A Country Hike with a Twist--Whiskey! (for some)

On Sunday, after bailing once on the hike we were supposed to do on Saturday, we finally got it together and went to do the Winchester hike that I will either help lead or will lead next week (with Mom and Dad in attendance! Hooray!) Dan came along for the ten mile hike, which made it fun in a different way than usual (because it's always fun).

Things started off normally enough. We all met at the train station, got our tickets, and had to sprint to catch our train. Before sprinting, Jim and Dan got some healthy McDonalds food and some typical British beef stuffed pie thing. From the beginning, they were taking this hike VERY seriously, as evidenced by the expressions on their faces in this picture.

After avoiding the Time Out Walking group who coincidentally happened to be doing the same country walk as we were (but much more efficiently, it turns out), we got a little side tracked by this sculpture outside of Winchester Cathedral. If you text message certain words to it, it changes color. We did this both at the beginning of our walk AND at the end (sigh).

Winchester, like a lot of England, used to be occupied by the Romans and one of the major features of this walk were the watermeadows, the man made river Itchen, and the weirs that the Romans used to control the flow of the water. Once we finally got past the sculpture, we experienced idyllic scenes like this:

These sheep/rams (there was much discussion about what they actually were and Jim, despite the whiskey that he and Dan had been 'tasting' wouldn't agree with my plan for him to walk into the flock and find out. I think they were sheep. With horns.) were peacefully hanging out in what is known as "the plague pit." Yep, you guessed it: that's where they tossed the plague victims.
This peaceful scene is also where all the whining and complaining about hills and hurting legs started. We were only about three miles into the hike at this point, so you can imagine how the rest of it went.

I'm not sure what it was that sparked the robot, but there you go. This was when the "how far to the pub" whining started and the first time I thought I might just ditch the guys and make my own way back.


Lucky for them, I thought they were annoying, but still endearing, even when they went running off into this field to take this picture (of a swan, in case you can't tell):


These two swans hissed at us while we were feeding them our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (I don't know why I bother making them because they always end up going to ducks and swans) and then followed us down the canal until we got to the pub.


Inside the pub, there was a picture of one of my ancesctors! (note:I got a new hairdo which will be featured in future blogs. It's shorter and slightly black...hopefully it will get a little less black with lots of shampoo!)


By this time, the whiskey was about half gone and several pints had been consumed by my companions. And this was the result:

I forced our departure before dessert, which I heard about for the rest of the walk. It's not easy having to be the tough one!

Far too early in the walk, Dan got the empty flask blues and decided that he wanted to sit and contemplate a beautiful field. Meanwhile, I contemplated leaving Dan and JIm again.

After we gazed at the field for a few minutes, someone had the brilliant idea to leave apples on the side of the trail so that passing horses (with riders) would stop and eat them. Not surprisingly, this plan really didn't work out that well. Thankfully, we came upon some horses who were all to happy to be fed. Then we tried to get a cow to eat an apple (again, not surprisingly, this didn't work, although one cow got interested in us. Dan was offended by how it didn't even NOTICE the apple we had thrown over the fence.)




Not long after this, Dan finally figured out how to use his GPS system and he and Jim spent some time running erratically in all directions to see if it would tell them they were going the wrong way (it did.) We eventually made it back into the outskirts of town.

We attempted to feed the ducks some smoked almonds, but they had a hard time with them, so it was back to peanut butter and jelly and we ate the almonds ourselves.

To top it all off, Jim and Dan completely disrespected the memory of Jane Austen by striking silly poses in front of the house in which she died. They were more respectful inside the cathedral where she is buried.

At the end of our walk we sent a bunch more text messages to the sculpture and yelled across the courtyard to each other about it and then trudged up the hill to the train station (certain members of our group complaining all the way about the hill)and made our weary way back to London. We had the muddiest feet on the tube, by far:

My tone might be exasperated, but it was a lot of fun.

Mardi Gras in London

Last night all the party people put on their party pants (and boas and glitter make up and sparkles and scary afro wigs) and came over to our flat to celebrate Mardi Gras a few days early. Most of us were decked out in Camden Market's finest--a great place to shop for festive outfits! Dan and Jim sported similar shirts from the same shop and I was dressed as my future self at 85 and going to a fancy hat luncheon with my cronies--blue eye shadow and all. Collectively, there were many feathers, glitter,wings, sequins, stripes, wigs, and a patch. What a fun bunch!

