Interview

The interview went much better than I expected. Instead of walking into a bleak and cold office staffed with vapid 22 year olds, I walked into a small office with four desks and two employees. I impressed K with my skillset and charming personality. K is going to get me an interview with a small company on Wall Street for Monday. Wahoo!!!! I don't always like to wear makeup but today, I think I did a pretty good job for the likes of me. It doesn't always come out as nice as it did ealier. To show you what I mean, I took a couple of pictures of myself in makeup.

I've developed this weird fascination with photographing myself. Can anyone explain it to me? Does anyone else have the same weird solopsistic fascination?

Yodelay Da-Hee

Easy Thursday. Just got ready for a job interview. I'm made up, wearing my new pink sweater, listening to the sound track of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou and looking at Jon lovingly every two minutes or so. I look very pretty. The interview is with an agency for a job as Assistant to VP of Marketing for an online education company. I think it's one of those fake jobs designed to bring you into an agency so they can humiliate you but I have something else good lined up for tomorrow so what can this hurt. Two hours of my life.
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This morning, before our walk, I made a yummy for your tummy breakfast. Eggs in the nest or Maryjanes, toasted bagels with butter and lemon curd picked up in England and Turkey Polish Kilbassa.

Tonight we'll be eating the leftovers of last night's dinner. Sorry to those of you who wanted me to bring the leftovers to you for lunch today, but time didn't allow for it today.

Recipe

I surprised myself. The shephard's pie turned out pretty yummy.

First I boiled 5 medium red potatoes and 5 chopped carrots until soft and let them cool.

Then I sauteed 1/2 pound of chopmeat with 1 chopped medium onion and 2 diced tomatoes.

Once the sautee was soft and nice, I emptied everything into a bread pan. Then I mashed the carrots and created a mushy carrot layer on the meat mix. Then I added the mashed potatoes to top everything off. I placed the bread pan into a preheated oven which I turned down to 200 degrees so the pie could slow simmer.

It was done by 10-ish, when I enjoyed a piece before Jon came home.

For seasoning, I used salt, pepper and OLD BAY to taste.

Yum.

Back on the Block

Guess who's back. Back again.

We're home. Jon is at work. I am chilling out. I was just looking over our oodles of photos. I'm trying to figure out which ones are truly worth printing. Digital is great.

This morning we went for an hour long walk in Central Park. In London, I started enjoy walking around daily. It's incredibly relaxing and invigorating so I want to keep it up. The walk was certainly invigorating. It was cold out there today. After our walk through the park, we found our way to Whole Markets in the Time Warner Center to pick up some food for dinner.

This afternoon, after Jon left for work, I watched ELF on DVD (hee hee - funny, funny) and then I went for a pedicure/manicure. Ahhhhh. That was nice. I chose Pink Slip for both toes and fingers. It's a light, pink color usually used as the base for a French manicure. It looks incredibly natural but very neat.

Tonight, I'll be making shepherd's pie. Our host, Mark, made it for us during our visit and I remembered my mom making it when I was younger. Being the stubborn person that I am, I refuse to look up the recipe in a cookbook so I'll be making it up as I go along, based on memories from my childhood and my vacation.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Bags are packed. I'm ready to go. . .

We are ready to go. We will be leaving in about 40 minutes to begin our long commute home. We've had a marvelous time.

For those of you who are positively sick of reading about my happy vacation, you will be pleased to know that as of tomorrow, I will be resuming my regular mixed emotion writing. After all, I have to find a job which is where we first met when I started this blog.

Dear Reader. Thank you for indulging me as I kept a journal of my first real vacation.

See you soon.

Westminster Abbey/Elgin Marbles

Today, our last full day in London, we went to Westminster Abbey and then to the British Museum to see the Elgin marbles.

Westminster Abbey is amazing. The most famous English Kings, Queens, scientists, poets and other impressive citizens are interred here. There are more amazing sculptures here than I have seen in any of my travels. Of course, photograph taking is banned there. I noticed that all the sites we've had to pay to see forbid the taking of photographs. That didn't ruin the experience for me but it would have nice after paying 15 dollars a head to get in, if I could have taken some pictures of Isaac Newton's statue, or Shakespeare's statue or Mary Queen of Scots effigy, etcetera.

After an overwhelming tour of Westminster we walked north to the British museum. There were two exhibits Jon wanted to show me. The first was the Rosetta stone. Pretty cool. But as cool as it was to see the Rosetta stone, the Elgin marbles were 10 times better. Of course, since this museum was free, I could take as many pictures as I wanted, which I'll download when we get home. I don't know how to describe them to you. They are the oldest sculptures I have ever seen, rescued from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin.

