I am never flying from London to Paris again!

We are safely back from our trip to Paris (pictures here). It was lots of fun and possibly the best trip yet. The funny thing is that we are not running out of things to see and do after visiting four times. It really is an amazing place. The best thing about Paris is the way it can take your breath away when you least expect it. You can be strolling down a quaint little cafe lined street and when you turn a corner you find a display of unspeakable beauty. It could be building, or a statue, or a garden, or a view of the city. It seems like there are millions of visual treasures just waiting to be found.

I won't go into too much detail about everything we did. I did that last year, it took me forever, and I am sure that nobody read it all. This year there is even more to report on. Again the inner nerd in us asserted itself and we wore step meters to see how many steps we were doing each day. It was over 30000 steps every day (about eight miles). When we weren't walking around we were eating, and we more than made up for the exercise with the food that we ate.

I would like to take a minute and talk about what a pleasure it is to take the train from London to Paris. Air travel has become such a headache (especially recently here in England). You now have to be at the airport more than two hours before your flight. You cannot take any reasonably sized hand baggage, and you practically have to be strip searched before you can get on the plane. The London airports are mostly outside of the city (especially the ones that the cheap airlines use: Luton and Stansted). This means that you either have to drive and pay extortionate parking expenses while you are away, or you have to take an expensive train from London to the airport (for Luton and Stansted airports, this is a 45 minute ride). Add to all that the fact that all of the London airports seem to be way over booked, and there are always delays.

The train was such a refreshing change. It leaves from Waterloo station in the heart of London. You only have to be there 30 minutes before departure. You carry all of your bags with you onto the train (they are all x-rayed on your way through security). You sit in a comfortable seat with plenty of legroom and nice big windows. The ride is smooth and quiet. There is a bar/cafe carriage where you can get coffee, drinks and snacks (I was especially excited about the Belgian beer available). You are transported to Gare du Nord in the heart of Paris instead of the sleazy Charles DeGaul airport that is way outside of the city. Instead of feeling utterly exhausted and dispirited when you reach you destination, you are rested, relaxed and ready to go. Instead of eating dinner and going to bed when we arrived in Paris, we were energised after dinner and went out to a really cool Jazz club.

The bottom line is that your holiday can begin the moment you sit down on the Eurostar train, but if you are flying your holiday won't begin until the day after the flight.

JE

I thought I had nothing to say, but then...

I had a little loose change in my pocket today (this is very rare for me), so I decided to go to the local chip shop for a snack to go with my lunch. It appears that there is no end to the culinary delicacies that this country has to offer. The snack that I ordered today raises the bar yet again. I ordered the "chip roll".

Let me describe to you this stupendous gastronomic creation, simple in form yet ingenious in conception. Start with a soft white roll, cut in half and then butter both halves heavily. Next, create a cone out of a couple of large sheets of paper (they don't use newspaper any more). Place the roll in the bottom of the cone and fill with chips (big, fat, greasy, french fries). Then saturate the whole thing with malt vinegar and finish off with a generous shaking of salt. All of this for the low price of £1. Who says London is the most expensive place on earth!!!

I really enjoyed it about an hour ago, but now it is coming back to haunt me a little bit...

JE

Not Much To Say...

It's been a while since I have put up a new post here. I just have not had much to say since the excitement of the beer festival.

I have been doing lots of song writing. I had seven or eight new songs that I played for Heather the other night. After playing them all as a group I was really underwhelmed by them; there may be one or two good ones out of the lot.

I have also been reading quite a bit. Since I have had my arm injury, I have not been able to bike to work, so I have had extra time to read on the train, and I have been making time at lunch to read as well. I think the reading is what has been triggering the song writing.

Tomorrow we leave for Paris to celebrate Heather's 30th birthday. I am really looking forward to the trip, mostly because we are taking the train and we are not flying. As you have probably heard flights out of London are a bit insane right now.

Soon I will be starting to help with music at church. I am also really looking forward to this because I have been feeling a bit like I have been "burying my talents in the ground" since moving to the UK.

Matthew 25:25 "And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.' 26 But his master answered and said to him, "You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. 27 "Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. 28 "Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.' 29 For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. 30 Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (NASB)

Yikes.

JE

The Great British Beer Festival

Most who know me know how much I love beer. So as you can imagine I was extremely excited to be going to the Great British Beer Festival on Wednesday night. I called up a fellow beer lover and he was equally excited to be going. Since this was a boy's night out, as Heather has no interest in beer, I decided to make it a really special occasion by grabbing a McDonald's double cheeseburger on the way (the main reason for the McDonalds selection was that I was on a £20 budget for the evening and I did not want to eat into my beer selection).

So it was £7 to get in, £3 for a pint glass (which is returnable, but I always keep mine), and £1 for a program. The program was essential because it was the only way to find the beer that I wanted to try out of the over 700 different drinks that were on offer. It is also good because it helps me remember the beer that I tried (things can be a bit fuzzy the next day). After all of the initial costs, I was left with about £9, which turned out to be just about enough as each half pint cost around £1.50 (I did borrow a little bit from my friend for the last sample). I stuck to my plan of sampling strong ales, porters, and one sample of barley wine. My favorite from the evening was the first one a tried, 1872 Porter by E&S brewery. It was just a really good strong and tasty porter. My second favorite was the last one I tried which was a barley wine (off the top of my head, I don't remember the name of it, but I could consult the program if I wanted to know).

We weren't quite finished with our last samples when it was time for my friend to get going. Rather than take a quick last gulp and then toss the rest, he had the bright idea of just slipping the half empty glasses into our bags and then finishing the drinks on the tube ride home. It was one of those ideas that sounds really good after 3 pints of strong ale. Needless to say, I sloshed barley wine all over the inside of my bag which now smells of stale beer.

Unfortunately, I had missed the opportunity to use the toilet before we left the festival (as a side note, a beer festival is one of the few occasions when there is a line at the men's bathroom and not a line at the women's). As a result, I was more than a little "uncomfortable" by the time I got the last train station to go home. Thank God for the little pay toilet stalls in London Bridge train station. Luckily I had the 20p coin needed to get in, and a disaster was averted.

Overall an excellent night out. You just can't beat a good beer festival. I would like to add that I think I prefer a slightly smaller beer festival than this one. 700 beers is a bit overwhelming, the crowds were enormous, and we ended up sitting on the floor most of time. All of that is really of little consequence because all of the wonderful beer more than made up for it.

I wasn't exactly greeted with open arms when I got home. Heather, who had not been drinking ale all night, claimed I smelled of "tramps and wee" (an expression we picked up from a disgusted English woman, used to describe the smell when walking under a bridge by the river).

JE