France - Nice

NICE


    We arrived in Nice, made ourselves at home and headed out for some unique food at one of the few places open at 10pm.  Some of the best Tabouli we've ever had, an eggplant thing with beef in it, and a triangular shaped burrito with meat and cheese.  The place we are at is only a 5 minute walk to the beach and we saw a bunch of twisty turny alleyways which weren't drivable but were lined with closed shops on all sides and could be worth a look during the day.

    In the morning we headed out to get WIFI at one of the places I found on a website called www.wificafespots.com.  It's a pretty cool website where if you need free Wifi, you just enter in your country and city and it actually pops up with places around there that have free wifi.  On it are reviews and ratings with regards to the speed of the internet, if you needed a passcode, etc.  Perfect!  The one we ended up choosing was a 2 minute walk and had decent food: Interesting veggie burger with the closest thing to what I could describe it as a Hash brown patty in it, some sauces, lettuce and some cooked veggies with a Bun that resembled what you'd get at McDonalds. It was pretty good.  Got some stuff done with the WEEFEE then headed to the Monday Antique market along an interesting strip near the water lined with cafes on either side and vendors all through the center.  A very cool walk



    We actually bought Candace a ring and bracelet, which is rare that we would buy any jewelry for her, usually its just inspiration based looking and she would just say "OH I could just make that" and we walk away =)  She got a cool bracelet and ring

    The wind started picking up and gusting through the area, and besides that it was closing time for some of the vendors (2pm), so we went onto the beach… ROCK beach.  I've never been on a beach like this in all my travels.  Not only is this beach not sandy, and likewise not rocky, but all smooth decent sized roundlike stones.  Super unique and cool.  The water was also beautiful and seductive as I just gazed at the light blue-to dark blue contrast and the open seas calling to me (they really do, kinda like fire calls to Sawyer).



    The waves were crashing pretty hard on the stones and were I'd say around 3 or 4 feet with swells up to 5 or 6 and it was super interesting to watch the water make it over the ridge and break on the stones then drain through..  Everyone that I saw in the water had watershoes / aquasocks on, probably so that they could actually walk on the stones.  Of course I had to go in the water.  I LOVE water and I've never been in the Mediterranean Sea!  Who cares about shoes.  With entering the water, Timing was everything with the size of the waves and the steep incline and the STONES.  Haha.  But I got in alright.



    The water was delightful and once out of the danger zone of the waves breaking on the stones it was immediately deep, well over my head as I dove down a couple times to reach bottom.  A bit of a current was pushing towards the Castle, so I got a good swim in just chillin and keeping position.  After a while I decided to get out.  I'll tell you, body surfing the waves into the stones was not a good idea…  Especially since I waited for the 1st swell of a set of big waves (I thought about this as I was surfing it in and about how I better not mess this up or I've got some big waves right behind me.)  Thinking like that will get you in trouble!  Instead, stay focused!!  Anyhow, I thought I could neutralize the stones upon landing, but it was just so different, by the time I got my footing to make a run for it, the next wave slammed me right over and I was thinking how ridiculous of an idea this was, as my wedding ring began to get pounded off of my hand and slipping towards the tip of my finger.  So instead of using my arms to push myself up and get out of the cycle, I decided stay down in the waves and to force my ring back all the way on as the next wave hit and stones pounded away at my face & body.  Of course in these conditions, I'd never find my ring if it came off.  As I started getting dragged back, I knew the wave was complete, and even though I couldn't see, I quickly stood up and booked it up the rocks and to safety.  I gave the lifeguard a smile and a little "hang loose" Hawaiian gesture and walked back over to our mats.  I decided to lay on the warm, sun-absorbed stones themselves and let it soothe me as I dried off.  Candace got back from the bathroom and I told her that if she is going in the Sea, she had better go over where the waves are small down the beach a bit and to go feet-first on the way back into the beach, kinda like when we float down class 3+ whitewater rapids.  She decided not to go in. I was glad. it was a bit chilly with the crazy wind out anyways for her, plus we had no towels because we had left them at the place in the morning instead of carrying them all day.

    We went back through the antique area to one of the cafes and I had a couple beers and read my book that I borrowed from James.  Candace was reading the Magic of Believing, the little red book =).  We then walked through the coolest shopping place of the trip yet.  I actually got some shorts, a shirt, and some shades.  It was that little narrow alley-type, filled with shops, place we saw the night before.  We also stopped in a beautiful church to check it out as we randomly walked by, and ended up in a cozy courtyard with a fountain and cool-looking buildings all around.  There were tables throughout the whole place and we just plopped a seat and had a banana split, an awesome salad, a couple beers, and alternated between reading and just absorbing the cool atmosphere while we got some sun.

