Day 7, Scheduled maintenance closes two entire subway lines?!?! And this is Normal?

Seoul vs London in an Underground Shootout. Coming at a later time. Suffice it to say that both have their advantages but I have never seen an entire Seoul Subway line closed, and it happens here at regular intervals. Moving on,
After a brief panic about how to get to our pick-up spot for our tour and the whole trying to get there thing we arrived, on time, in one piece. So we arrive, get on the bus and get started. We crossed the English channel on a ferry, and then it was back on the bus on the way to Paris. In Paris we went to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart), known as kinda the central part for the creative district. Famous people who are around here were Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh (thanks Wikipedia) Then we went just a little over to the village ish thingy of Montmartre (actually the name of the hill). It is a picturesque place full of coffee shops, crepe shops, and portraiteurs. It was probably the most Paris-esque place we went in all of Paris.

And of course, we finish the day with a visit to the Red-light district, and photos in front of Moulin Rouge

Day 6 - Our Last Day in London

We started the day a little later than planned but a lot earlier than previous days, no fighting with banks this morning!! We continued our tour of London on the south side of the river. We began with a huge church whose name and significance quite escapes me currently, but it was well worth visiting and is certainly off the beaten tourist track. We then turned East and headed along the river passing a reconstruction of the Golden Hinde, which you history buffs will note as being the galleon that Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world on. It is really quite tiny. Then we were on to the reconstructed Globe, which you should remember was Billy Shakespeare's theater. It was quite nice and our guide was a quite a character. Apparently, in order to raise money, they sold the flagstones around the theater to people who had their names inscribed on them. This lady had bought two, and then the summer crew had the gall to put a hot dog cart on both her stones!!! After the Globe we went to the Tower Bridge and walked on, over, around, and through it. We got to see the engine room and go on the top walkways. Then we hopped on a ferry and road down to Parliament and Big Ben, checked them out. Then we looked at Westminster Abbey (From the outside) and walked around the area. We went inside the Central Methodist Church, but they were have a rare weekday midday service and so we couldn't look all around which made us very sad. But we went to their coffee shop and had hot chocolate a muffin so that made it a little better. then we went home and packed; our time in London was ending.

Day 5 - The day of stairs
Day 5 began with our daily bout with the internet and banks. We began the day with St. Paul's Cathedral. It was great. It was huge. It was big. It was pretty. It was impressive. It was very tall. It had many steps. It had many, many steps. Yep.
The inside is just about indescribable. It's one thing to see pictures of a cathedral, but another thing entirely to be inside one. We were also able to climb up to the second level inside, and then the third and fourth levels outside (staircase inside, but you come out on the top of the dome). The stone steps going up had two worn away places where hundreds of feet had walked up and down over hundreds of years. Seeing the city from the top of the dome was amazing. And my knees were killing me the next day...and this was just the beginning of the stairs.
After St. Paul's we went to The Monument (yes, that is the official name). It is a monument to the fire of London, and consists of a very tall thin building housing a spiral staircase with 311 steps. If you make it to the top and back you get a certificate. The view is really cool. after this we went to the oldest church in London, where John Quincy Adams was married. They even have the book on display with the records of John Q Adams' marriage. As are basically all old churches that we've seen, the inside was so beautiful. Leaving this, we headed to the Tower of London. The Tower of London should really be called the Fort of London, I think, as it is really quite big and certainly not just one tower. One of our favorite parts was seeing the real crown jewels of England. Ones that have been in use for many, many years along with all this coronation stuff that only comes out when they crown a new ruler. It was really amazing. You basically walk inside this huge vault to look at it. It started to sprinkle right as the Tower of London closed, so we decided to head home and call it a day.

Day 4 London Pass
Day 4 began with a stop by MacDonald's, because our internet had completely died that morning. After sending yet more SOS banking emails, we collected our London Passes and began seeing the city. A London Pass essentially allows you to get into all the major attractions for a certain number of days for a fixed price. As most things in London are extremely expensive (we're talking 10 - 20 pounds a person for non-state-owned museums) it ends up paying for itself very quickly, and saves penny pinchers like us the agony of standing outside places like St. Paul's Cathedral wondering if 17.50 GBP a person is really worth it. On day three we saw Nelson's Column in Trafalgar square, the Household Calvary Museum, and Matthew's favorite, the Winston Churchill and War Cabinets Museum.

Churchill's underground room where he stayed during the air raids of London, when he wasn't watching from the roof...

Then we ate lunch in a stunning park, complete with huge white birds happily posted in the middle of the river on big rocks. Then we trotted off to Baker Street, as in 22B Baker Street, and finished the day with the London Zoo.


