Famille Du Pentium

Another Day, Another Llama Video

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

London Day 4 Part 2 – London Transport Museum

After swimming and the Harry Potter tour, we all got back together and went to Covent Gardens to visit the London Transport Museum.  This museum is a relatively hands-on, climb-on museum of old coaches, busses, horse-drawn carraiges, and of course underground trains that have served London over the years.  Great fun for the kids.  After our tour, Lisa and the kids hung out at the hotel while Mike and Marla met up with some old friends from work.  Sorry to disappoint you, but no pictures of the London bar scene – only the London Transport Museum.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 5:50 pm  

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

London Day 4 Part 1 – Harry Potter Tour

During our trip, my cousin Lisa booked a black taxi Harry Potter tour.  This tour ostensibly goes to various sites around London where Harry Potter was filmed.  I say ostensibly, because I didn’t go (daddy’s special time with Ethan – we went swimming and to the arcade instead.)  However, Marla and Aaron both took pictures (although having seen Aaron’s, I can’t vouch for their story-telling value) and you can follow along the path of Harry Potter through London HERE.

Later, I’ll post pictures from the 2nd half of our fourth day – a trip to the London Transport museum.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 4:24 pm  

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

New Caerlaverock Castle Pics

As I said previously, at some ports I took pictures with my 35mm SLR manual camera.  Although they are lower resolution, I used different lenses (long and wide) and different settings to take these pictures… sometimes for better, sometimes for worse (I’m still re-learning how to use all the manual settings.)  So there might be some interesting shots here, different from the vanilla pictures produced by the Sony point-and-shoot I used for the previous pictures.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded new pictures for Caerlaverock and Newark – the Clan Maxwell castles we visited – and will also publish them for the other sites we visited (to be posted later.)  Enjoy Caerlaverock HERE, and don’t say I didn’t warn you!

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 7:57 pm  

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Berkhamsted England

This is Day 3 of our London visit.  We went out to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, England.  The purpose of the visit was really twofold: visit one of Lisa’s old friends, and to see the castle.  After taking the tube to Victoria Station, we boarded the National Rail service to Berkhamsted.  The train ride took about an hour.  Upon arriving, a short walk later we were at our guest’s flat.  From there, we walked all around Berkhamsted, a beautiful little hamlet with small shops and cafes, parks, and a river with longboats on it.  Toward the end of our town walk, we visited Berkhamsted Castle, which was the last stand for the English against the Normans… William the Conquerer accepted his victory at Berkhamsted Castle.

Then we went to Lisa’s friend’s daughter’s house where we were treated to pasta, Pimms Fizzes, and great conversation.

Pictures of the town and castle are here.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 2:40 pm  

Monday, August 2, 2010

Trip Day 1 – London Day 1

First off, I’m going to try to post about 1-2 stories per day about our trip, to try to spread them out a bit and make it a little easier to keep up.  We started a little out of order – so that the Renewal of Vows and Maxwell Family / Caerlaverock Castle visit would be up first, but those were actually days six and seven of the cruise, 11 and 12 of the vacation.  So now we’re back to the beginning.

Day one in the UK was London – we actually spent five days in London before our cruise from Southampton.  This is actually day 1 and 2, because that’s how I organized the pictures.  By the way, if you see a little drawn paper figure in some pictures, that’s Flat Stanley and it was a school project for Ethan to take pictures of Flat Stanley visiting as many sites during our trip as possible.

So on day one, we mainly tried to stay awake until UK bedtime, in order to avoid jetlag.  So first we went to the Sherlock Holmes museum at, of course, 221b Baker Street.  The museum building is laid out roughly how it is in the stories, with authentic era furniture and settings etc.  After that, we met up with Lisa, Jerry and Rory at the hotel and proceeded to our Duck Tours on the Thames river.  One more duck tour under our belt!  We’ve now taken Duck tours in California, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Missouri, and now London.  There are probably a few more I’m forgetting.  Anyway, after Duck tours, dinner and bedtime.

Day two, Lisa and company went to Stonehenge while we took the Hop-On, Hop-off bus tour of London… so you’ll see lots of pictures of London sites.  The pictures didn’t organize well, so it’s sort of a mix of Sherlock Holmes, the duck ride, and various sites around London.  Pictures, again, are HERE.

Next up, London Day 3 – Berkhampsted!

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 5:48 pm  

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Maxwell Heritage – Caerlaverock & Newark Castles

OK first some family history – my grandmother’s mother’s maiden name was Maxwell.  From our records, we’ve determined that her family goes back to David Maxwell, who was born in Glasgow in the 19th century and moved to Champagne, Illinois sometime later.  David was one of the sons of the Honorable Joseph Maxwell, who was in turn the son of the 11th Baron of Herries, Marmaduke Constable Maxwell.   The lineage from Marmaduke Constable Maxwell traces back somewhat directly to Maccus, a Norse chief, and his son John Maxwell, who was Chamberlain of Scotland in the 13th century.

These Maxwells built and lived in several castles in lowland Scotland until the 17th century, two of which we visited during our British Isles cruise: Caerlaverock Castle in Dumfries and Newark Castle near Glasgow.  We, of course, took lots of pictures and I’ll walk you through them now.  If you open that link in a new tab or separate window, you can refer to this guide while viewing the pictures.

The first 16 pictures, through DSC03396, are from our trip from Glasgow to Dumfries, which is about 3 hours.  From there, you have the old Caerlaverock castle gate, and at DSC03400 your first view of the castle itself.  The rest are pictures from inside and around the castle, and of course the kids, up to about DSC03440 where we start making our way from Dumfries back to Glasgow to visit Newark Castle.  Mostly what you see is the countryside between Dumfries and Glasgow.

