Trip to England

Occasionally, if I play my cards right, I write a paper that gets accepted for a conference and my work will pay to send me. My most recent adventure was a trip to Cambridge, England.

We figured Julie could come along and I would do work stuff Monday - Wednesday (half of Wednesday anyhow) and then we could retreat to London and behave as proper tourists. The plan worked quite well.


We left via Wichita, Dallas, (Chicago), Heathrow. Chicago is in parens because it wasn't a planned stop. We had to land and let the crew replace something that pressurizes the cabin which had previously broken. While they were at it they replaced the brakes which we had burned out from landing too heavy at Chicago. Not a great 13 hours I suppose (planned time was 9 hours), but we got to England all right in the end.


Here I am, with poster in tow, having arrived at the conference. Robinson College, Cambridge University. After landing, we had taken the underground (subway) from the airport to Kings Cross, then a proper train on to Cambridge.



Here Julie uses her computer mojo to get our internet working in our room at the college.


This was the view out our balcony. They were very good with bricks!


While I conferenced, Julie either went for runs or carried the camera around town. This was taken during a camera session. The subject is (I believe) the chapel at King's College - the oldest college at Cambridge.


Proper gentlemen would take their ladies out punting on the shallow river that drifted all over town. We, ah, never found time. It looked nice though.


At this point, I've finished work stuff for the evening and Julie's showing me around. This was a big, metal, grasshopper-driven clock.


Jumping ahead, we've now finished conferencing and taken a train back into London. Their big park, Hyde park, was about 4 blocks from our hotel. Here Julie negotiates with a goose.


Buckingham palace, with fence. The fence was quite pretty.


Here we've got a palace guard with his mighty hat. I was impressed to see the ceremonial guards outfitted with proper weapons (you can see characteristic rear magazine of the SA80). I had expected swords or muskets or something.


Next up was Westminster and Big Ben. We showed up right about at noon so we got to hear the chimes in all their glory.


I'm a bit of an Admiral Nelson fan, so we had to visit Trafalgar Square. He's the one on top of the column, surrounded by lions. The column and lions were quite big and they were very well climbed upon. It was an excellent monument. There was also a spectacular mote of interlocking roundabouts surrounding the square.


I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the latest incarnation of the historic London Bridge. Later we went to the much more famous-looking Tower Bridge.


Tower bridge was cool. It was right outside the Tower of London fortress where we visited the crown jewels (not pictured). We had lunch along the river then walked over the bridge.


Here I display my roguish daring as I defy the fountain just long enough for Julie to, compose the shot...zoom in and out...compose again...ponder...click. I was very lucky.


Now we're on the plane ready to head back to Chicago (on purpose this time). The return flight was nice. Uneventful. Lots of good stuff to watch on the seat back TVs.


We arrived back in Wichita at about sunset - around 1:00 in the morning London time. We were a bit tired so we headed over to Julie's parents' house to sleep it off before heading on to Manhattan.

And that's it. I've got more pictures, but to see them you'll have to bring me snacks!