Munich Residence for Royals

Where we are staying is about 6 stops from Marienplatz, the center of downtown Munich. The location is really ideal, because the streets downtown look like Madison Square Garden at the end of a Billy Graham performance. We have a weekly transport pass for €12.30, a major bargain over the €2.50 individual tickets.

Our hosts, a gay male couple, are in Paris, so basically we have the apartment to ourselves for a few days. These are trusting souls. We have never met them before. They left food in the fridge for our breakfast, but I am not crazy about their coffee maker so almost the first order of business for me is a coffee stop. November 1st is a holiday throughout much of Europe and this very Catholic section of Germany is no exception. Cafés are closed, so the choices are thin: Starbucks on one side of the road or California Coffee Company on the other. CCC is closest and the caffeine fumes draw me in. Serves me right, the coffee is horrid.
 

Our destination for today is the Munich Residence. This is actually three museums combined. It includes the Residence Museum, the Treasury, and the Cuvillies Theater. The Munich Residence was the epicenter for culture and politicos from the time of the first dukes. Later, they were elevated to electors from 1623 working their way up the royal ladder to become the Kings of Bavaria from 1806 to 1918. The dynasty name was Wittelbach, each generation adding to the existing buildings, making for a magnificent display of edifices. In general terms, the Munich Residence takes up an entire city block. We entered at 10:30 am and finally emerged by 4:00 pm. Once you pay admission, the audio recording is free for both the Residence and the Treasury. The theater needs no commentary. Ron received a discount for seniors and I was admitted free with my European Journalist Press Card.
 

It never occurred to us we would spend that much time in these historic monuments, but the time really flew by. The Residence was amazing, but it really was difficult dragging myself away from all of those crowns. I just know some of them are mine from previous lives. It I had only saved the receipts. 

Alas, when we left, dehydration had set in, so we had to head to the HofBräuhaus to hydrate. The history of the HofBräuhaus goes back more than four centuries. The beer hall was first established in 1589 by Duke Wilhelm V and still welcomes thirsty souls today with drink and food. Casting my diet into the rubbish receptacle, I had a liter of beer with a giant pretzel. Being a holiday, many restaurants were closed, so we needed something of substance to carry us through.
 

With all of the stores closed, it was still shocking to see how many pedestrians there were clogging the arties of the byways.
 

That evening, we found a restaurant open called Opatija. They served German/Croatian food. It was crowded so we decided to take a chance on it. The portions were huge, the food was better than average, and the service was excellent. What more could one want when the prices are dirt cheap in addition.

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Pass on the Pass

If you travel where you are bombarded with enticements to purchase a city pass with promises of great things like free transport, free or reduced entry to museums, and faboo discounts at restaurants, think 2 or 3 times before jumping the gun. I am very leery.

For years now, when asked, I have been steering those who want to know, not to buy the pass for this great city that I live in. I cannot be more expressive. The tourism office has a deal with journalists to aid them in getting access for free to some places, in exchange for a plug on the city pass. The only success they produced was entry to one of the baths, so my loyalty is tainted.

Apparently, I am not a black sheep in the pass up the pass when you travel field. Budget Travel magazine had a cost comparison for the Paris card for a grandmother and her 12 y.o. grandchild. In a nutshell, the Paris card does not give senior or child discounts, but student discounts could be had at every museum. Sure, you get to cut in line, but as it turned out, granny would be spending an additional 48 Euros for the 3 day card just for herself. For the youngster, there was a difference of 12 euros.

If you think about it, you really need to hustle to get your monies worth. There were only 2 cities where I calculated a savings after risking the purchase. Stockholm has incredibly expensive public transportation so with the card affording us free admission to the museums, it turned into a no brainer. Major savings! Oh, and the city is tre-faboo! It should be on everyones' wish list.

Our other adventure was in Edinburgh. The card did award us with cash best kept in our pockets, but with an exception. We ran our butts off to get from place to place to fill a day in order to maximize the card. Though I must say, we did see and do things we normally would not have spent the money on, like the Scotch Museum or the Optical Illusion Museum. We totally enjoyed both after gaining access with pass rooting us on. You go guys! You can do it. Get over to that Scotch Museum, it is free entry.  When we return to Edinburgh, forget it. Been there, done that, bought the bottle of scotch.

