London

Good food, good beer and good people are a good start to any trip. We met two Korean students in this pub we stopped into in Soho. They were in London studying English before pursuing their careers in television and electronic engineering. They were happy for a chance to speak American.

Sue had read reviews of this nouvelle Indian restaurant called Soho Spice so when we stumbled across it, and they had a table available we decided it was a sign. We must have been on a roll because not only was the food excellent, but they had a bottle of wine that Sue has been hunting for almost four months.

The phone boxes are original, but inside the phone has an LCD display and slot for your credit card.

"The Tube" was something of a shock to our NY subway aclimated sensibilities. It was clean, fast, and bright. There were cushioned seats, digital displays of the approaching trains (which never seemed to be more than 3 minutes apart), and RESTROOMS! "Mind the gap." The tube is not perfect, it's twice as expensive and shut down around midnight.

The tower bridge was an early stop on our walking tour the second day.

Sue says there are too many pictures of her, so this is Ray in front of Big Ben. There are also pictures of Ray in front of Westminister Abbey, in front of the tower of London, in front of Picadilly circus, in front of.... But we'll spare you.

The ultra modern "millenium bridge" crosses the Thames in front of St. Pauls. It has been closed for a while so the engineers can try to dampen the harmonic motions that occur in certain weather conditions. Can you say Verrazano Narrows....

The third day we headed out to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. There are over 300 acres of plantings and several glass houses.

There was an elevated walkway around the top of the tropical house that gave a nice view of the canopy.

The basement of one of the green houses is dedicated to aquatic plants, but it was the fish that really stole the show. How could seaweed compete with a face like that?

The weather was mostly pretty good, and we were treated to all sorts of blossoming trees and all of the spring bulbs were spectacular.

Sue in the cloud forest room of the Princess Dianna glass house. There are 10 distinct climates recreated in this, the newest and largest greenhouse at Kew gardens.

The orchids were in bloom, and they were spectacular. There were huge towers of hundreds of blossoms for each of dozens of varieties.

The Princess Dianna glass house from the outside.

We had afternoon tea at the Orangery (coffee actually)

We had originally planned to spend the second half of our trip walking the English countryside. Since all of the walking paths were off limits, we changed plans and visited our friend Martina in Leiden, Holland.

This is one of the windmills that was built in the 18th century on the city walls. It's been converted into a museum.

This is the dining room, part of the home located on the first two floors of the mill. The informational plaques said that the millers often lived in relative poverty because they were paid with a percentage of the flour they ground. In good times the flour wasn't worth much and in hard times there wasn't much to grind. Either the museum crew restored the living areas inaccurately or this particular miller must have done ok.

There are ladders and trap doors between the stories six stories inside the tower. This is a "top winding" mill which means that only the top and the blades turn to face into the wind. We also saw other windmills where the whole structure rotated to face the breeze.

This is the sacking room where the flour ground on the top floor arrived via the shute on the right to be weighed and sacked.

Keukenhof outside Leiden is surrounded by hundreds of acres of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. It serves as a showplace for all of the bulb exporters in Holland.

Keukenhof is only open for about five weeks every spring, and we landed right in the middle of them.

Satuday was market day. There were hundreds of little produce, bakery, butcher and other stalls set up along the canal.

Sue and Martina trying to settle on a loaf of bread

After the market we set off for the beach by bicycle. There are miles of paved paths through the dunes just off the relatively unspoiled coast.

Martina warned us that if it's raining anywhere in Holland, it's raining on the beach. It's almost always raining somwhere, so we sat out a shower on the patio of a cafe.