Showing posts with label August 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label August 2004. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 21

London, England: August 24-26, 2004

Mark & I took a 14 day Baltic Cruise in the fall of 2004. Since our ship was leaving out of Dover, England we decided to spend a few days in London before embarking our cruise ship. There's no way I could include all the pictures we took so I've scanned a few of my scrapbook pages.

The hotels in London were pathetic. The rooms were tiny and as Mark is demonstrating... the hallways were so very narrow! But it didn't matter b/c we were out on the town nearly the entire time. We just came back to our room to sleep!

It was very awesome to see Parliament and the tower that holds Big Ben. They are such icons that we've seen in movies and pictures, so to see them in real life was very cool!

We saw Les Miserables in the theatre where it first premiered back in 1985. It was an incredible show, even though we were suffering big time from jet lag!

We started the day in sunshine and by the afternoon we were in rain ponchos and we were soaked! But we refused to give up and we stayed on the top level of the double decker bus and continued to see the sights!

We happened to be in London during the months that Buckingham Palace is open for tours. The queen was basically forced to do this as a way of raising money because the citizens were outraged when she spent over a million dollars to repair Belmoral Castle after a fire. This is how she is raising money to reimburse some of that cost. They speculate that when it is paid in full, there will be no more tours of Buckingham Palace.

Our last night we walked around and checked out China Town and a few other miscellaneous sights.


The cars in London were so tiny! They are made to get something like 100 kilometers to the gallon because gas is approximately $5.00 per gallon. But, my goodness, they were little tin cans!

Lana's Birthday: August 2004

For my birthday I decided I wanted to go to Inner Space Caverns. It is just north of us and we have driven past it a million times. So, we went and checked it out. It was actually very fun and interesting. The cave is named "Inner Space" because it was discovered during the big race to the moon in the 50's & 60's. The individuals that discovered it imagined this is what the moon would look like.




This room is called "Lake of the Moon". It was one of the more spectacular rooms. The water was so crystal clear that it looked only a few inches deep but, in reality it is over 25 feet deep!








Mark in front of the "Lake of the Moon".


















This is called the "Soda Straw Balcony". Obviously it was named because this lookes like millions of straws hanging from the ceiling.











Me in front of the "Soda Straw Balcony".










This called the "Scalloped Ceiling". Again, obviously named because it looks like scalloped potatoes.










This is called the "Flow Stone". It was formed by thousands of years of flowing water down the wall of the cave.






This formation is called banded drapery and has been nicknammed "Bacon Drapery" due to it's obvious resemblence to a slice of bacon.

Fun in the Sun: August 2004

On August 3rd we had a few friends over for a day of fun in the sun. We floated and laid in the sun all day, grilled some burgers & dogs and then had a rousing game of Catch Phrase!


Hangin in the pool. In the back of the picture are Brandy & Jeremiah Bentley. In the forefront of the picture are Mark & me.



Brandy & Jeremiah enjoying a cocktail in the pool.








Tobie and Jeromey Hannel, or at least the back of Jeromey's head.






As you can tell by Bear's tongue...he thought he needed a taste of Jeremiah's beer. Bear's always the life of the party! LOL!



Jeremiah giving a clue in Catch Phrase. "Some people call me this..." Idoit, dork, nerd.....nincompoop! LOL


Brandy clearly shows that nothing is better than a fun game of Catch Phrase!