visited 15 states (6.66%)
Create your own visited map of The World
On our trip through Central America, I got to add 6 countries to my map of visited countries. It’s too bad not all of them have a stamp representation in my passport.
I’ve actually been to more countries that this, but I didn’t spend the night, so they don’t count. I’ve been to France numerous times when I lived in Germany, and I also drove through Austria. They’ll be added to the list sometime soon through.

We left the flat and headed to Monument station, and walked across London Bridge. Now I had to have a picture of London bridge, because many people think that Tower Bridge (the unmistakable bridge in London) is actually London Bridge.

But it’s not. London Bridge is rather boring and unimpressive from a comparative perspective.

We walked across the bridge so that we could get to Borough Market, because we heard that it would be a really cool and authentic market in London.
We are so glad we went. Outside of being a really neat market, they were also having some sort of Spain celebration all weekend long, which meant that I got to have one of my favorite foods… samples!

In addition to the video I have of a lobster walking around on ice – soon to be someone’s dinner (coming soon), we also got to try a tasty Italian liquor, lots of different kinds of jams and cheeses, and a few different kinds of olives. We bought a small container of these olives for the low, low price of 3 pounds (Like $6.25. Have we mentioned that London is expensive?)
We also bought a smallish loaf of sun-dried tomato foccacia bread for 2 pounds ($4.20), a smaller piece of yummy cheese for 3 pounds, and some meat for about 2 pounds. Total cost for cold sandwiches (yummy sandwiches but not super-impressive food…) later in the day? More than $20. (I believe we’ve mentioned that London is expensive, right?)
From the really cool Borough market, we walked along the river to the bridge you will think is more impressive, Tower Bridge.

One interesting thing we learned about Tower bridge is that when it was originally built, it created so much water backup that it actually caused the river to freeze in the winter. The original bridge stood for about 100 years, and then turned into the more recent design which is an impressive bridge, but doesn’t back up the river enough to make it freeze solid.

We toured the Tower of London, which really was amazingly impressive. We’ve got a bunch of pictures to put up of this location, but here’s one of our favorites.

When you go to the Tower of London, depending on what kinds of sightseeing you like to do, give yourself at least half a day. Take the main tour and then there are others you can do as well, especially if you get there earlier in the day. The history of the location goes back to things that the Romans built here in the 200′s and 300′s, and the current tower has been there (as a palace rather than a prison) for a LONG time.

You can get your own Tower of London history at Wikipedia, if you’re interested in all the amazing details, but we really recommend at least four hours, if not a whole day, for this really neat place.

(And for all the women, or anyone else interested in gold and diamonds, the royal crown jewels are housed at the tower as well, and they’re worthwhile seeing.)

After the tour of the Tower, done by one of the The Yeoman Warders of the tower, (otherwise known as Beefeaters – though history doesn’t tell us why they got that name), Carrie and I sat by the river and ate our sandwiches. The day was cool enough that the meat and cheese stayed cold while we carried it with us, and our sandwiches were quite delicious.

After a walk to the opposite side of the tower, we went into a local pub to warm up and get some of the famous London Fish ‘n’ Chips (sans fish) as well as a taste tester of some local ales.

After that, we went on the “official” Jack the Ripper tour of London.

Now if someone sells you on an “official” Jack the Ripper Tour, you might be a little wary if they aren’t actually coming across as a good storyteller. Our tour guide was more fact based than story based, which was a bit hard to deal with for two hours of a cold walking tour that could have been told in such great story fashion.

There we are, in the heart of where the whole thing happened, and our “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour” only took us to the sites of two the murders, while there were actually five locations for killings attributed to Jack the Ripper. (The tour would have been better if it had followed a storyline of some sort.)

I’ll let Carrie comment on this more if she wants to, as she actually had a really great tour guide her first time in London, when she took the unofficial tour.

So we left London by staying up all night and catching a 3:00AM taxi to catch a 3:30AM bus. This is because we had a 6AM flight from London Stansted airport, and the London underground runs to Heathrow, but not Stansted. (Just for anyone’s future reference, London has four major airports – Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, and Stansted). There is a train that goes to Stansted (Stansted Express), but not that early in the morning, so in order to catch our flight, we arranged for transportation to London-Stansted on a bus.

