Regent St. Festival, Climbing and Champagne in the park

Since our last post we've been busy bees!

Last weekend we went indoor rock climbing at a gym called "The
Castle".  Checkout the picture below and you'll know why they call it
that.


We went with Nancy, a friend of Laura's from her new work, and her
husband Rob who is a policeman here in London.  He's got a good gig,
he patrols the parks in central London.  He says he doesn't get much
action except for tourists asking to take pictures with him in his
Bobby hat.  Interestingly enough, he once cycled from Japan back home
to England!  It took him two years and he snapped a lot of pictures. 
I asked him when he'd be writing his book, and he said that it's
almost done.

Then we went to a festival on Regent Street.  They closed off the road
between Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus, and transformed it into
an "English Garden" which means that they layed down sod and setup
booths to sell crap.  We also got lots of free samples and saw lots of
neat things.

They taught people how to play Polo!

The Metropolitan Police had an entire side street devoted to showing
off their neat stuff.  They had the cutest of their police dogs out to
play PR.  And they did it very well, Laura was running from puppy to
puppy getting licked and petting like a mad-woman.  The police here
are surprisingly well equipped.

That's a pursuit car that is in active duty.  They have three of them,
and I understand the justification is that they don't want *anyone* to
out run them.

Then we met up with Julie and we wandered around a bit.  It was good fun,
so to celebrate we thought it only appropriate to buy a bottle of
Champagne, some strawberries, cheese/baguette and some pudding for a
picnic at Buckingham Palace Garden.


On the way back to the Tube station, Julie, Laura and I noticed that
Whitehall road was closed down and there were lots of excited people
looking down a barricaded road.  Then a swarm of bikers zip by at high
speed.  It was the Tour of Britain!  Sort of like the Tour de France
only English.  The Tour of Britain is a one mile course that
circumnavigates the core part of downtown.

It was neat watching the chase cars squealing around the tight corners.

In addition to the weekend excitement, I decided to take a job.  I
started last week and  have been enjoying myself.  The office is smack
dab in the middle of Soho, which is a kind of trendy part of central
London.  Makes my lunch breaks exciting.  Also it gives me an
opportunity to do a bit more social interaction with some Brits
instead of sitting in our Flat programming.  Laura and I meet up after
work downtown which is neat too.

This week Joanne is coming for a visit, then the three of us are off
to Manchester this weekend to visit Laura and Joanne's cousins.  Then
Joanne will be off to Italy then some other countries.

The weekend after next we're heading off to Amsterdam!  Fun fun.

Here are all the pictures.