I totally forgot to post where we were going this weekend. I’m such a bad blogger. I guess it really doesn’t matter since most of my readers are coming from Regan’s blog now;-(

For anyone who doesn’t read Regan’s blog, we went to Austin this weekend for Jeff and Aim’s wedding. Everything was great except for the trip home. I keep saying this, but this was the absolutely last time that I fly through Dallas DFW. No really, I mean it this time. Our plane was 30 minutes late in arriving to the gate and took off 40 minutes later that it was suppose to. After landing and being delayed for 10+ minutes because of lighting strikes, 1 lighting strike within 5 miles of the airport == 10 minutes of waiting in the queue to de-board, we were left 10 minutes to make it to our next flight. Long story short we made it but our bags didn’t.

There will be pictures on Flickr soon and more of a story on Regan’s blog.

In no particluar order the things Regan and I did in London:

• British Library
• Harry Potter Attractions
• Changing of the Guards
• Tate Modern
• Lunch and Dinner at an Indian Restaurant
• Rick Steves’ Oxford Circus to Piccadilly walk
• Walked around trendy Islington
• Original Bus Tour
• Harrods
• London Eye
• H&M
• Apple Store
• Got lost in Knights Bridge
• British Museum
• Contributed to over seas opening week-end gross for V for Vendetta
• Walked across the Millennium Bridge
• National Portrait Gallery

–Regan

Today we tried breakfast from a place called Pret here in London. This has to be the best coffee we’ve had so far in London. Maybe it’s the fact that they claim to grind and brew their beans within 14 days of roasting. Thanks to Alton Brown we know that coffee starts to stale immediately after roasting.

That one cup, I got a regular when I should have gotten a large, makes me miss the good coffee of New Orleans.

When we were in Paris a man boarded our car with a karaoke machine and performed a few songs. He didn’t look all that enthusiastic about performing the songs. Regan thought that he must have lost a bet and that was why he was doing it. This got me thinking. If I lived in a city with a subway I would totally be making bets with the wager of performing karaoke on the subway. I’ve already picked out what Regan’s song would be, Madonna’s Like A Prayer, in full costume and all. I told her that making out with Britney Spears was optional but highly encouraged;-)

Our hotel doesn’t have free Internet service. The only way to get onto the Internet from our hotel is paid ASDL dial-up, cable not supplied. I was ok with this because there is an inexpensive Internet cafe across the street. What I am not ok with is no phone service in my room. I had to make a phone call today and the stupid swipe-your-credit-card-before-you-can-make-a-call phone wouldn’t give me a damn dial tone. I couldn’t even dial 777, which is the HELP LINE! Instead of calling the front desk, which even if the phone was working you can’t do, to fix the problem I decided to “acquire” the Internet instead.

The phone is plugged into a box that has two RJ-45 jacks, colored red and green, and the RJ-11 jack. The red RJ-45 jack has a cable leading to the box that is plugged into the TV. I’m assuming the box is used for the paid on-demand programming. So I plug my computer into the green RJ-45 jack. Nothing happens. I look around for anything I can use as a screw driver to remove the faceplate. Next to the coffee pot I find a spoon. I remove to faceplate with the spoon to find that the green RJ-45 jack is not connected. At this point I figure what the hell and unplugged the cable in the red RJ-45 jack and plugged my laptop into the red jack. Success! Not really. I get an IP address but I can’t route anything. It appears that the hotels DNS server doesn’t allow for external name lookup. If I had only memorized the IP address of jparks.net… Not to be foiled, I open up my ~/.ssh/known_hosts file and get the IP address of jparks.net. Can I ping that IP address? Yes! Can I ssh to that address? Yes! Do I now have the IP address of google.com? Yes! Does a Google search turn up an IP address for a public DNS server for the UK? Yes! Do I now have Internet! YES! Am I going to get sprayed with CS gas and then arrested for “acquiring” the Internet? Probably;-)

If you go to get on the Metro and most of the cars are full except for one, first check to see if a bum is occupying that car. If a bum is indeed occupying the car simply avoid the car and squeeze your way onto one of the crowed cars. If you are unlucky, like Regan and I were, to board the nearly empty car without noticing the bum, or not knowing to check for a bum, as was the case was for us, then you will be bombard with the foulest smell that you have ever smelt. The smell was so foul that the poor girl that boarded with us eyes’ went wide as the doors to the car fully shut. She then started uncontrollably gagging and had to exit the car at the next stop and switch to a different car. I’m not sure what was going through Regan’s head but I did not want to offend the bum by moving on the next car. Neither of us were gagging so we stuck it out for the three stops that we were on the Metro.

1. Problems with job hunting an hour before take off.
2. Regan gets sick on landing.
3. It’s 2°C(35.6°F) instead of 10°C(50°F).
4. It’s raining.

On the upside, I did manage to navigate us from CDG to the hotel with out getting us lost.

I’m looking for a hotel Paris for two days after Regan and I return from London. Since this is the end of our stay I want it to be close to a metro station. I consult my arch nemesis’ book since he breaks down places to sleep by neighborhood. I’m looking at the map for the Marais neighborhood and notice this building labeled “Hôtel de Ville” near a Metro station. I start scanning the near by pages to find the entry for this supposed hotel. After looking at every hotel entry in the Marais neighborhood and not finding an entry for Hôtel de Ville, déjà vu sets in. Three years ago in France Joe, Justin, and I were planning a weekend road trip in the south of France. Joe and I were talking about finding a hotel for the three of us and I suggested Hôtel de Ville. Every town we been to so far had a Hôtel de Ville so I thought it was a good suggestion. Joe agrees that is a good idea and we should book the hotel later that day. Then Justin pipes up, which he rarely does, and when he does it usually is to correct me or make fun of me, and says that according to Rich Steves Hôtel de Ville is city hall. There you have it. The same mistake twice, both foiled and fooled by Rick Steves. DAMN YOU RICK STEVES!

I seem to remember after we found out that it was city hall that we planned to get some hookers and show up at Hôtel de Ville asking for a room. Then we made a rap song about it. I wish I could remember the lyrics…