And our leaving London is where I’ll leave you for this rather long (but hopefully interesting) post.

Here’s the map of where walked today (with the exception of the walking inside the tower (for at least an hour), and the Jack the Ripper tour, which was an additional 2 hours of walking around various locations in London).

Carrie’s addition to this post regarding Jack the Ripper:

When I was in London in January 2003, we found a flyer for a Jack the Ripper walking tour.   We decided to go, as it was only £3 and we only had to pay if we really liked the tour.

Since none of us had any money at the time, we thought that that sounded like a good idea.  Our guide then was an amazing storyteller.  It was what he did for a living being one of the Yeoman at the Tower of London.  He guided us through the places where Jack the Ripper walked, stalked, and killed his victims (in sequential order).

As we walked, he told us little tidbits about London itself, about the area of town we were in at the time, and about Jack the Ripper himself (of course).  After a 3 hour walk that ended sometime after 10:30pm, I paid the £3 because I’d had a great time.  I learned a lot; I was very entertained, and felt like I had seen a lot.  I had also been given the guide’s guess as to who Jack really was, backed up by his “facts” and was completely convinced.  It was a wonderful time.  It was so wonderful in fact, that I wanted Jonathan to experience it as well.

While searching online for a Jack the Ripper walking tour in London, I came across the London Walks website (and a few others of course).  I couldn’t find one from the tour I’d taken before, so I thought we’d go on the London Walks version.  We met Judith at the designated area (along with about 60 other people), paid our £5, and were ready to go.  Thankfully, they split the mass of people into two groups.  I knew right away that Judith was more academically oriented than my previous beefeater guide, but I was hopeful that she would be a good storyteller as well.  After the first stop, Jonathan mentioned that he felt our guide wasn’t really telling us a story.  We hoped it would get better.  Unfortunately, it didn’t.   Judith took us to only two of the actual locations, and didn’t tell us stories.  She talked.  She talked as though reading a text book to us out of order.  The very last stop of the tour lasted for 20 minutes where she told us who might and who wasn’t actually Jack the Ripper.  The problem was that she was just giving facts without having a way for her audience to relate the facts to what we’d just been told on our walk.

If you go to London, I highly recommend taking a Jack the Ripper walking tour.  However, I am afraid that I cannot recommend that you take the one lead by Judith with London Walks.  While she is a very nice person, and full of information, she wasn’t able to capture the audience’s undivided attention.

Carrie and I were both feeling like we were done with Britain and ready to move on to our next destination.
Not that London’s not completely incredible… because it is, and we’ve really enjoyed our time here.
But after visiting the Tate Modern Museum (not that impressive for us), and having a really cool dinner last night (at Dans le Noir – VERY cool!), and meeting some really cool Londoners (thanks for the great time Suzanne and Dai),

and knowing that we’re still slated for the Tower of London and the Jack the Ripper tour…
(is that enough prefacing for you?)
we were kind of feeling a bit done with London.
That is…
until we got out of London.
Which is what we did today, and now we just want to have a car here and drive all over the UK finding cool things to see. (Except that driving here is a bit nerve-wracking!)
Today, we went to the most amazing castle either one of us has ever been to… Windsor Castle.
I could bore you with a bunch of stats and figures about the castle, but then you’re bound to be bored with this site and leave.
Suffice it to say that if you like history, and you like artchitecture, and you like art, and/or anything about the royal family (or, if you just want to be amazed by how extravagant royalty can be), then you must carve out more than an hour for visiting Windsor castle, because there’s just no way it can be covered in such a short visit.
Just plan a whole day. It’s worth it.
So, let’s throw in a picture or two here, so you can see a bit of what we’re talking about.
We rented a car today.

…which meant getting up a little earlier than usual and getting to Heathrow airport on the Underground (Subway).
So we got a little Peugot.
And while some people may think that it’s difficult to drive on the other side of the road (coming from the US to England), it’s really not that difficult at all.
Here are the driving instructions they don’t give you at the car rental place:
1. Forget EVERYTHING you learned about driving in the US;
2. Let go of everything your intuition tells you to do;
3. Don’t drive the car on the side of the road you think you should be on.
Do these things and you will do just great driving through the English countryside.
End of manual.
Or, you can attempt to drive like we do in most parts of the world, and end up with a nerve-wracked experience.
(Incidentally, we chose the second option – sort of by default?)