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Just Blame It on Ray

My life has taken major twists and turns in the last few months and it is all Ray's fault. Who is Ray? Ray is a reader of the is blog, who have become an intermittent e-mail penpal. If you search for Paris or Nice, France within the blog, you will find Ray. The topsy-turvey started when Ray mentioned that after selling their Nice apartment, he and his partner bought a place in Fort Lauderdale. Note that Ray owns a B and B in New Orleans. Their apartment purchase started my gears to working. When the economic meltdown happened in the US, we thought of buying a place in Boston. Ron even contacted a number of real estate agents checking on what was available. Not one had the courtesy of responding, so it went by the wayside. 

When Ray mentioned their acquisition, it started me thinking again. We have no real permanent address in the US. We use my father's address, but now that he is in a nursing home, that address is not going to be any use to us any longer. Neither of us have a driver's license any longer. After extending our CA license through the mail as many times as possible, we finally let it go. Ron tried to get an Iowa license when visiting last year, but it required too much documentation to make it happen. 

Each winter, we take off for a warmer climate for a month and have for the last twelve years, so thoughts of potentially living in a warm climate when we do decide to return to the US seemed like a no-brainer. Ray just happened to mention that there was another apartment for sale in the same building that they bought theirs and sent me the link. Just from looking at the pictures, I knew this was something we should pursue, so I made a list of pros and cons and presented it to Ron. With the pros far outnumbering the cons, we were in agreement. 

As it turned out, the real estate agent for the property was not as responsive to my e-mails and I have little patience with what I perceive as poor service. I also wanted to learn more about the area and Google is my friend. I found a number of social organizations where we could easily fit in and have the opportunity to create a sense of community quickly when we chose to make the States our home again.

Wanting someone on the ground with their finger on the pulse of things, I sent an e-mail to two of the organizations I found. After explaining where we lived, what we were looking at and looking for, I asked if anyone would be willing to correspond and give some direction as we moved forward. 

Two very nice men wrote back. One was Mike Golan who also referred me to a Realtor and the second gentleman, was Istvan Belucz, a Hungarian who was now living in Florida for the last six years. He too referred me to a Realtor. Using Mike's referral first, because he was the first to respond, his Realtor told me that the property Ray has put me on the scent of was a short sale property and then gave me this real estate lesson:

Now, there is an arena permeating throughout Southeast FL: the Short-Sale and Foreclosure syndrome (actually across the USA to which you must have heard about it in the news abroad).  This is quite an education and I will try to give you a crash course on it.

A Short-Sale is when a person bought a property about 3 to 5 years ago at the highest price of the market (say a condo at $300K) and the buyer took an exotic balloon mortgage at 1% interest for the first 2  or 5 years then the interest balloons up to 8, 9 and even 10% afterwards.  The intent was for those people to fix the property and flip it but, what happened is the market began to tank and those people missed the market.  Now their balloons have exploded and their loan payments jumped from $600K per month to $3,600 per month.  So, now they bought a house at $300K, owe about $240K but the present market value for their property is now only $175K.   So, if they sell their properties at present market value, they will need to come up with $65K cash, which, of course, they don’t have.  At that point, you ask the lender(s) to forgive the difference and close the property.  Some other people need to make a move, for whatever reasons (a job transfer or the house is too small because they have a new addition to the family) so they are also in the same financial predicament and need to do a Short-Sale.  However, in a Short-Sale situation, the lender does not own the property, so an offer has to be accepted between the buyer and the present owner.  Then, the contract is submitted to the proper lender(s) (often time there are a first and a 2nd lender).  The contract will sit at the primary lender’s desk for an undetermined amount of time (usually 2 months) until they get to it.  If there is a second lender, that will lengthen the process because the second lender will try to get something back to recuperate some losses – the battle between them begins.  After 4 to 5 months, they will give us an answer saying that they probably want more or else.  Again, usually the buyer will not go up and walks away from the deal.