    Heading back to the place, we stopped at a little market and picked up some breakfast food, some BIERE, and a couple snacks.  Upon getting home, our "roomate" (this time for AirBNB we had someone who was actually staying in the place we rented out - HER place ;), and it was kinda cool to have a local who could tell you this or that and give you the inside scoop, had beach towels and mats, etc etc.  She was a good host) ordered pizza, which we all split, watched some soccer, and called it a night.

TUESDAY:
    After heading to the post office to ship some of our stuff we bought back over to the states, we checked out the Market Strip where the Antiques were the previous day and found a flower market there instead because every day is different!  Smelled great to walk through and we noticed that the people at the Cafe's were ordering mussels, one order after another and the tables were full of them.  We headed to the castle and started our climb up, only to be rewarded as expected with a great view of the city, the ocean, and an interesting walk through some castle grounds at the top.




  While climbing a tree, I busted the screen on my camera so I lost the ability to view what I was taking pictures of and the zoom function became more or less worthless.  After reaching the top of a branch, I grabbed onto the railing of the next level up on the castle and climbed up.  Candace walked around and met me up there and we enjoyed another great view of Nice, France and the Ocean.





    We went to a couple of banks to exchange the rest of our American dollars at the best rate possible (don't do this, instead just use a debit card, no reason to bring US currency over, as I found out that day when researching the best exchange rates and such.  Best thing to do after over an hour of research is, unanimously, just to use the debit card of a Credit Union(which cool enough I have YAY), as its usually a 1% fee.  Also good and dandy are major bank debit cards, charging around 3%, which is Still highly preferable to paying 5-8% at a money change place plus possible commission or flat fees on top of that.)

    Then it was time for the "famous" shopping strip, which was kinda like Paris' commercialized walk except significantly smaller.  It was still cool to see, as it's different from the States and had a bunch of Cafe's and such along the way to see also.  We were heading to a WIFI spot called Queenie's, which had an ocean-view, when Candace spotted a Mediterranean food spot called Yalla!  She was like Woohoo!, hummus, cooked eggplant, special salad, pita, falafel, and some other stuff I had never actually seen.  Candace and I usually split meals and an appetizer but it was so good that we ordered another plate!   The owner was pretty cool and seemed to know Everyone.  People kept coming up to him while we ate and doing the French kiss thing (plant one on each cheek), saying hi and chatting.  He also had people waving to him from cars.  He had great English as he described that the brand new black Mercades out front was only 14,000 Euros (around 17,000 american), and that the taxes for cars was a lot lower here in France than many places.



    We finally made it to Queenies for wifi and a few cocktails as we watched Soccer, finalized Barcelona lodging, and figured out the nightlife scene in Nice for the night.  We finally ordered some mussels (since everybody else was!!) which ended up being great =)  Before heading home, we got to see how the game of rugby worked, which was super interesting to see the constant piling and piling over and over and the triangle shapes they form to force through the other teams defenses, or the lifting of teammate into the air to catch balls.  Anyways, we stopped at a couple places that we had reasearched on way back to check to see if they would be cool for later.  After getting home and changing, we headed out to Big Ben's.  It was great to see a place with some actual selection of beer!!  And I'm not being picky here or underplaying it when I say that nearly every bar/Cafe in France has either 1 beer (pretty common), or around 3-5 if its a really good bar, but even then, some of the times all the beers are super similar and simply light draft beers.  The WINE is always pretty good =), but not the beer.

    So I ordered a Kwak Belgin beer.  One cool thing about Europe so far is that anytime you are at a pub or decent establishment for beer, every beer you order comes with a special glass for that type of beer.  This particular one was pretty cool looking and had its own Stand to match!  In the background you will see our Menu, and if you click on the picture itself you will get a larger version and can perhaps read it -



    Then I saw that they had Rochefort ( a trap-pistes Belgian beer ), and although it was #10 instead of #12, and although I would have maybe preferred to try something new, I HAD to see what glass they would bring out with the beer!  Lol.  So I ordered it



    And Candace ordered a Strawberry Framboise beer as we busted out the Chinese Checkers and played a round where she ended up defeating me at one of the best games of chinese checkers I've played!  Super fun. 

