This picture is also the picture of the day on my Project 365 site.

Woooo!  Still waiting to hit 124,274 miles.  We’ll see if my baby holds out that long.  At this pace, it’ll take until June 2010 to hit.

http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/

I’ve been good about taking my daily picture, but I’m currently in the process of putting together another WordPress site with a custom theme to showcase the photos.

For my birthday, my fabulous lady made breakfast sandwiches.  Here’s a picture.

ohhh, bacon!

I celebrated my birthday in style in Las Vegas.  And by “In Style” I mean that we watched the countdown on TV and threw a bunch of confetti on everyone, including Kristine’s dog, who by the way bids you good tiddings in 2009.

I’ll (hopefully) be writing up more later about the trip, but we ended up at Balboa Island.  If my calculations are correct, we ended up about here.  The water wasn’t terribly cold on that day, so of course I had to run in.  I didn’t travel over 3,000 miles to just stand and let the water hit my feet.

Of course it wasn’t until after I got out of the ocean that I realized that we didn’t pack any towels…

While a week is hardly sufficient time to have adventures like those of my two-month stay here, I still managed to get around town, eat some really good food, and explore some parts of London that I hadn’t been to before.

One thing to note before I go on.  For those of you who lived in Stouffer College House at the University of Pennsylvania, you no doubt have come across the maroon Stouffer pens during your stay here.  Let me tell you, they do NOT travel well in high altitudes.  I had multiple pens explode on me while airborne.

Trip details and some pictures after the jump.

Sights:

Science Museum

For those from the Philadelphia area, this is the city’s equivalent to the Franklin Institute.  And dare I say it was better?  I’m not knocking the Franklin Institute by any means. But I am saying that the Science Museum had an overall greater collection of objects.  I think the Franklin Institute does a better job of interactivity with the exhibits, while the Science Museum has a more robust variety in the exhibits.

Personal highlights for me included Launchpad, a hall with physics exhibits, and a huge hall which mapped out the history of both mathematics and computing.  On the mathematics side, they had a large case of specially designed Klein bottles, that when sliced correctly, produce Möbius strips.  On the computing side, they had huge computers from the 1950’s, one of which was a random number generator which the British government used to assist with treasury bonds.  There was no interest paid on the bonds, however the computer would randomly pick a number, and if you were lucky enough to have you “Premium bond” number picked, you were awarded a cash prize.  They even gave it a name, ERNIE, and it developed a huge fan base where people would send in cards and gifts to the machine to ask that the computer picked their bond number next.  It sounds like a crazy version of a lottery to me.

Natural History Museum

Didn’t say here for very long because it was very crowded, but did see a huge dinosaur skeleton.

Food:

Wagamamas
A noodle bar is the best way I can describe this place.  You go in, you sit at really long bench tables, and the waiter will come over with a hand held gizmo to take your order.  You pick a number off the menu, they put it in their gizmo and write the number you picked right on your placemat.  I ordered a pan-fried panko-crusted chicken breast, slicked up and served under a bed of rice and a mild curry.  A-maze-ing.  The chicken was very juicy and had a slight crunch because of the panko, and while the sauce was milder than I would of liked, overall a tasty dish.

Ben’s Cookies
I heard about this place from a friend of a friend ages ago before I went to London the first time, but never had a chance to go.  This time, however, I stumbled upon their South Kensington location, and they are indeed fantastic cookies.  The are about the circumference of a normal cookie, however they are much thicker.  The consistency was very cakey but very layered.  Interspersed between the layers were the fillings.  I had three cookies: peanut butter, white chocolate, and milk chocolate.  The chocolate pieces were very flat and thin, and were between the layers of the cookie, making for a very tasty treat.  If you happen to find yourself in London, I highly recommend it.

Sunday Pub Lunch
Sunday Lunch is a big thing in London, so on the Sunday I was there I went to a pub near my hotel and ordered the Sunday Lunch Chicken.  It was an entire half of a chicken, served with two different types of potatoes, along with peas, carrots, and two crusty bread shells to make your own shepard’s pie if you wish.  Now, given that I’m adverse to gravy, cooked peas, and cooked carrots, I was left with chicken, potatoes, and crusty bread.  It was still very delicious.  The chicken was falling off the bone and was very moist and juicy throughout.  I am not generally a fan of dark meat but I ate the entire half a chicken very readily.

