Dream House II

 Scouting Tudor Homes, as I do and ran across this lovely little Tudor.

It sprawling, its got nooks and crannies and a medieval feel. I guess I have a leaning towards this style. See my original Dream House. Many have the exterior look, but lack any charm inside.

 

Main entry

The Great Hall, but not too great.

A snug little nook with fireplace. I'd get a lot of reading and/or napping there.

 

Dining room though left door, hall to the right.

 

Dining room with landscape view.

Kitchen with rear door.

Past the kitchen and down a few stairs to the family room with another fireplace. French doors open to a deck.

Crypt(that's what I would call it) under family room.

Garage with internal house access or front door access via stairs through arch to the left.

 Main Floor Master Bedroom over garage.

 

Hall, stairs to bedrooms, door to kitchen, steps down to front entrance.

 

 Upper hallway.

Upper Bedroom above Garage.

 

Top room in turret.

Upper Floor Back bedroom.

Balcony looking into Great Hall, AKA a Minstrels Gallery.

Room off Minstrels Gallery.

Rear view of the house.

Not local and not for sale, so not an option.

Past Trip: June 2012, French Alps, Chocolate and Cheese

 June 13 - 22, 2012 Chamonix, Montreux and Geneva

Highlights: 

• Chocolate
• Mountains
• Alpine Flowers
• Trains
  

Sights:

Chamonix: June 14 - 17

Aiguille du Midi at 3842 meters

Cable car to Bellevue at 1800 meters

Montenvers Mer de Glace and the Glacier Grotto and Glacier museum

Cable car to down to 400 steps down to the glacier grotto, a tunnel bored into the glacier every year. You can see the previous year's tunnels downstream.

Cable car to Brevent at 2525 meters

Montreux: June 17 - 20

 Chateau Chillion

Extensive small domestic castle on the lake, not far from Montreux.

 Took a day trip from Montreux to Broc and Gruyeres.

Broc

Masion Caillers Chocolate Factory

 Very good chocolate tour

Gruyeres

Gruyeres Cheese Factory, la Maison du Gruyeres, the robot in the aisle turns the cheese wheels daily.

Castle Gruyeres - Located at the top end of the town of Gruyeres, has great views is well furnished and has nice formal gardens.

I would have preferred to stay in the medieval walled town of Gruyeres than Montreux.

Vevey 

The next city over from Montreux. Spent most of the day there.

Alimentarium, a food and nutrition museum with many hands on exhibits geared towards children.

Funicular to top of Mt. Pelerin

 

Geneva: June 20 - 22

Maison Tavel, city's oldest private residence.

St. Peters Cathedral

plus view from tower

Boat Trip

Food:

Le Atmosphere, Chamonix Overlooking the river Arve

Chalet du Plan de Aiguille, short walk down from the middle gondola station had lunch.

Le Caliche, Chamonix

L'Impossible, Chamonix

Fondue lunch in Greuyers

Cafe Pacific lunch

Mai Thai, Montreux

La Caravane Passe, Geneva, Lebanese

Les Armunes, Old Town Geneva

Hotels:

Hotel Le Faucigny, In Chamonix, located near the Tourist information center, was central to all.

Bon-Port, Montreux, out of the way and just OK.

Hotel Bristol, Geneva. Half a block from the Pont du Mont-Blanc, walk-able to the train station.

Travel Info:

EWR to Geneva

EWR - LHR, left late arrived 6:40AM

LHR - Geneva arrived Geneva 11AM, waited awhile for shared van pickup, arrived Chamonix 1PM.

Geneva to EWR

Geneva - LHR, left hotel at noon.

LHR - EWR, flight cancelled at 6:15pm, Night at Hilton Hotel near airport

LHR - JFK 9:30 AM, taxi home from JFK

Trip Expenses:

Plane fares $627(M) + $1253(J&K) =     $1880

Airport transport to Chamonix (~1hr)     $131

Taxi JFK - Home $67                              $85

Rail Transport

Chamonix and Lake Geneva pass           $614

Hotels $616 + $810 + $1152                   $2578

Meals                                                       $827

Cash out:                                                 $1082

200E + 300chf +200chf + 300chf

 Total                                                        $7,838

2019 Recap

No medical ills this year, but was in a deep funk till I received an unexpected promotion in November. I was pushing for it, but was expecting excuses. Had a whole list of grievances ready that went unused. Nothing to complain about at work now it seems.

