So, Halloween in London is not quite the same as in the US.  Most people generally ignore the day and if you do partake it is all about ghouls and gore and scary costumes.  No pumpkins or cute animal costumes here.  Needless to say, Halloween is much more about trick and not very much about treat.

Halloween happened to coincide with one of my (Carolyn’s) co-worker’s last days of work. She is taking a career break for 6 months to travel to India to work with a charity organization, Roshni UK, providing physiotherapy services for children.  So, we coordinated a leaving-do/Halloween bash to send her off in style.

Here is a photo of some of my coworkers decked out for the night.

And here is a photo of our feeble attempt at dressing up (Matt does have devil horns on).

Yesterday was the final day of Wimbledon 2008 at the All-England Club and as many of you know, Nadal came away victorious in the men’s final and Venus in the women’s final.  On thursday the 26th of June, during the first week of the tournament, Dina and I decided to go down and queue up to try to see Wimbledon for ourselves.  I was extremly excited after years of watching Bud Collins and Breakfast at Wimbledon to finally have a chance to see the place in person.

In order to have a good chance of getting in, Dina and I got up at 6:00 am the morning after our second attempt at the Radiohead concert, and hopped on the tube to SW19.  We arrived around 7:30 am and were handed a queue card (we were number 3139 on the line).  The cards kept things nice and orderly as we made our way forward through the line, through security including metal detectors and finally arrived at the gates at around 10:45 am.  Here is a shot of the famous Wimbledon queue.

We entered the grounds around 11:00 am and I barely knew where to look first.  There was the scoreboard with the order of play, St. Mary’s Walk (which I always remember from Bud Collins announcing), Murray Mount (named this year for Andrew Murray – Britain’s current No. 1) and all 20 courts on which play began at noon.  We wandered the grounds for a bit taking it all in.  Here I am on St. Mary’s Walk.

When you queue up for day of tickets at Wimbledon, you are pretty much guaranteed grounds tickets which give you access to Courts 3-19 and standing room for Court 2.  There are a limited number of Centre Court and No. 1 Court tickets available day off but people queue up overnight for those.  Although we were not able to see Center Court or No. 1 Court action, we had plenty to see on all the other courts.  While we were waiting for the matches to start, we had a chance to watch Nadal warming up on one of the smaller courts.  We then wandered over to watch some men’s doubles on Court 6.  Turns out we were watching Nestor and Zimoniic the eventual men’s champions.  Here is Nestor’s serve in action.

We continued up to Murray’s Mount to watch Venus win in straight sets on the big screen showing the match on center court.  Next, we wandered over to watch Jamie Murray (brother to Andrew and strangely reminiscent of John McEnroe in the 80’s) play his doubles match.

We stayed at Wimbledon (at one of the sunniest days I have experienced in England yet) until about 8pm.  Needless to say we watched many matches – singles, doubles, men, women, top seeds and unranked players.  We ended the day peeking over the guardrails to get a glimpse of Venus and Serena playing their doubles match on Court 11.

One of the great things about Wimbledon is their policy on resale tickets.  Anyone who leaves during the day is asked to return their ticket.  After 3pm those tickets are resold on an ongoing basis for 5 pounds with the profits going to charity.  So, it is possible to get on center court or No. 1 court later in the day when other folks have started to go home.  Dina and I didn’t try for resale tickets as we were too busy watching all the matches on Courts 2-19 to bother standing on another line.  Here is a shot of the Order of Play and the updated scores so you can see what a busy day it was.

So, on our day out at Wimbledon we got to see the eventual champions in men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles and women’s doubles at least for a bit of play.  We had a great time!

Hi everyone. Its been a crazy couple of months full of lots of celebrations, travel up and down the east coast, big moves, a new job and a bit of exploring. Matt will be working to catch the blog up on all the events but in the meantime, I thought I would chime in for a bit myself.

You did read correctly, it says “new job” above. It’s true, I have started work as a physiotherapist in London. I have a locum (temporary) position through an agency. I started on June 2nd and am enjoying getting into a routine. I can even walk to work.