Together again! Tulaners unite in London. Karen and Joel were in town visiting just in time for our party!


Once again I had to defend my honor and remind Dan that it was only HIM who pulled the olive oil stunt senior year of college. Weirdo.


Wanting to stand out in his similar but different costume, JIm asked Dan to pierce his ear with a golden hoop.

Sparkles, sophistication, and....um...something:


And this is Donald when he's looking "normal."


Tony and Sophie came all the way from Wales for our party!


Meg and Dan demonstrated the ancient Mardi Gras Mating/Sword Fight Dance:


And there were further sword demonstrations. Here Dan shows us how improve blood flow and facial expressions through sword movements.

And how to knock someone out without getting out of your Ikea chair.Sophie was very understanding.

There is always time for deep thought during a Mardi Gras Party.


But like scissors beat paper, chocolate trumps deep thought in Jim's world. Thanks to Jack and Mindy for providing delicious Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which went perfectly with our Mardi Gras cupcakes (I tried to make a king cake, but that didn't work out so well...)

All good things must come to an end and eventually we were left to clean up. Jim was particularly excited about this task. Since it was late and everybody ate his Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I let him off the hook.

Happy Mardi Gras! Next party: Champagne Brunch! (We got THREE bottles of champagne from our festive friends!)

Found: Okra

It was looking pretty dire for my gumbo, which I have prepared for our Saturday Night Mardi Gras in London bash. Gumbo means "Okra Stew" (or something like that...it's African. My point is that okra plays a key role in gumbo!)and when, after checking in three major supermarkets, I wasn't able to find any, I tried to think of what else I could toss in that wouldn't take away from the authenticity of the dish. And then, in a beam of sunshine, I saw okra outside of a convenience store in a mini-market. Divine intervention! And the gumbo was saved.

Tomorrow: adventures in King Cake making. Major challenge: a very small oven and limited counter space. Good thing most of our party has never had King Cake before, so they won't have anything to compare mine to!

Skiing in Grand Massif France--C'est Tres Bon!

Our ski trip was incredible despite the fact that we had to get up at 3:30 am to get to the airport in time (in time, in Avant world means 2 hours early. The airport wasn't even OPEN at that point, but they still let us in). We did NOT ski in Switzerland, but we did fly into it and this is what we saw from our plane window:


We had an enthusiastic driver (British) who picked us up at the airport and told us all the thing we needed to know about skiing in France. He made sure we knew how to say "my French is very bad" in French and encouraged us to try as hard as we could in order to gain the friendliness of the country French who we would be talking to. So we did and I have to say that all the negative things that people say about the French are just not true (in our experience, at least). We spoke our terrible pidgeon French and they were very nice to us (with the exception of a couple of people who mocked our pronunciation). And it was FUN to try to remember our high school French. I'm kind of inspired to take some French classes now (I know, I know, I need to learn Spanish...)

We got to the chalet before Carolina, Dave, Santiago, and Dylan, so we hung around outside taking some pictures. Here's the view from the yard and we had a similar view from our bedroom window:


Inside the chalet was like a wood cabin and outside it looked country and rustic. Everyone was complaining about how little snow there was (global warming), but it snowed heavily up in the mountains and there was enough snow for some vicious snowball fights and sledding.

2 year old Santi watched and learned while Jim, Dave and Dylan pelted each other with snowballs. Mostly he just wanted to take his gloves off and was more interested in using the broom to sweep Dylan and dancing to The Magic Numbers, and not going to bed under any circumstance:



Dylan, age 8, is a skilled and dedicated snowballer. He also excels in skiing without poles and French X-box (Star Wars in particular):


Dave and Santi "sledged" down the hill in a forward position, while Dylan and Jim got fancy. Caroline watched from above.





