The start of three brothers "Bucket List" trip to Europe.

I call this a "bucket list" trip because I have never been to my father's homeland...Holland. He was born in Haarlem in 1919 and the house he was born in is still standing.

Lucky for me, my older brother had a humongous amount of air miles and offered to join the trip with 1st class tickets. A toast to the start of our venture.

Unfortunately, I think he ruined any chances of me flying in the near future, because if it is not 1st class...it isn't going to happen. Joe, our younger brother joined the trip, but flew from LA to meet us in London.

\

A nice big sign at the Heathrow, welcoming the three Dutch brothers..

My perception of England was spot on... break out the umbrellas.

On one of my better brain farts, I arranged a driver weeks before to meet us when we landed. While there are a number of ways getting from Hearthrow to London, we didn't like the idea of schlepping our bags on the subway, taxi, bus or train. Gino picked us up and gave an hour long tour, all the way to the hotel...life is good.

Admiralty Arch is the gateway to Buckingham Palace.

Nice house, huh? The Queen was at one of her other palaces...rough gig.

While the local police do not carry weapons, these dudes watching the palace certainly have some firepower.

As lavish as the palace may be...how would you like having a crowd hanging around your front door each, and every day...trick or treat!

I'll take this as my front yard fence.

Like most tourists, the easiest way to get the layout of the land is to take a city bus tour. While I love my brothers dearly, I was desperately trying to get off the bus before the lady in the back could locate her detonator,

The British Museum is one of the greatest I have ever seen in my life...up to this point on the trip.

One of the first things you see upon entering, beside a mass of people, is the Rosetta Stone... the most important link in the world, to an earlier civilization. It is the only surviving fragment of a larger stone, recording a ruling in 196 BC. Egypt was governed by a Greek dynasty and so the ruling was written in the three known languages of the time, Greek, an older one called Demotic and the oldest...Egyptian hieroglyphs. The only reason today that we are able to read hieroglyphs is because of this monumental key slab of stone. Without it, we would have had no idea of deciphering the earliest Egyptian words.

Some people have said that all the great antiquities Britain has, are from the pillaging of the Middle East countries she once ruled over hundreds of years. This may in part be true, but as we have seen in the last 20 years with Al Qaeda and ISS blowing up historical monuments left and right while selling museum artifacts to fund their terrorism... British preservation and collecting, doesn't seem too bad at the moment.

King Ramesses II loved building statues. This is in his likeness and only the top part of the complete statue is here.

This is the mummy of Cleopatra. It has never been unwrapped but they had learned quite a lot from CAT scanning. They estimated her age at death to be 17 years old from the hieroglyphics and CAT scans of her joints. For such a young girl, she sure made an impression on the world...and still does.

The Greeks and Romans loved bronze statutes and most cities had them at nearly every corner. Over the centuries, most were melted and reused. This figure is a Roman version of an earlier Greek statue. This is one of the few surviving examples...found in Egypt. 

The Royal Gold Cup was designed for ceremonial use or displays at royal feasts. It depicts scenes of St Agnes, who is thought to have been martyred around 250 AD.

I thoroughly enjoyed everything in the British Museum.

Some random photos from around London. These older telephone booths, which have been updated and mostly used for tourist pictures are a scarce item downtown.

We just can't pass a pint of the local brew, especially if it's from the Bag O' Nails!

British guards outside the US Embassy...not a friendly place.

Stopped by the "The Old Kings Head Pub" for a pint. All the talk about room temperature beer is hog wash...I might of been able to order it, but all the taps were cold beer.

A few pints went out the door this night. I wasn't looking, but I don't think I saw one cocktail the whole time we were there...or at least the pubs we visited.

After a few pints, Joe and I started walking back to the hotel when Joe points out this short cut...believe me, the camera is picking up way more light than it shows of this dark, dank and dingy alley. Sorry Joe, I'll meet you back at the room.

The street "Bobby" were all friendly and more than willing to pose for the camera.

