Revised Itinerary

The new, 15 1/2 day itinerary (with tentative dates) is on Google docs.

Itinerary, version 1.0 (with problems)

Here's a possible straight 14 day itinerary.  With one (big) problem, all the car trips are well under 2 1/2 hours (Google time) to destination.

The big problem is the last day - driving from Ft. William, Scotland to back to London.  That's 8 1/2 hours, Google time.

Second problem is only two days in London, proper, but we could drop a side trip to get an extra day.

The alternate is a typical "two week" vacation that includes an extra weekend (leave Saturday, return Sunday) and runs 16 days - although they needn't begin/end on weekend days (e.g., leave on a Tuesday, return on a Wednesday).

BTW, things are booking up for summer 2014.  I was looking at one castle (it was pricey, so didn't bookmark it) and there are days it's already full and others with limited availability remaining.  (It may be booked for private events, rather than just random vacationers.  Had only 40 rooms or so.)

Anyhow, it's just a starting point.

It's available at:
 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmH3g4BYgRtgdHY2TjUxSnNNUDl6YndSZFNPcUtvOVE&usp=sharing

For the collectors of underground city tours, here's one in Edinburgh

Mary King's Close

Sounds a bit "touristy", but who knows?

And, for all the Dan Brown Fans in our audience.....

The Roslyn Chapel

It's just 7 miles from Edinburgh centre (their cities don't seem to have centers) - by bus #15 or by car.

Dining (well, eating) Edinburgh

Stumbled on this one looking for info on the Royal Mile....

The Albenach

Bacon Cheese Burger with fries, about $15.00 for cost comparison only - has more Scottish dishes, including haggis burger for Amy, scottish salmon for me and Angus steak for Steve. Menu here [it's a jpeg]) and gets good reviews on Trip Advisor.

Also a £5 ($7.50) discount available on web site (I didn't check terms and conditions).

Day trips from London (may be combined)

I've identified *possible* day trips.  These are all under 2 hours (in no traffic, like that's going to happen) from London and it's possible to combine several into one all day outing sans exhaustion....

Oxford  (1 hour 20 mins, west/northwest)
Cambridge (1 hour 20 minutes, north)
Stratford-on-Avon (1 hr 50 minutes from London, but 1 hour beyond Oxford)
Stonehenge (1 hour 50 minutes, west southwest)
Windsor Castle. (50 minutes west, more or less en route to/from Stonehenge, Aylesbury)

Other possibilities?

To Let, London

Here's an aprtment that rents by the night (3 night minimum - not a problem).  You gotta love the view -  absolutely no doubt where you are:
http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p401139

and another (whole house):
http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p920354

Looks like daily rentals won't be a problem (the homeaway site of full of them - and that's just those listed as "children friendly".

No more specific locations - unless I find a really great one.

One problem solved (I created it; it turns out it wasn't really a problem to begin with.)

United Kingdom, 2014

Someone has to start it and, since it the family's 70th birthday present to me, I might as well be the one...

It's a year away and time to start figuring out what we're doing and when.

First discovery - it's cheaper to fly on weekdays (and cheaper still if that doesn't include Monday or Friday), than on weekends (a "duh!" discovery), but we're considering renting an apartment in London (referred to as a "without meals") for a week and they rent weekend to weekend.

Second discovery - rail travel is extremely easy throughout the UK (another "duh!", although I didn't realize quite how easy), but it isn't cheap.  A round trip for five London - York and return (2 hrs each way),  is about the same as a car (well, large van) rental for the week.  The car issue is flexibility and luggage lugging (pluses) versus congestion (which is supposed to be terrible in the cities - London, York and Edinburgh).

Third discovery -- York has more going for it than I expected.  "The midlands" were always described to me as a tourist's wasteland, but York has a great Gothic Minster (church), a Viking excavation and recreation combo, and a 700 year old stone tower.  Oh..... and the British Railway Museum.  I almost forgot that one. ;-)

Anyway, that's the opening salvo for a year's worth of preparations.

Dad out....

Gordbergs eat fancy in 2013, part one

I'm behind on my fine dining reviews, so hopefully I can catch up…first, Remy, from our Disney cruise last February.  It was a lovely, if slightly delayed by a stupid blizzard, trip. We did a couple days visting Grandma & Grandpa Ben in Fort Myers (we should have been there longer, but the aforementioned blizzard shortened our trip by two days), then a few days in Disney World (breakfast in the castle! (overpriced but Sophie loved it) dole whips! (i'm sure we went for at least two) caramel corn! (my favorite snack in epcot) etc!), then a week on the newest Disney cruise ship, the Disney Fantasy.  This was our first time on the Fantasy, though it is basically the same as the Dream - Remy is something they have in common.  If memory serves, Sophie had a hotdog that night, then happily headed to the kids' club (where she would rather be than eating dinner with us, anyway), and we headed to Remy.  It was a long time ago.  Hopefully I remember what we ate…

As with last time, we got amuse bouches of a little nugget of fried tomato soup.  I kid you not, in the middle of that cube was tomato soup.  I do not know how you fry tomato soup, but it was tasty.  You can also see some bread there.  I don't remember anything about it, except that it was tasty. We were served bread and fancy butter throughout the meal.

