London Part 2

So when last we were together, I mentioned something about London.  So we found ourselves in London.  Our first day was spent sussing out the town and getting some basic supplies for our stay.  We arrived Friday night and Saturday we went to the Tower of London.  Very nice and great for the kids.  Lots of armor, jewels, cannons and sausages.  We got to see 'the Crown Jewels' and 'Traitor's Gate'  I'll let you guess which of my three kids were enthralled by the jewels.  They have found Roman remains on that site dating from the 4th century.  Pretty cool.  After that we took a boat ride on the Thames.  managed to get ourselves around to Trafagar Square and to take a double decker bus tour.  After the boat ride, we ate at an English pub called The Sherlock Holmes a couple blocks from Trafalgar Square.  Again getting meat into the bellies was a very good idea.  Christo was still on crutches and so most of our tube times involved carrying him to speed things up and not tire him out.

Sunday was a big thrill for me (Michael).  Ever since we have known that we were going to go on this trip, I have been planning to see an English football/soccer game in person.  (I've now seen a Serie A match, an EPL match and a Finnish first division match.)  From outside England, it was hard to get tickets.  So we ended up with tickets to a match in Birmingham England: Tottenham Hotspurs (Spurs) at Aston Villa (Villans).  Would have preferred to see a match in London but no luck.  That meant we spent about two hours of train rides to get to the match.  We arrived pretty early to take in the atmosphere.  And the atmosphere was damp.  It was a rainy not quite chilly but not warm.  Fortunately that day was a 'Family Fun' day and so there were activities for the kids in the team practice area.  There was archery, obstacle courses, players doing skill demonstration and a gladiator style (foam covered paddles atop cushions) battle area.  Final score at the battle area: Christo 2; Daniel 2.  A draw.  Gab tried and liked the archery.  We were able to spend/kill a good bit of time there.  We had really nice seats near midfield a bit high up.  The Spurs fans were in a section about 25 to 30 seats to our right.  They would cheer very loudly throughout.  We were almost treated to an all goalkeeping match as Brad Guzan is the usual keeper for Aston Villa and Brad Friedel is the usual keeper for the Spurs.  Match was close but the Spurs scored late in the first half promptly very loud cheering to our right....and one of the Spurs fans threw a smoke flare onto the field hitting a linesman in the back of the neck.  This was bad and made these parents very nervous.  Another smoke flare appeared on the field.  The authorities were quick to make arrests and hauled a bunch of people out of the stadium.  The home side had even less to cheer in the second half as Andros Townsend was spectacular.  Nice to have great speed, great touch and be 22.  We survived a ride home and arrived late.  Crowd waiting for the local train back to the main Birmingham train station was a bit rough and there was plenty of alcohol being enjoyed.  Fans were tolerant which English soccer fans have not always been known for.  Can't say that I came away loving Aston Villa but I can say that I dislike Tottenham.

Monday was the British Natural History Museum.  This was a revelation.  Some of the pictures are below.   There are over 70 million specimens in the museum and some 20 million of them are available for display.  It's also a research facility.  We got to take the 'Spirit Tour' which let us go behind the scenes to some of the research areas and the storage areas.  Our guide was a biologist whose job it is to identify unknown species.  You would think that would involved lots of cool species from Borneo or Madagascar, but really she mostly does work on unidentified things that end up in peoples food.  We got to see flesh eating beetles in action from the other side of a think glass wall, the preserved body of the only giant squid captured alive (a 7m long little girl giant squid) and some of Darwin's original specimen's again on the other side of a think wall.  The museum was just massive.  An the overwhelming sense that I got from all of those creatures, especially the fossils was: Wow we are all very very much alike.  I was certainly someone who believed in evolution before the trip but after it there was little doubt in my mind that we're all descended from the same family tree.

