London and beyond
Thursday 2000-08-31
Monday morning I boarded the EuroStar train to travel from Paris to London. The EuroStar is the high speed train that travels from Paris to London in 3 hours and goes under the English channel. Cool!! It takes about 20 minutes to travel through the tunnel. The weather in London is partly cloudy and comfortable. I haven't been to London in 10 years so I want to be a real tourist and see as many tourist sites as I can in 2 days. I was really excited when I exited the tube (the subway), looked up and saw Big Ben! I spent the rest of the day sightseeing in central London. Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Green Park, Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Soho and Oxford Circus. Whew. What a day! The next day, Tuesday, was beautiful. I got an early start. I spent more time at Westminster Abbey and then spent a good part of the day at the Tower of London. What an amazing place! There is so much history there. After the Tower of London I visited St Paul's Cathedral, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square and finally Piccadilly Circus again. Another nice day. To finish off the day I had a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant.

On Wednesday I was up at 5:30 am to catch the EuroStar back to the continent. I had to take the EuroStar to Brussels and then ride a normal train from Brussels to Rotterdam. There was some kind of problem with the trains to Holland and I had to go to a different station in Brussels in order to get my train to Rotterdam. I finally arrived in Rotterdam about 2:30 in the afternoon where I was met by my good friend Saxwin and his girlfriend Angela.

Saxwin and Angela are wonderful people and very good friends. They invited me to stay with them while I was in Holland. After over a week in hostels, a 'real' bed was just what I needed! Saxwin and I have known each other for over 10 years. We used to work together and at one point we spent three weeks in Europe teaching classes in how to use a CAD software package (Versacad). It was a beautiful day in Rotterdam so we took a boat cruise of the harbor, followed by a nice dinner overlooking the water. They just bought a new house and after dinner we went to check it out. It's in a nice quiet residential area, close to the ocean, sand dunes and woods. We ended the evening with a fire in their back yard, sipping wine and chatting.

Right now I'm with Saxwin at his work. We're in Delft, which is very close to The Hague where I was working when I was here in 1998/99. I've been able to spend hours on the computer catching up on email and updating my web page.

On Friday I'm leaving to visit my friend Anna in Dusseldorf Germany. We're going to spend the weekend in Hannover at Expo 2000. I can't wait!

I'm still not sure exactly what I want to do next week. I was planning to visit Prague and/or Berlin. I will probably go to at least one of those cities. I also might return to Holland to spend some more time with Saxwin and Angela. We'll see. I leave from Paris, so I'll spend a day or two there before flying back.