London & Edinburgh

TO ALL

Well, the Strohm's are safely home from yet another adventure. One of our friends has questioned whether we are actually still in the Army or just over here having fun. Perhaps they should come see us and check that out for themselves????

Actually, this trip was a slightly different subset of Strohm's than previous trips. Alan and Amy went with Mike and I to Great Britian. Deanna is in Tacoma visiting friends and going to a youth event so she missed this trip. She will be back in Germany tomorrow. Amy has decided to stay in Germany and attend the University of Maryland at least for the next 9 week term. Alan will be here until Jan 17th when he goes back to Harvey Mudd College for his last term.

Back to our trip ----- we left Germany the day after Christmas and flew to London (Ryanair again - this time they got us there and back exactly on schedule). We got into London at 11:15 PM and the first 2 hours on the ground did NOT go well. First we offended a cab driver by reneging on a reservation we had made to be taken to Alconbury Air Force Base to the tune of £120 (or $240). This is not a good thing to do - even if you're feeling nervous about whether the rent car you reserved -- at the last minute, on a holiday, when supposedly everything was sold out -- is actually going to be there. In the process of trying to get some pounds to pacifiy the car driver and get rid of him, the ATM took my card and refused to give it back - this was the card that accessed the only one of our checking accounts that happened to have any money in it! We did finally manage to get some cash out of another account and pay off the car driver, but then we couldn't seem to find our rent car. Pulling your luggage around outside at midnight in London in December looking for a car isn't a lot of fun. We did eventually find it and Mike succeeded in driving it to the guest house at Alconbury ("it" being a standard transmission! - read "shift with the left hand while sitting on the right side of the car and driving on the WRONG side of the road, through a scad of roundabouts”). All the way there, Mike kept saying "this is soooo wrong" and Amy kept saying "Dad, there IS a curb on this side of the road, you know." At the end of the week, I have to say that Mike did an incredible job of driving in England.

Anyway the next morning things started looking up and we had a great visit in the UK. We spent 3 days in London. Since the first 2 days were banking holidays we were able to drive our rent car into London without paying the "congestion charge" and park on the street without paying the parking meter -- a nice break. The third day we parked at a grocery store outside the city and rode the Underground.

There is A LOT to do in London - unfortunately a lot of the admissions are kind of pricey (like £13.50 or $27.00 per person to tour the Tower of London), so we really had to pick and choose what we wanted to do. Some things are fun just to see from the outside so one of the things we did was to take a hop-on-hop-off double- decker bus tour of London.

The bus tour also included a 50 minute cruise on the Thames River which gave us yet another interesting prospective on the city of London. Lots of things in London had a strangely "familiar" feel to them which I think comes from having read English novels - Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, etc. - and having seen movies like Mary Poppins.

Anyway, we saw the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Parliament Buildings, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, and Big Ben (technically St. Stephen’s Tower) – all of which were really intriguing architecturally to our modern American eyes. We walked across Tower Bridge (and a couple of other bridges), toured Shakespeare's Globe Theater (which is actually a recent reproduction but very interesting), the National Gallery (art by Leonardo di Vinci, Raphael, Van Gogh, Monet, etc), the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Modern (another art museum).

The fourth day we headed north to Scotland. We saw parts of Hadrian's Wall and just enjoyed the countryside along the way. It is amazing how green the countryside is - even in the winter. The wool industry is still big in England and Scotland - lots of sheep in the fields. We stayed in a Travelodge at Berwick on the Tweed. The next day we went to Holy Island -- accessible by causeway only when the tide is out. The Landisfarne Castle and Abbey are there. The Landisfarne Gospels (known for their exceptional medival artwork) were copied there back in the 7th century. The castle and abbey were really picturesque and fun to wander around.

Then we went to Edinburg (pronouned ED-in-bur-ah) and toured the castle there. It is really large and sits up on a hill in the middle of town. A little pricey to tour but worth it, I think. A lot to see and very informative guides and exhibits. I wish I knew my English and Scottish history a little better.

I was fascinated with the architecture in England - again different than either Germany or Italy. Several obvious differences: buildings are almost entirely stone or brick instead of stucco as in Germany and Italy. Lots of chimneys and they stick up a long way above the roof (to reduce the fire hazzard back when buildings had thatched roofs??? maybe??? ). Also lots of individual flue's coming out of each chimney. Also, there are more stand alone houses and fewer "stairwells" than in either Germany or Italy.

It was nice not to have to deal with another language. Even the accents were less noticeable than I expected, though the Brits do have lots of funny expressions: "way out" for exit, "mind the gap" for watch your step (getting off the underground), "give way" for yield, and "no fouling" (on poop and scoop containers).

Mike and I discovered that traveling with adult children is really nice. We were in the car by 8:00AM every morning so as to make use of the limited daylight hours and no one complained. Alan and Amy both helped Mike with the navigation which was really nice (except for once when they got in a fight and started throwing maps at each other!). I was recovering from a bad cold and I did lots of sleeping in the car. Amy was actually willing to read the tour books and make suggestions about where to go. That job typically falls to me and I don't mind it too much, but it was nice to have help.

Amazingly the weather was pretty decent all week. I was expecting the worse. It was cold but manageable. Very little rain and lots of blue sky for the most part. Not at all what we had heard about England.

Food was expensive but really good. We learned to eat in pubs - cheap but good. Mike is always the most adventuresome when it comes to food. He kept telling us that he wanted a sheep sandwich. So the last night he had "haggis, neeps and tatties" - ground mutton, with oatmeal and spices, mashed turnips and mashed potatoes. None of it looked like anything I've ever seen before. Alan and I settled for more American sounding things like "Fisherman’s pie" and of course Amy did her vegetarian thing (she definitely wasn't in the market for a sheep sandwich!)

There is a lot to see in the UK and we only scratched the surface. But we have strong suspicions that we'll be back a couple more times. Lisa Hester - what are the chances that you all would let us crash your trip to the UK????? - maybe for a few days anyway???? Deanna is still planning to do the Great Britain trip with her class from Covenant High School (Tacoma) in March of 2006 and I'm hoping that Mike and I can tag along. Covenant HS goes to Great Britain every other year and with their Juniors and Seniors. The trip is really well thought out with lots of study preparation and educational stuff along the way. Sounds like Europe “Through the Back Door" but with a free tour guide!

Well, that's the news from the Strohms. Please prayer for Deanna when you get this. She's probably finding her way through all the hassles of traveling overseas during the holidays. She's also missing 2 days of school that will have to be made up when she gets home tomorrow morning.

I owe lots of you personal notes. Hopeful I will get caught up on e-mail before today is over. Mike went to work this morning and discovered it was a training holiday so he'll be home again before long.

I'm supposed to be teaching a Bible study through PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) starting next Thursday. I'm sort of dragging my feet on getting back into a routine again, but this seems like a good opportunity. It's not a Precept study - I know that's hard for some of you to believe! It's a workbook study but a lot less homework than Precept. It's by Wayne Barber and a couple of his staff members. It's called "Life Principles from the Kings of the OT." It's part of a series and I've done a couple of others in the series. They are pretty good, but I haven't exactly figured out how to approach the teaching part yet - no teacher helps - probably no white board available to use. I guess it's time to broaden my horizons a little.

Thanks for all your Christmas cards, letters, and pictures and for staying in touch with us. Please come visit us, if that opportunity presents itself.

Love,

Nancy