Fall in London

We've arrived in London for the Clash of the NFL Titans tomorrow afternoon. We had a bit of a bumpy flight leaving Aberdeen yesterday evening, and then spent a good 45 minutes circling over London, so we were quite knackered by the time we reached our hotel. The endless circling would normally have been more of a sore point, but we got a terrific view of the city, all lit up and colorful, that was quite enchanting. London always hits us with a sequence like that - showing us something cool and appealing, making us think that life in the big city wouldn't be too bad, and then we run into an obvious negative, like the insane crowds outside the Portobello Road market, and we're back to being quite happy to spend a little more time in Aberdeen.

The day started quite well, as Fiona was not only clever enough to book us a room at a great hotel in the middle of Kensington, but also got us "club" access - which means we can duck off into this small glass-walled room for breakfast or drinks and not have to deal with the rest of the hotel riff-raff. We wear our elitist label with pride. Breakfast was great and we followed it up with a tour of the hotel gardens, marvelling at the huge maple leaves falling from the central tree and wondering what caused them to feel they needed to put up several signs asking people to "Please respect our shrubbery".

We decided to try and get in to see the Natural History Museum, which everyone has been telling us is well worth the effort. When we arrived and saw the queue snaking out of the building, around the drive, into the garden, back out onto the drive... we turned tail and ran. We ended up in Kensington Gardens, on the other side of Hyde Park. THe fall colours were amazing. We strolled around the gardens, enjoying the weather and the foliage.

For lunch we headed to the well-reviewed Churchill Arms pub. It turns out that in the back of the pub is a little Thai restaurant, so we sat down for some pad thai. It came to the table absolutely reeking of something not entirely edible, but we decided to give it a go and ended up quite enjoying it.

We were wandering through Notting Hill, trying (and failing) to get into the market, and decided instead to head for Holland Park. We arrived in the park just in time to be greeted by a rain squall. Thankfully the trees still had enough leaves to offer us some shelter, and we ended up waiting out the rain on a small bench. I won't lie, there may have been some snogging.

We met up with some friends for dinner and are now looking forward to another good night's sleep. Our room has proven itself to have all the requirements - good and dark, with the right temperature. Hopefully we're a little smarter than yesterday, when we stayed up too late after being caught up with a TV movie about an old Canadian heavy metal band called Anvil. They had a little success in the 80's, but are now all in their 50's and still clinging to the dream. I don't quite know if it was the sincerity with which they spoke of their dreams, or the background Canadiana (which made us more than a little homesick), but by the end we were hooked, rooting for the band to find what they were looking for. I guess it's a true-story, slightly less comical version of Spinal Tap. Neither of us like heavy metal music, but we both enjoyed it.

Autumn

It's definitely autumn now, and threatening to move quickly through into winter. The days flip schizophrenically between crisp, clear, blue-skied wonder and long, dark, dreary spells of rain. The former puts me in a great mood - being possibly my favourite season. I love being able to walk around in a forest of multi-coloured leaf litter wearing a good thick sweater and coming back an hour later with the faintest tingle of coldness on the tips of your ears. No bugs, no sweating and a reduced number of people doing the outdoorsy bit. The grey days have their benefits too, giving you the perfect excuse to have a relaxing day in, catching up on your reading (Churchill's 'History of the English Speaking Peoples') or movies ('Away We Go' and '500 Days of Summer' - see them both), or even dashing between house and car and then car and Cineplex to see something good, like 'Despicable Me', the best animated movie since 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'.

We haven' really been up to much lately. Work has been hectic and we've taken a lot of time to just relax after some crazy weeks. Tidying things up, planning vacations and ... other stuff I'm sure, but I just don't remember. See on Sunday I was rummaging around in the cupboard-underneath-the-stairs to try and find a something or the other and upon exiting head my head on the door frame in a truly epic fashion. I didn't quite knock myself unconscious, but perhaps that would have been better. It defined my weekend. People ask, "so what did you do this weekend"? "Hit my head".

I'm hoping the foggyness lifts in time for this weekend, as we're off to London on Friday evening for a weekend trip. I have a ticket to the annual NFL game at Wembley on Sunday night, and I'm reasonably excited, even though I defy anyone to choose two more ridiculously awful teams to play. Oh well, it should be fun regardless.

In the meantime, Roger is here to visit. Hopefully the weather will change and he and Fiona will be able to get in a golf game or two. He's dogsitting Casey this weekend, and we have a couple more days together after we get back from London.

Two Years - has it really been that long??

I've been wondering for a few days now what to do with the big two year anniversary post. Do I do a long re-cap of the past year here, with the all the requisite highlights and lowlights? I figure you can get as much from going back in ye olde blog archive, so how about instead of reminiscing about past trips and recalling past glories I recount a few of the things that we're looking forward to in the next two years?

1. More travel than you can shake a stick at. We're looking at finishing up our Scottish tours with trips to the Borders (May '11), Shetland & Orkney ('11), Ullapool/Durness ('11), Dumfries & Galloway ('12) and the Isles of Mull and Harris ('12). Then we'll truly have seen it all. I'm sure there will be a great multitude of castles, monuments and fabulous hiking. It has been our great joy to discover this country that we probably would never have seen if we hadn't transferred. The European travel will continue as well. We've got plans for Florence and Vienna this year, and Fiona talks about another trip to Paris to see the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. She's also off to Budapest with her ladies group in November, and it looks like we'll be taking a side trip to Wales next time Cathy and Roger are in town. More trips to Holland are a certainty. We'll try and step out a little further as well. We're planning a trip to Egypt in the winter, and of course, back to North America to see family.
2. More good food. We're still loving the food here in Scotland. Bacon rolls, haggis, cranachan, curries, pork pies ... the list goes on. Our favorite restaurants continue to impress, instead of getting old and tired as some restaurants do.
3. Expanding our group of friends. We've met some really great people. It has been hard being away from friends in Houston and Calgary, and especially from family, but it takes a bit of the edge off the loss when you meet new people.
4. Scottish culture. We're looking forward to a few more Snow Balls, Braemar Gatherings and Burns Nights. Chances to put on the kilt and dance a few reels. I think we'll miss that when we leave.
5. It's starting to feel like home. The greenery, the small cars, the weird obsession with pop-dance music and the great news quiz comedy shows - all the things that felt foreign when we got here are now comforting (ok, except for the pop-dance music obsession).

So we're looking forward to another two years of this adventure. Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we'll keep it exciting for you.

Catching Up

After a pretty miserable Friday, which we have now agreed was the most miserable day, weather-wise that we have had in our two years here, we had a great day on Saturday. We made it down to the International Market and ran a whole bunch of errands, all under clear blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We made it home in time to put a pork shoulder in the oven, preparation for a Tex-Mex dinner party with our old neighbours, Roz and Lance. We had a great time as usual, although I'm not entirely sure the finer points of bidding in Bridge stuck with us.

On Sunday we went to a Thanksgiving Dinner put on by the Canadian Association. It was being held a week early due to the fact that the schools here would be out next week. Fiona had volunteered to make the centrepieces and the sign-in table decorations and she pulled it off with her usual flair. What a creative little genius my wife is! Now if only she could get it all done without stressing.

When we were downloading the pictures we found we still had a few Houston/San Antonio shots left.