By about 4p were all exhausted and we had not seen close to half of what the museum held.  Kids had Subway for dinner and Steph and I split curry and noodles from a noodle house.  We headed back to the apartment with Steph and I sharing secret glances about maybe going back the next day.  WE were pretty sure that the kids were not in the mood for more art.....so back we went.  Did I mention that the museum is free though it costs to check your coat?  Another awesome feature.  So Tuesday was spent at the museum again.  We got to see the Darwin Center Centre, a David Attenborough interactive movie in the David Attenborough Studio, and a special exhibit on the best nature photographs of the year.  There is a special rotating exhibit of treasures where we saw more of Darwin's original samples, first edition of The Origin of the Species, some of Wallace's birds, the first fossil collected by Anne Manning, my new heroine, and the plates from the first edition of John Audubon's Birds of America.  The other overwhelming sense that I came away with was wonder at the people who spent their lives and often their fortunes collecting these specimens that have made so much science possible.  It's an impressive place.  After two days we calculated that we had been in just over 75% of the musuem.  We did another English Pub, the Hoop and Toy.

We had reservations for the London Eye that evening.  It was cool and we got to do it at Dusk so we saw the London skyline both in light and dark.  We also got to go to the express line (because of CC's crutchers) and we got to say that "Elvis sent us."  Apparently the manager is Elvis and he was taking tickets in the regular line and sent us to the express.  The picture below left was taken on our way into something called the London Eye 4D experience which is why we are wearing the glasses.  Interestingly enough, all of the other people who got their picture taken at that spot, took off the glasses.  We look really cool, though.

Two other events stick out from London.  One was Hamley's Toy Store which is in Piccadilly Circus and is 7 floors.  It was tough to get out of that place.  The other was Steph trying to take a picture out the window of our apartment.  On the upper floor the view of downtown is from the bathroom and closest to the tub.  So Steph steps into the tub to take the picture with her cellphone.  And she slips and the cellphone goes out the window.  This is her US cellphone.  We each have a US cellphone from home and a Finnish cellphone for calls here.  You can imagine this cellphone floating through the air ...in......slow.....motion......and out the bathroom window.  Well it landed on the windowsill of an apartment two floors below and at 90 degrees to the bathroom window.  There it lay shining its little glow on that windowsill.  Now Steph has to go down to this apartment the really stinky from cigarette smoke one and ask for her cellphone back by saying.....knock, knock, umm excuse me could you grab my cellphone; it's on your windowsill.  Amazingly that worked.

The Finnish Strike Back

This is a short note out of chronological order.  There is the possibility of a strike by FinnAir this week and Steph is travelling to France and Switzerland tomorrow and returning Friday.

Two weeks ago there was a bus strike in Helsinki.  I was taking Gab to school that morning, a Friday.  After waiting for two buses (the 109's), we were starting to think about catching another bus and it was very likely that Gab would be late for school.  Not that big a deal but her first class is music and the music teacher is not so nice.  A very nice woman walks by and asks if the 109 has been passed.  I'm guessing that is what she asked as she did it in Finnish.  When I responded that I did not speak Finnish, she asked if we knew about the bus strike.  Some routes were affected.  No we did not but, thank you we will go find another bus.  We walked about 0.5miles to another stop and Gab got to school but a little late.

At lunch that day I asked my lunch group about the strike.  Most were not aware as their routes were not involved.  The lunch group is comprised of a woman from Serbia, 3 guys from India, a guy from Pakistan and a woman from Spain.  Another guy from China used to join us but not so much recently and a Finn left recently to take a job in Germany.  There reaction to the strike was that it was typically Finnish.  That is polite and not assertive.  They don't shut everything down and they let you know in advance that a strike might happen.  The woman from Serbia was mostly apathetic.  "What are there 1 or 2 strikes a year? C'mon in Serbia we had 2 or 3 strikes per month"  The Indians had a similar attitude.  "These strikes are nothing.  There's never any violence or threat of violence.  Very boring."

France 2, England 1

Okay so the title should really be France (Part II), England (Part I) but I could not resist.