In order to take advantage of my final few days without a work schedule, I took a day trip to Canterbury and to Leed’s Castle (some of you may remember Matt’s trip here last year) with a group called London Walks. London Walks organizes all sorts of walking tours in the city covering topics from Parliament and Big Ben to Jack the Ripper. Occasionally they do Explorer Days outside the city and I met up with the group for a chock full day of touring. We travelled by train to our first stop Canterbury. The main attraction here is the Cathedral which is home to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the destination for the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales.

The Cathedral is where the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, was killed in 1170 after King Henry II complained about his activities. The statue below is a memorial to the site of his assassination by four knights.

After visiting the cathedral, we wandered through town and were educated on many historical events and buildings. We then set out for our next destination, Leeds Castle. Leeds Castle was built in 1119 by one of William the Conqueror’s Lords. It passed into royal hands and was used by many widowed queens after the death of their husbands. King Edward IV gave the castle to a courtier in the 1500s and eventually it passed into private ownership. The castle is now open for tours, conventions, weddings and other special events.

It was jousting day at Leeds Castle so we had sometime to watch the intense competition before exploring the grounds.

It was a nice way to spend my last day as a full-time tourist in the UK.

Ok, let’s shift to something a little more fun while I get back into the swing of things. Our photographer has provided a website with a whole lot of photos they took at the wedding. They did an excellent job. If you have the time, feel free to graze through the many, many photos in this site. And let us know which ones you like. Drum roll please:

Matt and Carolyn’s Official Wedding photos

Carolyn and I might be biased, but we had a blast looking at the excellent photos that provide a great little documentary history of a night that could sometimes be a bit of a blur. It allowed me to really see what was going on (I had no idea my Dad was having so much fun on the dance floor! :)).

So Carolyn’s visa came through with no problem. I’m back in the UK and this means that very very soon, Carolyn will be moved here and can look for work and no more distance. Hurray! Very exciting.

In saddening news, I came back to find Anna extremely thin. She’d had problems and some very nice friends had taken her to the vet. She’s seems ok, but she is really really skinny. The vet took some blood and hopefully, they’ll have some news soon. Poor kitty.

So, on 10 May 2008, I married a wonderful woman. Most of you who read this have met Carolyn by now and know she’s pretty darn cool. Allow me to officially introduce you to my (hee hee) wife, Carolyn:

I’m not sure who that snazzy lookin’ guy is, but I hope she married him 🙂

We’re working on getting Carolyn’s visa set up now, but we’ll spend a day or two in NYC to relax while we deal with all sorts of chaos in the meantime and I head back to the UK in less than a week. So many wonderful things going on. Married life so far is going very well. I wouldn’t change a thing.

I thought some of you might be curious about what I (Carolyn) have been up to during my trip to London (while Matt has been at work). While I have been keeping busy getting settled into the apartment and job searching, I have found a fair amount of time to explore the city and do some touristy things too. I am not much of a blogger so I am just going to include a pictorial journey of my last week with some descriptions. 🙂

On St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrated with Guinness and I discovered the joy of half pints.

Last week I went to the Kew Botanical Gardens, on Dina’s recommendation, to see an exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures. I was able to get to the gardens on the London Overground rail system which is about 20 feet from the apartment for just one pound with no transfers! There were over 20 sculptures scattered throughout the gardens and I spent several hours wandering through the plants and art. Here is one sculpture set near the tropical green house.

This past weekend, I went to Germany. I got to explore Frankfurt, Germany a little bit. It is a really interesting city. Frankfurt is the financial center of Germany, extremely modern with tons of skyscrapers, and has an amazing array of museums. It was pretty much entirely rebuilt after the city was devastated by allied bombing during World War II. I spent one day wandering around the reconstructed old city, visiting museums and walking on the riverfront.

Another day, I took a train down to Heidelberg about one hour from Frankfurt. Heidelberg is a beautiful town with a large university, ruins of a historic palace, and tons of students and tourists.

Matt and I had a chance to travel in the Rhine river valley which Matt can tell you all more about tomorrow.