Airshow and Goodbyes

The airshow has started! We can hear the loudspeaker and crowds from our office. We can see all the flyovers as well. We walked outside to watch the first flyover together as a team, celebrating a team members' birthday at the same time. I'm grabbing video and I'll post it as soon as I can, rest assured it's awesome.

We dropped our family visitors off at the airport early this morning. That's always a bittersweet moment. It was so great to have them here, it was a nice reminder of home and priceless time together. It wasn't easy for them to get here and it wasn't easy for us to host, but it's absolutely worth the effort. They especially enjoyed Kyoto Garden, Leeds Castle, London Eye, Wimbledon, walks in London, and so many other things that it becomes hard to list! Good times.

Bath and Date Night

We drove our visitors past Stonehenge on Saturday morning. We wanted to get to the town called Bath and the road goes within a few hundred yards of Stonehenge.

We made it to Bath, but I messed up a little bit. I put "Bath" in google maps, which would be like putting "London" in the search. It took us to a strange back alley and it cost us about 20 or 30 minutes of driving in circles. So I updated the search to Roman Baths, which is exactly where we wanted to start, and then we were much better off. 

We watched some Cricket, then walked over to the baths. The bath are great, I'm always amazed by the engineering that has lasted thousands of years.

Bath continues to be a very musical town too. We saw at least 4 street performers and all of them were great. It's hard not to stop and enjoy their performance for awhile. One of them had a Frank Sinatra type of sound and he played trumpet too, so we enjoyed his performance a lot.

Our guests were very kind to watch our daughters for the night so that my wife and I could go on a date. We googled "most romantic restaurants in London", made reservations and popped over to a place called Beach Blanket Babylon. It's in the very nice neighbourhood of Kensington, so we used trains, tubes and buses to get there. We had lots of great conversation and had the rare opportunity to really talk and just he together. It was great and the food was some of the best we've ever had. It was so good, we ordered a third main course to share, which we had never done before and even the waiter was surprised by that move :)

Loving Leeds Castle and Business

Our visiting family loved Leeds Castle so much that we drove back on Saturday. We had spent £5 extra for the Annual Pass, so we got in for free this time. We took lots of photos and we had been warned that the grounds would close at 2pm. We walked up to the castle at 1pm and they didn't let us in because the castle closed at 1pm. Unfortunately we had missed that message, but we still had a great time walking the grounds.

My daughters wore matching bright yellow shirts that said I love London. When we walked through the gardens there were little black bugs that were highly attracted to the yellow, so they were half covered in those bugs. We even noticed a yellow plastic water cooler was also completely covered. Sure it was a little gross, but we had a little laugh about it and moved through the gardens pretty quick.

On a business note, I noticed that Chinese investors bought a popular pizza chain here in the UK. I remember those same investors buying a popular food chain in America too, I find that very interesting on an international note.

Continuing the business theme, we noticed the CEO of Mind Candy is stepping down. That's the company that makes several very popular games for kids, my daughter loves them (remember she took a tour of their HQ in London).I noticed the press release said they'd like to grow the American market, so I wrote my friend at Mind Candy and said my daughter would love to help in any way :)

She wrote me right back and said very nice things about my daughter. I guess we'll see where that goes.

Rochester, Leeds and Canterbury

We started the day in Rochester. We drove about an hour to get there, my brother and his fiancé came with me. They wandered the town while I went to work. They enjoyed the Rochester castle and cathedral.

After work, we drove to the castle in Leeds. That's the one I went to a few months ago, I remembered it bring beautiful and surrounded by a moat.

It was slightly rainy all day, but I thought the castle was even better the second time. The grounds were beautiful and the castle was even more memorable. We noticed a map of Northern Virginia in the castle, which was there because Lord Fairfax lived in this castle and owned that land. That was a really nice tie to back home.

I didn't realize the grounds were so huge the first time I went. This time we wandered over to the gardens and a fantastic hedge maze. At the end of the maze, you walk through an underground grotto which is very cool.

We still had plenty of sunlight, so we drove over to Canterbury. We went straight to the cathedral, which is probably my favorite cathedral in all of the UK. There was a guy singing (professionally) in the basement and the acoustics were amazing. I'm a big fan of the hanging sculpture in the basement too, it's captivating to me. I wish I could explain it in words, you might just have to google it and see if it's out there, sorry.

We had some great fish n chips in town since it was Friday. And we stopped by a place called Tiny Tim's Tearoom for afternoon tea and scones. We absolutely loved that place, I'd drive an hour to go back there, it has great food, ambiance, view of town, selection, service, decor and everything you'd want to experience in a tea room.

Family visiting

We have family here visiting and we're enjoying that a lot. It's fun to see London and the surrounding areas through their eyes. It's like seeing things again for the first time. My brother used our shower and came out saying "it's like taking a shower in a porta potty". Which is very true and some good American humour.

