Stratford, Warwick, and Bruno

Adam and I spent last weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon, which I was very excited about because I always loved my English Literature classes, and was about to be surrounded by all things Shakespeare. We had such a good time. The weather was perfect all weekend, and we stayed in a hotel that was originally an old Tudor-style home, so the walls were all crooked and lumpy... so charming.

We saw Shakespeare's birthplace and grave, and also Anne Hathaway's (not the actress) childhood home. The homes were so interesting to go through because they have so much of the original furniture, and the guides there are so informative on how they used all the furniture and just generally kept house, which I love learning about. For example, I learned where the word 'threshold' comes from! Don't worry, I won't bore you with that here. But feel free to ask any time if you like that kind of thing as much as me!

Shakespeare's home

Adam falling in the wildflowers

Anne Hathaway's cottage

Shakespeare's burial place

THE grave

We also spent a day in Warwick, a town right next to Stratford and home to Warwick Castle. We didn't really know much about the castle going into it, except that it is described as "the ultimate castle experience." So naturally Adam was very excited because he loves castles as much as I do old furniture and cooking utensils. As it turns out, Warwick really is how you imagine an old castle looking... and they have also turned it into a theme park! They had an archer shooting apples from far away, the world's largest trebuchet (basically a slingshot) which can shoot fireballs, a bunch of eagles and peacocks, wax figures in every room... and etc. So, when we walked in and realized we'd forgotten the kids that everyone else brought with them we thought, well okay, today we are the kids! We had fun getting into all the different attractions, plus the castle grounds are beautiful, and the weather was perfect, so we spent a lot of the day napping on the lawn. It was nice.

The archer

The world's biggest slingshot/trebuchet

He's such a trooper

After our wonderful weekend, the rest of the week was pretty lowkey with one exception: Bruno. One of the fun things about living in a big city is movie premiers. This is something that up until Wednesday, I'd not really taken advantage of. However on that day, I was out with my friend, Andrea, when her husband called to remind us that the "Bruno" premier was that evening. This is Sacha Baron Cohen's follow up character to Borat. For those readers of a different generation that don't know who that is, basically he is a comedian that creates these bizarre characters that develop a huge cult following, and lead to movies based on these characters where he makes the movie-watcher as uncomfortable as possible by performing wildly inappropriate (and admittedly often funny) acts in as little clothing as possible.

SO, back to the phone call... we all decided that this could be a really fun premier to go to if only for the production value, I mean this guy is always known to deliver. Plus, Andrea loves all thing celebrity as much, if not more, than I do, and seeing them live is always so much fun! So Andrea and I went to save places on the front of the red carpet, where we ended up standing for 3 straight hours with a group of EXCITED teenagers on one side, and a guy who'd never heard of deodorant on the other side. And after we'd been there for 10 minutes, a cold wind suddenly came through, which can only lead to one thing: rain. So we stood in the cold rain for 3 hours with the above mentioned people. Not really the glamour we'd expected. We also realized that this movie only has one character, so the red carpet wouldn't be full of a star-studded cast... just a bunch of famous Brits... none of which we really know.

After all that waiting, we did see his big entrance (not really as grand as we'd hoped for) and... wait for it... I touched his HAND! And we saw his adorable famous actress wife, but right before she got to where we were standing, she was just too cold and simply waved us and said bye. So sad.

Since we weren't planning on going to the premier, neither of us had a camera. So here's a picture I found on the internet. I hope it shows up on your computer because I don't really know what to do when it comes to stealing other people's photos.

The man we stood in the rain for

Also, if you're really bored right now, the teenagers next to us were interviewed, which made us the cool people in the background standing awkwardly because we're not sure if we're in the shot or not... http://entertainment.ie/Movie/feature/bruno:-UK-Premiere-Videos/2/293.htm. If you watch that video, we're behind the very first and very last group interviewed.

So that's all the updates for now! My parents are currently packing up to join us here in London, and we'll also visit Scotland with them! Which reminds me, I didn't get to blog about Adam's parents' visit before I went home for the wedding, so I'll make my next blog all about parental visitation!

Anywayyy...

For those that read Adam's blog entry, I tried to tell him that the male readership is really at about 0, but, what can I say, he loves his soccer. So, I hope you found it interesting!

So we are officially back in London after such a good trip home. The jet lag is beginning to wear off, and we're finally getting energized to soak up as much of this city as possible in the 6 or so weeks we have left. I'm not gonna lie, it was a bit hard to get on the plane and leave everyone at home again. And once the plane landed in London and the pilot said it was "50 degrees with light rain" I may have wanted to cry. But then I walked into our flat where Adam was waiting on me, and I remembered that we actually have created a little home here. So that's my sappy thought for the day, just know that am excited to be here again.

It was so wonderful to see all of you! And the main event, the big wedding, was a blast. Anna looked beautiful as ever. That Ben is a lucky guy. And we are a very lucky family to get have him around!

