Stopover in London

"Kitty cat, kitty cat, where have you been?"

"I went up to London to visit the Queen!"

By sheer chance, we saw the Queen in London. She was returning to Buckingham Palace after her birthday parade. She is the lady in the green hat in the carriage!

We stopped over in London en route to the States for summer vacation. We arrived at London Heathrow and took the Tube downtown. We stayed at the Generator Hostel. Not as nice as the one in Berlin, but a bargain nonetheless.

We went out for the free walking tour of London and got to see all the normal stuff. We stopped at the first telephone booth we saw for the traditional picture. The tour guide says that the city tried to do away with them and there was an enormous outcry by the traditionalists. He says about half of the public phones are red boxes and the rest are modernized. He also claims that the biggest buyers of used telephone boxes are Japanese businessmen who take them home and have them made into shower stalls!

We saw the reproduction of the Globe Theater from across the Thames River. It is supposed to be long, slow and expensive to get to visit it. The guide claims it is the only wooden walled / thatched roof structure in the city (fire codes).

We stood on the re-built London Bridge. The original is, of course, at Lake Havasu in Arizona. Jim has been on it. The guide said the guy thought he was buying the Tower Bridge! Jim doesn't believe it.

As usual, we stopped at Starbucks. The London souvenir mug was prettier than the England one. Also, we haven't actually visited "England", just London.

Like every other visitor to London, we visited Trafalgar Square. Big Ben is waaaay in the background and Lord Nelson is on top of the column where you can't see him. We walked around in the National Gallery, too. A block over was the National Portrait Gallery. We visited it, too. All the museums we visited were free (donations accepted).


The Clock Tower (better known as Big Ben). The name Big Ben used to only apply to the main bell, but is now used for the entire works.

We had lunch and dinner at Covent Garden. It looks like it should be spelled "convent", but they made a spelling mistake a looong time ago and have never corrected it.

The market has lots of farmers market stuff, crafts and restaurants. Nice place!

The traditional double-deckers are everywhere. We didn't ride one, but they sure look nifty. The bus and tube system have an "Oyster Pass" system. You load your card with money and just wave it over the sensor when you get on and get off. It was a lot cheaper than paying for individual tickets.

The London Eye is a giant Ferris Wheel. Don't ever call it that. They get real upset. British Air sponsors it, too.
From Trafalgar Square, we went through the Palace Gate towards Buckingham Palace. We knew that the Queen would be coming through for her birthday at about 10 am, so we made sure to miss that. We thought it would be safe to go take pictures in the afternoon.

We were surprised to see the Queen after avoiding the morning crowds. We forgot that she had to come BACK from her morning parade.

After waiting for the parade to be over, we went into St. James Park. Lovely place.

This is the Palace from a bridge in the park. This was the only reason we were there. You can tell the Queen is there because her standard is flying.

The guards had to go somewhere after the parade, too. A lot of them went through the park!

We had a wonderful time in Merrye Olde Englande! Two days wasn't long enough.

Explore the Kingdom II: Taif, April 2007

We took a guided bus tour from Jeddah to Taif. Taif is the “mountain resort” town of Saudi Arabia (alt. 1682 meters / 5214 ft). It was about a 3-hour drive from Jeddah. You can get there faster, but not by bus. We also made a couple of extra stops trying to get the air-conditioning to work. Actually, by the time we got there, we didn’t need it. Taif is measurably cooler than Jeddah. We went up there to see the roses in bloom.

The first big stop was at the factory where they distill the roses into perfume and rose water. The roses only bloom for about 70 days of the year.

Then we went across town to where they grow and pick the roses.

We then went to have a very nice buffet lunch at the Meridian Hotel. The hotel used to be a Hilton, but changed hands a couple of years ago. The view of the city from the roof-top dining was quite nice.

Another famous sight in the city is the baboons. They almost infest the city and beg (quite aggressively!) on the roads. We went out to “Baboon Valley” where they breed and got caught in a quite spectacular downpour.

Our next stop for the trip was visiting an agricultural farm. The bees weren’t as active as they would have been because of the rain.

We got to go and pick our own tomatoes. They were excellent!