As you can see, the London zoo is a very special place :). We have more pelican personal grooming photos...to be posted later.


After arriving at our special little guest house, we made a trip to the local supermarket right before closing to buy a bunch of day-old pastries that were marked way down. Glorious pastries. We also decided to splurge on a Domino's pizza for dinner. Not as good as our Guri Domino's though.

Day 3 Death to Banks!!!!

Day 3 was spent fighting with *&*) ()&*(%* Korean banks. However we did manage to go out and see the miserables that night. Seemed fitting.

We had seats right on the front row of the second balcony, in the upper circle. If you leaned back you couldn't see the very front of the stage but if you leaned forward the seats were excellent. The railing is even padded so you can rest your arms on it. You could see everything with no heads impeding your view, even the orchestra pit was in view.

Day 2: London

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After leaving the airport, we set off across London via the tube to find our hotel room. The tube is decidedly louder and smaller than Seoul, but a good deal less confusing than Tokyo. We still like the Seoul subway the best. Finally, we located our hotel (really, a guest house sort of thing) and knocked on the door. Two stories up a shirtless guy opens the window and asks what we want. We explained that we got stuck at the airport and were just now able to get here. He rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, so you are the people I waited up until two in the morning for?" Sad times. We tried to call the night before, but no success. Not to worry though, by the end of our stay we were quite friendly, swaping stories and even spices.

Our guest house was essentially two houses joined together, renovated to accomodate guests. It was pretty nice for the price. Had its own kitchen where we could cook our own food. The neighborhood was one of the biggest orthodox Jewish communities in England. You are walking down the street and half of the people looked exactly like they just stepped out of Fiddler on the Roof. Not even kidding. All these sweet little boys with one long curl hanging down each side of their faces, and a little cap. I hate to use the "C" word, but they were really cute.

Day two consisted of sleeping, grocery shopping and taking a stroll down town in front of Buckingham Palace. Lovely weather, lovely sights. The gardens in London are simply spectacular.

Post Script: Banking drama and thank the Lord for McDonalds

The story of our time in London would not be complete without a short explaination of how we spend our mornings, which was generally, trying to make our various banks cooperate. Basically, online banking in Korea is so secure we can't use it. Spotty internet didn't help. So here we are, unable to get to any of our Korean money, and unable to pay the movers who are shipping all our stuff home. In addition, our US bank basically tells us that transfering money from the US to Korea should be avoided if possible, since they don't just stick it in your Korean account. They hold on to it as long as they want, All of this is for the time being resolved, as a wonderful friend came to our aid (God bless you, you know who you are). The moral of this story is, the easiest way to bank is to make deposits under your mattress, and McDonalds has free internet in Europe. We've seen the inside of a lot of McDonalds. Thank you Lord for our good friends, and McDonalds. Right now, we're a little bitter at banks. Who cares if they keep your money safe and earn you interest.

The video of our room, for your viewing pleasure. I hope Ross especially enjoys the portrait video style. I've got skills man, mad numchuck skilsss.

Day 1, Moscow and London Airports

Well, first off, this blog is late, but better late than never. It's been crazy trying to get everything finished, and getting the banks to work with us (snarl) but more on that later.

So on to the real beginning,

Moscow is fun, if you have a three hour layover and some charming conversation partners. If you need to make a connecting flight in less than two hours, it would probably be just a frightening experience. The terminals are confusing, the people are scary, the old terminal looks like something straight from a B rate cold war movie. But we met a cool Estonian and we had a nice conversation. So the low down on Moscow airport, avoid if possible. The pics are not really representative of the place, but they are pretty, so enjoy.

We we there at sunset so the light was really nice, gotta take those opportunities when you have them. The airport itself is kinda in the middle of nowhere and we did get to walk on the tarmac and, I think, just being in the airport might be enough to give you a feel for the country, so we have officially listed it as a country we've visited.

Of course then it was onwards to London Heathrow International Airport. Our flight was late (btw if you can avoid flying with the Russian airline Aeroflot, that's probably a good idea too. Essentially no inflight entertainment, and the food was some of the worst I've ever eaten. The flight attendents are rather scary too.) and probably because we arrived late, there were only two Immigration lines open to begin with, and three airplanes had landed at about the same time. And so a half hour late flight, and an hour and a half immigration meant we just missed the last train from Heathrow. Since taking a taxi from the airport would cost more than 1 night at our hotel we decided to ....

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I apologize for the video quality, I had to convert it to .avi because the file is too big and I don't have time to do it well. So that was us, our first day