September, 2006

A TRIP TO ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND TO VISIT MAYA

We're going to jump right into it. You see we took a bunch of pictures the first day, but the camera memory chip failed and we lost all that.

From Jackson we went through Detroit and then on to a large airport south of London, England named Gatwick. Our daughter, Maya, met us at the airport and helped us navigate onto the train for the short trip south to her flat in Brighton. At the depot in Brighton, we met Tom, her boyfriend, but all those pictures were lost. Maya was just at the tail end of two years of school at the University of Sussex on a Marshall Scholarship.

Maya's flat is just beyond a stones throw from the English Channel. Between her flat and the water is a wonderful boardwalk that goes on for miles and miles and we walked it every day we were there. Here is where our first surviving pictures were taken.

There are two large build-outs into the sea in Brighton. This is the burned out one. It's been in this condition for over ten years. People keep talking about rebuilding it. It was a real ritzy deal back in its day. I'm sure Brits in the US would say they saw a lot of strange signs here. And we saw strange signs there. Here's one:

No. I can't tell you for sure what it is you are suppose to keep off. Actually you would do well to keep off the beach as well - at least in your bare feet. It's not exactly a sand beach. Take a look:

I know it's hard to get a sense of scale on this picture. If only there had been a pen or a dime on the beach. The biggest rocks in this picture are about the size of a baseball. Big stones. Now you should be ready for this. Charlotte loves to take pictures of pretty flowers and although I won't put hundreds here for you to get dizzy on, there will be at least a few. Here's your first one:

Oops. Another one made it:

Here Charlotte is about to embark on a swim across the English Channel. Oops. Too cold. Maybe another day.

Brighton is really a very fun city. Reminds many of San Francisco. Lots of colorful people on the streets. Lots of music. I was just blown away when we came around a corner and met the reincarnation of Jimmy Hendrix. I could have spend all day listening to him.

The first day in Brighton we also went to the Royal Pavilion. It looks very Indian. And the gardens behind it were pretty awesome too. But no you won't see any pictures of it. They all died on the bad memory card. But there was a sitar player in that garden that really created some tremendous atmosphere there.

More of those dang pretty flowers. (Believe me, you aren't seeing the half of it):

Now as we walked around Brighton, there were a lot of old buildings. Here is part of a church made mostly of rock:

Kinda strange shape of rock around the window. Charlotte thought the rock was kind of interesting, so here is a closeup:

Now here is a bit of a trippy sidewalk. In the wrong state of mind you could get quite lost here:

Maya lives on the fourth floor of her building. It's actually the fifth floor. They count different over here. This is the view out her kitchen window. You can tell right away it's not from around here:

Ok. Now we're going to look the other way. See the water between the buildings? That's the English Channel. I wonder if the French call it the French Channel. Now you do see something else in this picture. Scaffolding. They began building this scaffolding the minute they heard we arrived. There are billions of feet of pipe scaffolding holding up the buildings all over this island.

Now this next picture you are going to say, What the...??? This is pricy real estate. These are little beach garages along the board walk. People don't actually live in these things. They just keep a strange assortment of gear in these things and on a nice day you might see a bunch of these folks hanging out in a lawn chair by their door. I guess this wasn't a nice enough day.

This next pic makes some great statement. I'm just not sure what that statement is. Great though.

People!!! Maya, Charlotte, Luke. We're in a pub in Brighton. Charlotte and I are having bangers and mash. The vegetarian version. What is it? Well the bangers are vegetarian sausages and the mash is mashed potatoes floating as an island around a moat of gravy. Good stuff. A little embarrassed about the flower growing out of my beard.

OK. Look out. We're about to embark on the road trip. Here is the smart car we rented. It's the version with a back seat. The really smart car looks like only half a car. We got about 50 miles per gallon in this thing. It took some higher math to figure that out. You go to a petrol station and the price is advertised at about $1.00. Hold on. That is not a good deal here. That price is in pounds. And it is for just one liter. After some more higher math you have a new understanding of the phrase "Getting pounded". It works out to about $7.00 a gallon!!!

Continue on to The Road Trip to the Old Stones...