France to go

We’re coming to the end of our last full day in London, and it’s been action-packed right up until the end. Evan’s been busy finishing up Hellboy II — go see it in the U.S. July 11 and in the UK August 20 (or July 13 at Somerset House) — and I’ve been busy redesigning the Write-Communications site (with help from a great Revolution theme and lots of Wordpress plugins), doing work for Workology and still trying to get a bit of writing done.

The weekly list:

• Entrepreneur.com - Printing 2.0: Started on slick and colorful calling cards for the social networking circuit, Moo has quickly become an international stationery brand.
• Entrepreneur magazine - The PlayHousing Market: There’s no slump here: Barbara Butler’s company thrives by donating its fanciful houses.
• Londonist - Met Officers Brag About On-the-Job Collisions

On our trip we should be making occasional updates to Twitter (me/Evan), Facebook, this blog and Evan’s photo site, so stay tuned. Now off to do some more packing — we head to Egypt tomorrow!

Fighter jets flying over Buckingham Palace

It’s been a busy weekend in London. Yesterday was the Queen’s official birthday, and though I didn’t go to see the “Trooping of the Colour,” I did happen to see a lot of horses walking down Grosvenor St. and then was quite shocked to see an air-show worthy fly-by by lots of military jets — including fighter jets flying in formation, giant bombers lots of other gray air behemoths — passing right over Buckingham Palace.

A few hours later, I was walking home and as I passed by Hyde Park Corner, I had to stop to let a police escort whisk a royal motorcade into the park — there were crowns on all the black cars, though only one had the crown right on the top, where a taxi’s sign would be. It may have been the queen, though I didn’t really get a good look into any of the cars.

Apparently Pres Bush is also in town right now, staying by us at the Dorchester, and we saw what we believed was his motorcade, with even more police escorts than the royal one I saw yesterday, coming down Piccadilly tonight. We also saw a man in a dress. Well, more a skirt and top, actually, which, you know, wasn’t necessarily that notable. But about a minute later, we passed by a man with a thick Southern accent who said in a bewildered voice, “I don’t know what was more exciting tonight, seeing President Bush or seeing the dude in the dress”!

I also saw an old man wearing pink bunny ears and smoking a cigarette on Marylebone High Street this afternoon (LJ, where’s the photo?), so it’s been a bit of an odd weekend — though fun — to say the least.

This past week has been quite a lot of fun. On Saturday night we went to see Wicked, which was quite a lot of fun, especially since the audience got really into it — there were girls there in green face paint and a lot of the crowd gave a standing ovation at the end. It was really interesting to see how they turned the book into the musical, though I read it quite a few years ago and don’t remember everything, so there were still a few surprises. The ending was also different from what I remembered. The show also had some great effects, including a huge dragon puppet over the stage and lots of flying/floating.

Today I had a nice morning at Tuttle Club/Social Media Cafe, where I got to catch up with some of the usual crowd as well as meet some new people. I only wish I had been been able to get there earlier or stay a bit later. I hadn’t been in a few weeks, and I really missed it. I hope I get to make it the next few weeks before we leave town.

My Londonist posts for the week:

• 15-Year-Old Schoolgirl Stabbed in Southwark
  
• Londoners Don’t Like Guns in their Adverts
  
• Zippos Creates Mudbath in Twickenham
• And not exactly my post, but I consulted and helped provide pictures – Londonist Loves… Kew Gardens
  

I’m also still doing lots of work over at Workology, so if you consider yourself a Workologist — someone who works freelance or has their own business — please come join the discussion. The site is growing quickly and there are a lot of new conversations and job opportunities on the site.

For our big summer trip, the only visa we need to get in advance is the one for India. And as luck would have it, the High Commission in London has just in the past week changed their system to an outsourced company to help alleviate the long lines and disorder that would typically accompany a visa-purveying trip.

Evan and I got our papers all ready over the weekend. We had our photos, our passports, our references and our supporting documents. We were short a paper clip, so I stopped by the Hilton on my way to the bus stop and asked at the front desk — they were happy to hand one over (thank you very much!). I got to the visa office just minutes after it opened at 8:30 and stood in a short line outside in the morning drizzle. When I got inside, I was instructed to take a number, then go wait. It was no different than being at the DMV.