A foreclosure is quite different:  In a foreclosure instance, the primary lender is now the bona fide owner of the property after having been awarded the right of ownership by a foreclosure judge.  The second and/or 3rd lenders are completely out without a penny.  This allows the lender to hire a real estate agent, place the property for sale and entertain offers.  But the catch to that is that the lenders have been inundated by so many foreclosures in the past three years that they have finally figured out how to sell those properties.  They have created what I call a “blind auction” which means you make an offer at the full asking price, then the lenders respond back in a few days saying “we have had multiple offers and you need to came back with you best and final offer” (there is no way for anyone to verify that.)  People tend to bid up and often times, they may be bidding against themselves.  Right now, the proof of that is when they close; we can see what the asking price was and how much they closed for.  Don’t get me wrong, there are foreclosures that take forever to sell or that will be sold at substantially less than the asking price but there is a reason for that: everything is relative to location and aesthetic.  Those properties that are sold at much less than the lenders asking prices are because they are dumps and no-one wants them.

Doing short-sales is quite tedious a process and it takes time. Often times, one can find quite a treasure in a foreclosure but, you kinda have to be here for that and when it strikes you, you need to make an offer immediately without flinging and be prepared to go higher than the asking price.

Forewarned is forearmed as the saying goes. I was getting an education in a whole new area.

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Paris or Nice Rentals

ladauphine has left a new comment on your post "Paris Rentals":

"Our good friend has several apartments to rent in Paris: www.historicrentals.com and we still have our place in Nice to rent as well. http://ladauphine.com/nice/niceapmt.html

Ray and Kim in New Orleans

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Paris Rentals

Reader Ray and partner Kim from New Orleans just sold their apartment in Paris. However, he turned me on to this website for apartment rentals. Just click here.

If you don't know square meters, but do know square feet, you can click here for a automatic conversion engine.

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FLU One By Me

Something hit me in the middle of the night, about 4am. After getting up to use the facilities, when I climbed back in bed, I had a bad case of chills. Af first I thought it was just the exposure to the night air and I would warm up again once under the covers and self-tucked in. The chills continued soon followed by dizziness. I know I am sick or drunk when I am dizzy while flat on my back, but I have not been that drunk in over twenty-five years. The 3rd symptom to crop up was this feeling like my chest was going to implode, not explode. It was the strangest sensation that my chest wanted to cave in. I thought perhaps I was dehydrated, which it highly possible regardless of whatever else was happening. I guzzled water until I could not swallow another drop, but the chills kept me awake until the alarm went off at 7:3oam.

When I tried standing, I could not. I was overcome with dizziness. The thought that my blood sugar my have been low did spring to mind, but we had nothing to eat in the room. Ron had some mints, so I ate one of those. I wasn't going to make it to breakfast unless someone carried me on a litter or brought a guerny. Not even a wheelchair was going to work; sitting up made me feel sicker. Ron went down and ordered modified breakfasts to be sent to us. All I could eat was the fruit, hoping the sugars would assist me in getting on uptake. I had to forfeit a shower; I had concerns about standing and falling on the concrete, possibly hitting my head. The last time I had felt like this was when I had a  sever allergic reaction to fish at a Paris hotel restaurant.

Joseph arrived on time as usual. It took a number of feeble steps, but I did make it to the van. Ron told him I was sick and may need to make stops along the way. I curled up on the long back seat meant for three passengers and nested. Within seconds I had lost consciousness. Two hours later, I awoke only long enough to need a stop, but went back to sleep immediately after crawling to the back of the van. Five hours later, we were back in Nairobi and at the hotel for our last 2 1/2 nights before returning home again. This is not a hotel to brag about, so I am not even going to include the name. For some reason, at the end of a vacation, we feel it is necessary to tighten the belt and go really cheap. Okay, this place is clean, the sheets are clean, the staff is friendly; that is the extent of the tribute.

As soon as we were checked in, I crawled into bed and slept until 6:3opm. There are no restaurants close by, so to avoid taking a taxi, we tested my equilibrium by walking to a nearby hotel restaurant at The Heron. Nice hotel, nice restaurant, good sized portions. Back to our hotel and in bed to sleep.

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One List I Am Happy Budapest Is Not On

Pickpockets are everywhere and the people they like the most are the tourists, whose wallets are usually full of money to be spent on souvenirs. Where are your handbags and wallets the most in danger? Tourism-review.com brings the Top 10 of the most dangerous pickpocket places and cities announced recently by TripAdvisor.

1. Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain

Pick pocketing in Las Ramblas can be easily compared to generally practiced and accepted sport such as soccer. So if you want to stay offside or out of field be careful and watch your things!

2. Rome, Italy
The ancient buildings and astonishing cultural and historical buildings draw attention of the tourist. So it is no wonder that Rome is the number two among the top 10 pickpocketing cities. Hundreds of people admiring Trevi fountain or Pantheon are an ideal place for pickpockets to snatch their cameras out of their bags!

3. Charles Bridge, Prague, Czech Republic
Crowds of tourists from all over the world crossing Charles Bridge every day – that is the picture of today’s Prague. So before taking picture of the famous Prague castle panorama make sure your camera is in a save place.

 

4. Madrid, Spain

Chaos, cars, thousands of people in the streets – that is the modern Madrid. All the time you are walking through the narrow Madrid streets you have to careful not to be run over by a car. Pickpockets often use such situation! So pay attention to the cars and also to your bag!

 

5. Paris, France

Another famous city that tourists love visiting every year. Eiffel Tower and Mona Lisa are not drawing only the tourists but also the pickpockets. So think about it while visiting the French capital. Especially in the metro the travelers should be enormously careful. 

 

6. Florence, Italy

It is no wonder that people admiring the perfect body of Michelangelo’s David don’t pay much attention to their belongings. So be careful even in this beautiful historical city. Otherwise it is very probable you will have the unique opportunity to admire local police station from within, which is not what you really want, is it?

 

7. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Don’t cry for your wallet in Argentina, might be an alternative name of the world famous song. Don’t mistake friendly locals with overly “friendly” kids and adults who might be interested in nothing else but the contents of your wallet. 
 

8. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

It's easy to forget your whereabouts in this city full of fun and the many things to see and do. But don’t be lulled into carelessness by the beauties of the city and the laid-back atmosphere – pickpocketers often take advantage of tourists admiring this enchanting city. 

 

9. Athens, Greece 

As in almost every city that attracts crowds of tourists, many people head to the world known sites – including the pickpockets. Acropolis is definitely a must if you travel to Greece – but be careful.

10.  Hanoi, Vietnam

Let’s move to Asia. Charming Old Quarter makes Hanoi a very attractive place for tourists. So again pay attention.

Reprinted from Tourism Review

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easyJet adds Paris/Orly-Budapest route

Budget airline easyJet is adding a daily flight between Paris/Orly and Budapest on November 17.

Tickets are already available from the airline's website from Ft 6,600 including all taxes and fees.

easyJet aims to expand its 6% market share in Hungary, said Peter Voets, marketing director for the CEE region. The airline also connects Budapest to Geneva, Berlin, Dortmund, London/Luton, and London/Gatwick.

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Home again, home again

Having packed most of my things last night, the morning was free and easy, too easy. What could I do to fill the hours before leaving for the airport? By 10:00 am, I was showered, shaved, and ready to move my things downstairs on the way to breakfast. Due to the treacherous nature of the stairs, it was not worth risking a broken body part taking both the carry-on and the backpack down in one trip. I brought the carry-on down and left it in the hallway where luggage sits and waits. I dragged myself back up the stairs, did one last check of the room and grabbing the backpack said good-bye to my sleeping accommodations.

Of all of the personnel at the hotel, the one guy who worked the three day shifts, I like the least. He is not as service oriented as the others. Lest I be considered persnickety, I overheard others comment the same thing. He is not as quick to clean up the dirty tables as the others are and he is not as responsive about checking the coffee pot or the juice. Yesterday, one guest waited a good ten minutes while he sat at the desk. I thought I heard the sounds of an old fashioned adding machine, but could not see over the desk. In my mind, if you know you have a guest waiting and you are not working with a guest on the phone or at the desk, you stop what you are doing and give priority to the guest. The others seem to do this, but not this guy.

