All over England - Bath, Stratford, London and Oxford.

England does lawns very nicely. This fine example is the backyard of Blenheim - a mere couple hundred acres.

Obligatory shot of the Palace, which has better lighting each time we visit.

Driveway to Blenheim Palace.

Roman Bath's are found coincidently in the city of Bath. They happen to also be Britain's only natural spring. 

Entrance to the Baths

The Royal Crescent - some of the highest priced real estate in England.

Autumnal colors...in Bath.

Bath Cathedral

Changed Priorities.

Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon

Ann Hathaway's house. Here we learned that to clean a chimney, they would tie a string around the neck of a chicken or goose and lower them into the chimney. Inevitably, after a hard day's work of chimney cleaning, they would end up on the dinner table. 

Apples

Cotswolds

Field in the setting sun, back when the sun set at 6pm.

Stone walls - everywhere in the Cotswolds

Stow-on-the-Wold, a typical cute market village. On market days, once all the stock for sale had arrived, they would close off the streets to prevent runaway sheep!

Our carved jack-o-lanterns. 

Inside the Tower of London. Also in this courtyard, Anne Boylen was killed. According to our Beefeater,  the executioner was so swift that she was still moving her eyes and mouth in prayer for 20 seconds after her head was removed.

Guarding the Crown Jewels, Coronation Spoon, and other over-the-top ceremonial pieces. This includes the second largest cut diamond (Cullinan I), which is 503 carats, that sits on the end of a sceptre used in the coronation ceremonies.

Legend has it that as long as there are six ravens at the Tower, Britain will stand. So as a safeguard, they keep 7 on site.

The "main" tower. In total there are 20 towers on Tower Hill

Bonus points if you know the name of this bridge...

Us on the Thames

Where apples stay during Autumn...

versus, where pears descend to.

K's college at Oxford has a crypt.

At the Pitt River's Museum. Basically a man collected things, only to donate them to Oxford.

Fun Berries

Chilly Hot Air Balloon ride over the park...

Sunset. Time: 4:12pm....

France is Falling (and so is England)

 Oh, Hello Again - this is France and so is the next shot. Somehow, we managed to take only two pictures worth posting. So, enjoy Cannes.

 Boats! We actually timed it perfectly to be there during a regatta in Cannes... there were all these beautiful old sailing ships - one, two, and three masted!!! Again, these aren't those boats but perhaps you can imagine it.

We returned to grey cloud in England. (Grey cloud is the actual description given to the weather about 432 out of 365 days per year.) You'll notice some stuff in the background, those are cows, trees, and the buildings of Oxford behind.

 Hops, We don't know what you do with them...

 Some of the trees here that get berries have a fascinating growth sequence... Grow leaves then berries and the lose all the leaves but keep the berries. If I was smart, I'd turn that into a metaphor for something. Instead, we just think it looks cool.

Wee Apple

 Sweet lily pond at the Oxford Botanical Gardens. Turns out, they frown upon trying to catch fish out of it.

 We got 'punted' from the gardens and made our way to the river.

Magdalen Bridge over the Cherwell... roughly 200 ft prior to it becoming the mighty, albeit very placid, Thames.

These berries are awesome, they look like bright blue headed octopi with hot pink tentacles.

Cool fall foliage.

All the meadow animals were enjoying the nice fall day!

Dinner time!

7 Days in Grindelwald

So this is Switzerland!

We started our journey by making sure we were in the right country.  According to our flag index, we were indeed in Switzerland.

Next, as it was our honeymoon, we decide to take a jaunt down the Romantikweg (romantic way, for those non swiss german speakers). I'm not real sure why they call it romantic... what's so nice about shear faced granite mountains, alpine meadows, big poofy white clouds, blue skies, and cowbells in the distance?

Here is one of those cows ringing her bell via a solid nose-licking.

Where's the mall?

More Romantikweg.

Grindelwald! We stayed in the rockin Chalet Abendrot.  See the church tower slightly left of lower center? It's white. Our hotel was slightly west of that. The world famous Grindelwald museum - which features three stories of skiing, climbing, Bohren family info, and frontier style living quarters - was just to the east of the tower.

The Evolution of Man according to the local pooper scooper bins.

Historically this is what a Swiss Native American dwelling space looked like. If I remember correctly, they called it a 'Teepee'. According to wikipedia, "The tipi was durable, provided warmth and comfort in winter, was dry during heavy rains, and was cool in the heat of summer. Tipis could be disassembled and packed away quickly when a tribe decided to move and could be reconstructed quickly when the tribe settled in a new area. This portability was important to Plains Indians with their nomadic lifestyle."

This picture was taken by a lovely English couple recreating their honeymoon trip from 45 years ago.  It was on the way down from Mannlichen, our second hike, a very pleasant 7 hour hike ascending around 1200 m.

Baaaaaaah!

The third hike, from Grindelwald to Bussalp to Bachsee and down, sent us to our highest point yet (2600 m). At the top it was a boulder field with the path marked by painted rocks.  

Confusion...

Bachsee!

The mighty Eiger!

The mighty mushroom... Mario had recently taken a bite out of the back left before bounding away to do battle with many a koopa troopa. 

Tank and Cara, if you ever read our blog... this one's for you.