mind the gap | travel blog

looking back at february

Hi everyone!

Yes, we're still here!  It's been quite a busy month here in London.  We started the month with Michael's birthday and a family visit to the Royal Academy of Art for the David Hockney exhibit.

If you are here in London, this is a must see.  David Hockney is a master at landscape paintings and we were all in the mood for spring's long awaited arrival touring the exhibit.  Some of the works are just gigantic, with multiple large canvases put together to cover an entire wall of the gallery space. The exhibit also includes a large gallery of Hockney's iPad drawings enlarged to poster-sized prints...all done on the app "Brushes". They are absolutely amazing...and unbelievably realistic for digital creations.  I also just love how an artist in his 70's embraces modern technology...way to go, David!  We have been having fun with the Brushes app for about the last year now and it's great fun!  I especially like how the kids' creations are saved in a gallery within the app along with the ability to press a play button to see how each piece was created. 

Here is Julianna's rendition of a photo I took on the slopes of Tignes a few weeks ago...this one is aptly entitled "Ski Blizzard"

 

Speaking of skiing..we loved our visit to Tignes/Val d'Isere in France this February.  We started the week off with temperatures in the single digits...way too cold for my skiing taste!  Luckily, the weather improved as the week went on and the last three days we enjoyed a much more reasonable 30ish degree weather.  Wednesday brought on a big blizzard on the slopes and yes, Michael had us skiing down natural half-pipes with virtually zero visibility.  Here are a few snaps from the afternoon...

hmm, virtually no other skiers in sight...maybe that should have told us something!

 

and as the weather improved, so did our moods...

 

 

 

the kids finished off the week with a medals ceremony at the Club Med.  They were both pleased to find out they "graduated" to the next ski level...

 

and just because the party never stops for these kiddos, they both performed in the Friday evening kids show with over 100 other young skiers.  It's actually amazing they didn't collapse on the slopes on Saturday...

 

Oh wait, is that Julianna?  I think she did collapse!

The year of the Dragon

We have been keeping busy here in London with plenty of winter activities. The kids have been keeping up with tennis (and no joking, the lessons are outside...brrrr!). Evan continues to dedicate endless hours a week to his love of soccer.  He has a game this Saturday morning in Regent's Park and we will all be there to cheer him on...Go Hampstead (again...brrr, it's dipping down to freezing in the coming days)!  Julianna has been hard at work working on a fundraising project for the World Wildlife Fund and she is quite the animal activitist these days.  She actually asked me if she could sponsor the cost of a dog adoption for her birthday gift (that would be a dog adoption for another family, not ours.  We're still saving a new dog until our time abroad is over).

Michael headed to NY this past weekend and the kids and I took in the musical Shrek (what a great show) followed by dinner in the very decorated Chinatown. It's just amazing how many lanterns decorate the streets for the Chinese New Year festivities...Happy Year of the Dragon everyone!!

Sent from my iPhone

a look back at September..

I love using the Shakeit Photo ap on my iphone.  The photos come out with a dreamy quality and a great polaroid border (they even sound like a polaroid camera when the photos appear).  This past month I came across a photo-essay in a magazine called Intelligent Life and the photographer only used his iphone. The photos were taken in Cairo during the political uprising and the photographer wanted to be "under the radar", free to capture what was really happening in the streets without a giant camera in front of his face.  The photos were captivating and I was inspired to use my iphone to take more everyday photos our own day-to-day lives.  Here is what I have one month later...

 

We live just around the corner from this row of rental cycles and the kids are always jumping on them when we walk by.

Skyping with Nana...what did we all do before Skype?

a visit to the penguin beach exhibit at the London Zoo

this church is just a few minutes away from our house and we pass it often...it's just stunning and dates back from 1847

Julianna and friends from 4th grade Roman Day

a throw-back sign lisitng tube stations at the Maide Vale station (I wish they were all writen like this, the modern signs just do not have nearly as much character)

Michael at our favorite restaurant in Chinatown.  The staff actually noticed we were away for the summer and welcomed us back...

practicing the serve at Paddington Recreation Ground

A few shots of the Olympic Park in East London.  I had the chance to have a walking tour of the area this past month and check out the progress.  The first picture is the Olympic Stadium (would you believe this structure will be completely wrapped in fabric for the games). 

and the construction of an 377 ft obversation tower called "Orbit" and designed by Anish Kapoor. 

Evan and his "best girl" just happened to be dressed exactly the same one day before school...

the view of the back of Buckingham Palace.  Yes, I did get to finally see the inside of the palace this past month and view "The Dress" along with "The Shoes", "The Jewlery" and "The Cake"...I would have to say "The Cake" takes the cake!  It was amazing!

and a few from an absolutely gorgeous morning in Regent's Park.  It was 80 degrees last weekend!  Here is Evan hard at work at soccer practice

 

ok, that's all for now!  I'll have to work on getting in more shots in October...