I had a book with me — thank goodness, since I waited an hour and a half — and when I got up to the counter, I was told that I could get my tourist visa but Evan couldn’t. Now Evan certainly doesn’t have any reason to be denied a simple tourist visa, so what could be the problem? He doesn’t have a UK visa. Since our stay here is less than 6 months, he only has a work permit, which is good through July 4, 2008. I got a visa because it was the easiest way for me to go.

Now why should this matter? I’m not quite sure. We’re both here legally, we’re not returning to the UK after our trip and we’ll be leaving the country before Evan’s visa expires. But apparently his non-visa status strips him of his right to getting a visa to a foreign country he would otherwise be allowed to travel to.

It’s not like we have anywhere else to get the visa. The U.S. India visa site tells us we need to apply for a visa wherever we currently are — we shouldn’t be shipping passports overseas. The agent’s suggestion: Get our visas from Cairo. And while spending part of our short stay in Egypt in a visa queue sounds ever so appealing, we’re not guaranteed we’ll get it there, either. It will take at least 3-4 business days to process, which would be cutting it awfully close when we only have a week in the city.

Fittingly, when Evan emailed the Cairo High Commission, they told him it would probably be easier to apply in the UK, so we’re just being sent around in circles.

So now we’re debating whether to keep our itinerary and try to get visas from Cairo or to change our plans and head to Cyprus, Turkey, Israel or some other location instead. Maybe this is our sign that we shouldn’t be heading to Mumbai during monsoon season.

Evan spied these candies at the Kew Gardens gift shop and ran over to us making a joke about dropping acid, of course. The Brits we were with started laughing and said, “Until right now, we’d never thought of it in that way”!

Last weekend, we went to check out the Treetop Walkway at Kew Gardens on its opening day. The line to climb the stairs snaked down a pathway, but it moved pretty quickly, and we were soon up in the trees on the sinewy metal structure.

Though it was a shorter pathway than I anticipated, I really enjoyed being up in the trees, feeling the structure sway with the wind and getting to enjoy the great views of the Temperate House and other Kew Gardens sites.

Not everyone was as thrilled to be up in the trees, though. For those with any discomfort with heights, the walkway made them a bit queasy, and there were quite a few people clutching on to the railings or their partners and waiting eagerly to get down.

The biggest thing I would change about the walkway would be to add an additional entry/exit point, since there was only one — a single staircase only big enough for people to go single file each way, which caused quite a backlog on the narrow walkway. There was a lift right across from the stairs, but it wasn’t ready to be used yet.

We also went to check out the other summertime special tree exhibit, the Rhizotron, which was supposed to teach about root systems. We were unimpressed. It was really directed toward little children, with a cute mosaic, a few metal roots on the walls of the tunnel and some cartoony bugs. It seemed like an afterthought compared to the treetop walkway.

Check out more photos of the walkway on Flickr. And check out all the photos from day as well.

Sunday, Evan and I got quite a treat — we went to a scoring session at Abbey Road Studios, the famed studio where The Beatles recorded, and got to watch a 96-piece orchestra recording. We got to sit on a little balcony overlooking the room, and I was surprised to see some instruments I’d never seen before — most notably, two large brass instruments that looked like variations on a tuba and a trombone. I didn’t get any photos of them, though.

Watching the orchestra made me a bit nostalgic for my time playing in the band and orchestra in middle school and high school. But the highlight of the day was that Evan got to test out the huge Steinway while the orchestra was on break. He gave a concert for quite a few onlookers and impressed them all with his musical talents.

It’s been another fun-filled week in London. Evan got back into town on Monday, Wednesday I went to Creative Coffee Club for the first time, Thursday Evan’s parents arrived and I also met up with a new London friend, and Friday I went to Tuttle Club. I also managed to write a couple of Londonist posts and finally submitted my bio and photo to go on their staff page after just a few months of Lindsey bugging me to send them in.

This week’s posts:

• Confusing T5 Design Causes Immigration Free-for-All
• Ealing Hospital Makes Patients Feel Sick

Creative Coffee Club was a nice meeting of about 15 people. We discussed creating a “network of networks” to bring people together as well as a host of other topics, ranging from creativity on social networks to yawning kittens. It really got me thinking about the networks we all belong to, how we use them differently and how they converge in various ways. It also made me think about people’s anxieties while networking both online and off since I feel like I’m often a tentative connector, though I do somehow find a way to open up and make friends. Thanks, Toby, for the invitation.

