I know.  I’m a terrible terrible blogger.  And I’ve already posted this pic on twitter, but I was so struck by how it looked when I was waiting for the train home tonight that I felt compelled to take a picture of the sunset and save it somewhere with a bit more permanence than my twitter feed.

The tower was actually quite fun. The beefeaters who give the free tours are clearly chosen for their personalities, because our guide was a complete blast. As usual, pictures of the full days will get posted when I’m home, but here’s a sampling of a beefeater guarding the jewel house and an entrance at covent garden.

So then, in search of something to see and/or eat, we ended up walking all the way down Thames walk to black friar bridge, back across, and taking a tour of LSE, before having a classic pub lunch.

Again, more pictures will follow once I arrive home, but today’s photo of the day is the view of the millennium bridge and st. Paul’s. And I didn’t even edit this. It’s really this beautiful out here.

So anyway, I’m in London, ostensibly to visit my brother, and to see a few other folks, including meeting some people I actually work with but have never met in person, and catching up with a few former colleagues on this side of the pond.

Today, since my brother had a conference to go to, I took myself to the British museum. A full set of photos will get uploaded once I can edit them properly on my computer, but I thought I’d start off by testing my camera to iPad adapter by showing photographic proof that I’m actually here.

a great tale of man’s unending need to keep looking for things, from Colonel Fawcett’s need to find Z, to everyone else’s need to find Fawcett once he disappears.

Fawcett was one of the greatest explorers of his age, charting vast swathes of the Amazon, an area so inhospitable to outsiders that few survived the experience. Fawcett became convinced that there had been some great society, which he dubbed “Z”, and which others have at times referred to as El Dorado, and set out on a final adventure to find it. He was never seen again. 80 years later, the author (with the help of modern technology, as well as the devastation brought to the rainforest by logging and the like) tries to find out what happened to Fawcett. He doesn’t find Fawcett, but what he does find is even more astounding.

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I can’t believe he’s leaving again. It seems like he just got back from the Peace Corps yesterday.

(and yes, he is totally one of those do-gooder-type people who wants to make the world a better place while the rest of us obsess over the real estate market).

Oh, and apparently everyone in my family really likes orange. Not pictured is myself, wearing orange-framed sunglasses. At least we’re ready for hunting season.

And to think, thanks to the iphone, this is relatively tame compared to what it used to look like when I had a separate cellphone, ipod and work blackberry. 

First, the travel. As always for thanksgiving, I’m heading to the berkshires to hang with family. Except, instead of staying through Sunday as I would normally do, I’m flying to Houston on Friday, because one of my oldest friends is getting (re)married down there on saturday. And then i’m flying back to NY on Sunday. Of thanksgiving weekend. I’m thinking it’s a good thing I don’t have a job I’ll need to actually get to on Monday.

Actually, that’s about it for my nutso week, now that I think about it. Although apparently my brother is sick with something that may be the flu (swine or otherwise) and is only finally going to the doctor because my dad convinced my brother’s girlfriend to drag him there. Or an emergency room. I’ll have to call him later to check on him. I’m not going within 100 feet of him though, because I’m pretty sure that swine flu makes a pretty crappy wedding present.

I’ll return to photoblogging later with a post about the book I just finished, but I left the jacket at home so I can’t photograph it yet.

A few years ago, I thought it was incredibly fortuitous timing that they published a travel article on spending the weekend in Paris mere days before I went to Paris. crazy, convenient coincidence, right?

But now it’s just getting creepy. I’m going to Philly next weekend for my 10-year law school reunion, and what do they publish this morning? Yep…36 hours in Philadelphia.

In all seriousness though, I’m not sure why they thought it was a good idea to encourage people to visit philadelphia in mid-may, which is the height of graduation/reunion frenzy. The few remaining hotels that aren’t booked solid are probably either incredibly sketchy or have super-exorbitant prices. But I’ll probably print out the ideas on the off-chance that I’ve got some downtime somewhere in my reunion-weekend schedule.

Nothing quite like the George Bush airport in Houston. Seriously. Nothing.

The latest: The moment may have arrived: We may at last be on the brink of empowering Amtrak to offer a sensible method of alternative travel in the U.S.

I’ve never quite understood why we have such crappy rail service in the US, compared to Europe. Over there, I could bicycle across France secure in the knowledge that if I got tired, there was a nearby train to take me and my bike to the next town. And it was completely sensible and both time and cost effective to travel by high-speed rail from Brig, Switzerland to Paris, France. A distance that would have pretty much required flying in this country. As someone who regularly used amtrak to go between philly and nyc when I was in school, I’m very excited to see some real movement to encourage train use in this country. It’s too bad that it took getting completely screwed by the oil industry to get there.

After getting to the rental car place at the very reasonable hour of 6:45 in the morning (!) and getting my car, I discover that it doesn’t have the GPS I requested. So then I had to wait for them to find me another car that did have GPS and swap them out for me. Then it took me over 45 minutes to get to the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel (according to my GPS, I had traveled a total of 5 miles). This was only really annoying because it meant that the poor associate who had flown in from california would be sitting waiting for me in the hotel lobby in allentown. But other than that, the drive was generally OK.

The way back however…about an hour into my trip back, the skies opened up and the most horrendous torrential downpour, complete with giant lightning strikes that looked like they were going to hit my car, started. Needless to say, it took me 3 hours to do the 90 mile drive.

And then, after I finally returned the rental car and got myself home and dried off?

I realized that I had left my cellphone sitting in the car.

Going back out in the rain might have been the most fun part of the day. Luckily, the Hertz manager had found it and put it in the safe until I came back. He was very funny – pointed out that he was going to try to call me to let me know, but then realized that he had my phone, so he just had to hope I’d realize it and come back.