So at the end of our last post we were in Paris staying downtown.  Our apartment was on the fourth floor of a really old building with an elevator that barely fit two adults and moved at the speed of a geriatric on valium.  There were these translucent skylights that went up about 12 feet like being in a silo.  Daniel did not realize they were there until day 3.

One of those nights we put the kids to bed and I'm furiously working on trying to submit some papers for a conference.  Now the papers are due at midnight Eastern time so I have some leeway if I want to stay up.  So then I smell smoke.  It is important to remember that Steph has no sense of smell so to paraphrase Ilsa Lund in Casablanca 'I do the smelling for both of us'.  I go around the little apartment looking for the source.  Nothing.  I go back and do about 10 minutes more.  Again the smell, stronger this time.  I opened the windows and there was clearly smoke in the air and flashing lights at the corner.  So Steph starts getting ready in case we have to go and I run down the steps to check it out.  Daniel wakes up and goes with me.  There is chaos in the streets, smoke is billowing out of two drainage vents from the street and a firetruck is emptying their hoses into the vents.  The firemen spray water down the drainage vents for easily 45 minutes.  A couple of firemen come to our door and want to know if I have a keep to the basement.  Yeah, right!  So they start calling all of the apartments in the building.  Eventually they get down their and find nothing.  We went to bed shortly thereafter.  Next morning the street was just as if nothing happened.

On our last day in Paris we packed up, checked out and headed to Gare du Nord (North Station) to catch a high speed rail (Tres Grande Vitesse or TGV) to Calais.  The picture above left is the kids playing on their devices while we weight for Steph to get the tickets printed.  It was not enough to have the tickets on our phones in this case, we had to have them printed and, of course, we were one of the last to board because ti took 45 minutes for Steph to find the right line and get to the head of the queue.  We had a night ride through the French Countryside.  We get to Lille and everybody gets off and we're somewhat concerned.  After a frantic couple of minutes, I noticed a bulletin board that said that Calais was the next stop.  We get to Calais and the TGV drops us like 10km outside town.  Everyone scurries over some tracks while we take our time making sure that Christo, still on crutches, was doing okay.  Well, of course, we miss the local train to downtown and so we have to call a cab.  Apparently only two cabs come to this station and neither is big enough for all of us and our stuff.  Oh, joy.  So Gab and CC and I took the first and Daniel and Steph waited for the next one.  Crazily they beat us there.  We took the cabs to get a rental car.  After picking up the rental car it was about 3pm so we drove to the southwest to an area known as the Les Deux Caps (the two heads) with areas on the coast called Blanc-Nez and Gris-Nez (white nose and gray nose).  (Enterprise screwed up but that's for another day.)  The picture below are from those areas.  The last one on the right makes me chuckle.  It is the descendant of German immigrants to America playing on a German bunker peacefully unaware of what she is playing on.  There was lost of evidence of fortifications all along here, not a surprise given that we could just barely make out England across the water.

 

 

As we headed back to our hotel we drove along the coast and it was getting to be dinner time.  Well dinner time for the Schuckers kids.  Not for the French whose restaurants in this part of the world don't open until 7p.  Not good.  We drove on.  We got to our hotel and their restaurant did not open until 7p.  We were getting desperate and beginning to think about our first McD's of the trip. And. Then. Steph discovered rooms service at the hotel.  It was a Holiday Inn and we ordered nuggets and fries for the kids and cheeseburgers and fries for the adults.  It was cliched and it might have been embarrassing if we weren't so damn hungry.