Yesterday, I made a new friend in London who actually found me on my blog. Jen is a friend of the BSE who has been in London for a little while, so she sent me an email after seeing my interview with Battlecat and we met for lunch.

Tuttle Club/Social Media Cafe was nice today — it was quieter than usual, so I didn’t feel squished, it wasn’t too loud, and I was able to have some good conversations with people. I talked to some of my usual friends like Steve (who wrote a great post this week about a musician with a bad attitude) and Janet, who I also saw at the Creative Coffee Club, and I got to speak more with some new friends, like Vikki, Improbulus (who mysteriously does not share her real name), Allix and Dan.

We also booked our big trip today, so if you have tips on any of our destinations, please send them along.

And tomorrow I should be heading out for a day in Bath, so look for lots of new photos soon.

Today, after going to Tuttle and having a lovely Friday morning talking to friends and making new ones, I headed to Hyde park with my watercolors, intent on painting something in the afternoon sunshine. What you see above was my one and only creation — a view of the end of the serpentine, facing the Hilton Hotel (which you can see rising over the trees). I was never particularly talented with watercolors, but I still like to try. And sitting on a bench in the middle of the park, I just didn’t really have the patience for mixing colors or measured brushstrokes. I’m also pretty horribly out of practice, though it was fun to be outside, doing something.

In the park, I notice that things were completely different from two weeks ago when Evan and I went and took photos. The tulips in those striking gardens were almost completely gone and their flowerbeds looked frazzled. The supposedly dead tree that people were climbing — seriously, it had NO leaves or even buds — was lush and verdant, forming an intriguing bower. And the beautiful flowering tree, with full, pink blooms, had no flowers to speak of. My how things change…

Writingwise, this week has been busy. It was my last week at Sugarscape.com. In my 6 weeks there, working three or four days a week, I managed to write 69 stories, not counting competition copy (the numbers on my page are a bit off since it includes individual photos for galleries). It was sad to leave Alex and Becs, who were lots of fun to work with, and they bought me a lovely bouquet and a travel journal for my summer trip.

I also wrote a post for Londonist, “Shocking: Amy Winehouse Arrested, Let Out on Bail,” and a post for Workology, “Want to reduce your WTD? Get a VA!” I would love for all you freelancers and small business owners who read this blog to come join me at Workology, or at least comment on my blog posts — as of today, you don’t need invites anymore to join the new social network for independent workers.

And if you haven’t read the blog post about Best Supper Ever (I know, it’s just below on the page right now), go take a gander — Battlecat gave an awesome interview.

Winter finally decided to loosen its clutches on the city of London, and we’ve had some lovely weather. The first really gorgeous day, Evan and I took an excursion down the road to Hyde Park. While we’ve been to the park plenty in the winter, and we knew it was a nice park, it was pretty chilly and barren save for the grass.

Two weekends ago, though, it has a fantastic facelift — there were tulips, cherry blossoms and daisies in bloom, the lake was full of row boats and pedalos (what the Brits call pedal boats/paddle boats — you know, the plastic kind you power like a bicycle), and there were plenty of children, pets and friends soaking up the sunshine. Even better, we left our jackets at home and were even able to go without our sweatshirts for much of the day.

Evan and I went out on the Serpentine on a rowboat, which was very relaxing (I did some rowing, too). The only thing missing was a picnic and some sunscreen — I unfortunately managed to get a pretty decent sunburn.We also took a tour of the Serpentine Gallery, which had a very intriguing exhibit of Viennese artist Maria Lassnig’s work. Though the gallery was very small, it was perfect for a 15-minute detour in the park, and Lassnig’s works were very intriguing — the first paining that greeted us was a self-portrait titled “You or Me,” where we were confronted by the naked octogenarian artist pointing guns both a the viewer and at her own head (you can see some more images of her work here).

And here’s a great photo of a duck Evan took while we were at the park…

For more photos of the day at the park, visit Evan’s site.

Saturday, I went on a lovely trip to Kew Gardens with Annie, Mex, Nikki and Julian (the links go to their photos). Unfortunately, Evan had to work.

For the bank holiday weekend, there is a Woodland Fair going on at Kew, and there were horse-drawn carriage rides, craftsmen, Morris dancers and a falconry show. I didn’t get to see all of the different gardens in the park, or go in the palm house, though, so hopefully I’ll get back there soon.