We may not have a ton of time left, but we have a TON of events planned. So stay tuned for the conclusion to Adam and Kate in London!

The Rosamond girls. Although all of our names have now officially changed...

My guest-appearance on the topic of English Football - by Adam

Although I suspect the male readership of this blog is somewhat low, I have decided to make a cameo to discuss the topic of “football” (aka soccer).

One of the elements of sporting life that I find interesting about London is how much more popular football is than any other sport. In the US, you can really make a case for (American) football, basketball, or baseball being legitimate #1 sports. Or at least they are close. Not so in London, though. The margin between #1 sport and #2 sport is so large that I really can not even tell you what the #2 sport is – rugby, cricket, tennis, who knows?

A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Blake, Kate, and I went to a Premiership game featuring Chelsea vs. Blackburn. After the game, and after a season of watching football, I have a few observations about the sport:

1. The atmosphere at the games is pretty intense, but not quite as dangerous as I had hoped. Part of this might be explained by the fact that there are an incredible number of police officers (see photo above), including a solid ring of probably 300 police encircling the entire visiting fan section. One thing I found quite odd, though, is that beer is not allowed in the stands since in general Europe seems to be more alcohol-centric than the US. I asked a fellow fan about this and received a five minute rant on how London is an authoritarian government which treats its citizens like children and that he wants to move to Paris because he can park his bike on the sidewalks there. Strange.

Another slight difference from US sporting events is the massive amount of swearing. Not that US sporting events are immune from an irate fan screaming profanity, but at English football matches the swearing is neatly incorporated into songs which are chanted by the fans. One note if you plan to go to an English football game, you should learn these songs ahead of time because you won’t understand many words outside of the profanities which are communicated clearly. Also, it is interesting that many of these chants are to the tunes of children’s Bible songs, such as “Jesus loves the little children.”

2. Relegation is absolutely brilliant and incredible. The English Premier League consists of the top 20 English clubs. Beneath that is the Championship league, which consists of the next 20 best English clubs, much like a minor league. The brilliant element here is that at the end of every season the bottom three teams from the Premier League are “relegated” into the lower league and the top three teams from that league are promoted into the Premier League.

I find this genius, offering the potential to simultaneously solve many of our country’s greatest sports problems, such as throwing games to improve draft position, having teams that are perpetually horrible, and the BCS. Let me explain that last point. What if each BCS conference program aligned with a non-BCS conference and the bottom two schools in the BCS conference each year gets relegated? This would give schools like TCU a fighting chance and make more conference games much more interesting, plus it would address those who accuse the BCS of being an anti-competitive monopoly. And it just seems fairer.

One element of the Premier League that needs some work, though, is that there is no playoff. There are various other tournament type set-ups throughout the year, but the Premier League itself is decided by the regular season. Seems lame. They also really need to get the tie-breaker situation in tournaments sorted. I saw Chelsea play Barcelona, the best offensive team in Europe, on the road and shut them out 0-0 and then play them to 1-1 draw at home only to get denied a chance to play in the Champions League Finals. The tie-breaker is based on where the goal was scored (whether home or away). I am not a Chelsea fan and I even felt like I had been robbed. Two tie games and you declare a winner!?!?!? I was literally shocked.

3. Finally, I feel like I should offer a brief endorsement of European football as a game. I typically only watch soccer in the US during the World Cup, which I suspect still places me somewhere in the top 10% of soccer fans nationally. But now that I have invested some time watching more games, I have really begun to appreciate it. It has always seemed a bit odd that the US so vehemently disagrees with the rest of the world on this point.

A couple of concluding notes. One is that I am sure Kate (and others) will make fun of me for using the term “football” in place of “soccer” within this post. But I don’t care, that’s what they call it here. The second is that I recognize this has turned into a very lengthy post, which is why I have labelled the next section on how Kate and I picked our teams to support as a “Sidebar” to create a more “optional” sounding feel about it. But if you’ve already read until this point…

SIDEBAR: How we determined our Premiership loyalties

It was the English passion for football that led Kate and I, almost as soon as we arrived, to begin discussing our football allegiances. (This is not dissimilar to the process that Kate and I went through when we decided to do school in Chicago and quickly decided to become avid Cubs fans.) We naturally began our research efforts by speaking to the locals. Unfortunately we quickly realized that there were a lot of differing opinions, each articulated with a certain matter-of-factness that made it difficult to really believe much of what we heard.

I think I (predictably) took the decision of which Premiership team to support to somewhat of a different level than Kate. I say that because Kate had pretty much made her decision of which team to support within the first few weeks of being here. Her logic was basically that, of the people we spoke with, she seemed to like Liverpool fans the best. Plus, she likes the accent of people from Liverpool. I don’t think it hurt that Liverpool also has a really classy looking uniform.