Things Done:

• Maker Space: Drill Press safety class, January
• 2 Cassoulet dinners (February and October)
• Maker Space: 3D Printing Class, March
• Repaired a Reel to Reel tape recorder
• Repaired a 8mm film projector
• NJ Farm Tour with lunch, May
• Eddie Izzard at the Beacon, May
• 2 Cousins gatherings (May on SI and August in NJ)
• Australian Visitors, June
• Participated in Travis 4th of July Parade, July
• Le Tour bike race, most of July
• Yesterday movie, July
• Spyscape Museum with James Bond exhibit, July
• NYC Tenement Museum, July
• Outstanding in the Fields, September in NJ
• London Trip, October
• Union Square Holiday Market, Bowling Green Holiday Market, December

Food Joints:

• Osaka (not the current name, just what we call it), our sushi place on SI
• Corner House BBQ, SI
• Meatball Shoppe, Manhattan
• Valhalla, Manhattan
• Cheese Grill, Manhattan
• Veselka, Ukrainian food,  Manhattan
• Surf, SI
• Barca, SI
• The Richmond, SI
• Mizuumi Ramen, SI
• Asbury Festhalle and Bier Garden, NJ

Garden:

• harvested 75 garlic bulbs
• Early tomato crop stolen by squirrels
• Later summer tomato crop outpaced squirrel's consumption
• Squash yellow and green were poor performers this yea
• Melange of new plants planted and forgotten noticed after they bloomed.
• planted garlic for next spring

House:

• Painted Living Room (Benjamin Moore Persian violet 1419), LR Shelves (BM yukon sky 1439) and front room (BM bistro blue 1421)
• bleach on driveway concrete to kill moss, too much CO2 in the air, but that is a good thing I am told. Once most scientists say it is too late to do anything about it, all of a sudden people will believe what most scientists say.
• Minor house and garage paint touch-ups
• A garage and basement clean out
• plus this stuff done earlier this year here and here.

Maybe Next Year:

• pig roast/work reunion BBQ
• smoke some bacon
• smoke/dry/cure some duck
• minor garage exterior siding replacement
• new backyard gate
• rolling 19 inch audio rack to consolidate equipment
• guitar effects box pedal board
• digitize some reel to reel and cassette tapes
• clean out basement

2019 Books

2019 Books Read
5 more Inspector Maigret's books read this year, reread Travels with my Aunt, always enjoyable and read The Hand of Dr. Fu Manchu, not as rude to different groups as I expected it to be. New author this year Jay Rayner, UK food critic, writes well, very witty.

1. Duck Season David McAninch Author moves to Gascony for 9 months, eats lots of duck and writes about the people he met.
2. At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, Alexander McCall Smith (AMS), third in a series of 4 small books concerning Professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfel. Strange happenings here.
3. Adventures of the Mad Monk Ji Gong, Gui Xiaoting DNF
4. Suffer the Little Children, Donna Leon, Takes place in Venice, main character is a police detective.
5. Atomic Habits, James Clear
6. About Face, Donna Leon
7. Beastly Things, Donna Leon
8. Maigret Travels, Georges Simenon (GS) Portrayed on TV recently by Rowan Atkinson, rather well I thought, but only 4 episodes were produced.
9. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
10. The Patriarch, Martin Walker French policeman in small French town.
11. The Dead Ringer, MC Beaton
12. Maigret's Doubts, GS
13. 44 Scotland Street, A Time of Love and Tartan, AMS
14. No Echo, Anne Holt  The author's series with character Hanne, I enjoy some more than others.
15. The Source of the Nile, John Hanning Spike DNF Written in a journal entry style, too much data to keep in ones head.
16. In Dust and Ashes, Anne Holt
17. Toujours Provance, Peter Mayle Not as good as some of his earlier books.
18. The Hardman Legends/Cycling Gods
19. ???, Ann Cleves
20. Fatal Pursuit, Martin Walker
21. 13 (short stories), Dick Francis
22. Monsieur Pamplemousse Afloat, Micheal Bond (MB)
23. Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Tangled Web, MB
24. The King's City, Don Jourday DNF
25. Travels with my Aunt, Grahame Greene
26. The Dead Season: A Mystery in Florence, Christobel Kent  Very good book about an ex-police private investigator searching for a missing person, first time reading this author.
27. Cold Earth, Anne Cleeves
28. Maigret's Secret, GS
29. The Hand of Fu Manchu, Sax Roamer
30. The 10 Food Commandments, Jay Rayner
31. Brief History of Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis
32. Maigret and the Ghost, GS
33. Maigret's Anger, GS
34. Greedy Man in a Hungry World, Jay Rayner
35. Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon

