Back from Vacay

If anyone's still bothering to check this thing, I'm back. I was in England for 2 weeks, then had a jam-packed weekend and have been sick the past few days, hence no blogging.

khlkh

So, I went to England (seems like ages ago now) and came upon some serious problems at immigration. Why people pick on me at UK customs quite often, a person who always follows rules, is still beyond my comprehension. I won't go into this any further because the situation makes my blood boil, but let's just say (as Dave and Jay recommended) maybe the next time I plan to visit England, perhaps I should go to Pakistan first, train with Al Qaeda and then go straight to England (maybe pop a few kids out too and claim benefits from the government as well) and that should definitely allow me entry.

khlkh

I didn't do anything much during the daytime when I was there; I met a few friends during the days which was nice - helped Laura pack up her kitchen, saw Shiraz on his lunch break, went shopping with Joy, spent a few days with Ana, went out with Liz and Graham, met Zoe and Ben for lunch.

khlkh

Are they playing "Something 4 the Weekend" in a Sears commerical? I swear I just heard that.

khlkh

Anyways, on the Saturday Dave and I went to Crystal Palace because I had a strange obsession with going to the Dinosaur Park there. I didn't know much about it, just that Time Out London said it's one of the 100 things you should do in the city. I know I'm weird but I was really excited to finally get up close to the satellite tower. This thing to me is almost equivalent to the Eiffel Tower, you can see it from everywhere elevated (well, that mostly means the Eye) but it fascinates me nonetheless. I had to take some tourist pictures:

I can't remember if the dinosaurs in the park were built in the 1850s or if they were built as based on what scientists thought they looked like in the 1850s. Anyways it was basically like a zoo but with fake animals and dinosaurs, really weird.

That night I went out in Camden to Edinboro Castle (the beergarden is great at night, didn't even realize) and then headed to Underworld. Here are some photos:

Marc and Andy Ben, Me, Dan Dan, Alex Dave and Me Joy and Andi

My first Monday there Dave and I planned to go to Wales to finally do the hot air balloon ride which he had gotten me for my birthday (we tried this in September in Bath but weather conditions prevented it.) We booked a bed and breakfast in the Wye Valley which shouldn't have been too hard to get to. Unfortunately there was massive flooding on the route so we ended up taking a train from London to Cheltenham Spa, then a train to Bristol, then a train to Newport (we walked around for a bit and Gareth was right - it's soooo ghetto! It took a good while just to find a normal looking person to ask directions from. Definitely one of those places where you don't look people directly in the eye.) Then we took the train to Chepstow, walked around there and got the bus to Tintern where our hotel was. In between all of this transporting we found out the balloon ride was cancelled again! We booked another one for the next evening in some place called Westinbert and stayed in the B&B pub eating and drinking for the whole night (there was nowhere else to go in the village except other B&Bs.)

This was our hotel: The valley was beautiful

Ye olde abbey

On the way back the next day, we took the bus to Chepstow, then assumed we'd figure out how to get to Westinbert at that station, but there was no ticket office. I had no idea where to go, it totally felt like I was on the Amezing Race. We went to Newport and they told us to go to Swindon. We went there and hung out for 3 hours until we found out that the balloon ride was cancelled once again. We headed back to London with meat and pie recipe books in tow and made the yummiest pie the next day. Check out our baby:

That Friday night, we met Liz and Graham at a comedy club in Bethnal Green. I have never been to BG before, esp. to this random comedy club, which made it a really strange coincidence that we bumped into Pablo, a guy Liz went to high school with and we both went to Binghamton with. Additionally, we found out he's doing a PhD in Japan and was just in London visiting a friend for the weekend. SO RANDOM!!! They had karaoke after the comedy club and we seemed to be the only people to keep going up. Liz and I sang "Dress You Up" by Madonna. The screen kept scrambling and we didn't know all the words, this is quite funny on video but if Liz ever saw that I'd posted it she'd kill me so forget that.On the Saturday we went to Dave's parents' house. His niece and nephew just got a psycho kitten that likes to attack you if you're wearing socks, so cute!

We set out on Sunday once again to try the balloon ride (in Bath.) We made it in great time (3 1/2 hours driving) and couldn't believe our ears when the recorded message confirmed that we would in fact be flying that evening. I was still skeptical until the moment we actually took off.

The ballooning experience was overall amazing. We didn't realize we'd be a part of the actual set-up and breakdown as well (my part of the set-up being watching and taking photos, but thumbs up to Dave for handling the crown of the balloon.) The balloon is laid out on the park lawn, the basket is set on it's side (and roped to a car to hold it down), and they blow it up by using two fans blowing cold air into it. Not until the end do they set the flame to stand it up.

Before the Operation Another Balloon Ready To GoOur Guide Gavin

Taking off was the scariest part for me. Gavin was yelling for us to jump into the balloon, the ones who weren't scared to go first. I was so nervous because the basket was hopping around (even though it was still tied to the car.) The basket held 16 of us and the guide, it was divided into 4 compartments with a bench and ropes to hold onto (no seatbelts.) We sat, held on, and took off, literally a minute later we were already high up in the air and allowed to stand.

Bye-Bye Bath Royal Crescent We saw jumping deer, heard cows mooing, and saw people waving to us from belowWe were definitely up 2,000 feet but we might have gone higher Champagne ToastHill with the Most UFO Spottings in all of EnglandFamous White Pagan Horse (of Westbury - is that right?)After the landing we had to push the air out of the balloon and roll it up. It was seriously exhausting!!

The ride back was not as smooth as the ride there. We hit 3 diversions on the way (which gave us a nice double tour of Enfield) and after leaving Bath at around 10:30 pm, we got back to Dave's house in east Essex at 4:15 am. Needless to say, we were tired.

That was the bulk of my trip. Uploading those photos was exhausting, I'm going to bed now.