    On the way to the next place (Wayne's), we saw this cool looking place as we walked by.  We paused for a second to see what was up and the guy was like "Hey! Come on it!  Gay Bar but no problem! Come on!"  He was so enthusiastic that we ended up going inside for a drink.  As Candace was telling me about a picture above my head behind me that I shouldn't look at and and then proceeded to describe it.. and talk about it.. I was like OK, I Gotta get outta here before I cave in and see this picture.  Thus, we slammed our drinks and off we went, my mind still clear of any lingering ridiculousness that could have been freshly planted.

    Off to Wayne's an English pub, run by British dudes who spoke excellent english.  It was interesting to see basically a British Pub turned into half pub, half dance party with a DJ spinning music and people dancing on the tables in the DJ room.  Also, we don't really have French or English pubs over in America, just Irish pubs, and those are run and worked by everyday American joes, so it was cool to check out an English pub in France. 

    On the walk back we found a place that was still open and serving something other than just late-night Pizza.  Score!  We had a huge bowl of some seafood soup, a super-loaded Chef's Salad, some bread, and good wine.  As the waiter described the wine "smooth.. not sweet, not bitter but, Smooooth" and that it was.  The soup was super different flavored and Candace didn't like it so she started making faces at me when I ate it.  We started busting out laughing and making more crazy twitching faces at eachother.  Well, originally I thought that the soup was just tolerable, but as it turned out, it was definitely worth the full amount in Euros for the laughs that it brought.

    Our train we got on in the morning is taking us to Barcelona right now.  Big travel day, as we don't get in until 9pm!!  Anyways, it has been a cool ride, and we are getting this train thing down as we switched over a couple trains today, and everything has went smoothly.  Gotta love free upgrades to 1st class with the Eurorail pass!  Cheers,

Jason & Candace

France - Paris

 Hello!! =)  It's interesting in England and France if you are looking for a place with internet and you ask a local for "internet" all you will get is a dumbfounded look...  You have to say WiFi.  Or "WEE-FEE" as sounds when they say it.  =)  On with the story though - With no place to stay in Paris, we arrived and crossed the street at the station to a Cafe.  In France "Cafe's" are more than just places to grab some coffee and tea.  They are full-menued restaurants and bars as well.  We connected to the internet and ate some super interesting mussel-scallop things as well as some yummy French Bread while scouring CouchSurfing, AirB&B, and attempted to score some magic on Priceline.  As far as Hostels are concerned, we were saving them for a last resort, and booking a regular hotel without discount on Priceline as a last last resort.  We ended up landing a pretty sweet place in Montmartre, Paris, the northern part of the city and a big art district.  In case you don't know how Air B&B works, you basically rent people's houses, apartments, condos, or even just a room or portion of their place, depending.   In this case we had basically an apartment we had all to ourself with a full kitchen, etc.  We had a cool view of a courtyard, great location -> walk directly outside of the place and within direct view are a couple markets, couple Cafe's, and a 5 minute walk to the Metro.  $116 a night.






    So we headed to and found our spot while grabbing some groceries for breakfasts and snacks/picnic's and such then decided to check out a Tapas place with a bunch of unique foods.  It was a 1 minute walk from our place, but was hopping with locals till late at night so we just chilled a bit and worked on a couple things like Blog, Pics, n such from London.
    We woke up, headed to the Tube/Metro, then off to the Eiffel Tower we went!  In our Rick Steves' guidebook - Europe Through The Back Door 2012, we found a cool pathway to walk from the Metro on up to the tower (Thanks to Nick Najar for book rec) through Rue Cler.

    It was nice to mosey along and buy some of the "special" strawberries and munch on them as we walked through the marketplace and checked out various shops.  The coolest for me was a huge cheese shop, with literally several hundred cheeses and a boatload of wine.  We sampled a unique cheese I hadn't seen and then bought a cheese variety platter for later.  The Cafe's here along the Rue Cler were Packed inside and out with locals as this is THE place to go for lunch in the area.  As we finished the Rue Cler walk and began to get closer to the Tower, we began to see it.  The closer and closer I got the more amazed I was at the actual size of it, MASSIVE.  I found out that this thing is almost as tall as the Empire State Building.  It has four supports that touch the ground and in the middle there is nothing but tower above you.  To walk from one of the corners to another corner across the open center takes several minutes. 
 
