JANcich & hanDLEY

Paris!

We're back.  The photo gallery is here.  We'll write more later.

(Don't) Forget Paris!

Yesterday afternoon Kyle and I talked about how sad we were that we hadn't yet had the chance to go to Paris. Instead of mope about it, we dialed up the Eurostar Web site and found two tickets cheap for this weekend, which was to be Kyle's last in London. No better way to spend your last weekend in London by going to Paris, right?!

Special thanks to our pal Guillaume for taking us in on such short notice.

Check back for pictures Monday. Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Dave and Steph's Series of Unfortunate Events

My parents left this morning after a whirlwind, eight-day visit to London. Kyle and I kept them very busy with trips to Windsor, the Tower of London, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Big Ben and Parliament, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, the British Library, the British Museum, and to Piccadilly Circus to catch The Canterbury Tales in the theatre performed by the London's famous Royal Shakespeare Company. Of couse, there were also many visits to London pubs and one requisite visit to the Crepe Stand. We also took a boat cruise of the River Thames for an amazing view of the city.

While we managed to have a good time, my parents suffered some serious bad luck during their visit. First, it was hot as Hades in London, which is highly unusual. In fact, last Wednesday was London's hottest July day on record, reaching around 97 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the city. Because such heat is unheard of, very few things in London have air conditioning, including the Tube and buses. We did manage to get a significant amount of sightseeing in despite the heat, but we really sweated it out! Luckily, my parents' hotel did have A/C, so they could cool off at the end of the day.

Second, my parents got stuck in what Kyle and I have termed "bus purgatory." Being in bus purgatory is when you wait and wait and wait at the bus stop for a bus that takes forever to show up. Kyle and I are too impatient to spend too much time in bus purgatory -- we know public transport well enough to take alternate routes if necessary -- but my mom and dad only had one set of directions to my house and it included taking a 253 bus that took more than an hour to show up at their stop. By the time they made it to my house, I was frantic, thinking they'd gotten lost, had a medical emergency or had gotten mugged. Now I know what I put my parents through when I was a teen-ager who broke curfew...

Third, Central London suffered a power failure on Sunday, which knocked out the electricity in my parents hotel for about four hours. Normally, this would have been a minor inconvenience, but my parents room was on the 6th floor (7th to Americans, since the Europeans term the first floor the "ground floor" and count up from there). Due to construction in the hotel, there were no emergency lights in the stairwells, making the trek up and down the stairs especially dicey since the elevators weren't working due to the power failure. The power failure also disrupted a return trip for my mom and I on the Tube because it forced station closures at Euston and King's Cross, the two closest stations to the hotel.

Despite the catastrophies, it was wonderful to see my parents after a year of being separated by the Atlantic. I am terribly depressed today after their departure because I think I enjoyed their vacation the most. I had a blast showing them around the city I love and showing them what its like to be a Londoner, hot Tube rides, power failures, bus purgatory and all.

Now I have to get back to work on my dissertation. :( I have about 7,500 words written out of about 13,000 and more lines of PHP code than I care to count. Meanwhile, Kyle is packing up, ready to ship out to the States in less than two weeks. I can't help but feel the party is over! Feel free to leave a comment to cheer me up!

Fighting Crime. Why not?

I went out for a run today at about 11 am to Hampstead Heath following my usual running route down Rochester Road.  As I rounded the corner from Camden Road to Rochester two guys came running out of an alley with packages and headed in the opposite direction.  Behind them was a postman, carrying packages yelling "Thiefs! Thiefs! Help!"

It did not take long for me to size up the situation, so I took off running after one of the yobs.  Because I run regularly and I am an ironman triathlete, I was able to close the gap on the kid very fast.  Realizing he was had, the kid dropped his stolen package on the street to avoid the impending tackle I had in mind.  Unfortunately, the other guy got away but the postman at least got one of his packages back.

The kid hid someone for a few minutes, but I spotted him again and ran him down, again, to ask if he had anything else.  As it turns out, he was pretty much scared shitless and announced that he "ain't got nothing."  Apparently, he thought I should leave him alone because he dropped the package on the street.  The funny thing was that he was wearing slacks, dress shoes and white dress shirt.  Obviously a typical school boy.  He even turned out his pockets without my asking and dropped 20p on the ground which I kept only because he was too much of a wuss to come back and get it from me.

There are several troubling points about this story.  The first, is that several other bystanders could have stopped these thieves.  They ran right by several able bodied males that clearly should have understood what was going on.  This brought home a big problem in Britain.  A recent survey found that 6 out of 10 Britons would not stop 14 year old youths that were vandalizing a telephone booth, for example.  But 6 out of 10 Germans would do something. 