He also irritated me when I went to put my backpack behind the desk. He was off somewhere and when he appeared he did not give the appearance of having been too busy. I did not go behind the desk, but put my backpack with my coat on a built in chair to the right of it, recessed in the wall. Rather than being polite, he came upon me and said “Excuse me, but what are you doing?” I turned and with an authoritarian tone that seethed with “I am a paying guest, you twerp” said “Theo told me when I checked in that this would be safer back here. It had my computer in it.” Theo was the magic word since he is the owner. However, he was still snippy enough to ask me when I would collect it and if my coat could live somewhere else. You would think it were the queen’s throne the way he was carrying on. I said I would collect my coat after I had my breakfast as I was leaving for a few hours until I left for the airport. He did not seem to appreciate this, but he did not refute it.

The breakfast room was almost full. At first I thought I would have to share the table with my new Costa Rican friend/neighbor, but one table was free, so I sat by myself. When a couple of French women came down, a table emptied, but it was still messed from the last guests. They stood there waiting and Mr. Attitude asked them if he could help them. If he were paying attention, he would have known they wanted a seat with a clean space. When they told him they were waiting for a table, he said “If you just wait, I will clear one.” Smack his face, why don’t you?

Now I was faced with hours to kill before getting the tram to Central Station to take the train to the airport. I did what I have been doing the last four days, I walked. I walked to the park that was designed by the same landscape architect as the famous gardens I spent the day at on Sunday. This park was lacking flowers, charm, and appeal. It did not seem to offer much except walking paths. After 20 minutes of a fast walking pace, I turned around and went back the entrance.

Finding a cozy bench in a canal, my book was a diversion for about 15 minutes, until my blue fingers caught my attention. It was decidedly colder today, feeling more like autumn than spring. The thought of walking to the Rembrandt Museum and tour the gift shop seemed like an idea I could warm up to.

From there, the coffee shop around the corner from the hotel was the next logical choice for some warm respite where I could read for an hour before collecting my luggage. When I returned to the hotel, Theo was there and I was pleased to see him. He is very hospitable.

On the tram, I was able to buy a one time ticket for 1.60 Euro and headed to the train station. My timing was excellent as the train was there and left within five minutes of my boarding. At the airport, I found Wizz Air and was checked in in a matter of 10 minutes. Now I am sitting in the Diners Club lounge with an hour to spare before I head for my flight. The DC lounge is not spectacular, but more than adequate. There is no WiFi access and the use of Internet is charged. They have drinks, but the snacks are limited to chips and small packages of cheese. It could be worse; they could not have a lounge at all, like in Paris.

Wizz uses the ‘H’ lounge, a kind of generic lounge with no amenities. The sign asks that you do not enter security until your flight is displayed on the screen. Once it has, you go directly to the gate and board. Other than the child behind me that screamed for 80% of the flight, it was uneventful, but efficient.

As soon as I arrived, I turned on my mobile and there were four SMS messages from students, then one actual call also from a student. For a minute, I felt like I had never left.

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And the Beat Goes On

And the Beat Goes On

Breakfast is getting boring. We both agree on this. Chocolate croissants are wonderful for a couple of days, but day in and day out, the novelty wears off. There is always the same number available regardless of how many of us are available for breakfast. We are wondering what will happen when more people come for breakfast. We still have not had a conversation with our “host”. He doesn’t even try to continue a conversation when we attempt one, but it has not dampened our stay in London. Most people we have stopped for directions or had reason to speak with have been extremely friendly and helpful.

There are problems with the transport system. We have caught some headlines in the papers about slowdowns and work stoppages. Many of the tube lines have signs that display all of the stations that are having problems for that day. It has not been too disturbing on our routes, but the tubes are getting farther and farther apart, so our commute to work each day gets longer. It took us an hour and a half to get to Kensington Palace, our mornings work sight as tourists.

Kensington Palace is where Princess Diana lived and so do many other Royals including the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret. The Queen uses this palace from time to time also, depending on her needs. From what we understand, she is moved about for security reasons. Each of the Royals has their own apartment on the grounds of the Palace. Our pass gave us free entry and it included an audiophone. We usually shun these, but we were delighted that we had it to tour us from room to room. Kensington, like Buckingham is not an architecturally wonderful looking building, but it has charm. This was one of Queen Anne’s favorite palaces, but more on her later.