 

   We got in line to get to the top of the tower to lay claim to the best view of Paris.  The line was huge because all of the lifts but one were out of order…  On top of that while we were standing outside in this line, the rain hit.  We had checked the weather earlier and it only indicated some showers and we figured we had at least another hour before they hit.  Well it hit sooner than expected, and it hit hard.  Candace grabbed an umbrella but even then and with the partial protection of the tower above us, our shoes and legs were soon soaked all the way through.  Everything happens for a reason though because as it began to torrent at us and as other people's umbrellas began to break, the challenge began..  People started dropping out of line as the rain became almost horizontal, thick, and hard.  Those who overcame the obstacle were well rewarded with a significantly shorter line and, once up top on the tower, beautiful sunny skies.  The view was pretty awesome.  It was crazy to look down -> The people just looked like small insects and you could see for miles and miles in any direction..  We grabbed our pictures as we made our way around the circular area, catching views from all angles and taking it all in.


Another cool thing to check out was to see the shadow of the Tower extend out across the land.

   We saw some more storms coming in on the horizon (above pic, upper left), black skys, and as we kept tabs on it, it soon became apparent that it was time to go.  We made our journey down and as we hit concrete again, the showers started.  No worries though because we were heading inside the biggest palace in all Europe, the Louvre!!

   They say the most visited museum in the world with over 8 million visitors a year,  this place was supremely massive.  We had read online, and in multiple guidebooks that you needed to take 2 or 3 days alone JUST to see the Louvre.  With so many items, sculptures, artifacts, paintings, sketches, tombs, statues, and unique collectables.  There are said to be 35,000 works of art on display in the Louvre and to devote 30 seconds to each, while ignoring the time taken walking from one work to the next, it would take about thirteen 24 hour days to see each piece..

   This is us from the central courtyard.  Underneath us is all stuff and to either side of us are buildings.  If you google Louvre you'll see the scope of this place more.  Basically -> there is a whole bunch of stuff most people could care less about or aren't interested in very much.  Our goal was to go check out what was available on the map, asked the Information desk some questions, which we did in Spanish, since the lady's Spanish was better than her English, and then take off, with a mission to see Just what wanted and were interested in. 

   We started in the Denon building with the Italian Pictures area.  The Mona Lisa was cool to see in person.  It was cool to see paintings that were a thousand years old and just stroll through the section.  It was so big you didn't have to spend looking at each piece, but just the ones that caught your eye to warrant additional attention.

    Then we saw Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love. Said to be the 1st statue of a women in the nude - 

  We also saw the statue of King Ramses II, The Victory statue (the one with the wings and without the head), and a few other super famous paintings and statues.  Among the other things viewed, my favorites included a couple of paintings, a piece in Napoleon's Quarters, and "Apartments Napoleon" -- the quarters & entertaining room themselves.  One painting I liked depicted a battle.  It just looked like a cluster with horses on top of troops, chaos everywhere, people on top of people, people battling over the sides of horses.  It made me look at it and wonder if that's how it really was, and if it was then that is what interested me. 

Another was a painting of a Father, Mother and their sick daughter.  They appeared to be praying to heal her.  For some reason I just stared at it for a while.  I liked the clothes on the dad and the realism of the daughter.

I liked Napoleon's entertaining quarters because of the cool design and style of chairs, shapes of which I had never seen in some of them, the crazy huge chandeliers, the piano, and the atmosphere of the room.

  The piece in Napoleon's quarters that was super cool was:

    We headed back to our place after our 5 hour tackle of the Louvre and them booting us out as it closed at 9:45pm.  On the way back we grabbed a bottle of wine and got back & setup our room with some super-cool lighting, the assorted cheese platter, olives, tomatoes, crackers, cucumber, more food, and Shakespeare in Love, the excellent movie with Ben Affleck and Gwenth Paltrow (which Candace and I have seen several times), and enjoyed a fine evening.

    The sun rises… and so do we, ready to have an amazing day with our packed picnic lunch and 2 labtops (we bought Candace a Macbook Air in London because it will save a bunch of time on Research, Blog, Pictures, Organization, Bookings of lodging, and it weighs less than 3 lbs anyways.  And also because she needed a new labtop anyways because hers at  home just messed up a few weeks ago), and our plan.  We start off with a walk through Montmartre and its beautiful streets, hills, and art district to Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.  On the way we picked up a fresh loaf of bread for later, a couple souvenirs, and some cappuccino Gelado.  Surprisingly, since I don't generally like Ice Cream that much (YEAH I don't like Ice Cream that much!  Weird eh!?), it tasted like, Hagan das - Coffee Ice Cream, which is my favorite.  I also don't like coffee much… just to further confuse you..  The church was bustling, the busiest inside And out of any church we has thus seen.  Outside was a beautiful panoramic of part of Paris since the building is actually set upon a hill.