I got the hang of the driving after a bit, although it wasn’t without its perils stories to follow at some later date.
So, the castle just blew our minds, and we really wished for more time here, but here are a couple of pictures.

Here’s a shot through the castle moat – pretty cool that they’ve converted it into a nice garden and fountain

A really cool courtyard in the upper part of the 13 acre grounds of the castle.

So, after leaving ourselves just enough time to really want to come back to Windsor, we decided to drive to one of the world’s most visited locations.
Stonehenge
It’s really a big pile of rocks. But one of the cool things about visiting Stonehenge is that the place gives off a really cool kind of peaceful feeling and is a really great experience.
Our tip for this location is to get the guided audio tour. It really explains everything and… best of all… it’s free! (You don’t see anything that’s free in England.)
So, this is us

And this is the pile of really neat rocks.

(This is one of our favorite pictures of the trip so far.)
And then, we debated. We knew there was this really cool cathedral in Salisbury, but it meant driving further away, again on the other side of the road… (and driving back in the dark on the London highways)
We decided to go, and we are VERY glad we did.
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury is a neat little town, and the cathedral there is AMAZING! If you get a chance, go see it.
You’ll be able to see it from some distance away…

And here’s the inside.

The nighttime drive back was easier than the rest of the drive, although it did involve a 2 minor mishaps in two different roundabouts and a wrong turn (which left us on the wrong side of the street), but all’s well that ends well, and so hopefully we’re leaving you feeling well.
We sure are feeling great!
Thank-you for following our travels and stay tuned for more!

When Jonathan returned from LA, he was really excited to take me to a few things in London. He learned about the cheese market at Borough Market (where we’re going tomorrow), and this restaurant he wanted to go to. Almost the first thing that Jonathan did was make reservations for this restaurant.
He wanted it to be a surprise. Was it ever! The ambiance of the restaurant was incredible. Words cannot describe what it was like in there. So, we took a picure of what the inside looks like (we’re not supposed to, so don’t tell anyone).
Click here to see it.
Seriously, that is exactly what it was like. Click to read more about it… (WARNING: if you want to go to this restaurant, what follows does contain spoilers.)
Both Carrie and Jonathan recommend that if you’re ever in Paris or London that you give this a try. It’s amazing what you learn about others, and (more importantly) about yourself.

The name of the restaurant is Dans le Noir. The concept is that you are given a taste of what it would be like to be blind.
Here’s how it works: as you walk into the restaurant, you are asked what kind of meal you would like. You have four choices: White = you can eat anything, Red = no fish, shellfish, or seafood, Blue = no meat at all (but seafood is ok), and Green = vegetarian. Then you are offered the choices of two or three courses. We each had two courses – Jonathan white (main and dessert), Carrie green (starter and main).
Then you are called by name and arranged in a single file line. You are asked to put your hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you. Then everyone is led through a dark tunnel into the dining room where everything is pitch black.
Picture the darkest room you have ever been in. Now make it so dark that there is literally not a speck of light anywhere to be seen. It’s so dark in fact that it is almost lighter when you close your eyes (but not quite). Now, imagine that you have to eat a meal in this room, including pouring your own drinks, holding conversations with complete strangers, and trying not to get too many empty forkfulls of food into your mouth (or spilling too much down your shirt).
Now think about how you would clink glasses during a toast.
How do you cut your food?
How do you pass your neighbor the basket of bread without bonking them in the head?
Pour your friend some wine?
How well do you think you could do?
What about your waiter?
How do you think (s)he would do serving you your meal in absolute darkness? How does he know where you are when he hands you a plate, or serves you in a room where no one can see a thing?
The answer: he’s blind.
That’s the entire concept behind Dans le Noir — that those who dine there are able to have a glimpse into what it might be like to be blind, a tiny moment where the diner can actually understand exactly what they take for granted every moment of their lives, and can have a small glimpse into what it might be like.
Dans le Noir is an absolutely amazing experience, both “politically” and self-exploratorally. Following your meal, after being escorted back to the enrance which is lighted, but dimly, you are then asked to guess what you ate. (And, for those of you keeping score…Jonathan knew what the side dish of his main was, and his dessert, but didn’t know the main dish itself. Carrie knew her starter, but nothing of her main. Have you every heard of “funky cous cous” or an “Ethiopian wrap”? She hadn’t either.)
Both Carrie and Jonathan recommend that if you’re ever in Paris or London (or Moscow) that you give Dans le Noir a try. It’s amazing what you learn about others, and (more importantly) about yourself.
(Tell them Carrie and Jonathan sent you!)

