A birthday party for my dear sister, Robin:

And my dear friend Josh:

Some of you may know these people but you probably don’t. See Josh grew up in America but he now he lives in London. Robin is spending the year in Edinburgh getting her master’s degree. You see the trend, yes they have friends here but they also have friends in America who would like to celebrate with them.

Enter Matt and Lindsey and computerz:

Step 1: Stalker

Even though I’m good friends with Robin and Josh I don’t know all their friends (weird right?). So I scanned my email for the few group emails they’ve sent out and picked out the emails I didn’t know. I also scanned their facebook account for the past month or so for any activity coming from friendly voices I don’t know. Finally, I painfully went through each of their friend list and made note of the people I’ve heard them mention that I didn’t have contact details for. I made a list for each, Robin’s list was titled ‘Robin’; Josh’s list was titled ‘Josh’.

Step 2: The Plan

Have a plan before you contact people. This is my plan:

This is what we were physically doing. Pretty cool right, but more on that later. Obviously, their friends across the world can’t fly to London to play birthday for one evening. So I came up with a way for them to play with us and us to play with them.

youtube: I created a youtube account for both Robin and Josh for their friends and family to upload videos. Here’s an example:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELL2o6Eh_b0

Step 3: Contact

I’m quite used to contact people with newsletters, etc. So I just set up a separate mailchimp account and loaded it full of Robin and Josh’s friend’s emails. And sent them instructions to create genius. And genius they did, look at what my mom did:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3b53iCttgU

Step 4: Party

As you can see in the map in step two, I had a pretty full day of surprises planned. I set up a website for Josh and Robin to host all their videos and a live feed of all the photos and tweets going. It really gave a little connection between us and everyone else watching around the world.

Gierhart FAMILY FATHER/SUN LONDON 2008

So let’s set the stage, my father (Mel Gierhart—see years 1989 through 1992) and I came up with this plan. He would quit his job and come backpack around London for a week with me. Well if you call backpacking eating amazing food and not backpacking at all.

So he did it, he quit his job (retired) and got on an airplane to London.

After a little confusion about meeting places (who would have thought there would be more than one McDonald’s in the train station, shows how much we know about McDonald’s). We began our tour of London.

I thought we would start with the London Eye, this is just a good view of the entire city. This way I could point and talk. We took pictures and examined the machinery that operates the eye. There are some optical illusions that take place as far as motion.

Just a warning there are a lot of tourist style pictures, because well we were tourists. Here’s another notable site:

It made it kind of fun because it was just the two of us and so many of the pictures are just one or the other posing in front of something. Which is such wonderful postcard material. I think for Christmas I’m going to collect all these photographs and make a little postcard book to give out. Here’s more:

London buses to me are just transportation. I forget they are iconic red double deckers that seem so foreign compared to other buses around the world. It felt a little strange to pose in front of one as I was reaching my head around to figure out which number it was.

In 2003, I was living in the Czech Republic because I do that. For Christmas my family decided to fly to Czech and spend it with me. That was no questions asked my favorite Christmas ever. But then I felt something that I felt this time with my dad as well, I was showing him around. I know the way things work and to a certain degree he is relying on me. My dad is very capable tourist and knows how to get around anywhere you drop him (you should see him navigate and memorize maps, it’s uncanny). But to have your parents rely on you to show them around puts you in instant grown up mode. And maybe more importantly it puts you and your parents on a peer level. So show him around I did:

Here’s the obligatory telephone booth shot, which took some convening to do.

After the photograph my dad responded that he couldn’t really see himself.

Parliament was evacuated when we tried to go in. We never did find out what happened, but we did notice that even the cooks were asked to leave. No one seemed to be in a panic.

While police and fire trucks went crazy dealing with the Parliament, my father had an ice cream in front of Westminster Abbey.

Mel’s Tourist tip #1: The Ice Cream at Westminster Abbey is better than the ice cream at Hampton Court.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures in front of the war room that Churchill conducted WW2 from, but I would like to list some interesting facts about the war room.

1. They smoked a lot, I mean a lot. Every room, every desk had an ash tray. Mix that with the fact that they were in a basement with no circulation, I would have rather risked the Blitz than that cancer.
2. Churchill would win arguments by pretending to be deaf and not hearing the opposition. It works, try it.
3. WW2 was basically carried out on a Risk board

Another fun fact that my flatmate tells me is that Churchill’s statue (picture below) is electrified. This keeps the pigeons from sitting on it. Apparently, it was the only way he would agree to have a statue built of him.

The next day we toured the tower of London which was overtaken by peasants at one point, nice work English army.

We did get to see the crown jewels. No pictures allowed sorry. But I think I can describe them:

Then my dad took this picture:

You might think that this picture is kind of boring. But immediately after taking this picture my father was arrested and charged with terrorism. They threw him in the London tower and told him he would rot away. I scaled the tower and saved him with a sword fight to the death against a guard (thank goodness I did that training in the mountains of China).

Not really, but they did write him a warning ticket. Here is with the bobbies:

Note that woman’s teeth are G to the Ross. But another British stereotype I showed my dad, it’s all part of the English experience.

Then came the poshest experience of both my dad and mine life: seeing what a royal dinner looks like at Buckingham Palace. We didn’t get to eat, but the places were set and we listened to the effort that goes into having a state meal.

• menus are planned 14 months in advance (the queen is very active in choosing the courses)
• places are set 2 days in advance
• vegetarian and vegan options are available
• each guest has a little LED light that lights their plate
• there are old fashion guards around the table
• lots of secret passages are used so servants can get food in and out quickly

Again, no pictures allow. Its a theme.

Skipping of to Oxford for the day (check out Josh’s photo set) and a few other London sites we found our way to Hampton Court. I believe hampton court to be the best of the major tourist attractions. The gardens are sooooo beautiful.

What makes a beautiful garden an amazing garden is a hedge maze.

Matt’s travel tip: The Hedge Maze in Leed’s Castle is 1000x better than the one at Hampton Court.

Traveling alone with my dad was really cool because we don’t get too many times when it is just the two of us. Just hanging out and being friends and making jokes made overshadowed anything London had to offer.

In the end, my father had to leave and turn in his Oyster card.

We like to have this contest in our family to see who is the best or the favorite, something that allows one member to *temporarily* claim superiority over the others. My father and I were better than my sister and mom that week, it was easy.