Indian Restaurant #1
Clearly a half a chicken wasn’t enough for me, so that same evening I ate at an Indian restaurant right in the same complex later that night.  For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the place, but it’s right near the North Ealing tube station.  It was on the fancier side, with nice linens and place settings and the like, and the food was superb.  I have decided that whenever I go to an Indian restaurant, I am going to get chicken tikka masala.  For the uninformed, chicken tikka masala is standard fare at American-Indian and British-Indian restaurants.  The basic ingredients are chicken breast chunks slow-cooked in a tomato and yogurt based sauce.  However, according to our good friends at the BBC, a survey was done of 48 chicken tikka masala recipes, and the only common ingredient in all of them was chicken.  The chicken tikka masala here was very good, and I might have to designate it as my favorite.  The reason that this particular recipe was so good was that the sauce was of a slightly sweeter nature than normal.  I’m not sure what made it sweeter, but my guess would be that some honey was put into the recipe.  Overall, very delicious.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen
This place is actually an import from New Zealand, and was the closest I was getting to an American burger.  I order a burger with cheese and “streaky bacon”.  From what I understand, what the Brits call bacon is closer to pork roll, and what they call streaky bacon is closer to American bacon.  Well, what I got on my burger was still pretty close to pork roll in my opinion.  This is just a personal thing, but there was too much fat going on for me to enjoy the bacon, so I took it off.  As for the burger itself, generally very tasty, but there were too many bits of grizzle for my liking.  However, this is the only place in London that has asked me how I want my burger cooked.  The fries were a very thick cut, but were golden in color, cooked well throughout, and were nice and fluffy inside and had a very clean taste to them.

Tandoori Villa
Tandoori Villa was visited on my last night in town.  It’s near the South Ealing Tube stop.  The restaurant was opened recently, and if I understood the time line right, the owners of the place last year converted their living room into this restaurant.  I of course got chicken tikka masala, but was fortunate to have gone with eight other people, and tried a variety of different meat and curry mixtures.  I was also introduced to peshawari nan, which is a nan that has a sweeter taste and had almonds baked in.  It tasted like an Auntie Anne’s almond pretzel.  Notice my tendency to enjoy sweet things?

Well, that about sums up the trip in a nutshell.  A very nice culinary adventure indeed.

Here’s a cool picture from the Science Museum.  It’s a lights and LED exhibit that spanned three stories.

And here’s a Klein bottle.  Is it sad that I recognized this only because I’ve seen it on Futurama?

I’ll take another picture if I hit 124,274 miles.

After the jump…pictures!

Tonight I was watching Wheel of Fortune. Let me establish first that I love that show and one of my life goals is to be on in. Also, for those who don’t know, I worked at Great Adventure for four years while in high school.

Now, the rant. On the first puzzle tonight, there was a prize back to go to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ. Wow! Cool. Except when they were describing the trip, they said it was “located just outside New York City!”

What a crock of manure. Anyone from that area knows that it’s nowhere near New York City. 70.3 miles to be exact! Up to two hours in traffic!

Here’s what Google Maps has to say:

I ended up down near Big Ben and took a nice stroll along the South side of the Thames. I stumbled upon County Hall which was hosting a Star Wars exhibit that I had seen earlier on my trip about six weeks ago, but it wasn’t open yet. Well, it was open yesterday, and I forked over my hard-earned pounds to see what it was all about. Han Solo in carbonite? OK, pretty cool. Life-size podracers? Also pretty cool. All in all, it was good, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, you kinda have to go.

Lots o’ pictures of Star Wars stuffins in the Gallery.

I also found an exhibition called “Sport in the 21st Century” which had a collection of about 200 sports photographs. It’s located right near City Hall and Tower Bridge. My favorites? A picture of two orangutans in a boxing match where one was knocked out cold and the other was triumphantly standing on the turnbuckle with his hand raised in victory. Putting aside the ethical dilemma of monkeys fighting for the enjoyment of humans (it’s hard, I understand), the picture was hilarious. My other favorite was a picture of Barry Bonds being booed by a Phillies fan holding a sign with a asterisk on it.  The picture perfectly captures Philadelphia sports fans.

The Rundown:
Charles de Gaulle Airport, Oops Hostel, Le Boulanger de Monge, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Deux Magots, Je The Me, Eiffel Tower, Starcooker

As always, more pictures in the Gallery.

The Long Version (with my 12 Pillars of Travel that I created when writing about Scotland):

1. (Get out a map. Pick a place that you’ve never been before.) Paris. Check.

2. (Do research on the place that you’ve picked.) I was armed with a Rick Steves’ book about Paris (thanks Amanda), a French phrasebook (thanks Kristine), and eight semesters of French.

3. (Plan your travel to get there. Take an unconventional route.) Since there’s a body of water separating the UK from France, I had a few options for travel. Chunnel train? Too pricy. Ferry? Too slow. Swim? Too out-of-shape. Airplane? Decent price, decent travel time, voila! It’s not exactly unconventional, but given the other alternatives, it was the option I went with. I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, by far the most beautiful airport I’ve ever been in. High arched glass ceilings, intricate lattice structure holding it all together, and Orangina-a-plenty. It was also where the cover art for U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind album was taken.

4. (Book a hostel ahead of time so that you have a place to sleep and have a map of the city.) Booked the hostel, forgot the map. Fortunately, I remembered the road the hostel was on, and there was a Metro stop with that name. I stayed at Oops Hostel, and all in all, a pretty good hostel. It’s located in the 13th Arrondissement in the southeast corner of the city and had just recently opened. (Think of arrondissements as zip codes within a city. Paris has 20 of them.) The staff was very friendly (and bi-lingual), and the facilities were all new and shiny. Negative points on the lack of lockers in the room and the fact that anyone in the hostel could have taken anyone else’s bag in the baggage room. Positive points for the awesome croissants.

