London

So seeing how London was all over the news yesterday I feel like I should get started on our blog about London. And what did you think about Kate's dress? Gorgeous, elegant or just so so?? I like it! I liked her sister's dress better though...

Anyways, we got to London on Tuesday around lunch time and hopped the Heathrow Connect to head to Paddington Station, which was a five minute walk from our hotel! We got checked in and showered and headed to Afternoon Tea at the Georgian Restaurant in Harrod's. Thanks to Jan's suggestion on where to go, we had a delightful time and ate more sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and jelly than I can count! It was wonderful. After that we wandered around Harrod's and then headed back to our hotel to call it a night, we were exhausted.

The following morning, we were up and ready to explore the whole city. After we talked to the owner of the hotel, we got the day pass for the Tube and went just about everywhere! We started off by going to see the British Museum. We saw the Rosetta Stone and a lot of the Egyptian and Greek sections, but then we were evacuated because the fire alarm started to go off. According to the news over 8000 people were evacuated! We walked outside to two fire trucks pulling up and decided we might as well go see something else and maybe we would make it back. We never went back.

But we headed down to the London Eye for our reservation that we had made for the afternoon, since we were a bit early, we walked over to Big Ben and Parliament and even stopped to get some Nutella covered strawberries! After we waited around and had lunch we took our ride on the Eye. It was pretty cool to see all the city from the top and it is definitely worth it! After that we wandered down to the Tower of London and thought about going in, but decided not to since it was so late in the day and it was kind of pricey. So we made our way over to Buckingham Palace to look around there. It was pretty much closing down for the day, so we decided to head up the Piccadilly Circus and see what was going on up there. We got some fish and chips at a pub nearby! They were good, but nothing to make a special trip to London for, maybe we will have to make a special trip to Ireland to compare! Then we headed back home.









Then on day two we decided we would make it a priority to go see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and apparently so did every other tourist in town! It was packed! We could see some stuff, but could not really hear anything except the band. We ended up moving around a bit, along the front of Buckingham Palace and could see a little bit more of the Foot Guards, but were still pretty far away. After that we wandered our way over to Trafalgar Square and took some pictures of the Lions. There were lots of restaurants and little places to eat, so we got some sandwiches and ate in the square with the pigeons and tourists.

Then we headed down the road towards Westminster Abbey. Along the way we saw the Horse Stables and Downing Street and then spent some time looking around the outside of the Abbey. We thought about going back to the British Museum, but instead decided to see if we could get tickets to see a show in Piccadilly Circus that night. We looked for tickets for Les Mis, Mama Mia and a few others, but all the tickets were sold out, except the really expensive ones, so we passed. We went back to our hotel and got packed for a train ride to Paris, since we had to leave the hotel around 5AM to get to the station in time. So we got packed, the hotel owner told us of some good restaurants just up the road, on London Street, including an Italian place, so we walked over there and had a lovely time. We even saw the hotel owner eating there with her family! Because we had to get up so early, we took the bus around town to try to find a grocery store to get something for breakfast the in morning.

And that about wraps up our time in London, we did a lot of walking and a lot of sight seeing in two days. It went really fast! Stay tuned for PARIS!!!

We're back

The silence recently has not been due to a lack of interesting things to blog about, but it has been because we were in Europe for two weeks!!! OK, most of you probably know that already, but I still really enjoy saying it. We spent a few days in London, Paris and Istanbul, and the next few blogs will be dedicated to the highlights of each city.

Now, before you start to avoid our calls or turn down invites for dinner, we won't subject anyone to all of our pictures (there are about 2500 of them), so we'll just post the highlights here and Julie and I will look through the pictures as we plan our next adventure.

While we get organized, here are some quick highlights of each stop, with more to come in the next few days.

Julie getting a little close to the lions in Trafalgar Square:


This one really doesn't need a caption:


And this is just one of the many very cool things that we did in Istanbul:


More to come!

Who you gonna call??

Ghost-busters!! I mean orb-busters! Last weekend my Aunt Carol and Cousin Katie were in town and I think my mom had been waiting for someone to come to town so that she could have the excuse to go to the Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs. The Miramont Castle is supposedly the most haunted castle in the United States... but you can't call it haunted. The crazy lady at the front desk tried to show us all sorts of pictures of orbs that were around the castle. We wandered our way through the castle and looked around for about an hour, but alas no orbs were seen.

The Miramont is also a Firefighters museum, which featured the opportunity to wear some firefighter gear and take pictures. So we did!

The castle used to be owned by a bunch of rich folk who helped start Manitou and such, which is why they have a lot of fancy stuff around. Like these place settings, I wonder if anyone has to polish these regularly?