I was pretty pooped after absorbing all that info, so Jon and I came back to our home base. 10 minutes after we got back, Jon went off alone to play at apub quiz with Mark. As much as I wanted to go, I really needed to hang back. After all, I have packing to do. We are leaving tomorrow. We are going home. (sniff and hoorah!)

The Palace of Holyrood

One of the more romantic places Jon and I went was Holyrood Palace. The Holyrood Palace is the official residence of the Royal family when the pass through Scotland. It's really old and is the setting for some pretty historic events. One of my favorite historic residents was Mary Queen of Scots. This is where she lived when her wicked cousin, had her friend/lover? murdered. The story of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth is probably a favorite of a lot of anglophiles, which I am slowly becoming. Anyway, there is a room that contains many, many personal effects of the Mary and other famous members of the British royalty. One of the creepier things we saw in this room was a cast of Robert the Bruce's skull made from his found remains which were interred somewhere else, perhaps at Edinburgh castle but I don't really remember. My head is pretty crammed with royal knowlege.

Not to be overlooked is the abbey at Holyrood. It was built by King David I after he saw a white stag when hunting. It may have been some kind of vision or something. Again, I'll have to study the story a little further (crammed head needs much sorting). He built this abbey which is now a romantic ruin. Here is my photographic contribution.

Sunday in Greenwich -The Cutty Sark

Sunday, Jon and I spent some time in Greenwich, near the meridian. The first site we visited was the Cutty Sark (see below). We also went to this charming open market because Sunday is Market day in Greenwich. Then we walked up to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park where we stood on the meridian. We saw where Haley did most of his work. We saw cool equipment and took photos of each other on either side of the line. Later that night, we went ice skating with some friends, also in Greenwich. We had drinks at Trafalgar pub which was full of Lord Nelson memorabilia. I did not try the ale named Lord Nelson's Blood. After our drinks we went skating at the Old Royal Naval College, although I did more wall grabbing than skating. Jon and our host Mark both impressed me with their skating, especially Jon who was actually quite good at it. The other people we met, Steve, Annie and Shonny were just lovely. They were such nice people. We had a very nice time. After skating, Jon, Mark and I went out for Indian food. Yummy. I've had some pretty amazing Indian food here, better than New York City even.

That was enough for one day. After that we pretty much called it quits and packed it in for the evening.

We got home pretty late.

Quite a few people suggested we see some theater but when I saw what our choices were, I ruled out seeing anything. For those of you who suggested that we see Jerry Springer, I give you this photograph of the theatre's marquis.

Tower of London

Here is a self portrait of me near the entrance of Tower of London. Mark and Jon were on line waiting for the tickets and I was getting a little restless. I tried to to take some shots of the wall I'm standing in front of but the light wasn't quite right. The haziness at that moment made the light bounce everywhere so all my shots kept coming up all washed out.

About 30 minutes after I took my brilliant self portrait, the sky changed completely, clearing up wholly producing a brilliant blue sky. This happened about 3 minutes after we started our tour. Here is a picture of the first gate. I think it's the North Gate but I could be wrong.

This is a head on shot of the building that houses the crown jewels. I don't know what else to say about that except they are utterly breath taking. Sadly, the casual tourist is forbidden from taking photographs in here for security reasons. You'll just have to trust me. If you haven't seen them they are everything you've heard they are and more. Just breathtaking. If you have seen them, you know what I mean.

One of England's more interesting kings was King Henry VIII. You have probably heard of him. He's best known for having had six wives and for being an overall jerk with an appetite so large that only his greedy ego could top it. The most fun I had was observing this enormous cod piece from one of his later suits of armor. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Dog and Bell Pub Quiz

Here is Jon, asking questions as host of the Dog and Bell weekly pub quiz. As I mentioned before this went over very well. People were pleased with the questions and it helped us connect with London on a more personal level.

While I was walking around the pub with my camera, Charlie the owner of the pub, asked me to photograph his most recent award of Regional Pub of the Year. I requested that he hold the award to give the photo a nice human touch. He was just the loveliest man ever. He explained to me how proud he was because there is a real art to running a neighborhood pub. Activities, types of ale, food and ambiance are all part of it. He managed to put it all together which is why he won the award. Here is a picture of proud Charlie.

A Happy Val

Here is a picture of me before takeoff.