     Locals were out for their afternoon walk, or afternoon chill session on the steps below the church.  There were tons of people begging, selling their wares, performing and so on.  A harp player, and a few SoccerBall Dudes (all I can call them), were out and about.  The soccer ball kids were so good with the ball that they could juggle WHILE climbing things with their arms, like lamp posts.  One guy got to the top and was juggling the soccer ball on the top part of his feet for a good minute while hanging on before he got down.

    Once we went inside and checked out the church, we headed over to a different Metro stop to get us down to The Grand Boulevard: Champs-Elysees.  Even just walking around Montemarte is beautiful and walking to the metro we realized Pars' true charm… Its in the little streets you can walk along,  in the Cafe's.  It's in the places that that locals live and relax. 

But like I was saying, we headed over to the Boulevard - a place where a dozen boulevards converge on the Arc de Triomphe.  You can't even walk to the center where the Arc is… too many cars and too wide.  Even I would think it was stupid.  ;)

    Instead we had to follow the masses and go underground through a tunnel and pop up at the Arc.  The Arc was quite beautiful with its stonework and massiveness.


    We took ourself from the Arc and followed the pathway to the Louvre from there through the Ave Des Champs Elysees.  This was a cool Commercialized walk.  Meaning, its a lot different from walking the old, soft, cobblestone, and intimate streets of the small market isleways.  Or the beauty of the streets of Montmartre.  There was every modern Prada, Sephora, McDonald's, Starbucks, and anything you can think of.  Like a big strip mall except cooler.  It was OK for a change but certainly not enchanting.  Laudree Tea Salon was quite interesting though :)

    At the end of this walkway we run into the Obelisk of Luxor, a 3300-year-old centerpiece carted here from Egypt in the 1830's, a gift to the French king at the time.  The gold-leaf diagrams on the obelisk tell the story of its laborious journey. 

    From the Obelisk, we headed towards the Louvre and the gardens in front of it for our Picnic!  Along the way we stopped for some Escargot, which was actually served IN the snail shells.  We then had to of course pick out our spot perfectly placed behind some bushes, shielding the wind, while making sure we could see the Eiffel Tower in the backdrop and still keep the Louvre shining brilliantly in front of us.  Down we ploped, and out comes the fresh loaf of bread, the hummus (which turned out to be amazing), what was left of our cheese platter, another block of cheese I bought at a market earlier, olives, cucumber, a bit of yellow hot spicy peppers, tomatoes, our portable speaker and some Mozart.

    Now, no picnic is complete without feeding the little sparrow birds and pigeons.  The would literally grab little pieces of bread from your hand.  When you were done giving them the goods for a minute, they would leave you alone, no begging.  It was kinda cool, and as we had heard, the thing to be doing during your picnic. 
 After the Louvre, we headed towards Shakespeare & Company (a famous old bookstore).  The walk was beautiful - after passing The Louvre and heading to the river, we crossed onto a bridge and just gazed at the scene around us.  The river is the place to be in Paris.  The thing to do is to grab a bottle of wine, bread or snacks and head down to the river and swing your legs over the side and relax.  Some of the locals have straight up bottles of Vodka, or cases of beers and sit around in a circle just hanging out.  Here and there will be some people knocking on some drums, but mostly people just having a good time as the long sunset drags on and on (sunlight and people will still be reading books along the river @ 10:30pm…)

   We did arrive at the bookstore though, which is an antique in and of itself.  Books stacked to the ceiling, every inch of space used, this place used to be a publishing company and library, and editing house and more: clubhouse, post office, bank, etc.  Members of the club included Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, George Moore, and more.  Now it's just a Bookstore.  No Photos on the 1st floor, where all the new books are.  Heh.  The second floor was pretty sweet.  Most of the books are not for sale, just for reading on the second floor and there are several places to lounge around and read as well as a room specifically for a typewriter, and a piano room filled with books.  Luckily a local was showing off to a girl his piano skills and was playing the piano the whole time we were there.  He was pretty good and I enjoyed listening as I read various old books, like 100 Years, a cool old book that summarized each year in world history.  Taking a chapter per year for 100 chapters, each chapter had a few different cities it would use to talk about world events.  It was cool to see a map of The Americas before Phoenix was even around.

    Before I headed out I caught a glimpse of the new Dark Tower book, The Wind Through The Keyhole, and I sat down and read a couple chapters real quick.  Prolly will need to grab this on my Kindle soon.  In the meantime I'm onto a book called The Game-Players Of Titan, I'm borrowing from James.   Once out of the store, we gazed upon Notre Dame and decided to walk over and check it out.  After all, it was just across the river.  =)  Beautiful.  Large.  Intricate.  Closed, but it was cool to see the outside.  It also led us to rollerskaters jumping off ramps, people rapping, a crystal ball mover guy, and a lady swinging fire around.  Super distracting, super cool. 