The rich people apparently also needed some security:

And a sewing machine? I would be more sure of the history of these items, however one of the first signs in the castle declared that some information on their signs was wrong, but didn't tell you what information or which signs were wrong.

Oh, and they had a fancy pants bath tub where the water came up from the bottom, as opposed to a faucet. It looked odd...

Debbie was really excited about the spirits and the orbs and other fanciful creatures, so she took the advice of the crazy lady and had us take each picture twice. The lady said that would give the spirits a chance to come be in the picture. Really. Manitou is awesome.

Who is really excited about the spirits? Debbie is!

All in all, no spirits or orbs or anything else out of the ordinary for us at the castle. The spirits must have had a party to go to or something and couldn't show up. So we got our picture outside, and moved on.

After wandering around the castle we went to Old Colorado City and visited the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory and we shared some caramel apples! They were delicious! After that we got dragged around to a quilt shop and a knitting shop... it was very exciting, but we were a little tired after our long runs earlier Saturday morning.

We had a great time looking for orbs and spending time with the family!

Fogo De Chao

Last weekend we went to dinner at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant with Cary and Adrienne who live up in Denver. We had tried to go about a month ago, but got detoured by the snow, so even though it was snowing this time too we were committed to going! And we had a great time!

We got to our table and they told us the system for dinner. The guy said that we should go to the salad bar first (which looked amazing), and when we were ready to get some meat we had a little coaster by our drinks that had a red and a green side. The green meant for them to start bringing the meat and red meant for them to stop. They warned us that if we didn't turn it to red they would not stop coming and they weren't kidding.

The salad bar was delicious, they had everything! Then once we were getting through our salads they brought us mashed potatoes, rolls, polenta and caramelized bananas, all very tasty. Cary was the adventurous one at the table, so he turned his little card to green first, and boy did the meat start showing up! There were five men with meat on sticks before we knew it.

They would ask how you liked your meat cooked and then shave you off a piece. Every time they would ask me, I would say well done if possible, and they would say "I'll be right back for you" almost every time, and then to Mikey's surprise they didn't even roll their eyes! They would take the meat back to the grill and then come right back to our table to shave me off some sizzling well done meat. This happened at such a quick pace that we lost track of the time, all four of us were full and delighted with the meal, and we had only been there for 30 minutes, counting the salad bar! The food was amazing, the salad bar by itself would be a good place for a meal, and the meat was out of this world.

Sorry this picture is blurry, but it was dark and the meat men were moving fast! (Mikey said that I should tell everyone that this was a clear picture, but the men were just moving that fast!)

Here is a picture of Mikey's meat, there was filet mignon, round steak, sirloin, lamb chops, the house special. We missed the ribs, they must have been going fast at another table.

We had a great night, and by the time we were done with dinner at 5:30 it wasn't snowing out anymore! So we went to Yogurtland! It was delicious! I got chocolate cake flavor with walnuts and gummy bears and then I got peanut butter flavor with cheesecake bites and Reese's, it was outstanding! Too bad they don't have one in the Springs.

Remember that time...

I found a dog in my backyard!! Well, yesterday when I got home I heard a dog whimpering outside, at first I just thought my neighbor had a dog in her backyard and it was in a cage or something. After about ten minutes of nonstop whimpering I went outside to take a look. And there was a little bitty dog stuck in my backyard. She had a leash and a collar on, and some how the leash got stuck underneath the corner of our shed... poor little dog, I have no idea how long she was stuck there. She seemed really scared.

I got her unstuck and then took a picture with my phone to show Mikey what I had found... he thought I went out and bought a dog! He was going to be mad at me since he is allergic to them! After that I got it some water and then went and asked all sorts of neighbors if they recognized her or if they knew who she belonged to, and no one knew her at all, it was sad. After asking what felt like the whole neighborhood, I went back to my house and sat on the front porch with her just in case someone came by looking for her and while sitting there I called the humane society to report that I had found her. She ran around like crazy, it was really no wonder she got out of her owners yard.

Well after about an hour Mikey got home and we were talking to our neighbor across the street and he let us borrow a doggy cage for the little pup, and he gave us some food for her too. We let her eat and then put her in the cage and we were going to take her with us to Jim and Amanda's house since we were going over there for dinner. And then, just as I was pulling out of the driveway I saw some kids walking by, so I asked them if they were looking for a dog and they said yes! Yay, parents! I took the little pup out of the cage and the kids were happy to have their dog back. All the neighbors agreed that it was a Mini Pincher, so Mikey and I called her Pinchy, we didn't want to get too attached! It was an exciting two hours!

Oh, and be ready for a lot of posts... I have been slacking...