I just got back from Los Angeles yesterday… or the day before, depending what time zone you live in.
In any case, I’ve been (back) here since Sunday.
I think Carrie is happy to have me back (really happy!), but I also think she enjoyed her time here in London as well.
The Altitude conference I went to in Los Angeles was truly amazing, and is the start of something that I feel will be a big movement for business in America… but I’ll post about that on the Strive4impact blog at some point in the nearer future.
We are really…

…enjoying an awesome time here in London
So far, we’ve seen a lot of the more touristy things associated with London.
Carrie has been writing reviews of the restaurants we’ve eaten at on her CarriesClassics.com web site.
(Click the link to read her reviews – opens in new window.)
Westminster Abbey
We really liked Westminster Abbey, but to be honest, we were expecting more of a church and less of a monument. If you go to the abbey expecting a church, you might be a little disappointed, as it’s more of a tribute to the heroes who died serving England, and those who glorified England with their life’s work, than a place of worship. It’s still a fascinating and cool place to be, just not quite what we expected.
Houses of Parliament and Big Ben
Not really much to see here, other than a really nice walk by the river Thames (great thing for a honeymooning couple – that’s us!) and some really great photo ops.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral
If you’ve never seen a big European Cathedral, this is one place you simply must visit.
It’s mind-bogglingly huge. It’s the mother church of the Church of England, and definitely left us with the feeling that we’d been some place that would be difficult to describe. We actually made it to the cathedral while there was a service going on, so we didn’t have to pay to get in. (If you want to go for a service, you won’t need to pay either. (Otherwise, it’s like $20. But probably still worth it, depending on what kind of sightseeing you like to do.) Suffice it to say that if you can, visit Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
Since our time is short here at this point (we leave for Germany on Friday morning), we’ve decided not to go to Scotland or Ireland.
It’s a sad decision, but we know we’ll see these beautiful countries at a later date, so we’re saving them for a “northern Europe” trip at some point in the future.
So, with our remaining three days in London, we’ll be seeing:
The Tower of London
The Tower Bridge (the famous bridge most people mistake for London Bridge)
Stonehenge
Windsor Castle
The Tate Modern museum
Borough Market (one of London’s more famous markets, but only open on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday), so we’ll go here Thursday
And the Jack the Ripper tour
So, stay tuned for pictures of these locations.
Thanks for following along with us as we travel around London!

Once again, we want to thank all of you for helping to make our wedding so special, either by your attendance, or by all the things you did to make our wedding just perfect. Thank-you so much!
So… All of our wedding pictures are online. There is a fun slideshow (put together by Tom) at http://www.tomkphoto.com/0709cjk/slideshow/ and the gallery of photos is available at http://www.tomkphoto.com/0709cjk/gallery/.
Our first couple of days in London have been fabulous. We have an awesome flat where we are staying near the South Kensington underground (tube, subway, etc.) station. Thanks so much Dan and Jane! This place rocks.
So far we have seen: Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives; Big Ben and the houses of Parliment; Westminster Abbey; Picadilly Circus (not really a circus, it’s the Times Square of London); “The Merchant of Venice” performed in The Globe Theatre (awesome); Trafalgar Square; Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens; Kensington Palace (Princess Diana’s favorite home); and St. Paul’s Cathedral (amazing – the main church of the Church of England).
That’s a “quick” run down of what we’ve seen so far. We’ll post detailed thoughts and feelings on some of these places when we do a more detailed post. Here are a few picture highlights (clicking on the smaller pictures will show you the larger version)

Parilament and London at Dusk

Jonathan with the royal horse guard

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey (back)

Carrie and Jonathan at The Globe Theatre (Shakespeare’s theatre)

A lovely afternoon in Hyde Park