We got to touch an owl — its feathers were soft.

There were woodworkers turning wood by foot power — those long sticks attached to a strong wrapped around the piece of wood, and turned it back and forth.

There were also cute crafts like these wood May flowers.

We saw bees emerging from their pupal cases — this one was had only popped his head out. I also bought some pollen collected from the bees’ legs, and there were many different types of honey to buy.

There were morris dancers putting on a show — they danced around with bells on their shoes and legs and smacking their sticks together.

In one of the stranger moments of the day, these two wandering musicians were encircled by some very enthusiastic people who danced circles around them. If only I’d videotaped it…

There were also lots of yurts — here’s a wooden tiger overlooking the accordion player in front of the puppet show yurt.

Check out the rest of my photos on Flickr.

Well, it’s been another busy week, but I got to see a lot of people. The Tuesday night blogger meetup was nice, and today I went to the Social Media Cafe/Tuttle Club, where there was a nice, big group to chat with over croissants and coffee. I got to catch up with Mike, Darika, James, Rob, Melinda, Toby, Lloyd, LJ, Josh and Steve, and I met a few new people, including Roger, Justin, Terence and Laura.

The best part of the event was that there was a nice little discussion group afterwards hosted by James and James of Spinvox about the “future of voice.” We talked about the difference between voice and text, where voice recording, storing, transcribing and translating technologies are going, and the implications of having a record of all the things you’ve said.

They also started by having us do a funny little drawing activity, where we added on to shapes, which was supposedly a psychological test that revealed what we thought about ourselves, how other people viewed us, our career, religion, home and love life. Mine were pretty funny, though I don’t know how accurate they were. I apparently see myself as a dinosaur/dragon with a fat tail and spikes, but I think other people see me as a flower… hmm… leave your psychological interpretations below.

And what have I been writing this week?

There were the usual entertainment and fashion posts for Sugarscape, though the site was experiencing some pretty serious technical problems that slowed posting considerably, so it’s possible not all my stories made it up.

I got back on the wagon with writing for Hitched with a post about “Going Green This Summer.” Big thanks to Jamie from WalkIt.com for helping me put some ideas together, and thanks, Luke, for connecting us.

I also managed to do a few posts on Londonist — a nice little piece about “New Cancer Centre Offers Free Support,” and what you’ve been waiting for… “Stupidly Cute Monkey Born at London Zoo.” Check out the video of the endangered little critter below. Sort of so ugly it’s cute, and then ridiculously so because of its fuzzy little head and skinny little limbs.

I finally made it to another one of Andy Bargery’s blogger meetup — this time at the Coach & Horses — and had a nice evening catching up with Londonist folks, seeing some people I hadn’t seen in a while and meeting a few new ones, too. I worry that since I know some people at the events now, I don’t spend as much time mingling as I should. It’s always nice to catch up with people, but I need to find a balance between meeting new people and spending time with the people who I only really see at events like this.

The best moment of the night was when I was chatting with TikiChris, the food and drink editor for Londonist, and meeting a new Chris, who said, “I just emailed with someone from Londonist… Francine…”! Of course, I told him that it was me and introduced myself. He works for is doing some work for Lactofree, and had found my blog and emailed me about my Lactofree posts, and we’d been exchanging emails just a few days earlier. We had a good chat about lactose and food allergies, and he said some new Lactofree products are in the works.

I was happy to see M@, Dave and TikiChris from Londonist, Siany, Annie Mole, Tim, Peter, Andy Roberts, and Melinda. And it was nice to meet some new people like Chris, Tom and Jaz. I also met Malcolm, who blogs about breakfast, so I had to do a bit of ranting about how I haven’t actually found a very good breakfast here yet. He says Americans just don’t like British breakfasts (I could agree to that). I did get some good recommendations, though, and I’ll be trying some out — top of my list is the Wolesley.

Sorry if I forgot to mention anyone… it was quite a busy night!

Well, as you may have been able to tell from my lack of blogging, it’s been a busy week. I’m still busily pumping out the celeb gossip, fashion and music stories over at Sugarscape (finding budding YouTube stars has become a new favorite passtime), I’ve also been busy in the evenings.