  Walking back along the river towards the Louvre, we decided to walk among the locals right down on the riverbed.  Very cool to see the culture like this, the river hangout reminds me of the people hanging out in the Plazas of Spain from my time studying abroad.

Beautiful place.

You can see the Eiffel Tower lit up in the background, the Louvre to the right.  We ended at Le Fumoir, a cool cafe we had heard of with free WEEFEE (haha).  Busting out our labtops, sipping on some Absinthye, we pounded out our route for the next day to Nice and lodging. 

Bye bye Paris, we will miss you!…

    Ending the night with a metro trip home, we ended up missing our connection by 2 minutes and the metros were closed (2am).  Another adventure begins as we fight for a taxi with all the drunk locals and tourists and finally 45 minutes later, in front of the Obleisk, end up sharing a taxi with a local who spoke excellent English.  Who also in the end tried to pay for the taxi herself before I forced her to take some Euros!  Overall an excellent day.

    As I write this I'm on a a train to Nice, a city at the southern tip of France.  Although I won't be able to post until I connect to the internet, this 6 hour train-ride has just recently turned quite beautiful as, we are now heading along the coast of the Mediterranean going east right now.  It Reminds me of Costa Rica, with the little bays and hilly oceanfronts with houses crowded all in them.  Except better.  I'm seeing Castles on the water, beautiful bay after bay with boats and Islands right off the coast.  This ride is getting very exciting, and I'm hoping Nice delivers as well.  Talk soon!  Yours,

 Jason & Candace

England - London

   England!  London and the area around it houses 8 million people!   We took a 50 minute train ride on the TUBE, as Ronald Jenkees would say-  "Hey tubes!".  The Tube is an underground railway that is super efficient and allows you to get all around London very easily. It was funny getting used to all the little changes of wording like "Mind the gap", which means watch your step, and "Would you like chips with that", which means do you want french fries (and chips were sticks), etc etc. James met us at the station, and we had a 10-minute walk to his place.  After dropping our bags off at James' place we headed to Picailly Square - like Times Square for London but not AS crazy lit up.

 We walked around checking out statues and ridiculously large building that curved forever:

    In moving towards the long stretching building with British Flags, we happened to pass by a club that had a girl with a hoola hoop on fire twisting around her hip.  So of course we had to enter.  Inside were crazy chandeliers and felt like a cross between an elegant mansion with a bit of Moroccan spice.  Upstairs had a bit of African flavor and a ton of little benches and stools.  Dancers were dancing around and the music was super loud, which ended up pushing us out and onto other things.  Like for instance buying Coldplay tickets for Saturday night!  Or, for instance, Sushi with James.  We met up and he took us to his favorite Sushi restaurant.  The food was good, and the selection unique and entertaining with the way they brought out so many dishes, it seemed like one dish every 2 minutes for 20 minutes.  But, alas we had to get home because we had to leave at 7am for a Jujitsu tournament in the morning.  Sleep it was.

    By the way being around James was like old times right away again and we could walk around talking for hours at a time and not even notice where the time went.  It was fun to see him being able to get to know Candace more and such as well.  Back to Jujitsu though -

  At this event there were close to 100 vendors for martial arts, arm wrestling tournaments, body building competitions on stages, fencing, boxing, gymnastics, swords, tae kwon do, and more…  Cool as heck to walk around and see the Cluster of stuff happening.  Though 80+% of our time was spent watching Jujitsu and anticipating (almost 3 hours) James' first fight.  He ended up winning the 1st two fights and then, the closest fight of the day with the dude who ended up taking the Gold Medal.   James lost 5 points to 4, and he had "Advantage" at the end.  On top of that, James had the champion in a lock and the winner said in another 5 or 10 seconds he would have tapped out.  Oh well, Silver medal will have to do ;)



    Afterwords we got BUBBLES TEA, which was like nothing I've had before.  The tea was great, but Inside the tea were two types of bubbles.  One bubble was like a gummy chewy one while the other was like a pop-type bubble that exploded, all the while your straw is large enough to draw these "bubbles" through it.  Super yummy and good and I'm slightly jealous we don't have them in the states yet that I'm aware of.