Our reason for going to Calais was that there is a relatively new aquarium there.  So we went the next day to the aquarium and it was really nice.  At right is a picture of Daniel through a looking hatch of the coral reef section.  The best section was a very large tank with sharks and rays.  Sorry no pictures.  We managed to escape the aquarium with only two new stuffed animals and returned the rental car.  We then took a ferry across the English Channel.  Below is a view of the White Cliffs of Dover from the ferry.  After arriving in Dover, we took a train to London and got to our apartment in West Hampstead, a suburb of London. To get to West Hampstead we took a London cab from King's Cross.  Ate there.  Kids were excited about King's Cross thanks to Harry Potter.  Our apartment was the 3rd and 4th floor of a flat with just steps and a very strong cigarette smell on the 2nd floor.  Kids got the bedroom on the 4th floor and Steph and I shared one on the 3rd.  Ran out that night and got Sugar Pops, Bread and Milk for the next morning.  The TV worked in this apartment. It was the first time that we had had live TV (as opposed to internet) since August.  So what did they watch?  The Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  We are high class all the way.







 

      Soccer Match


While we were in London we went to a premiere league soccer game in Aston Villa. We sat with the Villa fans and it was good match. The other team (Tottenham) scored first and during the celebration on of the Tottenham fans threw a smoke bomb and it hit the linesman in the neck. He was arrested 20 minutes later. Tottenham scored again and that pretty much ended the game. The teams were pretty evenly matched and they both played very well. After the game we took a train back to our apartment and slept almost the whole ride.


Daniel

France

So we took a trip starting about three weeks ago that began in Turku, Finland.  Turku is on the Southwest coast, was the capital of Finland when the Swede's controlled Finland and is the oldest permanent settlement in Finland.  I (Michael) had a conference for the program (Fulbright) that is paying for our trip.  It was a talk on American culture and my talk was on the Adirondacks.  The conference was Friday and Saturday.  We took the train Friday morning and back on Saturday afternoon.  Sunday morning we got a plane for Paris. At the Helsinki airport there was a 'Boston' sports bar where the boys got bar-b-q chicken wings

We rented an apartment in the Marais section of Paris near the Centre Pompidou.  The apartment was decorated in a Morroccan style.  It was a one bedroom with a pullout couch and a regular couch in the living room.  Just perfect for us.  We arrived and promptly needed to eat.  This would be a theme for Paris, particularly with Daniel.  I think he grew about 2 inches on the trip but needed protein at about 40 minute intervals.  Had we realized it earlier, it might have made things go more smoothly.  But we got it eventually.  Anyway, we arrive and found a corner restaurant near a metro station near our apartment.  I ordered mussels provencal and got the bucket in the picture on the left.  Daniel got 3 kinds of sausage, Christo got a hamburger and fries, Gab got chicken fingers, Steph got some smoked salmon on flatbread.  The reason for noting this on the blog is that the kids loved the mussels.  By the way, that pot in the picture had more mussels, I only bothered to take a picture after it was apparent that the kids were enjoying it, too.  Who would have guessed.

We went and got settled in the apartment and then took a taxi to the Eiffel tower.  Below on the left and in the center are pictures of us watching the Eiffel tower as the sun went down.  Relatively new there is that sparklers go off on the tower on the hour for about 5 minutes every hour.  We hung around to watch that twice.  It was relatively cold that night.  We did not go up in the tower until later in the week since the line was really long.  Later we went up (see below) but this time we reserved our tickets.
 

 

Monday, Steph had some meetings in Paris, so the kids and I toured the local area including the childrens fountain (above, right).  We also went to the store and got groceries, croissants (as we did every day) and we got the Paris museum pass.   The museum pass gets you in to almost all musuems for a set number of days (1, 2, 4, etc.).  Kids are free.  You'll notice that Christo has crutches in most pictures.  We were able to skip most lines and to use wheelchairs .  Our apartment was about 2 blocks from the Centre Pompidou which is a funky inside out building (all the wiring and duct work is visible from the outside).  It houses some modern art.  There was some cool stuff but the kids were not too impressed.  Christo had his crutchers taken away for 'security reasons' when we was waving them around from his wheelchair.  After Steph got back we went to Musee l'Orangerie which has the very large Monet murals.  Very cool.  Afterward we hung out in the gardens near the Place Concorde.  There was a Lamborgini and a Ferrari for rental.  Just 87 euros (about $110 dollars) for 20 minutes.  In the words of Carly, it would have been totally worth it.