At this point, you also get your complimentary cocktail, the Colette - Champagne & pear vodka, with some little bits of dried fruit.  Yummy. Once we finished that, we followed up with a bottle of the same Taittenger champagne they used in the cocktail.

Up next, I think we both got a complimentary serving of ratatouille (because Remy is the rat from Ratatouille, get it?) with some olive oil ice cream on top.  Nice, light, tasty.  I think.  It's been a while.

Next, we moved to the first course.  What were the other two courses? Um, -1st and 0th, I guess.  I started with a shrimp that was magically fried in some sort of light rice-based crunchy stuff (Massago, i think it was called? Something Japanese). It was on a bed of fried Japanese noodles, with a sort of soy sauce-ish foam.  I think one of the sauces was an aioli, and the other was some kind of citrus-y ponzu sauce.  Very tasty. 

Steve had some kind of fancy tomato tart, with (I think) whipped mozzarella on top.  His came with something really amazing - a champagne glass filled with what looks like wine, but is really clarified gazpacho.  It was amazing - it is literally this clear liquid, but it tastes clearly of tomato, cucumber, and various other vegetables.  So, so good.  I wanted to steal all of it, but I resisted.

Up next, I had some kind of salmon. it was tasty.  I want to say the yellow sauce drizzled around it was some sort of lemon-based sauce, and underneath was sunchoke puree, maybe? Whatever it was, it was yummy. 

Steve had poulet rouge (aka, chicken), stuffed with some kind of mushroom duxelle, breaded & fried, on a bed with other mushrooms.  He is not a huge mushroom fan, but he still enjoyed this - I ate most of his big mushrooms, though, I think.

Up next, more fish.  I had something, he had something.  They were good.  I really should have written this sooner; I have no idea what they were, or even which one we each had.  I know Steve ate his, and, not being a fan of fish, that must mean it was good.  Halibut, maybe? I know he likes halibut...

Main course - he had wagyu beef "taco" - the orange crunches were seasoned with fancy taco seasoning, and it had fancy-pants guacamole with it.  And maybe sour cream? Something like that, it looks like...

I had…hm, bison maybe? with an extra bowl of very fancy mashed potatoes?  Whatever it was, mine was better than his.  His was delicious, but mine was better.  And had mashed potatoes that were half butter, so how could I lose?

Next came my very favorite course.  I'm not going to try to tell you what all the cheeses were, just that I loved them.  I think that of the 9 or 10 I had, there was maybe one I merely liked instead of loving.  My favorite this time was some sort of triple creme - so creamy, so delicious. Oh cheese, how I adore you.

Now, this time, we did not mislead our waiter into thinking Steve liked cheese, and thus, I did not feel like I was going to die after I ate all of his cheese in addition to mine - instead, he got some apple sorbet, which was light and refreshing.  But oh, that cheese…

Then, it was time for dessert.  I (once again) had Tanzanie chocolate mouse in a freaky chocolate eyelash thing (make note of this dessert; it will show up again in the near future). It also had a small amount of chocolate-orange ice cream, which, yum.  Very rich, very delicious.

 

Steve had something else chocolate-y.  It looked kind of like a cigar.  It had crunchy stuff inside, I think.  It was slightly less rich than mine, but still pretty darn rich.  And it had gold leaf! It evidently came with something frothy in a martini glass.  Honestly, I can't remember anything about it at all - what was it? I really have no clue.

With dessert, Steve had coffee & I had tea.  I had to take a picture of the menu - because where else have you ever seen Monkey Picked Oolong??  I had never seen it.  I had it. It was really, really good tea.  Those monkeys know what they are doing.

After dessert part one, they brought dessert part two - friandises (or mingiardises? not sure what the difference is).  Little bites of yum.  I remember a little lemon shortbread cookie with lemon curd, some caramel with macadamia nuts, nougat, various chocolates, some long cinnamon-y pastry cookie things, fancy lollipops, marshmallows (coconut, I think?), and canelles.  All were tasty.  I think we brought most of them back to the room; I can't imagine we were still hungry at that point…I seem to recall, they also gave us a small box of filled chocolates and I got a rose to bring back to the room.

All in all, it was an extremely tasty meal.  I fell like we had more memorable courses the first time we went, but perhaps I am jaded.  The clarified gazpacho that came with Steve's first course was truly extraordinary, and the cheese continues to amaze me. The service was impeccable, as last time, and the meal took us 3 hours to eat - but each course was small enough that we never felt like we were going to explode. 

I know this is unheard of, but right now, we don't really have our next cruise scheduled - but I think when we do, assuming it's on one of the newer ships, we may skip Remy dinner next time, and try their brunch - I hear it's delicious. And lest you think we are overly depriving ourselves, there will always be Palo...

Part two, our tenth anniversary dinner at Victoria & Albert's coming sometime soon...