Breakfast in our Covent Garden Loft

Champagne Johnny outdid himself this time. Great location and sweet digs.

We're in London!

Awesome apartment in Covent Garden. More pics to follow. Love this place.

Inside roosts

The upper inside walls of the pidgeon coop contained these roosts. Commonly used in small numbers in many barns this was a colossal community effort at mass egg production. This building has 1000 roosts. The key is that wood pidgeons and doves lay two eggs at a time. If you remove just one they will keep laying - and you can keep replenishing your egg supply. With 1000 roosts that's a lot of eggs - mmmmmmmmm..................goat cheese omlets!

Basically a big stone pidgeon/dove coop

Built by the local community in the 15th century the idea was to provide the entire community with a source of protein - pidgeon eggs. Cattle were kept on the ground floor to provide heat and entice the pidgeons in through the small windows during the winter months. See the next photo for the interior of this building.

Ahhhhh....that's better.

Really unusual tombs behind the altar in a tiny church in the Cotswolds. From the mid 13th century, no idea why they are positioned like this. Maybe because there was only a small amount of room for the coffin in the wall behind this. In immaculate condition considering they are almost 800 years old.

The classic Cotswold shot

Weaver's cottages. Henry Ford tried to buy these and ship them back to the U.S. stone by stone to be reconstructed in Michigan. The British government put a stop to it and they are now owned by the National Trust. Beautiful even in the rain.

Cotswolds!

A perfectly normal English day, rainy and cool.  We didn't care.  Arlington Row is just beautiful in any weather. Mel

3am Bacon Eggs and Beer

Before our 4 hour stay at the Yotel.

Upper Class Mel

We're off

I

In the Virgin Clubhouse at Dulles. Yes, there is Champagne!

L'Auberge Chez Francois



We enjoyed this absolutely delicious tart at L'Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls on Friday after work. The chef actually went out to the garden and picked all the herbs and vegetables after we ordered it. Fantastic!

Pizza from the Garden

Jacques Brasserie, L'Auberge Chez Francois, Great Falls, VA

Birthday girl

L'Auberge Chez Francois, Great Falls, VA. Perfect dappled sunlight in the garden!

Freshfields Village, Seabrook Island, SC

Betty, Sue and Madison out for Sunday morning coffee on a bike expedition in South Carolina where it is HOT, HOT, HOT!!!

Best and Worst of Our Trip

It's all over but the crying. We're in the Red Carpet Club in San Francisco with some time to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly:

AIRLINES:

Best Airline: Air New Zealand

Best Cabin: United First (upgrade) to Frankfurt, however, we may be getting Air New Zealand's newest cinfurguratioin home t San Francisco so we reswrve judgment n this ne.

Best Business Class Cabin: Air New Zealand

Best Airport Lounge: Air New Zealand Sydney. Honorable mention - Turkish Air Istanbul

Best In-Flightt Service/Food: Thai Air First (upgrade)

Best Champagne: Thai Airways (Dom Perignon)

Best International Airport: Singapore (Betty) Bangkok (John)

Best Domestic Airport: Koh Samui, Thailand

Worst Cabin: Turkish Air

Worst Airline Food: Shanghai Air

HOTELS:

Favorite Hotel Overall: Les Suites Orient, Shanghai / Rambagh Palace, Jaipur

Best Hotel Food: Regent Rotorua, Rotorua, New Zealand

Worst Hotel Food: Nadesar Palace, Varanasi, India

Best View: Les Suites Orient, Shanghai

Worst View: Limes Hotel, Brisbane

Best Room: River Birches, Tungari, New Zealand (Betty) Fraser Suites, Sydney (John)

Worst Room: Limes Hotel, Brisbane

Best Service: Naumi Hotel, Singapore

Best Value: Les Suites Orient, Shanghai

DESTINATIONS:

Most Surprising - Positive: Shanghai (John) New Zealand (Betty)

Most Surprising - Negative: Koh Samui, Thailand

Most Exotic: India

Most Expensive: Australia

Cheapest: Thailand

Best Weather: Bangkok

Worst Weather: Hong Kong (AGAIN!!)

Best Food: Thailand

Worst Food: China

Best Food Value: Langham Place, Hong Kong (not there were special considerations here. We had club floor open 24-7 with food and drinks always available. Because the weather was so rotten we spent a LOT of time there, consuming most of our calories in HK. The Langham also holds a worst value mention for the expensive 3 Michelin starred Ming Court where Chris John and I ate a highly mediocre meal with the ambiance of a slightly upscale dim sum joint. Capped off with marshmallow bunnies!

Best Scenery: New Zealand

GENERAL:

Scariest: Taxi to the train station in Shanghai

Funniest: Night at the Windmill Bar in the Intercontinental, Shenzhen with Chris Lambert and other top executives who might have helped my presidential campaign.

Sent from my iPad

Champagne Johnny Auckland to SFO flight

This travel is just hell on wings ;)

Kayaking in the Ohau Channel

Lake Rotorua and Lake Rotoiti. It's longer than it looks and it is full of black swans. This entire area is one big geothermal wonder -- you can see steam venting all over the place and bathe in the mineral waters. The water in the channel was crystal clear but pretty chilly. It was a hot sunny day, but we weren't planning on a swim unless we capsized. We came close when we got caught up in the current and slammed into a big spiky plant on the edge of the channel.

Hobbits for breakfast

The movie set for Lord of the Rings is on the Alexander family farm, about 2 hours south of Auckland and 1 hour north of Rotorua where we have been for the last few nights. We could not resist a stop on our way to the airport. They are about to start filming the new movies, The Hobbit (2 parts), so the set was in beautiful condition. They had 45 hobbit holes, the Green Dragon Tavern, the party tree, grounds and lake with bridge. There were loaded apple and pear trees, pumpkins and onion fields, and they had already harvested the fields of corn, sunflowers and other crops that were grown to make up the set. Very cool. The only really fake thing on the set was a reconstructed oak tree above Bag End. They cut, disassembled, and then reassembled a 26 ton oak from nearby Matamata. They then had fake leaves and acorns wired into it to create the perfect specimen of a huge oak. Unbelievable what they do to create the perfect set. We took lots of pictures but they swear if you post them on a website or email them that they will shut down the website and track you down and beat you. We simply couldn't risk a shutdown of our cheesy blog.

Maori show: turning up the tourismo

We generally avoid this kind of thing like the plague but alas, it had to be done. Pay your 85$ per person, get picked up at your hotel in a bus, go to the fake old Maori village where warriors arrive in a canoe. Then a show begins with story telling, singing an dancing. The show was actually very good and we were in the front row for all the performances. Following that we ate our buffet plated traditional hangi meal (basically everything is steamed over rocks/dirt using the heat from the natural underground thermal springs giving it a smoky-earthy flavor). The food wasn't too bad!

Mountain bike Betty

A momentary break from tearing up the trail.