First we walked around Guildford to give them a feel of a little UK town. We stopped by the castle, the shops and the train stations. I can't believe how comfortable the whole town feels to me now, compared to how new it feels to visitors. 

On their second day/night, we took them around London. They saw all the major sites and walked until it hurt, as we all do :) They especially enjoyed the Eye, Tower Bridge and a stroll along the south bank.

Their credit cards and cell phones don't quite work, so I guess you can never do too much planning for those. We're getting by without them, but it sure would be easier to have them. 

Yesterday was a big day because my brother proposed to his girlfriend! He did it at Kyoto Garden and it went perfectly. We had been planning the day for quite some time. It was a hard decision to choose the exact location and I had been trying to help as much as I could. I had called several folks that control the garden to get their help, they were very nice people. Technically, we didn't do anything special such as rope off the area or mark "private event", we just used the natural beauty of the spot. I got there about 15 minutes before they arrived, I let everyone know what was about to happen, and one family stuck around to watch and cheer. In fact lots of people cheered for them, it was a special moment. Congrats to them!

Farnborough Air Show

The Farnborough Air Show starts next week. I've heard about it for years, really decades since I've been working in the defence industry. I would have never thought I'd be here in person to see it. In case you haven't heard of it, its a huge airshow where thousands and thousands of people come to watch the skies. I believe its celebrating 100 years of aviation this year and apparently you can see everything from the first planes to the latest, greatest ones.

I happen to be in Farnborough today and while walking to lunch, I saw a smaller plane flipping through the skies. They've started practicing for the airshow and this particular plane looked like what I can do with a tiny remote control (RC) plane. Its not easy to do the flips he/she was doing even in an RC plane, let alone a real plane with a real person. This is going to be good :)

I hear from the locals that we need parking passes and I hear its quite difficult to get into the show. The ticket prices have doubled since last year and free/shared passes don't seem to be an option. We'll make it work somehow!

4 July Weekend

I visited the Barrow site for work last week. Its a 5-6 hour drive north of London and its just south of a beautiful region known as "The Lakes". I haven't made it to the lakes yet, but Barrow is close enough that you can start to see and feel the beauty. Its basically a region of pristine lakes with mountains and fields.

One joke that came up in Barrow was that its 'junior prom' season. Apparently its a season that didnt exist one generation ago, but 'America' has brought it over. One dad had spent over £500 on a dress, and he knew of a family that was using a helicopter to take their sons/daughters around that night. I learned these things while we went out for dinner. At dinner they warned me that the 'mixed grill' dish was a very large portion. I was fascinated to see how large it might be, and sure enough, I could only finish half of it, but it sure was delicious, especially the local sausage. We shared a good laugh about it all, and many other things.

In light of Indedepence Day in America, they had "Independents Day" in Guildford. They gave away prizes for people that shopped at shops owned by independent folks. It was a really nice way to celebrate local business. My older daughter decided to take part in it directly, she opened a lemonade stand and took donations. She explained to people that donations were going to two local charity shops in Guildford. I stood a few feet behind her in support, but she made the lemonade herself and talked to 'customers' herself. Proud daddy :)

Saturday night we went to a live show of James and the Giant Peach. It was a great show and it was their final night, so I think they poured a little extra effort into it. I think the audience included many family members of the actors and actresses so thats always nice to see. Our younger daugther did very well, she watched and even enjoyed the show. She only made a lot of noise one time when she yelled out 'oh no', but it was well timed with the story, so mostly people just laughed or smiled.

My wife had taped the entire day of Wimbledon that I was there, so I spent a few minutes going through the video to see if I could spot myself on video. Sure enough, there's about 1-2 seconds of clear video that shows me in the stands, fun! I also watched the final championship match on Sunday, what a great match that was! I found myself rooting for Federer, but mostly because I wanted good, competitive tennis. The positive of Djokovic winning is that I can say I saw him play from the second row at Wimbledon!

On Sunday morning we drove down to Brighton. Many local folks have mentioned how much they like it there. The drive was pretty quick and easy, and the family loved it. We had a great time and I think we've already all agreed that we'll head back someday for more time there. The beach is nice, the pier has a lot to do, the food looks great and the shopping seems amazing. It has the feel of a 'holiday town', which is great. Oh, there's some great architecture there too, a dome and a theatre right in the heart of town...

To wrap up the weekend, we had dinner at a local friend's house. They invited us over and we had a great time. We cooked together, talked about our interested, and we didnt even discuss US/UK very much. We did learn a few little things such as flashlight = torch, 911 = 999 (in UK) = 118 (in France). There's something really special about sharing time and meals like that, it helps you really learn about people and life.