The tour is a bit different from what one would expect. Each room shows something of the life of the Royals from more of a sociological perspective. One room was the sewing room that had authentic materials used in gowns sown for Royals from the 18^th century. The conditions were deplorable by today’s standards and it was said that many lost their sight from working on miniscule lacing or sowing on beads in very poor lighting conditions. Also displayed were some of the wardrobes that both men and women were expected to wear in the royal court. Men had to wear as many layers of clothes as women did. They also had to wear two pairs of leggings. One pair is to cover the hair on their legs and the other white pair that fit their uniform.

Each of the rooms had specific purposes for the monarch’s use. There have not been many decorating changes for years, according to the tour program. One of the long halls included painted portraits of many of the royalty that have lived there. Poor Queen Anne had 19 children and not one of them survived past eleven years old. Her husband predeceased her and she was said to have had some disease that crippled her and she lost her sight. She did not produce an heir to the throne. One room holds the gowns the Queen has worn for different official occasions and the tour spoke about why the design was chosen. For an official visit to the United States when Reagan was president, her gown included beaded California poppies. After someone explained it to Ronnie, he is said to have appreciated the gesture.

Kensington is a beautiful palace inside and the tour was well worth the time. It was very educational without being redundant from what we had heard already. The grounds are wonderful, but the sunken garden was not planted. It looks like it is between seasons of plants, since the earth is turned up. There is grass and other shrubs that are permanent greens surrounding the fountain, so one can imagine what a wonderful sight it must be with flowers in bloom.

On the bus on our way to the Royal Mews, our next work assignment, we overhead the woman ahead of us ask her husband what one of the landmarks was. He said he did not know, so Ron offered the information. She told us that this was their first day in London. She was originally from Austria, but had been living in Virginia for the past forty years since her marriage. This was there first trip to Europe and they were on a tour. They had two days in London, five days in Paris, and four in Rome. When I started thinking about the amount of time that it took them to finally make this trip, I was not sure if I should be sad for them or ecstatic that they finally made it. We all prioritize differently, so my hope for them is that they have had other things in their life until now that is as life renewing as travel is for me. Shortly, after we made it to our bus stop, we had two American women stop us and ask for directions. They were from Utah and decided to try Priceline.com and flew to London. They too were only going to be here for a couple of days and then on to France where one of them lived for a year. They had hopes of touring Buckingham, but we regretted to tell them that the tours ended on September 30^th. We did encourage them to see the Tower of London and Kensington. How is it possible to cram so much in such a short amount of time? There is too much to see and do and the question that is always in the back of my mind is wondering if I will ever get to return? What will never survive in the event of terrorism or war? We have to experience it all or as much as our pocketbooks will allow while we can.

Our job at the Royal Mews was to tour the museum and see all of the Royal carriages used to carry the Queen and other Royals in parades, processions, jubilees, and other official occasions. It is a tough job, but someone needs to justify the salary of the guards. Our afternoon was spent keenly observing the differences in each carriage, their purpose, how many horses it takes to draw that carriage and whether or not the horses are ridden or if there is a driver. It is amazing how beautiful these carriages can be. We went with a sense of curiosity, but were soon filled with wonder. The most beautiful was the 24-karat coach that the Queen rode in for her coronation. Queen Victoria also rode in it for her coronation, then her Silver Jubilee, but refused to ride in it after that since her beloved husband Albert had passed away. She shunned much of the pageantry after that. Queen Elizabeth had a second spin in this coach on her 25^th year Silver Jubilee and next year will once again ride for her Golden Jubilee. Doesn’t time fly. The Queen has been on the throne for close to fifty years already.

Due to modernization, the Mews is also the home to the Royal Rolls Royce. The Queen owns five. Each car weighs 30 tons and is claret and black in color. One of the cars was on display since the Queen was in Scotland when we were at the Mews. The cars are sometimes lent out to other Royals, but generally they are all kept for the Queen’s use.

We were also able to see the Queen’s horses. These are the horses that are used for all of the pageantry associated with the royal duties. Each horse is bred for temperament and they are judged for their worthiness at an early age. Their training starts at four years old and takes about seven years for complete training. They have to become accustomed to the cheers of the crowd, the trumpets and other instruments, flashing photos, plus all other distractions. There is a training school on the property of the Mews. There are two kinds of horses used: Cleveland Chestnuts and Windsor Grays. The Grays were not available to see while we were there. They were on their vacation since the Queen was out of the country. They go to pasture when she is gone to rest and relax.