I looked the ultimate in cool in my ski pants. Additionally, they appeared to make me look very short, which is a funny concept and not something that I have ever experienced:


Say what you want about my lack of ski style,but those pants are incredibly waterproof and warm...two qualities which were important since I spent most of my time on the slopes in this position:

We were able to walk to the ski lifts and ride straight up to the mountain from the chalet. We took the old ski lifts, which were rickety egg-shaped pods that were not entirely water or snow proof. After a couple of runs on the bunny hill, we skied mostly on Blues and the Blues in France are unlike any other Blues I have ever skied (and since I have only ever skied once before this, that's not saying much, BUT it was confirmed by someone else that the blue runs in France are harder than any other blue runs in the rest of Europe). I was, to be frank, terrified at some points. But there was no way back but down, so I made my crashing way down the mountain. The picture above was one of my more graceful falls, where I simply flew out of control off the side of the run and into a huge pile of snow. I also lost control and went down the mountain backwards, on my stomach, doing the splits, and most amusing for everyone involved but me, one my face. The most painful fall was when I crashed backwards on an icey run. I still feel that fall. There were times during our ski trip that I resembled a crying, snotty abominable snow man. Fortunately, things went much better on our third day and I even went down a Red, which wasn't exactly planned, but was necessary since, again, it was the only way down.

Unlike me, Jim is a really good skier. He has great control and speed and grace and only fell about four times the whole weekend. And he even agreed, reluctantly, to ski with me again the day after my massive down the mountain melt-down. Because of my panicking, we almost missed the last lift down from the resort. On Sunday,we worked out a system where he could fly down the mountain at his own speed and then would stand at the bottom and cheer me on as I made my wedged, slow turning way down. I was really impressed by Jim. Here he is in all his ski glory on one of the lifts:


And, in front of some of the mountains. I still can't believe we were skiing in the French Alps. the view, as we were going up the mountains on the ski lifts and when we got to the top were amazing. These pictures don't do it justice:


I was really good at "the wedge" and used a lot of energy trying to keep from flying off the side of the mountain and to complete my turns. It has been two days since we went skiing and I still can't get up and down the stairs or walk in non-Frankenstein style. Of course, Jim is hardly sore at all.


Fortunately, there were a lot of places to stop and take a break and we learned that taking some food and drink breaks was the way to make it through the day. Unfortunately both our goggles were stolen at this place and Jim forgot to try to speak French, so they were a little rude to us. But they redeemed themselves because one of the people who worked there took our picture. Happy times! This place is also where we had our first bathroom experience in France, where both men and women share the same bathroom, with male and female stalls designated. Somehow I didn't really mind that there was a man in the stall next to me.

Hopefully we'll ski again next year!

How we dry our pants

I'm stuck at home today waiting for a package to arrive. Here, they won't leave your package on your doorstep or in the bushes next to your front door like they do at home. Here you absolutely, positively MUST sign. So if you are waiting for your ski clothes to arrive from the states and you happen to not be home when they do arrive, you are screwed. Therefore, here I sit. And, as a result, I am blogging about silly things, like my laundry.

I know that laundry continues to be a theme of my blogs, but I just can't help it because it is now such a huge and time consuming part of my life, that I feel it must be included. The confusion over the clothes line has been resolved, so the other day I decided that I would do a bunch of laundry and hang it on the line to dry. It hasn't rained lately and the day was forecast to be sunny...but I didn't consider the coldness. My laundry stayed out on the line all day and none of it dried. I wish I had thought to take a picture of our socks, underwear, towels and sheets hanging all over our house, but I didn't. The thing I have noticed, though, while peeping into people's windows at night while I walk home from the tube, is that everyone has their laundry hanging all over their houses.

Here is the drying technique that I have found to be most effective:

If you put your trousers (not pants..those are underwear) directly on the radiator, they will be dry in a few hours!

This strategy, the drying rack, takes a little longer.


The women in Little House on the Prairie had it much worse.

St. Albans pictures

It is snowing outside as I write this. We are supposed to get several inches today and, this weekend, while we are in France, it is supposed to snow the entire time, which means fresh snow for our skiing!