Monday I hung out with my friend Jess, who I’ve known since we went to summer camp together when we were 12. We went to a pub, then to Pacifico for a nice Mexican dinner — I really like their fajitas, and my experience was much better this time, going on a quiet Monday night than when we went on a Friday and had to wait for hours in the packed place for a table.

Tuesday, I got to meet up with Charlotte, one of my editors as Entrepreneur, who is actually responsible for this first story in the print magazine, “Talk to Me,” about Joe Badame and Martha de la Torre, who run the LA-area Spanish-language media empire, El Clasificado. Martha was a wonderful woman to talk to, and I only wish the article could have been 1500 words instead of 150. Sorry to digress. Tuesday, Charlotte and I met up at the Red Lion, then went to Imli, an Indian tapas place on Wardour Street, which was great. The only complaint there is that they don’t have one of my favorite Indian staples — naan. But the meal was flavorful, with lots of spicy and sweet notes, and eating tapas-style, it was fun to get to sample a good array of the inexpensive dishes on their menu.

Wednesday and Thursday night, I was at film screenings — Forgetting Sarah Marshall and What Happens in Vegas (which I’m not allowed to write about until the week the movie comes out). I know I didn’t really write about it on here, but last week, I also went to the 21 screening, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but didn’t have a very convincing story.

I also managed to meet up with the Londonist folk at a pub on Wednesday, though because of all my activities this week, which kept me out of the house until the late hours, I didn’t write any posts for them. I did also meet Gordon Butler from Fancyapint?, and he was happy to learn that I’d used his site just the day before.

Saturday, Evan and I went to Leeds Castle. It all started in a pretty dramatic fashion, when we nearly missed our train. Evan rushed to buy one from an automated kiosk, while I tried my luck standing in line. Of course, we both reached the front of our respective lines at the same time, and while I was being hassled by the Victoria Station ticket agent, who told me I really should just go to Leeds Castle another day since it was already the afternoon and kept hassling me about our travel plans while refusing to let me purchase a ticket, Evan managed to get them.

We ran through the station, rounding a corner where we could see our train beyond some gates, and the large digital clock, which was ticking down about 30 seconds from departure time. We struggled with our tickets to get through the gates, and finally hopped on the train — hoping it was the right one — before the doors shut right behind us. Whew!

The train ride itself was thankfully uneventful, and we had a rather relaxing, hour-long journey to Bearsted, despite the looming clouds which threatened rain. By the time we got to Bearsted it was quite rainy, the coaches had stopped running to the castle and the number outside the coach and car hire office wouldn’t connect us to anyone. So we walked into town and stopped at a pub for a bite to eat and directions. The pub, The Oak on the Green, turned out to have some good food, and our server helped us call a cab to take us to the castle.

Once at the castle, the fun really began. We walked through the duckery, where I got quite close to an albino peacock, which really became the theme of the day — me trying to get close to the birds, that is. And we caught some very nice views of the castle in the distance.

We then walked along a winding garden path, and finally approached the castle. We passed black swans, some sort of snake sculpture that emerged from the grass and a whole bunch of very whiny children (they all seemed a bit tired and on their way out of the park). We entered the castle through the gatehouse across the moat, then walked around its outside to a back entrance.

Inside the castle, we got to walk through a large number of rooms, mostly decorated for the castle’s most recent owner, Lady Baillie. There were also some really nice and clear exhibits on royal coats of arms, and the castle had an interesting history — it was used as a hospital during WWII, and Lady Baillie’s daughters served as nurses. And there were lots of bird drawings and sculptures decorating the rooms.

Once we finished the castle tour, we headed to the dog collar museum (sort of interesting, though small), another garden, the aviary and the labyrinth, which were situated along a river.

The labyrinth, though it looked small, still took a while to figure out, and we spent a good amount of time wandering its green corridors trying to find our way to the center. Once in the center, we got to climb up to see the top view of the hedge maze, then descended into the cool, watery grotto to make our way out underground.

Though we could have stayed longer, had a picnic and caught one of the falconry shows or duck feedings, half a day was enough to have a good time at Leeds Castle. We wanted to check out the Go Ape adventure experience, but they seem booked up for a long while, so it wasn’t an option. And our only slight hassle was getting a cab. But once we got the number, they came quite quickly and were pretty inexpensive — £6.80 each way, I believe.

Also, admission was £15 a person, which lets you return anytime for an entire year after purchase.

Check out more photos on Evan’s site.