We visited the town’s vegetable market. It is mostly wholesale, but you can buy smaller quantities, too. Alonda got half a case of tomatoes and made spaghetti sauce. We should have bought more!

Overall, a very nice trip!

Jim didn’t get photos, but it was interesting to see the farming on the way up to Taif. They have rock and dirt walls between the fields. You might think it was to hold water, but it is actually to cut the wind. Desert wind can kill a field in a hurry.
For the trip home, they gave us a police escort. This got us through all the checkpoints in a big hurry. It was downhill, too, so we went a little faster than going up!

Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia, March 2007

We (and colleagues Francois and Sunhae) went down to the Farasan Islands for a weekend during Spring Break. The islands belong to Saudi Arabia and are just off the coast of Jizan. The location is well south of Jeddah along the Red Sea coast and barely north of the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

This area (and the entire Red Sea) is world famous for scuba diving, snorkeling, coral reefs and sea life. This is the area used by Jacques Cousteau (inventor of SCUBA) to experiment with living and working underwater for extended periods.

We traveled with two colleagues (Francois and Sunhae Bourcier). Francois is French and Sunhae is from British Columbia.

This is the first time we have traveled on a domestic flight here in Saudi Arabia. We and our colleagues were the only foreigners on the flight. Francois, Jim and one Saudi man were the only males NOT wearing thobes (long white robes). All the women were, of course, wearing abayas. Alonda and Sunhae were the only women NOT covering their faces and heads.

Traveling to the islands was an extra adventure. We went on the “fast boat”. There is also a ferry boat, but that is not what we were on. We heard that on the ferry boat, the men and women sit in different ends of the boats. It is free, of course, but one of the boats is out for maintenance and the schedule is “irregular”. The “fast boat” was pretty choppy in the night, but we were all sitting together. The ride actually got better when the light in the little compartment burned out and it got darker. We arrived at the hotel on the island about a half hour after midnight. We had to get up and catch the dive boat at 7 am.

We shared the boat with four guys from Riyadh who were scuba diving. The day was very relaxing and the snorkeling was excellent. The reefs actually teem with life and color. The pictures don’t really show how beautiful it all is. We used a disposable underwater camera to take our pictures.

After getting back to the hotel and taking a very short nap, we went out to watch gazelles. The islands used to have a unique species of gazelle, but high-powered rifles wiped them out in the 1940’s. The island has been re-stocked with another species of gazelle. There are no natural predators (except Man), but there is almost no water. The gazelles were very hard to approach. They run when a car gets within a couple hundred meters of them. You could see them a little closer when you were in heavier brush. The good pictures aren’t on the site yet. We used our 35mm with the zoom and it will be a few weeks before we get them developed.

The hotel put on a fresh fish buffet dinner for us. The whole thing was served in a tent Saudi style; sitting on the floor with rugs and pillows, TV (American sit-coms with Arabic subtitles) and air-conditioners. We and the scuba guys were the only guests. The fish was excellent.

The next day, we toured the island. There is actually not much on the islands. Depending on the tide, there are about a hundred islands. They are made of uplifted coral and have very little soil. They were “harvesting” coral from the middle of Farasan Island. They cut it and use it for building material. We have seen a house with some of that type of material in it.

The bridge we stopped at now connects two of the islands (total population about 18,000). You used to stop and hire a couple of camels to walk across the shallow area. The houses and camel shelters are still there, but the bridge put all those people out of business.

We would highly recommend the scuba and snorkeling. It really is a world-class location.

A couple of pictures

March is here already!

Almost doesn't seem possible, but it is already mid-March. Coming back from Christmas / New Year, mid-term exams, starting a new semester, snorkeling, and Alonda's birthday! Busy, busy, busy.
The weather has been holding. We know it will get hot (this is the desert) but we hope it holds off for a couple more months.
Alonda is out with her Marine Biology kids visiting a museum and the local fish market. Jim is trying to make deadline on the Yearbook (800 copies).
We don't know when we will get changed over to this blog site from our old one. Our computer is sick and Jim has to re-install Windows. He is not looking forward to it.