Transportation!!!!! God, we out west could learn so much from all of Europe's transportation systems. Fast, clean and safe subways, every 2 minutes, to where ever you want to go.

This Jack is trying to talk one of the Tower of London security blokes out of just one little Royal gemstone.

Of course, watching is another guard, watching the old guard. The Crown Jewels were quite a sight but no photos allowed.

While the Tower of London was pretty, I expected a more sinister place, seeing that people were beheaded, drawn and  quartered and burned alive there.

Did I mention something about a great transportation system? This may explain why most people use it.  A typical parking garage near our hotel...38 pounds for 24 hours, that's $58.

The next day, Joe and I walk down to Harrods and pass by the French Embassy. I ask if I could get a photo with the guard and my brother and he says..."sure". Then he changes hats with Joe but Joe thinks it would look cooler if he had the weapon too...sorry mate.

Harrods was absolutely one of the biggest stores I have been in, 5 acres and over 1,00,000,000 square feet of retail...and the less likely one I'd buy anything from, super expensive. The place was crawling with Persians, Arabs and Muslims, all in face veils and burqas... somebody has the money. 

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayad memorial is in the basement.

 Tower Bridge is a famous bridge in London that spans the River Thames and is near The Tower of London.

One view underneath the towers. 

And a more expansive view. The bridge was constructed between the years 1886 and 1894. The bridge is owned by a charitable trust, that also maintains 4 other landmark bridges.

  

This is a typical scene throughout London around 4:00 PM. Every pub (and they have a lot) is filled with workers who are done for the day and getting their pint or two before heading home. It's very social, like one person's explanation..."a pub is not a bar, but more like someones living room"

Now for some photos of Londons architecture. Big Ben at the end of the House of Commons is a classic.

The London Eye.

Barge and tourist boat traffic 

You might call London a city of "cranes" there was so much construction going on.

St. Paul's Cathedral has been a London favorite for over 300 years. The dome is one of the highest in the world and until 1962, the tallest building in London.

The Shard is Western Europe's tallest building at 95 stories. 

Mmmmm... the BT Tower. One of my friends quipped, "you can sure tell that the architect was a man"

The football shaped glass building is The Gherkin, a commercial office building in London's financial district. We found out in the coming days that England, Germany and Holland all go to extremes in the flowing lines of glass in their architecture. Rarely did we see a rectangle or square box building in Europe... France is the exception.

Along with the free flowing glass architecture, Europe as a whole takes great pains at preserving their historical building whenever possible.

The London Hippodrome, built in 1900, at one time had animal act and now after extensive restoration is a casino, restaurants and theater. A look on the web at who has played here just about includes all the names of bands I can remember.

These are probable what a New Yorker calls a "brownstone" house or apartment. Hundreds of this same shape building that house thousands of families. Like the New York brownstones, these don't come cheap. What I found interesting are the thousands of chimneys still attached to the buildings, even though coal is not allowed as heat anymore. They are either kept up there for architectural purposes or maybe they vent natural gas heat...I don't know.

Leaving England for our next stop, Brussels. There, we will stop just long enough to pick up a rental car and head for Dad's homeland.

The Eurostar will take us underneath the English Channel, through a corner of France and then on to Belgium with only one stop...did I mention the excellent transportation system in Europe?

Very comfortable seating with PC or eating tray. The train also had a dining car.

You really don't feel like you are traveling 183 miles per hour because the tracks are a welded one piece track, and the cushion between the wheels and the coach must be extensive.

Only when you look out the window do you realize the speed.

Did I like London, you bet. 

Would I like to go back? In a heartbeat! 

Maybe I'll start one of the "GoFundMe" things on the internet...there have to be folks that would contribute to it, just to get rid of me :-)

Dinosaur Ridge in Colorado

While visiting my sister Teri, and brother-in-law Randy, I had the opportunity to hike up the road to Dinosaur Ridge not far from their house.