Photo Update

Well. I managed to get some more pictures off this disk onto Flickr into this post. Our first day out, Jon and I went on the London Eye. Here are the pictures. Enjoy. I won't bore you with the details when you can just look at them. You may have figured out by now that we are having a good time. This is also apparent from our enormous smiles.

Friday in London

Jon and I split up so he could spend some time with his friend and I could be on my own a little bit. I thought it would be interesting to visit Harrod's, you know that big department store owned by the Al Fayeds. It was interesting to see the exterior but the interior was as busy as any New York department store two weeks before Christmas. I did use the luxurious bathroom but then I headed out to get some lunch and to see the Victoria & Albert museum.

Lunch was delicious. For £9 (about 18 dollars because the dollar is crap right now)I had a huge bowl of soup, chicken and four different vegetables. Yummy.

Then I went to the V&A. I walked around for about 2 and a half hours. It's a museum of decorative arts. There didn't seem to be any really famous artworks there but there were some lovely pieces.

Here is a photo of the church we saw in York.



Here is a picture of Jon in front of above church.

Woman Walking In Shot

Here is a picture of that walking into our shot.

Last Day In Edinburgh

We slept well last night, our last night at the Hotel Ibis on the Royal Mile. Today is our last day in Scotland and we plan to squeeze in as much as humanly possible. The main focus of the day will be visiting the Holyrood (sp?), a palace of some sort or the other. I'm sure I'll learn plenty from our tour guide.

Scotland is a beautiful place and I recommend vacationing here highly. It's not too expensive and the people are friendly enough and mostly everyone speaks English. Edinburgh is lovely.

This is probably the last chance I'll have to blog for a while so until next time . . .

Happy Chanukah!!!

For those of us who are celebrating the miracle of lights, happy holiday to you and yours. Just so you know, there is no indication at all over here in Edinburgh that Chanukah is even in play. Nor was there any indication in London for that matter. One would think there weren't any Jewish people around here.

About the Pictures

Okay. I've moved our pictures to disk but forgot to pack them before leaving our hotel. I promise there will be pictures soon.

Time to go. We're going to go have some scotch and dinner.

The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre

That nap was absolutely wonderful. After spending the morning in the crisp, mountain air wandering around the Castle, I was quite nackered. I slept peacefully and deeply. I've gotten to the point on the vacation when you've finally relaxed after several days of not working, except this time, I don't have to leaave yet. This is my longest and most fun vacation since I was 14 years old and spent the summer in France.

One of the activities I looked forward to when we were planning our trip was visiting The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre. Here, for a small fee you are taken by a guide on tour of the history of Scotch Whisky. This was worth every pound. Our guide was an adorable 25 year old, Spanish woman from Seville who spoke with Scottish English with a thick Spanish accent. The tour started with a taste of single malt Scotch called Teachers. Then we were led to a room where we watched a movie on the history of Scotch as told to an American tourist by a Scottish bartender. After one sip, he was magically transported in time to when his great grandfather worked in a Scotch destillery. The movie shows the several stages of production from germinating the malt to aging in the casks. Then we were led to a second room where we saw a movie on the different geographical regions where Scotch is produced.

Did you know that there are 90 distillerys for single malt whisky butt only 7 that produce the grain whisky they use to make blended whisky? Then we watched a holographic image of figure from the past who was the first to blend whisky. He explained the importance of blending whisky and of gathering years of experience developing a nose for it. Blenders are the one who make sure a particular brand of scotch or whisky is consistently the same for quality control.

As you can see, I learned a lot about the process of making Scotch and Whisky.

The best part of the tour was the ride. We rode a car through wax figures depicted from different times while a voice from the speaker on the dash explained the history of the Scotch industry. I took many pictures on this ride, perhaps foolishly but I'm sure you will like the once I get them posted.

The Castle at Edinburgh

I transferred our first 150 images to disk so I could take some more pictures today at the castle at Edinburgh. Our hotel is only a 10 minutes walk up a steep hill to the castle. The whole town is built on a series of steep hills. All the houses and buildings are built with the terrain in mind. Entrances on one street lead to exits on another street behind and above.

The castle was very pretty. Aside from having the usual castley things, it has a very special chapel devoted to the memory of St. Margaret. She is a former queen of Scotland who was known for her kindness to the sick, poor and infirmed. I guess that's why they made her a Saint.

We also spent some time in the National War Museum of Scotland, also located at the castle. AWESOME.

This is a very pretty and special place. Jon's off to see the history museum and I'm heading up for a nap. We started out pretty early this morning and I could use a nice nap after my nice cup of tea.