Lea Valley Canal (Heading south)

Susan has been wanting to show me the ride along the Lea Valley canal to the Thames since she's gotten her new bike.   We had a sunny weekend and made the best of it. 

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Heading out from our place in Walthamstow

One of a few interesting bridges and tunnels along the way

Looking at Three Mills where a lot of Stop Motion productions are done. (Including the new Frankenweenie movie)

Lea Valley canal merges into Thames water (Tide was out)

Bending around before meeting up with Regents Canal

Just finished having a sandwich in Victoria Park

The new athletic Olympic stadium which is next to Victoria Park

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HMS Belfast: Check!

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So we finally saw the HMS Belfast museum that sits on the Thames river.  We had a good excuse to go with Ben and Brian who were visiting from Canada. The ship sits all year round right across from the Tower Castle and it's always one of those things that's a either too expensive to bother or you just don't have enough time to see it.  Truthfully we still didn't have enough time to see it all but that was partially because we didn't know our way around the ship before they started closing down sections.   If you like WW2 stuff then there's plenty to see and learn plus it's all decked out with creepy mannequins posing all around the ship.  

Road trip through Scotland Ireland and Wales

Check out the rest of the pictures here!

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We had lots of sun cloud and rain everyday, our stereotype of of Irish and Scottish weather was strongly reinforced.  Luckily we would get some really interesting photo's in the process.   Our odometer on our rental bill was at 2200 miles of driving in our 11 day trip.   I never expected everything to be quite so beautiful throughout our trip,  I definitely think it's something worth experiencing even if its a bit cooler in the summer.
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At the top of Ben Nevis: 1344m

Caernarfon Castle sword fight

Welsh Highland railway steam train in Caernarfon.

Switzerland and South Germany (Luxembourg too!)

Between Zurich/Chur

On our 7 hour train trip to Zermatt with 7 train transfers!

Between Chur/Visp

Between Zermatt/Gornergrat

360 at Gornergrat station.

Between Zermatt/Gornergrat

Zermatt Downtown

Uhh.. I was too hungry to remember to photo our awesome Bratwurst  with bread and mustard in Basel Switzerland  :D

Dion, Ace and Suz.

Baden-Baden

Black Forest

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Bacharach

Bacharach

Luxembourg

Aschaffenburg

View Trip in Switzerland/Germany Aug'11 in a larger map


See the rest of the photos here!

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Our 5 day speed vacation all came together very quickly once we got a call from Asaph telling us he suddenly decided to do a week vacation in Germany/Paris and wondered if we wanted to join him.  I've spent all my free time after work booking flights hotels and cars scrambling to put together a trip worthy of the giant price tag attached to flying with short notice.   It's hard to believe how well it all turned out and how much we accomplished in such a short period of time.  With some help from an unexpected change of warm sunny weather we were able to get some great views of central Europe.
Our journey through Switzerland is fantastic by train, it turns out doing a trip from one end of Switzerland to the other and back works perfectly for getting a "Swiss Pass" which gives you unlimited train travel for two days on the main train lines. It's pricey at 180 Swiss Francs per person but in the end your saving quite a bit and not worrying about where you go.   However while travelling in Germany I would recommend renting a car as it's surprisingly similar to driving in North America.  In fact I really enjoyed that part and it allowed us to cover lots of land and see many things in a short period of time.  We even ambitiously decided to trek it all the way into Luxembourg and when your driving at 200 kph it doesn't take as long as you think!

Ben & Jerry's Sundae Festival

Free ice cream!

More free ice cream!

Oh and bands too!

Ben & Jerry's Sundae Festival Site

Google map: Clapham Common park

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We heard about this little gem of a festival though someone Susan met at work.  The key attraction is the free all you can eat Ben and Jerry's ice cream!  I suppose the catch is it's £17 a ticket but it's hard to pass up an opportunity to eat as much ice cream as you want while enjoying some quality entertainment.   Aside from day being pretty overcast the sun eventually came through in the end which topped a cherry to an excellent day.