 

Next day we stsrted at the Musee d'Orsay which is known as the Impressionism Museum.  That was the morning.  Steph organized artwork bingo.  We each got 24 assorted paintings from the museum and then we ticked them off as we found them.  Great way to keep the kids interested.   However, we had clearly failed to get enough food in Daniel and this compounded with the lack of clothing on some of the artwork had him in a bad mood.  We ate baguette sandwiches along the river and decided to take one of the river boats to Notre Dame.  (Picture above right is front one of the boats.)  Two sandwiches of salami and cheese were not enough and we still had some grumpiness as we neared Notre Dame.  So we decided to hit a cafe.  In part to get some caffeine for Steph and me but also to satisfy the caloric needs.  At this cafe we introduced our children to creme brulee.  It was a great hit.  We went to Notre Dame had a great time and all the kids fed the birds in front.  Notre Dame is 850 years old.  I had forgotten how impressive it was especially considering its age.

 By now it was mid afternoon and our reservations for the Eiffel Tower were 5:30.  Except that Steph's phone with the electronic reservations -- we didn't have anywhere to pring the reservations -- had run out of battery.  So we made a plan.  I would take the kids by boat to the Eiffel tower and Steph would run back to the apartment and get the reservations on to some electronic device (phone or laptop).  We agreed to meet under the north leg of the tower.  I take the kids and we had a nice ride along the Seine and we get to the Eiffel tower around 4:45.  Not much going on.  We got ice cream again trying to head off any possible meltdowns.  Christopher had to go to the bathroom.  So I left Daniel and Gab by one of the .  Not sure what I was thinking leaving those two together alone in Paris by the Eiffel tower but I did it.  Probably would not have done that three months ago but if Gab can navigate the Espoo/Helsinki bus system why can't she be alone with her older brother for, what, 10 minutes.  I mean, how long can it take to find a bathroom.  Well it took a minimum of 15 minutes to find the bathrooms and then they were closed for cleaning from 5 to 6pm.  Uggh.  So now it is 5:15 and we work our way back to where I left Daniel and Gab.  Only they are not where I left them.  So Christo is on crutches and his arms are tired; we're moving slowly, and I'm frantically looking for Gab and Daniel.  It felt like 15 minutes of panic but I'm sure it was less than 2 before I found them with Steph just around the corner from where I left them.

So we go up the Eiffel tower to the first level which is only about 40% of the way, not all the way to the top.  Now Christo had been collecting coins from the various places that we were visiting so we have a coin from the Louvre and one from Notre Dame at this point.  So we're in the gift shop of the Eiffel tower and Christo sees a shiny pink wrapper that is about 2 inches square, has the outline of a circle clearly visible and has 'I [heart] Paris' on it.  So he grabs it and says to me 'Is this a coin? Can I get it?'  To avoid further awkwardness I just explained that it is not a coin inside the wrapper.  Insert your own baguette joke here.

The next day we did the Louvre.  The Louvre turned out to be a big winner for a couple reasons.  As mentioned above we got and ate 8 pieces of chicken for the kids at 11am.  We were getting preferential treatment for Christopher because of his crutches.  And every place allowed us to borrow a wheelshair during our visit.  We also had a fiasco with coffee during that 11am stop.  At the Louvre because of his wheelchair, Christo and I got closer to the Mona Lisa than anyone else because it is now heavily protected but there is still wheelchair access down front.  So no fighting the 10 deep crowd we rolled right up front.  After lunch we went to the old original parts of the Louvre from its days as a castle in the middle ages and the Egyptian section.  This was a big hit.  Mummies and sphinxes are interesting to 10 and 12 year old boys.  I also convinced the kids that I could read hieroglyphics for about 4 and a half minutes before they saw through my 'this here says that larry owes me five bags of grain and an owl.'  When we came out of the Louvre, it was pouring rain so we decided to head home and have a bit of relaxation.  Basically, Steph and I napped and the kids played on their computers.  

More to come...