5. (Talk to everyone you can and get their opinion on what you need to do in while in town.)

It was my first excursion into a country where English wasn’t the native tongue. It was time to put eight semesters of French to the test.

Unfortunately, I failed. Fortunately, most of the people I interacted with spoke English as a second language.

For the most part, I did fine.

“Bonjour madame, je voudrais un billet pour la .”
“Hello ma’am, I would like a ticket for the third level.” – Referring to the Eiffel Tower

“Bonjour monsieur, je voudrais une baguette.”
“Hello sir, I would like a baguette.”

“Bon soir madame, je voudrais cinq billet pour le métro.”
“Good evening ma’am, I would like five tickets for the Metro.”

“Bon soir madame, où sont les toilettes?”
“Good evening ma’am, where are the toilets?”

Most of my conversations in French involved buying tickets for things, eating food, and finding out where the bathrooms were.

6. (Make friends with the local people you meet.) and 7. (Experience the nightlife.)

I’d like to start out by thanking Zeynep for being an awesome hostess and tour guide. She went to Penn with me and is now studying in Paris, and I met some of her friends (both Parisians and people from around Europe, so I guess it counts as “local”). Most of my nightlife activities all revolved around food and is covered in #11.

Paris is known as the city of lights, so at around midnight on Saturday I trekked down to the Eiffel Tower. The structure looks cool during the day, but at night the whole thing is lit up and at the top of every hour there’s a “light show”, which basically means that thousands of pulsating lights on the tower blink on and off for about 10 minutes.

At the Eiffel Tower we were having a problem with trying to get a good picture. If we used flash the tower was too dark, and if we didn’t use flash you couldn’t see us in the foreground. Canon PowerShots have special settings for different situations, which is where we discovered “Night Snapshot”. The icon for Night Snapshot? A person standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. We figured if THIS didn’t work we’d have to throw the camera out and sue Canon for false iconiness. We started calling it “Eiffel Tower Mode”, and much to our delight, it worked and the pictures were fantastic.

8. (Do something touristy.)

Notre Dame – Beautiful church. I tried to find the entrance to climb to the top, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find it (it’s apparently on the left side if you’re facing the entrance in case you ever go).

The Lourve – Art museum that is the home of the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, along with a bazillion other pieces of art. The Venus de Milo was pretty cool, and the Mona Lisa was very tiny. My favorite section was definitely the Egyptian collection, which featured a mummy, tons of figurines, huge statues, a false door, and lots of random Egyptian stuff. My final semester at Penn, I took a class called “Land of the Pharaohs”, and despite that fact that I fell asleep in just about every class, I apparently retained a lot of it because I was running around like a kid in a candy store recognizing the different artifacts. I saw things like that ivory boomerang which was used for warding off spirits, the little scarabs that some pharaoh had carved with stories about his greatness, and Seth, the God of Cabbage. OK, so I’m a little hazy on the details of things I saw, but I am still giving myself a high-five for remembering at least some of that class.

Le Tour Eiffel – The 90 minute wait was worth it. Beautiful views of everything for miles. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, but being 976 feet up in the air was a good tradeoff. The top level was cool, but the best views of the city were on the second level (377 ft) and the first level (187 ft) has a bunch of shops and a post office.

9. (Do something off the beaten path.) I didn’t leave the city at all, but I found Rue Mouffetard, a road just north of my hostel which was full of farmer’s market stands and had a very festive fair-like atmosphere to it. I also found a bowling alley and resisted the urge to go in. I also happened to have been on a Metro train where there was a group of guys with some horns and a synthesizer playing right on the train. Why doesn’t SEPTA have in-flight entertainment like that?

10. (Go somewhere that you’re not supposed to be.) It was a relatively non-adventurous weekend, so I didn’t feel the need to do number 10.

11. (Eat something that your place is known for.) Ahhh, the food. Très délicieux.

Le Boulanger de Monge – Delicious baguettes in the 13th Arrondissement. I picked a multigrain one with a lot of seeds.

Les Deux Magots – A café in the 6th. Back in the day, it was a hangout for many famous writers and artists, including Hemingway and Picasso. Now, it’s an overly priced café with mean waiters where I ordered a Coke and paid 5.70 € for it. That’s $8.36 for all of you playing at home.

Je The Me – A little bistro in the 15th. I had an a-maz-ing steak along with sautéed mushrooms and potatoes. To top it off, I had a dish of summer berries and crème.

Starcooker – A brunch place in the 4th. For 20 € ($29.30), it was an all-you-can-eat brunch featuring ham, salmon, breads, cheeses, ham, fruits, tuna, croissants, crab, pasta, ham, and various deserts. Did I mention there was ham? It was on everything.

12. (Try not to make enemies with a local resident. If you do, get a good story out of it.) Despite what I’ve heard other people say about the people in Paris being crazy American haters, everyone I met was very pleasant and nice.

I didn’t make any enemies, I ate good food, and finally got to use French in France after eight semesters of studying it. Très bien. More photos in the Gallery.