The ridge was at one time a flat, shallow sea nearly 100 million years ago called, The Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. The seaway split America, as we know it today, from the Gulf of Mexico to the north of Canada. Most of the tracks made in the mud were by large herbivores and carnivores who roamed along the edge of this sea and were preserved for us by an accident of geology.

The animals of the time had walked in the muddy, shallow terrain and their weight depressed the soil that eventually filled in with sand. For millions of years the land slowly rose and tilted upward at an angle. Erosion eventually uncovered some of the prints that we see today, I suspect there are millions more still hidden in the earth, just waiting to be discovered. I had to ask if they enhanced the footprints for easier identification... yes, they use charcoal.

Some of the exhibits almost look fake, but rest assured, these are the real deal! The patterns give paleontologists clues as to what they were, how they moved and behaved.

Here are just a few of the creatures that left prints and bones at Dinosaur Ridge. 

Footprints were not the only thing frozen in time. Here are some fossilized sand patterns caused by water lapping on the shore. 

This looks northeast from near the top of the ridge. Below this ridge is a drag strip and just past the freeway is the start of the central plains of America. I plan on taking the trail all the way to the top.

TA DA! My selfie, because there was no one else up there to record this historic event! Ha Ha

Feeling Nostalgic up to 2005

I have a lot of photos in the cloud, but if anything were to happen to my PC and, or external hardrive I may lose a few that I would not want to, here are some that I like.

The family was so important to Donna. Our first years together, I did not have a lot of contact with my own family, but it was forced upon me through Donna. My family adopted her immediately, as if they knew something that I didn't, and she in turn loved being so involved with all my siblings, nieces and nephews that it couldn't help, but draw me in too.

I won't say that Donna made friends easily, but what she did do was to express an interest in everyone she met...the tight friends around her just seemed to bond themselves together without any effort. I always admired how forceful she was with her friendships.

Did Donna want me to buy and keep the boat in a slip at Mission Bay, San Diego...probably not. She was much more conservative than I was with money, but because she knew it was important to me, she agreed. After a year or two she loved getting away from Vegas to the boat as much as I did, like me...the boat grew on her.

Donna took up golf because I found a new love and she wanted to participate, and I love'd having her on the course with me. Neither one of us were any good, but at least we were bad together!

You can't fake a smile like this, Donna loved her Benji and Missy so much. Funny story...we had always had big dogs as pets and when the last big pet died of cancer, she expressed a wish for a lap dog. I found this breed, Havanese, by accident and from that day on we never had a pet...they were family members.

Travel? This girl loved to travel and camp. I'm not talking about "frilly" 5 star places... Donna just loved experiencing new or different places in the country. As her 50th was approaching, I asked where she'd like to celebrate it... Mexico (always a favorite) or some other exotic place? No, Donna had read that there was a mountain on the coast of Maine, Mt Cadillac, that is the highest point on the eastern seaboard and the very first to receive sunlight in the USA. So that's what we did, on the morning of her 50th, at 4:00 am, we drove to the peak of Mt Cadillac to celebrate...did we care if it was overcast? Na, we just pretended the sun that day was hitting Donna before anyone else in America...pretty cool.

Ah, the light of her life and always a cause of concern...our son, Jason. Jason was so important to Donna...even before he was born, that it nearly caused a ruckus when she was 6 months pregnant. I had always thought I was divorced in 1973 from Roxanne, and Donna and I got married in Janurary 1, 1978. Turns out that was not the case. Around December of 1982 Roxanne mentions that we never signed the papers and we were still legally married. I about shit a brick and we quickly finalized it and I told Donna not to worry. Yeah, right...that went over real well. The divorce was done by the end of 1982 and Donna insisted that we "remarry" at the courthouse on Janurary 1st, same day as in 1978 we thought we were married, so Jason's parents have two marriage licenses...pick one is what I say.

We really don't know what kind of impact a life will have on people when they are gone, some leave huge impacts...others like Donna leave such a subtle impact that until they are gone you don't realize just how much they have changed your life for the good...that was Donna.
I love you sweetie...