At DSC03453, we arrive at Newark Castle and start making our way around it.

The “DSCxxxxx” series pictures are from my point-and-shoot Sony; the following pictures starting with IMAG0001 are from Marla’s camera and so they repeat starting back at Caerlaverock and then moving forward to Newark.  I also took 35MM pictures with film and some long and wide lenses; I’ll post those once they are processed.

Our excursion was arranged in advance with a private tour guide and coach company, and everything was great.  The staff at Caerlaverock had been alerted to our arrival by our tour guide and treated us like royalty.  The tea room had a great lunch menu, and I even tried the haggis sandwich.  Then, we had to make our way back through Glasgow to Greenock, where our boat was docked.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 9:20 am  

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Cruise – Renewal of Vows

First things first, on our first day at sea we (Marla and Mike) renewed our wedding vows.  This year marks our 18th anniversary.  My (Mike’s) plan was to schedule a cruise for the two of us on our 20th anniversary (something we intended to do back when we got married) and do the renewal of vows thing then.  However, since this cruise was scheduled for this year, and there’s very little chance we’re going to be able to take another cruise in 2012, we decided to do it now.

Princess Cruises offers a renewal of vows package that includes the ceremony, officiated by the captain (Andrew Proctor in our case), flowers, champagne, and some memorial items like keepsake glasses and a certificate.  The ceremony was coordinated by passenger services rep. Liz, who did an outstanding job.  It was well worth the cost.

Ethan served as ring bearer, and Justin wanted to carry flowers so he was the flower boy.  Aaron was Mike’s best man, and Lisa was Marla’s matron of honor.  The standing party consisted of everyone in our party.

After the ceremony, we retired to the Crown Princess dining room called Crown Grill, which is basically a steak house.  There, our champagne was served and we enjoyed an excellent meal with even better service by Camilla, who basically hand fed Justin his trout and didn’t take any guff from our party about “Oh, I don’t want to eat desert!”

As far as pictures go, we’re a bit out of order here – the renewal of vows was on the first sea day, which was actually about 10 days into the cruise.  But I felt that this post deserved top billing, and I’ll post more later.  Pictures from our day at sea and renewal of vows is here.  The pictures of the rocks are the islands we passed at sea while passing over northern Scotland from Glasgow to Invergordon.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 4:57 pm  

Friday, July 30, 2010

We’re Home!

Reviews, pictures, and general trip minutiae will follow.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 8:36 pm  

Monday, July 5, 2010

Our Vacation Iten

So we’re going on vacation next week.  Above is a map of our cruise – the Princess British Isles Cruise.  Here’s what we’ll be doing:

  • 1 Week in London: Sherlock Holmes Museum, Thames Duck Tour, Hop-on/Hop-off Bus Tour, Berkhemsted, Harry Potter Tour, Museum of Transportation, Tower of London tour, and Jack the Ripper walking tour.
  • Guernsey / St. Peter’s Port: Walking tour of Castle Coronet
  • Cobh / Cork: The Monks, Vikings, and Normans Tour (606 – 1690).
  • Dublin: 1916 Rising Tour
  • Liverpool: Steam Train / Chirk Castle Tour
  • Belfast: Hop-on, Hop-off Bus Tour
  • Greenock / Glasgow: Private tour of Clan Maxwell’s Caerlaverock Castle (my grandmother was a Clan Maxwell)
  • Day at Sea
  • Invergordon: Loch Ness and Castle Urquhart
  • South Queensfferry / Edinburgh: Hop-on, Hop-off Bus Tour
  • At Sea
  • Le Havre / Paris: Louvre tour, lunch at Eiffel Tower, Paris city tour
  • Southampton / Travel Home

We have a full itinerary!  I’ll post updates as I have time and internet access.

Steam train/Chirk Castle
posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 8:08 pm  

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Springfield Vacation

Day 1

On Friday, July 10th we slept a bit late and got going on the road around 10.  Springfield is about 3.5 hours away, we made it there in about 3.  We got to our hotel early, so before checking in we went to the State Capital and walked around.  We could have gone in, but we didn’t want to spend all afternoon there (a swimming pool awaited us at our hotel!) so we just walked around and took in the atmosphere and got our pictures taken next to Abe.

Friday evening after swimming, we all got together at a restaurant named Darcy’s Pint, where the specialty of the house is a dish called a “Horseshoe” which contains beef or other meat covered with fries which are in turn covered with white cheese sauce, all nestled on a bed of Texas toast.  Here we all are, and here’s what a horseshoe looks like:

Darcy's Pint Horseshoe

Darcy's Pint Horseshoe

Mmm, Yummy!

Day 2:

On Saturday, we went to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.  These are actually two separate buildings and the museum is the main attraction.  It goes over the life of Lincoln, the Civil War and Emancipation.  Many pictures are ready to be enjoyed.

After that, we headed out to New Salem, Illinois – a now abandoned city near Petersburg (where Lincoln is buried) where Lincoln first moved when he turned 21, and worked for a while as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and doing odd jobs.  This was actually two days of activities, we went both Saturday afternoon and Sunday before we headed home.  Pictures of the Kids and us in New Salem are here.

Then there was some other stuff, and we got a flat tire driving home:

Flat Tire

Flat Tire

It was near old Route 66:

Mother Road

Mother Road

Wasn’t that exciting?

ALL the pictures here.

posted by Michael Humphries-Dolnick at 6:50 pm  
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