My pleasure

Jason, It was great enjoying a birthday gift with you (not like 4 yrs ago when you got a nice massage while I waited in the car..... ;-)
I LOVE YOU TOO and I am looking forward to our weekend in Venice!

We saw living legends

Hey everyone! I hope you're having a great week.

This weekend Annelies treated me to a big surprise for my birthday. For the last few months, she has been leading up to a "fun event" on Sunday, August 20th. "Ok," I thought, "this should be something pretty darn cool if she won't tell me about it!" As the week rolled on last week, I started asking more questions to try to figure out what we were doing.

"We have to leave at 4:00 PM", she divulged. "And oh yeah, it's fancy, so you have to wear a nice suit."

"Okey dokey," I thought. It must be some fancy British tradition! After several more questions and answers, I ruled out that it was NOT skydiving, hot air balooning, nor horse racing. On Sunday, we went for a run in the morning, and when I was about to start ironing my suit, Annelies poked me in the arm and told me she was kidding about that part: "we can wear normal clothes, hehehehe."

Taking the lead from her, I put on some jeans and a shirt, and we left to catch our 4:00 train. At the station, the secret was revealed! There was a message that trains to Twickenham would be delayed due to the Rolling Stones concert! At last, I asked Annelies the correct question and she confirmed that was where we were going!

So we met up with some friends for a bite to eat at a local pub and then headed over to the Twickenham Rugby Stadium for the show (a stadium the size of Mile High Stadium).

The show was AWESOME!! The Rolling Stones absolutely ROCKED. After all, with 40+ years of experience putting on big shows, they do have a lot of practice! Mick spent the entire 2 hour show running all up and down the stage, singing like crazy; he sure knows how to be a rock star! And even though Keith Richards claims that he "doesn't really remember the 80's" because of too much partying, he can sure play the guitar! They played a bunch of their big hits and ended the evening with "Satisfaction". If you ever get a chance to see the Rolling Stones before they finally retire, you should jump on the chance!



Thank you very much Annelies for a wonderful birthday surprise. I love you muuuito!!

-Jason

It has been a while...

Sorry for all of you that have been awaiting updates... we have had some busy weeks!

Three weekends ago, our friend Steven came from Belgium to spend the weekend with us. It was a lot of fun. Saturday we went to Oxford to visit one of his friends. Oxford is beautiful (eventhough we spend the first 2 hours in a pub waiting for the rain to stop..) So, a couple a pints and cider later... we went out to explore the beautiful university city. There are something like 100 different colleges that make up Oxford, some of them dating back hundreds of years. We walked by the famous oxford library. But the real hit with the tourists was the Christchurch College (see picture). This is where some of the Harry Potter movies were filmed and there were big crowds of tourists to prove it!

The city was overwhelmed with police officers, which was due to an animal rights group demonstration that was expected. There is a big animal testing lab in Oxford; surprisingly even with all the police and crowds demonstrating about the lab, there was no problem walking around the lab. We shot this picture when we walked to the back of the lab; the police were photographing the grafiti... Here in England the animal activists have made a fool of themselves and have no sympathy of the general public!


On sunday we went to Greenwich park.. to see the 0 degree longitude mark which divides east from west. Very touristy at the Royal Observatory!! We also saw the official GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) clock... But the worst was the attempt we made to ease out mexican food withdrawl and ended up at a restaurant that left all of us sick....

The weekend after Annelies' brother (coming from Brazil) and sister (coming from belgium) came to spend the weekend! We had a lot of fun! We went to the London Dungeon.. not sure if it worth the £15 for another visit put the farmer's market nearby was very interesting (the London dungeon was pretty touristy and at least entertaining...). We wanderd around in London (it's great to be a tourist when we have family or friends in town) and went to see the Pirates of the Carribean 2 (also not sure if it was worth the £10, but kept us entertained...)

And last weekend we went to the Cotswolds (hills) and Wales (in the Western part of the island). Annelies had to attend a dog show (pretty much just to handover a trophy...) and as a benefit we got a rental car and hotel for the weekend! What fun that was to drive on the wrong side of the road for the first time! We're both happy to say that we tried it and didn't cause any accidents :)

That part of the country was beautiful and it truly was lovely driving around some of the smaller roads and towns throughout western England and eastern Wales. We stopped at a number of ruinous, 1000 year old castles which were pretty interesting to check out. You could imagine the medieval times: catapults, knights, kings, fare maidens, horses, wagons and all!

This weekend we're taking it pretty easy around London and relaxing. In a few weeks we're going to take a trip to Venice which should be very nice and romantic! We hope everyone is well and are happy to report that planes are now currently flying overhead (and on their way to land at Heathrow). Be safe. Lots of love,

-Jason & Annelies