next day we had time to go on a "flight" on the London Eye. Look at my flickr page to see what I am talking about. It is the big wheel. After this ride Dave's parents and we separated for a while. They visited Westminster Abbey while we went to the Aquarium. I've seen so many churches, abbeys and cathedrals since I am a frequent visitor to England that I already have a hard time remebering what I saw where. Well, and I am always intersted in animals ;o)
We also went to Buckingham Palace. All the roads around the palace were closed since they had a test run for the Queen's birthday parade. What else? A drink at the Sherlock Holmes Pub (where Sir Doyle wrote one of his stories), another church visit (St. Pauls cathedral), some shopping at Oxford street, a quick visit to Hyde Park and nice Sushi at a Japanese Restaurant. The last day was dedicated to the British Museum. We managed to see maybe half of the exhibitions there. We looked at the Assyrian, Greek and Egypt area as well as at the mummies. The also have the stone of Rosetta there, which helped to translate hieroglyphics. The best thing about almost all museums in England is: the entrance is free! They ask for a donation, but that is up to you. But I think it is a great idea to bring these things to everybody, so I of course donated some money.
That was my long weekend in England. Together with Dave's parents we also spent some more time in Cambridge and in the Norfolk countryside. Now they are home again and our weekends will be back to normal...whatever this means.
Maybe we should start thinking of some more details regarding the wedding next year...and Dave needs to learn Scuba diving....I want to go mountain biking....and then there is the business trip to Vancouver next week...
Well, I don't think I will be bored during this summer ;o)