But I was still undecided. First of all I was torn on how good of a team I should select. For the past several years, basically the same 4 Premiership teams have placed at the top of the league. Picking one of these teams would make me somewhat of a bandwagon fan, but not picking one of these teams would pretty much guarantee that I would never get to follow a contender and that I would never see the team play once I went back to the US (as most games played in the US only involve the top clubs). My other consideration is that I preferred to support a local London team (5 of the 20 Premiership teams are from London) because I felt that was most defensible as a basis for loyalty.

In came Bill Simmons from ESPN. For anyone interested in picking a Premiership team, I highly recommend reading his informative article on the subject: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060719. His material is somewhat dated and I did not end up agreeing with his choice, but he makes some good points which helped along the way.

In the end, I have decided to become an Arsenal fan. They are London based (defensible), they are a top 4 team (contenders) but at the bottom of the top 4 right now (not too bandwagony), they play an aggressive offensive style (more fun), and have one of the lowest payrolls but compensate with a genius coach and strong team play (which makes them likable). Their nickname is also the “Gunners” which sounds cool.

Cousin Blake and Kate being Chelsea "hooligans"

Siena and Pisa

On our last day in Italy we took the bus from Florence to Siena, and because our flight was actually leaving from Pisa and not Florence, as it claimed (thank you very much Ryanair), we were able to to see the leaning tower! So that was kind of a bonus we weren't expecting, but it did put us on a train or bus for a good portion of our last day in Italy.

Siena neighborhoods

The extremely hilly streets of Siena. I expected excellently toned legs after a day there. (Didn't happen, although I was quite sore.)

The main piazza in Siena

Adam made fun of me for adding this picture here, but I love it. This is a fountain in the main piazza, and the bird is giving the lion a kiss!

The Candyland church in Siena

Inside the Candyland church

Siena and the surrounding countryside

Us and Italy

Pisa

There it is...

Just in case someone thought we weren't tourists.

It really leans a lot more than I expected!

And we finished our Italian trip with Gelato on the river at sunset. The perfect ending to the perfect trip!

Florence

After spending a couple of days in Rome we took a train to Florence. We stayed in a little boutique hotel run by the nicest Italian couple. If you're ever in Florence we definitely recommend staying there. It was all just perfect and felt like we were in the Italian countryside.

We spent one day wondering around Florence, and the next day we went out to Siena. We really didn't have any exciting adventures to tell about. It was all just very relaxing and full of good food and wine!



Windblown in a piazza

Seeing David live was way more exciting than I thought it would be. He's so much bigger than I ever imagined. It really turned out to be a highlight from Florence for us, so I had just to had to ignore the angry Italian woman yelling "NO!" at anyone holding a camera and snap one. Such a rebel...

Famous gold doors... can't exactly remember the name, but apparently these started the whole Renaissance.

The Duomo. Or as like to call it, the church in Candyland.

Florence at dusk

Another Candyland church

Ponte Vecchio and the Arno River

Florence

Italy... finally!

Sorry I've been such a lazy blogger! I really have no excuse. We took over 1,000 pictures in Italy, and I simply haven't wanted to go through them all to pick and chose the few I can share with you. But today I promised myself I would begin the daunting task, so here we go...

First of all, Italy was incredible! I wasn't sure if it would really live up to all the hype, or if I would be disappointed at all... I just really wasn't sure what to expect. But oh my gosh does it live up to the hype! I can't begin to describe just how perfect the trip was. It was nice to have 5 days there because it allowed us to slow down and enjoy each day much more like the Italians do.

We spent the first couple of days in Rome. I was kind of surprised at how much I really fell in love with Rome. I was looking forward to Florence much more, but Rome has a lot more to offer than just ruins, as it turns out! We had a great time wondering around all the different piazzas and finding quaint little neighborhoods with picture-perfect cafes. Of course we also saw the colosseum, the forum, and Vatican City as well. Since we were there over Easter it was very crowded, but still interesting to be around all that energy. I left Italy thinking I was Catholic.

Panoramic of the forum and other ruins, colosseum in background

Old stuff

In front of colosseum

In Vatican City

This is actually a public water fountain. For drinking. We thought it was weird/gross enough to take a picture of

The Pantheon

Looking over one of the main piazzas in Rome

Trevi Fountain

I wasn't leaving Italy until I had this shot

Typical street at night. So perfect!

Probably my most favorite place on Earth. It was this amazing park where the grass is actually as soft as it looks... The perfect place for a gelato break!

Okay, so that was Rome. I wish I could show you more of the pictures we took. We really worked on our photography skills over this trip, and I do believe we really have some cool photos to take away from it. Unfortunately in the short selection I have to pick for you I leave out all our artsy-fartsy attempts. Don't worry, when I get home I force you all to spend 10 hours going through the 6 months worth of pictures we'll have!

So I have now been at Whole Foods for 4 hours just uploading these few pictures. So for now I will leave it at that and put the rest of the pictures in the next post.