Gratuitous Cannon Shot

That's it for my London Trip. I highly recommend it especially the treacle sponge pudding and the fish and chips....mmmmm.....though you might have problems finding a good london pub in the midst of all the italian restaurants... Also, if you try not to think of the exchange rate and you'll feel much better...

Trip Highlights - The British Museum

The British Museum is a massive place - my feet get tired just thinking about it - and they have a sampling of histories of civilizations from all over the world. I have to say that the best bit of the British Museum was actually on temporary loan (and will be till April 2008). The TerraCotta Warriors! (sorry no pics - not allowed..) They were very cool - I particularly liked the horses :) It was a very complete exhibit and the scale of the complex is massive - apparently the guy that commissioned it was a teenager when he started it - granted a rather powerful teenager - and he had 700,000 people working on it for years! After seeing all the work of course I was impressed, however, the most impressive thing to me after seeing the entire exhibit was the fact that all the warriors that now stand at the palace - for lack of a better word - were destroyed by looters hundreds of years ago. The place was completed and filled hundreds of clay people fashioned and painted, then the place was looted, sacked and then to add insult to injury the roof collapsed and the entire place filled wth dirt to be forgotten for many many years. It must have been quite a job to put them back together again - in fact there are vast areas of the complex that have never been excavated!

London by Night

No trip to London would be complete without the prerequisite 50 photos of the Parliment Buildings and Big Ben bell tower and a trip on the London Eye - to get more snaps.


Apparently you can see for miles on a clear night - personally I think that's a myth, I don't think they have clear nights in London.

Back to London....

Travelling in style as usual...

Windsor Castle

Windsor isn't too far from downtown london - only about 1 hour by train from Waterloo Station. Once you get there you have a short little walk to see this amazing castle.




I'd have to say the highlights include the miniature house - think CSI only with working indoor plumbing - and the state apartments - think ROYAL and GRAND and GOLD - and of course the audio guide is very informative.




Of course no castle would be complete without the guards. During our stay in London we saw all sorts of guards. The Tower of London Yeoman, the Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace Guards and of course the Horse Guards - my personal favourite.

Train Trip!

Ah...travelling by train.
Europeans are so sensible. Just look at these spacious seats!

The Prime Meridian

Look at me! I'm on the Prime Meridan!
Kind of anticlimatic isn't it...but hey it's still cool.

Moving On...

From the Tower of London we see Tower Bridge. Very original naming I must say.
Apparently people have this problem telling London Bridge and Tower Bridge apart. I'm not sure why they have this problem, Tower Bridge is next to the Tower of London, its big and blue and kind of gaudy and London Bridge has it's name written right on it! See...(you might have to squint, but trust me - it's there)

The Tower of London

Welcome to the Tower of London. I must say the absolute best thing about the Tower of London is the Crown Jewels. They're big and sparkly and if you go early enough in the day you'll have them all to yourself! A close second is the Beefeaters or Tower Yeomans. They tell really good stories about EX-E-CUTIONS! MUHAHAHA! and the ancient history of nursery rhymes and the like. Who'd have known that history could be so interesting?

Welcome to Sunny England

Hello All!

Time for another adventure. This time my travels bring me to London. Here I am at the top of St Pauls Cathedral. It was one brutal climb, but not a bad view eh?

Welcome to Nova Scotia...Home of Boats....

Beer!

Historical Houses...

Fog...

Lighthouses...

Tall Ships...

and Cannons of course!

(apparently in Nova Scotia you can never have too many cannons...especially the 9 inch 250lb shot rifle cannons that require 80lbs of black powder...something that everyone should have if you happen to have a patch of water to defend...)

A day at the beach at the Bay of Fundy!

Sure it's big and muddy but that's what happens when the tide is out - after all I wouldn't want to be washed away now would I?

Of course the big attraction here is the ...

Whales...up close and personal...

It turns out that we aren't the only curious animals about...this particular humpback whale thought that we were so fascinating that they came over for a look-see...luckily they only eat krill and herring and other small fishy things...

Time for the next adventure...

Let's go dogsledding!

More Pics

Parting Shots...Goodbye Southern Arizona

COOOOOOOL!!!

Ok, so I'm a bit biased, but being the travelling companion of an engineer does bias you in certain ways and AMARC no matter how you slice it is COOOOOL! AMARC stands for Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Centre. The whole war-thing aside and looking at it purely from an engineering point of view, this place is amazing! Approximately 4200 aircraft at any given time, all of them have had their weapons, engines and classified info stripped. On one side of the road that runs into AMARC are the planes that can or will fly again, on the other are planes that will be stripped for parts or "destroyed" because of some arms treaty or another. You'll notice that all the planes have layers of white stuff on them - well the desert gets hot. They seal the holes, spray a black sealant on and then a white sealant. It dries to a plasticy-like material that can just be pulled off as necessary - say if you need to fly the plane again - just put the engine back in and off you go. All in all this is mostly a civilian operation - actually mostly a lockheed martin operation if I was listening closely enough, there are 2 flyboys (or girls) onhand to test the planes if necessary, but mostly they just check them out, repair them or put parts together for the people in the field as necessary. Total amount of hardware on site...something like 3 billion US dollars worth.

Tombstone

What trip to Southern Arizona would be complete without a trip to touristy Tombstone?
You can saunter down the mainstreet and then go for a cool afternoon drink - a prickly pear margherita :)

The complete desert experience

What desert experience would be complete without a day of ATV-ing?
All in all no one got hurt - well only bruises, but those rocks and hills aren't as easy to go up and over as they seem! At the end of the day we were all a bit dusty and grimy but happy after having seen some beautiful scenery and a few of the local residents...big horned sheep :)

Urban Sprawl...and home depots

Welcome to Phoenix - or the greater Phoenix area, i'm not quite sure what it's called, but it's massive. The main streets are 6 lanes wide, the cars seem like they are all SUVs or trucks, they have drive-through banks and restaurants and liquor stores - plus they have restaurants where drive up, order and they server you while you sit in your car - weird! The houses are all clustered together in gated or psuedo-gated communities, each group of communities seems to have one or two massive mall complexes with a Target, grocery store, pizza place, bank and Home Depot! Plus you can't go a block without hitting a car store of some sort - breaks, fluids, parts you name it...these people must worship their cars. You'd think that they'd never get any exercise driving everywhere, but once you see the size of the parking lots you start to reconsider that.

Have you hugged a cactus today?

Cactuses Galore!

The desert is filled with all sorts of cactuses. I'm not sure what the first one is...but it reminds me of brain coral :) The second one is an agave, looks similar to aloe, some have unique patterns on their leaves. Some cactuses have barbed thorns that stay in you after you accidentally met them, while others have straight thorns that get softer the farther you go up the trunk. The ribbed trunks of the Saguaro are so that they can expand when it rains. The Saguaro can absorb hundreds if not thousands of litres from a good rain over a few days. The Saguaro generally starts it life being sheltered by another plant, once its mature it becomes very efficient at absorbing surrounding moisture from the light rains (10-12" a year) and the tree that once sheltered it, dies.