Meeting Gary, Tourist Stuff and a Birthday

Roland: I am actually not that much into Motorcycles, but I was really looking forward to having breakfast at the Ace Café in Northern London and meeting up again with Gary France who we met two years before on Vancouver. Gary arrived on one of his custom made (would an Englishman call this 'bespoke'?) Harleys with 5500 cc or something. The bike drew a lot of attention, and when Sonja sat on it I was warned by a bystander that I should tell her to get off it before the owner comes back (apparently he could not believe that the owner was standing right next to it). We had a lot of fun chatting all morning and even ended up with two Ace Café T-Shirts sponsored by Gary. Thanks a lot!!!!

We spent the rest of the day doing the usual Tourist stuff in downtown London again: walking up and down River Thames, strolling over the London Christmas Market at the London Eye and enjoying the scenery at Trafalgar Square.

Getting hungry again we started looking for a good Restaurant in downtown, but in the end we decided to ride back to Paddington to conclude my Birthday with a very nice Italian dinner at the Taormina Restaurant. I even got my traditional Birthday Chocolate Cake!

This was a very good birthday, indeed!

Flying Emirates, Walking in the Park and Celebrating a 50th Anniversary

Both our employers urged us to take our remaining vacation days until the end of the year, so we decided to spend an extended weekend in London as we felt that we lacked a bit of the buzz of a big city. So we booked one of these super cheap Ryan Air flights from Baden-Airpark (another former Canadian military base) to London Stansted from where we took a train to downtown London. We stayed in the same hotel as last time, halfway between Paddington station and Hyde Park and prepared for bad English November weather by carrying various layers of clothing, topped with rain resistant coats and an umbrella. As it turned out we had great weather, sometimes bordering at fantastic, with lots of sun, blue skies and no rain at all!

We hadn't really worked out a program, so on Saturday we decided to follow our noses, ending up in North Greenwich where we were hoping to get a good view on Canary Wharf. When we left the station we were curious what was meant with 'connection to Emirates Air Lines'... until we figured out that this is a Gondola via River Thames. Of course we hopped on and were rewarded with fantastic views over the O2-arena and the Wharf. We strolled around the old the old docks for a while: a totally different London!

After an extended walk in the fresh air we took the tube back to Canary Wharf, where we watched Ice Skaters on the rink at Canada Square Park and enjoyed awesome food at the Turkish Restaurant Hazev.

After lunch we rode to Baker Street, looking for address 221B, but we only found a very commercial 'Sherlock Holmes Museum' that rather reminded us of a tourist trap than a museum. 

So instead we decided to exploit the last sun beams of the day in Regent's Park. The autumn colours were stunning. We couldn't believe that it was a late November afternoon in London!

The only planned and pre-booked event of our visit was the 3D-screening of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary episode 'The Day of the Doctor' (WHO?) at one of the (smaller) London cinemas. The show was sold out, like in any of the other venues, and we enjoyed David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt bantering at each other in their different incarnations and interpretations of the Doctor. And they even had Tom Baker and - for a split second - Peter Capaldi showing!

What a gorgeous day it was!

Canada's most embarrassing mayor...

Source: Tagesschau.de

...now has made it into German news, too. The article summarizes the scandal pretty well, although only starting in May (as far as we remember Ford started acting strangely a long time before that). For everybody Non-Canadian who might not know the background:

Ford, who is the mayor of the City of Toronto, supposedly
- used substances (incl a DUI charge in Miami)
- is an alcoholic
- has insulted various people with offensive language
- was driving drunk
- was reading and texting while driving
- has threatened that he would kill somebody
- and on and on

Apparently the law does not provide the possibility to fire him during his term, so the Toronto City Council removed some of the most important aspects of his power.

Many of the comments of the article draw comparisons to Italy's Berlusconi who is widely considered as the worst politician alive in the view of many Germans. Looks like he has found a worthy competitor...