    Then we checked out Chinatown area and headed back home.  Time for Coldplay!  It was funny as I kept playing random Coldplay songs off my phone for Candace so she could remember what they played and the whole time as I played each song she was like - oh, they do that?  Oh - that one too? etc etc.  I was pretty excited to see them, and not just that but to see them in their hometown of London that they grew up and started in added to the excitement.  The concert was awesome!  Every song had amazing effects.  Every song was spot on.  On top of that, the comments inbetween songs, the exact verbiage, was powerful - whether it was at the beginning being genuinely grateful for peoples time, to recognizing the audience, addressing the rain and other issues of the night, and generally just making the audience feel special, it was brilliant crowd management and more than that.
 

    Then we metup with James and Randi at home around about midnight and headed out to a club that their friend and other DJ's were spinning some music at (drum & bass, electronic, etc).  Super interesting seeing the laser show at the venue and all the crazy people there, most of which were on something or another.

     After James had 3 redbulls and we felt like leaving, we headed back for some late night youtubing of honeybadger and Ronald Jenkees around 5am

    Sunday everything was closed because of the holiday - the Queen's Jubilee.   Celebrating Elizabeth's the II Reign of over 60 years as monarch of England, of which only one other Monarch has done (which was 63 years).  Plus with it being Super rainy all day, "miserable" as James put it, we kinda just chilled out a bit - Randi took Candace to go Antiquing down a really cool strip she knew about.  Candace saw some cool Jewelry and souvenirs, while James and I went to eat and then saw MIB 3.  The movie was just OK, so we headed back to hang out and to watch a more epic movie.  I know most of you SHOULD be able to guess what that is, my new favorite 80-minute movie, part of which I used to wrapup RDC this year, The Art of Flight, for like my 10th time =)  Epic as always.  Just like the next day:

    MONDAY we made a touristy day!  Out we went on the town taking the Tube to London Bridge.  After walking across the bridge, which didn't fall down!, we bought a Tour Bus ticket which afforded us the ability to tour all of London's sites on a bus and included a River Cruise.   Before we hopped on the bus, we started a walk from London Bridge to Hill Bridge, which we actually were gazing at when we were ON the London Bridge and happens to be WAY cooler looking than London Bridge (which was flat and boring But DOES have history =)
London Bridge:

 Hill Bridge:

    From Hill Bridge we took the Rivercruise down the Thames River.  The cruise was nice and the commentary great & humorous, even talking about his engagement on the top of the London Eye (A huge wheel right off the river Thames that is the tallest viewing spot in London, looks like a carnival wheel.
Tallest building in London:

London Eye:

      There is a ton of history along the River Thames, the most interesting to me was the fact that the whole south side was rather destroyed because during WWII bombers at night came in and followed the river bombing alongside it.  Even if the city lights were completely off, the moonlight still shimmered unfortunately along the Thames..  The north side has since been built up and historically restored.  We saw an Egyptian spire which is the oldest piece of architecture in London, unfortunately the Sphynx's are facing the wrong direction and admiring the spire rather than protecting it =). 

We also got an interesting view of the Parliament building, a ridiculously large, old, and beautiful building along the river.  I had to go nearly across to the other side of a bridge later to actually get a shot in its entirety.

   After the River Tour we engaged the bus adventure tour and hopped onto the multi-level bus.  The top part of the bus was uncovered so thats where we headed for the best view.  We had to bundle up because it was a bit chilly, but as the bus moseyed along we learned a bit about and at the same time captured pictures of St. Pauls, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Hangmans Tree, The Royal Courts of Justice, Shakespeare's Globe, The Tower of London, Statues of Achilles, Genghis Kahn, Famous generals & admirals, and a sad lion…

    The admiral in the following picture earned his rightful place in the center of London through his legend.  He is centrally located on the spot that all distances are measured between stations, maps, and cities throughout Europe.  A battle between the English and the combined navies of the French and Spanish took place where the English Armada was outnumbered almost 3 to 1, but managed to sink over 30 enemy ships and turn the tide of the battle to victory as the Spanish and French retreated.  The admiral died in the battle, but his orchestration and plan worked so well that the English lost only one ship during the battle and turned back a force far massive than their own.  An epic victory, and possibly one of the greatest naval battles and overcoming of adversity in recorded history.

    For dinner we met up with James and ate at The Assembly House near the Tube stop.  Food was great.  When we got back we played a movie - Drive, which we downloaded overnight and was spurned by the fact that Jeremy Katan hooked me up with a song "Kavinsky - 01 Nightcall (feat. Lovefoxx)" that I played randomly the night before.  James had asked me "oh yeah, how did you like the movie?".  I said "what movie?".  Drive.   Cool movie.  Bit gory towards the end, but otherwise super original, good music, and interesting story with an open-ended ending leaving the viewer to their imagination.

