Last summer my beloved Sony F717 died. It was my own fault--I was careless and dropped it while hiking at Winterpark with my family. That camera had great optics and had become a long time friend. I was so very bummed but saw it as an opportunity to buy a new camera. I bit the bullet and found, what was then, a good deal on a Nikon D40.

When we got back to London, we were trying to decide where to go. The Eye? The Science Museum? We decided on the Tower of London.

The Tower is very touristy. The place was packed even during an afternoon over the week. The Tower has been well restored with additional sections being restored while we were there.

The Tower boasts great views of the Thames and the surrounding country. I do think that much of the Tower's displays are too modern. I found myself a little off put by the chrome pipes moving down to plexiglass panels with information about 16th century fabrics or tiles dropping from the ceilings. Projecting video onto Tudor walls was strange. The information was quite interesting but offered in ways that contrasted too heavily with the structure itself.

Yesterday we spent the day in the city. Festival is going on so many streets were closed for traffic. The energy in the air was tangible throughout the downtown.

In the morning we went to Edinburgh Castle. They have added stadium seats to the lower redoubt for a tattoo that occurs only in August.

God awful if you ask me. I think they probably could have worked something out that was a little less anachronistic.

My faith in Grayline Tours was re-kindled today. We took a coach tour to Loch Ness, then up to Inverness and back. Thank you Graham. Photos are being flickred right now. I warn you, I am uploading more than 300 right now.

It was an early start to the day. We headed over to a local hotel where our pickup was supposed to happen. There was some kind of accident on the motor way causing our ride to not turn up. We caught a taxi to a second pickup point where our journey began.

The lowlands in Scotland are gentle rolling hills with many sheep, cattle, and fields of crops. Quite idyllic. When you start coming up into the highlands, the land changes entirely. It becomes quite harsh and very hilly/rocky making farming impossible. We saw lots of farm animals, but no crops until the land became so treacherous to make it impossible for animals to be bred either.

We arrived in Wycombe by train yesterday. My Aunt and Uncle put together a little barbeque of chicken, pork chops, and sausages. We had green beans and potatos from the garden. We also had lettuce and tomatos that came from the garden too. It was a very nice meal.

After eating we got dressed for the theatre. Every year my uncle and aunt attend the local theatre's children's production at the Wycombe Swan. In this case it was the last night of Kiss Me Kate. The performers are between the ages of 8-18 and I must say were quite good for such a young cast. It seemed like there may have been over one hundred in the cast. I was please, because it gave a young group the chance to work with a proper orchestra in the pit.

Yesterday we took the rail from Cambridge to Coventry. We arrived in Coventry at about 4:30 in the afternoon. We took a cab to the Ramada, where we were staying for the night, and checked in. It was a little studio style set of rooms with a sitting room and a bedroom. There was a kitchenette with a microwave and a fridge.

We decided to take a walk out to the Cathedral with a little walk around the town. The town took old timber Tudor houses, inns, and pubs and brought them back to life on Spon street. Mostly there were pubs and taverns, but--much to my amusement--one of them had been made into a Hi Fi Bang and Olufsen store. The street was delightful.

Cambridge was a whirl wind tour. We arrived in early afternoon and had a lovely lunch with my Aunt and Uncle at their house. It was a terrific sunny day--we've had great luck with the weather so far--so we ate outside in the back garden. After we finished up our lunch, we took a taxi into the downtown--there is very little parking downtown--where we wandered about town. We saw parts of Queens College Cambridge with wonderful Tudor architecture. Once again, I marvel at how something built so very long ago is still being used.

We took a peek down the river Cam and continued down to Kings College Cambridge, where my father was a chorister. Kings has the most amazing chapel with amazing vaulted ceilings. There are buttresses on the outside that allow a "curtain" of stained glass inside the building. The Chapel has an amazing screen between sections of the building.

Thanks to a good broadband connection the last two nights thanks to uncles and aunts, I am pretty much caught up on our UK photos for the first six days. Unfortunately, the flickr uploadr tool has been giving me grief on and off and so it seems like my photos in the flickr stream are not in proper order and I may have some duplicates. Please forgive anything that seems strange in that regard.

A Photo Recap So Far

Day 1

We did nearly nothing--but did experience the largest fish and chips ever.

We've had great luck with Grayline tours most places we have traveled.  One of the best was a man named Mike in Melbourne Australia.  He was funny, engaging, interesting, and genuinely helpful.  One of the worst we've ever had was yesterday.  Tony was rude, pretty much to every culture on the coach.  His comments included telling two Asian ladies that not ordering food in advance was, "just stupid".  He claimed the folks outside of Stonehenge must be Scotlanders or from Nova Scotia because they were "too cheap to purchase park tickets", and so and so forth.  He asked where I grew up and where I lived I told him that I grew up in Ottawa Canada but now live in Denver, Colorado--he said to me (with a smile), "You're a traitor then aren't you?"  What do you say to that.  I haven't decided, but I think I might complain about the abuse folks got in general.  Enough griping, onto the day's adventures.

Today (Tuesday August 7th) was a less vigorous day. We traveled from the Heathrow hotel this morning to Greenwich, where one of my sets of Uncles/Aunts live. We slept in quite late--10 am--and were quite leisurely about our morning regimen.

We needed to be out of our room by noon--which posed no problems although our daughter did lock herself into the bathroom quite by accident. She couldn't figure out how to open the door and was getting pretty freaked out. I noticed that there was a slot headed screw on the outside of the door. I tried using a UK penny--too wide, 5p, 10p coins. Nothing was working until I dug out a US dime. It fit and after much effort (and bruised fingers) I got the door unlocked.