The second troubling point is that this kid was a just a school boy that probably did this on a whim.  It's also the second time I've been in it with school boys in the past 3 weeks.  A few weeks back a group of about 8 blue blazer, tie-wearing school boys threw a handful of sticks and rocks at me in Hampstead as I ran by them.  The funny thing was that I turned around and charged the little bastards (probably 13-14 years old) and they scattered.  Not one of them would admit to doing it, yet they were happy to call me names as I ran away with my back turned.  A 3-4 minute altercation took place on this occasion.  And again, there were plenty of other folks around that saw what happened.  No one did a thing.  In fact, most looked on as if I was a nutter.

I would like to see what similar stats to the Guardian article look like for the US.  I'll try to find some.  Maybe it's because I'm American, maybe that has nothing to do with it, but I don't understand why people stand around and take this crap from a bunch of teenagers.  I'm also pretty sure that David Cameron's plan to "hug a hoodie" isn't going to help.  Something cultural is at work.  Probably an overwhelming sense of fear and intimidation stoked by politicians and the media.  Any thoughts?

Busy travel Weekend

We did a lot of travelling last weekend in southeast England.  On Saturday we went the wedding of Sarah's friends Ed and Dani.  The wedding was in Tolleshunt Knights, near Kelvedon, in Essex.  Pretty much due east of London.  I have made up a map here.

The wedding was a good fun and we got to hear a number of smash hits from the 80s such as Final Countdown (Europe) and Living on a Prayer (Bon Jovi).  This was surprising, since both Ed and Dani were less than 10 years old during the 80s.  But the 80s live on.

On Sunday, we decided to visit Cambridge.  It's only a 45-60 minute train ride from London and we've been meaning to visit for some time.  It was a great way to spend a day and we have a new set of pictures up here.  Cambridge is full of great architecture and historic buildings.

There were two main highlights.  The first was visiting King's College, former home to a number of famous academics such as economist John Maynard Keynes.  You may remember that King's was the subject of a previous post.  Most of the colleges charge a few pounts for entry and King's was the only one that we explored.

The second adventure was punting on the Cam.  You can rent small flat-bottomed boats called punts and take them out on the River Cam.  They are steered with a long pole (much like the canals in Venice).  I am doing just this in the photo at left.  Our boat was named "The Little Kitten."

It is quite difficult to steer, move forward and avoid hitting other boats all at the same time.  I failed miserably at all three until I got the hang of things after about 45 minutes.

This will probably be our last big trip outside of London as we are both leaving in a few more weeks.  I hope you have enjoyed all the reports.

Thanks for reading.

-K

Yay Kyle!

Jandley.com has just learned that Kyle will graduate with Merit (honors) from the London School of Economics this month. He worked very hard all year, spending the better parts of May and June holed up in the library while preparing for his final (and only!) exams. This honor is well-deserved and should be celebrated. Way to go, honey!!!

Our trip to Edinburgh...finally

We got back from Edinburgh, Scotland last Wednesday.  I am finally getting around the posting a blog and the pictures about it.  Sorry for those who were eagerly awaiting the reports (do any of you eagerly await our reports?).

Edinburgh (pronounced ED-IN-BURRA) is a great city.  We had excellent cool and sunny weather the whole time we were there.  I have many pictures up in a new album that I haven't gotten around to writing captions for, but they are worth a look.

We saw our third castle on this trip, Edinburgh Castle.  We have toured three castles and they are all quite different.  Edinburgh Castle sits on the basalt core of an extinct volcano.  The rest of the volcano has eroded away over a time (A US example of this phenomenon is Devil's Tower National Monument from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind). 

Edinburgh is divided into the Old Town and the New Town.  Funny thing is, the New Town is older than just about every building in the United States.  But it's all relative.  Some rebels from Revolutionary War were actually held as prisoners in the castle.  One of these carved an American flag into a door which you can see here.

We had some pretty nice meals while we were there and celebrated my birthday at a Spanish restaurant.  We also visited the Scottish National Gallery, the Scottish Museum of Modern Art and Royal Britannia Yacht at Ocean Terminal.  Our favorite set of sites were these three pubs (1, 2, 3) located in close proximity to each other, each trying to outdo its neighbor.

I plan to get around to putting up some captions on the photos eventually.  Until then, enjoy them as they are.  I have also reorganized the sidebar menu with a photo albums list if you are looking for our older trips.

-K