Last evening, I went to Trafalgar Square to view an outdoor screening of a classic 1929 Indian silent film "A Throw of Dice". The highlite of the film was the music score which was played live by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Over 10,000 people attended the free performance and the weather was wonderful.
At 5:30AM this morning I went to Smithfields (Meat) Market where buying and selling of meat has gone on for over 800 years. I was not allowed to take any photos inside the building. Customers (restaurants, butchers, and regular public) can purchase their meat products at the market. It opens at 4AM and by 6:30AM, most of the meat on the counters had been sold. Although I witnessed tons of meat leaving the complex, I did not get there early enough to see any new carcasses being delivered.
Underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank of the Thames, is an area where people ride skateboards and bikes. It is also the only area along the river where they are allowed to do Graffiti Art. We notice the spray paintings while walking over to listen to music during the evening but there are always too many young people riding their boards and bikes to be able to take photos of the art work. So early this morning, I walked over and took these photos. There are some pretty amazing images and one artist has his own website www.walllecker.com.
After a bank holiday weekend, the trash and filth in the city is really bad although it seems to be really bad everyday. The slide show above is of photos I took this morning walking along the Southbank near the London Eye and Dali Museum. I did speak with a person that was cleaning up and he explained that he worked for the business owners along that section and that they do not but rubbish bins out since the terrorists threat is high and they are worried that someone would put a bomb in the bin. It does not make sense since they could easily put a bomb under all the trash that is laying around. Between 8AM-9AM each morning the area is pretty clean. Any other times it is difficult to walk through the area. We did not see trash like this while in Paris.
Hesse Security - News - Arrest for wireless piggybacking Read this article. This could be you. Hopefully, I don't get arrested before I leave the UK since I have had to borrow someones connection because the Internet in the building was down.
Our neighbors, Frank Lilly and Karn Stiegelmeier on 3 Aug 2007 turned on their Photovoltaics Energy System and started putting solor generated energy back on to the Xcel grid. Today, they invited people to stop by and Eric Westerhoff, Innovative Energy who installed the system, told us how it worked. Frank and Karn installed 5KW worth of solar panels on their roof. Since turning on the system on 3 Aug they have generated over 256KW of energy enough to run their house and still provide 32 KW to Xcel. In addition, they have save over 435 lbs of CO2. Click here to view more photos from today.
On Friday, I attended my sister's 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration in Moclips, Washington. Bret, Jeri, Evan, Paige, Craig, and Sarah also attended plus my sister's two daughters Rene' and Sandy and their children (Justin,Kendra, Mary, Kenny ). Also my cousin Barb and her husband Gary plus her granddaughter Kelsy and John and great-grandson.
We had a great time at the beach in Washington and stuffed ourselves with fabulous food prepaired by Gary (biscuits and gravy), Kendra and Mary (too much to mention), Dave (famous Eggs Huevos ).
Click here to view more photos of the party.
Just flew from London to San Francisco and waiting for a connecting flight to Portland Oregon.
I am attending my sister and brother-in-law's 50th wedding anniversary this weekend in Moclips, Wa.
Bret, Jeri, Evan, Paige, Craig, and Sarah will be there plus many cousins and my sister's family.
Should be fun. I will fly on Monday to Colorado for a week before returning to London on 21 Aug.
On Saturday, we got up early and had breakfast at the hotel. It was less expensive than what we spotted on the street and we were able to grab some extra cheese, meat, and bread to make sandwiches for lunch.
As we headed to walk to Musee Orsay, we spotted the hotel that we stayed at in 1994. We also found the outdoor market where we had purchased some broiler chicken. They are still in business and we bought it again for the evening dinner.
Musee Orsay is a fantastic museum in a converted rail station. We arrived early and missed most of the mass of people. They were having a Cézanne to Picasso, Masterpieces from the Vollard Gallery exhibit. This was really interesting to see since Vollard was he had achieved a special place in the art market by his passionate defence of unknown or "banned" artists. In particular Vollard was the first to organise a one-man exhibition devoted to Paul Cézanne in November 1895. Also interesting to read where artist would purchase other artist painting's from Vollard.
After about 4 hrs, we headed out and found nice place in the park across the street to have lunch and then walked to Eiffel Tower. We had planned to walk up to the second level (800 steps) but since there were some many people in line for both the lift and steps, we decided to just view the tower from below. It is an amazing structure. After we got our photos, we decided to take the bus back to our hotel, get food, and enjoy another evening on the Left Bank of Seine.
Click here to view more photos of Musee Orsay and Eiffel Tower.
Last Friday, 3 Aug 2007, we (Helen, Helen's brother David, and Rick) walked over to the Waterloo rail station at 4:30AM to catch the 5:34AM Eurostar to Paris. The train goes to Dover and then through the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) to Calais France and then to Paris. After a 3hr ride, we were in Gare Du Nord rail station. Wonderful way to travel to Paris.
We immediately, purchased transportation and entry tickets to "Palace of Versailles". While taking the metro to get to our train, David forgot (or was not aware) to retrieve his ticket when we entered the first metro station. Since he did not have his ticket, he could not go through the entry gate to the second metro stop. After Helen tried to explain that we just purchased the ticket and David accidentally left it at the prior stop, we had to purchase an additional travel ticket (5.60 euros). When we arrived about 1hr later, there were thousands of people queuing to get into the Palace. We elected to stroll around the magnificent jardin (garden) at Versailles. The flowers were in full bloom. We found a nice quite place to eat our lunch and enjoyed the view of the jardin. We then continued across the jardin to Maria-Antoinette's Estates. This area just opened to the public in June 2006 and was her private escape area on the Palace grounds. Very impressive.
After a couple hours, we then entered into the Palace, which was built for King Louie XIV in 1682. This palace is massive and every room decorated from ceiling to floor with paintings, jewels, furniture, and more portraits of the Royal Family. We lasted until about 5:30 and enjoyed every moment.
We were able to take the train back in Paris and after a short walk we arrived at our hotel for the night. We picked up some wine and food and then walked over to the Left Bank of the Seine river near Notre Dame to eat our dinner with the Parisians lining the bank.
To view more photos of our first day in Paris and Versailles, click here.
Manchester United, UK Football Team, signed this 9 year old kid from Australia to a contract after his grandfather showed this video to the team owners. Check this out.
