October 23, 2003

European Vacation Part 6: Sightseeing with The Stoddards .

When we'd gotten back to Charlene's the previous night, she made a big pot of tea. I didn't realize how much caffeine English tea has in it and I ended up not being able to get to sleep until like 6am.

On Thurday morning, the plan was to get up and head into London to do some sightseeing with Grant's family (who were coming into town from nearby Essex) and to get our plane tickets to Crete, which we'd had delivered to their house.

chris a, grant — We all ended up oversleeping and had to rush out of the door so as not to be late meeting up with Grant's parents, grandmother (Pam!) and (hot) sister, Gemma in Covent Garden. Grant was freaking out the whole ride in. He was like "We can't be late! My dad'll kill us!"

gemma, grant, mr stoddard, mrs stoddard, nanny pam — It's the Stoddards! Gemma, Brad, Grant, Pauline, and Grandma Pam (who believe it or not, reads this website! Hi Pam!)

Fatty's pic of me filming the reunion. Cah-cah-crazy!

After all the introductions were made, we all walked up Shaftsbury Avenue to Tralfagar Square.

chris a, fatty, me — Hi, we're tourists.

We enjoy your fountains.

Very much.

gemma, grant, mr stoddard, mrs stoddard, nanny pam — The Stoddard Family!

chris a, grant — Chris (being a ninja and all) out of the blue decided to climb the giant, bronze lion statue. Evenutally (with much more difficulty) the rest of us managed to climb up there with him, but I can't find the picture of all four us up there (which is a good thing because a picture of the four of us snuggled up riding a lion statue would be so gay that if I posted it on the world wide net there'd be a risk that it could cause a chain reaction and turn the entire world gay).

mr stoddard, nanny pam — After all of our lion climbing, it was time for a pre-breakfast beer *quiver*. We went into a pub and got ourselves a Stella Top (which is where you fill a pint with 3/4 Stella Artois and 1/4 Sprite. Yes, Sprite the soda. No, I'm not sure who thought to do that.)

chris a, fatty, nanny pam — Grammy Pammy, Fatty and Chris.

gemma, grant — Grant and *rowr!* Gemma. (Hi Gemma! [holds hand up to ear and mouth and makes the international sign for telephone and whispers] "Call me!")

fatty, grant, me chris the greek — After our beers, we walked over into Chinatown to get lunch.

The bathroom in the Chinese restaurant was really interesting. They had toilets, but no urinals! Instead, they had this really neat metal trough filled with refreshing cubes of pineapple! Who knew England could be so exotic?!

chris a — Chris the Greek coldlamps on the Greek Street lamp.

grant, nanny pam — Gemma was feeling really ill (I think Grant poisoned her so she couldn't stick around to be flirted with any longer) so around 4:30pm the Stoddard fam packed it up and headed back to Essex leaving us to sightsee.

fatty, grant — After Grant's family took off, we popped into a cafe for a quick cup of coffee...

chris a, me — ...and a light schhhhnack.

chris a, fatty, grant, me — Then it was back to more sightseeing. Clark: "Look kids! Big Ben!"

"Parliament!"

fatty — Clark: "Look kids! Big Ben!"

chris a, fatty, grant — "Parliament!"

Clark: "Look kids!" Audrey & Rusty: "Yeah, we know dad. It's Big Ben."

After we were done recreating that scene (from one of the greatest movies of all time), we walked through St. James Park (which was only noteworthy because Grant identified it as the location where he made out with some cute girl last time he'd been in London) over to Westminster Bridge to check out the view of whatever that over-sized ferris wheel that the Brits make such big deal about is called. (Oh, it's called "The London Eye." Alot of people don't know this, but its full name is actually "The London Eye [Wonder Who Thought This Big Ferris Wheel Would Be Interesting].")

While the view from the bridge was pretty spectacular...

grant — ...it wasn't spectacular enough to negate the 30mph winds that were whipping down the Thames River and causing us to...

...practically freeze our buns off.

fatty, me — We hurriedly snapped a few more pics (Here's me wearing Westminster Abbey as a hat)...

chris a, fatty, grant — ...and then got the hell off that windy-ass bridge.

On the way back to the subway we passed the Channel 4 building (which is a lot more interesting in person that this photo would lead you to believe).

chris a, fatty, me — After that, we hopped back onto the tube, headed back to Charlene's flat...

fatty — ...packed up our stuff...

...thanked Charlene's roomies for their wonderful hospitality (thanks again!)...

chris a, fatty, grant, me — ...and grabbed the train to Heathrow to catch our 10:20pm flight and kick off the next leg of the trip: Crete!

fatty, grant, me — We chatted up the totally cute Greek girls working the Olympus Airlines ticketing counter and they hooked the four of us up with...

chris a, fatty, grant, me — ...the center emergency row! Let's hear it for extra leg room. Awww, yeah.

We landed in Athens 3:59am...

grant — ...and had an hour and forty-five minutes layover to kill before our puddle jumper flight from Athens to Iraklio (or Heraklion), Crete!

We landed in Heraklion at 5:45am and while we were waiting for our baggage, we ran into...

chris a, grant, ross m — ...a huge Cretan man that looked like a bizarro "Ogre Version" of our good friend Ross Martin. Not willing to let him escape undocumented, we dispatched Chris (who speaks fluent Greek) to tell the giant Ross-Ogre (R'ogre, if you will) that he looked just like a friend of ours and would he mind posing for a picture. There was an uncomfortably long pause as he pondered our request (which I spent fearing he was about to crush all of our heads like grapes) but instead he gave a polite nod and posed for this fantastic pic.

ross m — Here's the side by side comparison: The real Ross Martin's on the left and the Ogrified Ross Martin is on the right. If you squint a little, you almost can't tell who's who! Hahahah.