DNF - Did Not Finish

London 2019

London: Thursday, September 26 to Saturday, October 5

Thursday
Travel day.
United Airlines, Newark departure 8:30AM, arriving Heathrow 8:40PM
Picked up some supplies and checked into the Citadines Hotel in Holborn. Took a pre-booked Cab to the hotel.

Friday

• Boden Shop at Hanger Lane
• Princess Louise Pub for lunch
• British Museum
• Bar Polski for dinner
• 7806 steps, 24 flights

Saturday
 Photos not of Johnson's house, but the Caretakers cottage. The house did sustain some damage during WWII, but was fixed up by the local Fire company.

Prince Henry's room, survived the Great Fire, no longer open to the public. The Eldest when she was little got 50 pence from the elder gentleman who was there when we visited years ago.

• Dr. Samuel Johnson Museum
• Twinings Tea Shoppe on The Strand
• Ye Olde Chesire Cheese, multi-level, multi-room Pub for lunch
• The Delaney for light refreshment
• Sir John Soane's Museum
• Belgo for Dinner, mussels and fries
• 9033 steps, 10 flights

Sunday

• Wellcome Collection
• Marquise Cornwall for Sunday Roast
• Coal Drop Yard, Canopy Market, shops
• German Gymnasium, for drinks. Built in 1865 for the German Gymnastics Society, now an upscale eatery.
• 10692 steps, 24 flights

Monday

 Photos from the Roof Terrace at the Institute of Engineering and Technology

 

• London Film Museum, Bond in Motion. Cars and other conveyances from the Bond movies.
• Convent Garden shops
• Stanfords Travel Book shop, new location
• Lunch at The Institute of Engineering and Technology employee Cafe
• Foyles Book store
• Wagamama Holborn for dinner
• 10576 steps, 12 flights

Tuesday

• Portobello Market
• Books for Cooks
• Police Museum in the City of London Guild Hall Galleries
• Borough Market, the Eldest's place for lunch
• Andina in Shoreditch, Peruvian food for Dinner
• 12442 steps, 33 flights

Wednesday

• Chiswick House and Gardens
• Lunch at Gail's bakery
• V and A Museum
• Holborn Whippet for real ale and drinks, a small Pete 2020 meetup was happening
• Dinner at Bill's
• 11306 steps, 21 flights

Thursday

• Postal Museum and Mail Rail train ride
• Francis Crick exhibit,  not worth the trip
• Camden Market, much changed, pasta for lunch there
• Chicken Shop for dinner
• 14003 steps, 27 flights

Friday

The Tower House by William Burges, now owned by Jimmy Page of Led Zepplin.

 Kyoto Garden, quite small. In Holland Park

 Walking Man by Sean Henry, also in Holland Park

 Ladder on Steeple, not quite a stairway to heaven.

• Leighton House Museum
• Kyoto Garden in Holland Park
• The Windsor Castle Pub, Kensington for lunch
•  8442 steps, 18 flights

Saturday

• 3:45 AM cab to Heathrow airport, SAS to Stockholm and then Newark
• 3:30 PM exiting Newark Terminal B
• 5685 steps, 5 flights