Rick Rambles – A blog

London 07-28-2010
Finally people speak English… and that accent :>  interesting hotel, not too small and has ac, a must.  I figure out where I am and start looking into a flight home.  First stop, food, fish and chips of course!!!  it was not wrapped in newspaper though.  A little disappointing.  It was good though.  And they had free wifi.  My phone stopped working, so I needed to find a phone store and try to replace my charger for my laptop…  success on the phone, not so good on the charger.  It said it was charging, but lied…  no laptop, very sad!
I loved the writing on the streets, “Look Right”!  They should just admit that they drive on the wrong side of the street!  There is actually one street in London where you have to drive on the right.  I forgot why…
Of course I have to do the hop-on hop-off bus…
Buckingham Palace, Big Ben (it’s actually the bell, not the clock tower), London Bridge, London eye, and all that.  There is a lot to see.  It was nice to be able to actually talk to people.
When we started the bus tour I was the only one on the top and there was a live guide.  I had a private tour for a while and then a bunch of people joined us.  It was rather amusing.  He kept welcoming people to Rick’s personal tour of London :>
I went to a place called “The Spice of Life” for some food.  How could I pass up the spice of life?!?!  I met a guy in there that was waiting for his blind date…  he met her on-line.  I did not wait around to see her, but he was looking forward to it…
The on and  off bus in London actually included a boat ride too…  that was cool.
I did go to the national museum.  It was one of those “no pictures allowed” ones…  so the pictures are not-so-good :>  Had to sneak them…

I got really lazy at the end and booked a hotel right next to Heathrow Airport.  It was very nice and I was ready to go home and did not want to mess with travel in the morning.  The train station was attached to the the airport so I was all set.
The hotel was really nice.  For some reason I always judge a room by the bathroom…  this one had a cool glassed in shower and a tub…
I hung out in the airport and the hotel and chatted with a bunch of people.  The food was good and I recognized it all.
Now, when you book a flight the day before, you don’t get a lot of choices…  when I went to book it I would hesitate and the flight would be gone…  I was getting a little antsy so I ended up getting a flight that went to Boston, to Philly, and then to New Haven…  ok, a round-about trip, but I made it.  I got a taxi from Tweed.  I had never flow into Tweed…  it worked.
Being home was nice…

Prague – Dresden – Frankfurt – Brussels 2010-07-27

Lots of trains.  The problem with these trains is that you can’t get there from here.  It took me several attempts to figure out how to head towards London.  That explains the stright-ish shot to Brussels.  I could have stopped in Amsterdam instead, but thought that a bad idea… me in Amsterdam all by myself, unsupervised…  even I know better than that!
I had several hours in Frankfurt so I figured that I would wander about and sit down and get some real food.  So while in Germany I ate at an Australian restaurant.  Why you ask…  it was there and I wanted some meat!  I have Australian beef and it was good!  There were a bunch of business people from the financial district eating there, so I figured that it was a good choice and I was correct.
Oh yeah, very important…  go the bathroom on the train if you can.  It cost $ to go in the station.  And there is a long line.
This was a tricky train.  Fortunately I had read about them.  The only way that you can determine what train that you want to be on is by the departure time.  The train number is often unknown, the track does not show up on the board until 10 minutes or so.  So I am to get on the train to Brussels and there are two trains leaving at the same time on the same track!  What up with that…  then I remembered.  Some trains actually split at a station with the front going to one destination and the back going somewhere else.  Make sure you are on the right half and don’t fall asleep…  the couple next to me, actually the women was very concerned about the train splitting thing and asked every person that went by.  We were in the correct car.  They had been traveling for several weeks and he was tired of sleeping in strange beds.  They were from the UK.  They were off to some friends house to stay for a couple more weeks…  they get lots of vacation time over there…