    TUESDAY - Today was a day where James and Randi started out with us and decided to show us some stuff.

  We hit up the Tower of London and saw the inside - HUGE.  PS The area where you see the tents used to be a moat filled with water about 7 feet deep.  The "Tower"/Castle I'd call it, is shaped overall like a big square, so what you see of this picture is not even half of one side of the square.  Those are people on the bridge on the right hand side for perspective.

   Used as a backup castle to take a King or Queen running away from enemy attack and house them for a time or siege (though ended up not being effective sometimes for several reasons), the castle was quite large and held a massive armory as well in the center.

    Also here at The London Tower, The Crown Jewels were on the premise (a quite large display, but no pictures allowed).  The diamonds in these crowns just blew our mind, James included.  We couldn't even estimate the cost of a 530.60 Karat diamond… insane.  James and I plotted ways to infiltrate the place, but the best we could come up with would be to blow a hole in the castle wall - No way getting through the safe which was over a foot thick. Haha.   The rest of the premises were cool, and it was definitely fun to put yourself in the place of an English solder defending the castle from the ramparts and walls:

    From The Tower, we headed to St Pauls Cathedral.  It was massive and the bells were ringing loud when we got there.  The Peoples church it was said to be was very well kept on the inside and was very different architecturally from the Cathedral in Dublin.  You can see James and I midway up the steps:

    After our little tour of the city, the idea was to go see Hamlet at The Globe, a Shakespearean theater that is modeled exactly after the theaters Shakespeare's plays were performed in back in the day.  No electronic audio amplification, seating the exact same, etc.  Unfortunately we booked tickets for the wrong day, and they were already booked until August.  So instead we headed back to James' house and Randi and him cooked us dinner.  Afterwords James and I went into the olden times with an SNES emulator and busted out one of the coolest games ever - Rock N Roll racing.  We proceeded to play, and yell, taunt and be very loud all the while the girls making fun of us the entire time.  Needless to say nobody could sleep with our antics going on, so we ceased and yet another day ended in London, England.  But not before playing a round of Eucher!  Guys vs Girls and an epic battle it was with guys down 8 to 2 and then coming back for the victory 11 to 8.  Afterwords, James Candace and I retreated to the other room while Randi went to dreamland.  We played an awesome game of 3-person Eucher. =)

    Wednesday Candace and I did a bit of research on Paris and got things setup to leave the next day.  We then headed out to the British Library where we were able to see some notebooks of William Shakespeare, the Magna Carta, some handwritten songs from The Beetles, some parchment from a super-ancient bible, and original handwritten workings of some of Da Vinci's architecture plans.  It was interesting learning about the Magna Carta (about 1000 years old) and the fact that it was it 1st time to define The Law as an entity that is separate AND able to make the King subject to Law (in the Magna Carta it was mostly dealing with Lords and deeds and estates and not the "unfree peasants", but the point is that it made it so that the King had penalty if he did certain things, the whole important concept of this document.  This, of course, eventually led to much more limiting of the Kings power in the future as this idea progressed of Law applying to all, even the King)

    After we got back home, I left for a Jujitsu class with James.  The particular training place James goes is fairly special, considering the teacher of the classes is Jude (don't remember last name), who was the 1st black belt in the United Kingdom for Jujitsu and trained under the Gracies, grew up in the sport with the son (who's father taught them both) who has dominated Jujitsu worldwide for 8 years and has been unbeatable.  Jude is also a Thai fighter and is a black belt in 2 or 3 other martial arts.  When I stepped into the class, Freddie, one of the guys I sparred with who was about 3 years in, pointed out all the ridiculous fighters around me that were practicing; From BJJ, internationally ranked kick-boxers, wrestlers that were gold Medalists, championship boxers, etc etc, all learning Jujitsu.  I must say I haven't been so exhausted from a workout in almost 5 years since my Bike trip..  It takes more endurance than Soccer, Hockey, Rock climbing, anything I have done.  I could barely move my hands into a fist by the time I was halfway through the hour sparring portion that came after the hour warmup and training.  I also got to spar with Jude, which was my favorite person to go against.  Cool experience and now James is looking to see if he can find anyone reputable in PHX that I might be able to train with. 

    In the morning we left for Paris, France!  I'm now in a Spanish Tapas restaurant near the apartment we are renting for $110 a night through AirB&B.  Gotta love Air B&B.  Gotta love travel.  Gotta love being in a restaurant right now where you can only point at things on a menu and can't ask a single
question, but still get good food.  Gotta love life.  Cheers, talk soon,

Jason & Candace