There is much information here about Queen Victoria as there is all over London. Since she was the longest reigning monarch in the history of Great Britain, she deserves the attention. She is said to have watched her nine children learn to ride in the Mews riding school. It is said also that Queen Elizabeth, who is a horse admirer visits the Mews often to see the horses.

With all of that walking it was time to sit, relax and have some afternoon tea. There are many places with outdoor spots to sip your drinks and watch the people go by. The weather was warm and breezy, but a coat was not really needed. When I sit down at times like this, with my feet aching and swollen, I think back to the time I was a hairdresser. We used to put a rubber hat that was filled with very tiny holes over a person’s head. Using a very tiny crochet needle, we would poke it through the hole in the cap hoping not to gouge the scalp in the process and pull out a wisp of hair. When this was done all over the head, the hair was bleached for a frosted look. At this time of day, by 3:00 pm, my feet feel like someone is taking a fine crochet hook, poking it into the bottoms of my feet and pulling out nerve endings one by one, then smacking the hell out of them.

After our tea break, we headed to Leichester Square to the ½ price theater ticket office. We had high hopes of getting tickets to The Lion King or Mama Mia, but we knew they were both sold out until February of next year. We were lucky to get two tickets to Starlight Express for less than the price of one ticket at home. The show is scheduled to close by the first of the year. It has had quite a long run thus far. The curtain was at 7:30 pm. There are strange curtain times here. I am used to theater having a standard curtain at 8:00 pm. Here, some shows are 7:15 and every 15 minute interval until 8:00 pm.

With time to waste until the theater, but not enough to visit another sight, we went to the Official Brass Rubbing Center at St. Martin of the Fields church. They have a number of designs in brass that look like large rubber stamps. You tape paper over the brass and use different colors of wax to rub the brass. Whatever is raised above the surface that the brass is on, will take the wax. All of the indentations of the design will remain the color of your paper. I could not find a design that appealed to me, so I watched why Ron rubbed. A couple of times he looked like an overgrown kid, trying to stay within the lines. He would pick up his wax stick, check out his picture, then the head would go down once more in deep concentration and he would rub some more. Finally, I had to rush him to the finale, as we needed to get to the cyber café for a bit before heading for the play.

Our new friend Nick e-mailed to say that he arranged a free Internet connection for us to use anywhere in Great Britain. I needed to check out phone plug and see if it will fit the ones here. I don’t have a phone adapter. It continues to amaze me that people are so generous with their time and energy. Then there was another e-mail from a friend of ours in California who shall remain nameless saying that she had been deleting my e-mails up to this point thinking they were offers from a pornography sight. It wasn’t until she had a conversation with another recipient that she realized what she was deleting. With little time to spare, we went to Pizza Hut for a quick, cheap, and surprisingly very good quality pizza before the play.

I am amazed at how seldom we hear English on the streets. We are almost craving hearing a British accent. This is such a cosmopolitan with immigrants from everywhere.

News headlines: 15 million pounds are expected to be lost until the end of the year from American tourists alone, due to the New York City incident. Later tonight, the news said that hotels are hurting and they are trying to encourage the English to travel more in their own country to make up the losses.

So now to review Starlight Express. There were no stars that are known in the States or here either that we could tell. For those of you who do not know the story, it is basically The Little Engine That Could retold. There is a little boy who is never seen, but heard from. He has different train engines and cars that he races against each other. The whole show is about these trains racing. The characters are the trains in very clever costumes and the whole show is done on roller skates. The costumes were very well done, the skating was phenomenal and the races were interesting. Whenever the characters were out of view, skating around the theater including the balcony, there were monitors that showed the action for those in sections that could not see where the trains happened to be at any given time. There were cutesy names for some of the characters like Dinah the Dining car, Ashley the Smoking car, and Dusty the Coal car. The sound system was off or it was the singing. We could not understand the lyrics to most of the songs and it was not due to the accents. When they spoke lines, it was with an American accent. The story was simple, but it was an enjoyable evening and night out, but neither of us were ready to encourage anyone to run out and see it before it closed.

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