London and Beyond

We have a little catching up to do on the blog. We are now on our way to Oslo, after a mad dash in the airport. Small details matter; a flight to Oslo’s Rygge airport is not the same as a flight to Oslo’s Torp airport, even if on the same airline. But we did finally make it to our gate with even a minute or two to spare.

Our blog has been neglected over the last week because of our busy schedule. Good friends from Boise came to London and joined us for our five days there. We had a wonderful time, and the days flew by. There is a lot to see in London, and all of the kids (five with the two families) wanted to do more than we expected, so our down time was pretty much nonexistent. Even our new tradition of watching an episode of Lost every evening had to be suspended.

With that in mind, I will begin with our last days in Copan. When we left for Copan, I was not sure that there would really be five days worth of activites for us to do there, but it turned out not be an issue. By the end, I wished we had decided to spend more days there, though primarily so that we also could have made a side trip to Tikal and Antigua in Guatamala. It was a half day’s ride to Tikal, and the kids enjoyed the Copan ruins so much (Bjorn went there two separate days in addition to a day there in the museum) that we knew they would have loved Tikal, as well. Copan is a nice little town in it’s own right; nicely kept buildings, interesting architecture, and pretty decent food, all at a nice price.

From Copan, we headed back to San Pedro Sula to catch our flight to London. We decided to try to get there early in the day to go to a movie theater as a treat for the kids. Unfortunately, there was nothing playing there that we wanted to see, and it turned out that our hostel there was the worst place we have stayed on the trip. The room had no A/C, (not terribly unusual) but it’s fan brought to mind being at the airport and standing in front of a B52 bomber that was periodically revving it’s engines. On top of that, outside the window, which had no glass or screen, was a metal shield that had water continuously dripping onto it; something akin to Chinese water torture. We had to get up at 4:15 AM to catch our taxi to the airport, so even in the best of circumstances, it would have been a short night’s sleep. Given it wasn’t the best of circumstances, I was lucky if I managed to piece together even four hours of sleep. Knowing that I was not going to be getting much sleep the next night because it was an overnight flight to London made me concerned about what my first day in London was going to be like. Fortunately, after a two hour nap and a cup of coffee, I actually felt pretty good, and with a twelve hour sleep that night, I was in synch with London time, and felt well rested. The kids and Margit all did well, too. Maybe the key to adjusting to jet lag is having two bad nights of sleep beforehand.

On the way to London, we connected in Miami, with a five hour layover. It actually was kind of nice, because it allowed us to send off a package (Bjorn’s Panasonic camera that died after having it for less than two months), add some more books to our Nook e-readers, pick up more US dollars (very handy in many countries when you don’t want to have to change money at the end of a stay, as often merchants are only too happy to take US currency), and make some phone calls to businesses to try to straighten some things out.

Neither Margit and I had been to London in about 25-30 years. Still, it seemed to be what we remembered it to be, except for being a bit cleaner and more fixed up. It is an expensive place to visit, hence our short stay there, but many of the attractions are free, which certainly did help. Still, it is too important a place to skip on a tour around the world. The British Museum was probably the highlight for me, and I think most of the others. It has an amazing amount of artifacts from other ancient civilizations, including Egyptian temple columns, hieroglyphic carvings, statues, and burial tomb pieces, as well as the Elgin marbles, the beautiful carvings that once ringed the top of the Parthenon in Athens. (Incidentally, the younger kids were disappointed with the Elgin marbles because they were expecting a great set of the kind of marbles that you play with.) This was on top of the wonderful artifacts from the early Assyrian and Minoan civilizations. I was curious whether the museum would address the controversy over possessing other countries important heritage pieces, but they just ignored it. It was certainly nice to be able to see them in one place, and displayed so well, and one can certainly argue that if the British had not taken them, that they would have ended up in private collections or been allowed to deteriorate or be destroyed, but still, it seems wrong to have them in London rather than their place of origin. I know that the Greeks and Egyptians, and, I would guess, the Iraquis and Turks, think so. Other highlights included the Tower of London, and the London Eye, the huge “ferris wheel” that affords a great view of the city. The Tower of London is, contrary to our expectations and the name, not a tower, but rather a castle. Granted, there are some towers within the castle, but I still don’t know why it is the Tower of London instead of the Castle of London. Perhaps the name is catchier. It was particularly interesting because it is 1,000 years old, and was the original castle of the first king after the Norman conquest. It is not a beautiful castle, nor particularly imposing, though it may have been considered that when it was built. Additionally, it would have been cold, drafty, dark and smelly. I must say that I much prefer my own home and style of living than to what the English kings had. We also made it to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and the Natural History Museum. The latter two we did on the same day that we went to see Buckingham Palace, so things got a bit rushed, especially the Natural History Museum. There is a lot to see there, and we only saw a fraction of it. Unfortunately, it was so packed (it was a Sunday, and it is free), that we did not visit the dinosaur exhibit, the area we most wanted to see. We will be passing through London to connect with our flight to Cairo in November, and I think we will likely spend another day or two then, and go back and see some of the things we missed on this trip. I am hoping to get in a Dicken’s walking tour, or perhaps a Harry Potter tour during that visit, if possible, as well. As much as I was interested in doing those things on this trip, it didn’t quite rate with the other attractions.

But now it is on to Norway, our old ancestral home. My dad’s mother’s family and both sides of Margit’s family all came from Norway. This will my second trip to Norway, and Margit’s third, though Margit’s first trip was not very memorable, even though it lasted about eight months. She was born there. Her dad was there studying on a scholarship program. Margit’s mother, Ruth, will be joining us for our entire two weeks, as well. This will be Ruth’s seventh or eight visit, so she knows the ropes pretty well. She also speaks very good Norwegian, though given that nearly all Norwegians speak English, that is not as important as it is other countries.

Fram! Fram!

-Mitch