 

Greetings from the Royal Wedding

Well, at least our view of the big event. We are watching the festivities on big-screen tv's from Lords Cricket Ground and the bride is just about to arrive...

 

Sent from my iPhone

Honestly, what do you do all day??

So....to try and answer the question.... I present you with exhibit A below...

A simple trip to the hardware store to pick up some Drano can be quite amusing.  Here I am, in the store and I need Drano...only I know they are not going to call it "Drano" here in the UK.  So, what is "Drano" really?  Sink un-stopper stuff??  After trying my best to ask for Drano with this winning description, I am presented with this...

really???? 

Ok, I am already dreading a future trip back to the store where I have to ask the 20-something young guy working at the store for some "Buster bathroom plughole unblocker"....p-leeease!  You try doing that without cracking up!

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

What will you do?

The kids love reading the messages on the shirts of these funny-looking characters seen all over the London bus and tube network. Now if only I could come up with something similar to positively influence our behavior at home...

Sent from my iPhone

Build-a-bear in Britian...

here are the results of yesterday's day off from school~ do they not look adorable??  Meet Woof-woof the Guard and Huddlestuff the "football" player from Liverpool.

 

The kids were given the day off school yesterday and this is pretty much all we did...all day!  Yes, with London in our backyard and endless museums to choose from (many of which offer free admission) my dear children wanted nothing more than going to the movies and a visit to build-a-bear.  Never mind the fact that is is available at just about any mall across America~this is all they wanted.  We did have a discussion about visiting the Tower of London in the morning (a great time to go with all the British schools still in session).  But, the reality of the day was everyone (including me) woke-up grumpy.  We headed out in the 40 degree rain to walk to the High street for two haircuts at the local toy store (ugh, I know you can all only guess why this is such a pain), then back home because we forgot the gift cards for build-a-bear.  At this point I decided to bag the museum and we headed out for lunch and the store (no movie...they are such a rip-off here...honestly, £12 for a kids' movie ticket?  In the middle of the day?  That's almost $20 each!  We'll have to see all the movies we can while back in the states this summer.)  The next time the kids ask for a movie, I've decided we'll try the entry-level seats for a West-end play such as Oliver.  They start at only £16...quite a deal compared to the movies!

Ok, so not all in London is in the ridiculously expensive category.  Julianna also picked up a few adorable new things at a UK store called Monsoon for spring.  I love their kids' designs (they have boys clothes as well) and the prices are very fair for London.  Look how cute these are...

Evan's class visits Anish Kapoor exhibit

Yes, I thought this was a little unusual when I first signed up for the field trip with Evan and 19 of his fellow 5 and 6-year-old peers from his K2 class.   For those of you that may not be familiar, Kapoor is the British artist that created Chicago's famous Millennium Park sculpture "Cloud Gate" (aka "the bean").

He recently had a major solo exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts just a quick bus ride away from our neighborhood.  What a great trip this turned out to be for the class!  The kids were given sketch books and were encouraged to talk about their impressions of the exhibit (and I was given the assignment to write all these cute descriptive phrases down in a journal while I kept track of 4 highly-energetic little gallery-goers...most definitely giving a whole to meaning to the word multitasking). 

Sadly, we were not allowed to take photos once we were inside the galleries but, believe me, this was absolutely adorable.  Here's a sampling of the exhibit and the view from just outside the Academy-

and photos from the exhibit website~ (you can only imagine the drawings they created...)

baby, it's dark outside!

Would you believe I snapped these photos via iphone today at 4:30 in the afternoon?  It starts to get dark here at about 3:30pm and is still dark when we get up at 7:00 am...and we are prepared for it to get worse as we get into December.  So think of us here in the dark when it's only lunchtime back home...

 

the notting hill carnival

Going way back to August here with a few photos from the Notting Hill Carnival...Europe's largest street festival.  The carnival is held every year during the end-of-summer bank holiday weekend (right around the same time as Labor Day) and celebrates Caribbean culture in London.  We were told that Saturday was "family day" so we decided to check it out (hmm, we're not entirely convinced after attending that it could actually be called "family day", but maybe the less crazy day of the weekend).  If you ever decide to go, be prepared for large crowds (hundreds of thousands of people visit each day) and high-volume/high energy parades.  The kids quickly caught-on to the fact that most kids were blowing whistles or horns (ughh, my ears are still ringing as I think back on all this...)  The streets of Notting Hill are completely transfomed for the festival and most shops and restaurants are closed and boarded-up as protection from the huge crowds of people.  The costumes in the parade were pretty amazing, and, of course, the music has an irrestiable beat...a fun way to spend our first bank holiday weekend!