Finally, here are the pictures of St. Albans that I took when I was on the walking tour last week. Just to give you a little historical background, St. Albans is about 22 miles outside of NW London, so it was an easy train ride for me! From Wikipedia: It was the first major town on the old Roman road Watling Street for travellers heading north and was previously the Roman city of Verulamium. After the Roman withdrawal, and prior to becoming known as St Albans, the town was called Verlamchester or Wæclingacaester. St. Albans is OLD and full of Roman relics, which was really interesting. There is a whole town built over the original city of Verulamium and all kinds of medieval drama went on, the details of which I cannot remember. But I do remember that St. Albans used to be the center for the manufacturing of straw hats. That doesn't seem to be the main focus of the town anymore, as we were surrounded by posh shops and restaurants that had nothing to do with straw hats.

We started out, as so many of our walks around England do, near a church yard. I hope that when I die, a big bush or tree grows out of my grave. We see a lot of that here, in the old graveyards. From death comes life.

The next two pictures are not that great, but their significance is that they are haunted houses in St. Albans. I've noticed that England has a lot of ghosts. The white house's ghost sweeps the stairwell, which, I think, wouldn't be that bad of a ghost to have around. The other house, is the former home of one of the leaders in straw hat making. He caught his butler stealing sips from his liquor cabinet and the butler was so mortified that he jumped out of the top window and fell to his death on the sidewalk below (right where all the ladies are standing). He still haunts the house and, actually, the door opened behind our tour guide while she was talking about all of this, but there was no one there. Wind or the ghost of the butler? You decide.


It's hard to see the writing on this door, but it says "Commit no Nuisance." Little signs like this are common in England and provide us with much entertainment. Jim is planning to put together a project that documents all the funny signs we have seen around England. One sign, in our neighborhood, says "Traffic calming efforts in effect." It sounds like therapy for the traffic, but really it's just speed bumps (which, by the way, they call "sleeping policemen.") The calming efforts in our neighborhood don't seem to work very well, as people just scrape right over them. The minis, especially, meet with disaster when they don't slow down for the sleeping policemen.

This is a famous clock tower, but I can't remember why

In all of the churchyards in England, there are yew trees, because back in the olden days, the young men of the towns and villages were responsible for providing protection. They did this with bows and arrows, which were made from the yews. The trouble with yews is that they have very poisonous berries on them. So, in order to keep the town's animals from eating the poisonous berries and dying a painful and unnecessary death, they put the yew trees in the churchyards, which had fences around them. This particular churchyard may have kept the animals from dying painful deaths, but, three men who dared to release the rabbits of a local Duke were hanged here and their bodies were left, by order of King Edward (aged 14),"to hang until the whites of their bones were showing." Nice young man.

In this picture, you can see how the eaves of the buildings have warped over time. It makes for a very creaky looking street.

In this picture, you can see a tile floor,the remains of a Roman home. Underneath the floor, they had an intricate heating system (water, I think?)

This is the oldest occupied pub in England--the Fighting Cocks! They changed the name to something like the Royal Lambs in the 19th century, because cock fighting was not PC, but then they changed it back for historical reasons.

And finally, some pictures of the St. Albans Abbey. When Henry the 8th decided to dissolve the Catholic church in England, he left the Abbey to the town, which was too large of a burden for the town to maintain, so the abbey started to crumble. One tower, in particular, started to blow in the wind and they figured out that, because the people of the abbey had been insistent about being buried as close to the alter as possible (as in, under the church), now that their coffins were decayed, the structure of the abbey was all askew, so the tower was very unstable. A local wealthy Lord suggested a competition between architects to fix the abbey and then joined the competition himself (and won,obviously, because he was paying for the renovations). He is the same man who designed the inner workings of Big Ben and he made changes to the abbey that, nowadays, shock medieval historians because it was just not the same style. Anyway, this modest man, also made sure that the angel looking over the front door of the abbey had his face. I didn't take a picture of that, but it was pretty funny.


Inside, the abbey is very ornate and very tall. While we were there, the organist was practicing and it was beautiful. I resisted the urge to buy a postcard documenting the falling out of the eyeballs of the swordsman who beheaded St. Alban (he was so stricken by what he did that his eyeballs fell out...I love the medieval times. Everything was so dramatic and violent). This picture is a part of the abbey, which has been turned into a boys' school. All the boys were lolling around in their school uniforms and looked quite preppy.

And, the front of the abbey, in all it's pseudo medieval glory!