Think before you have that second bottle of water...

Because Ryanair may start charging people on flights to use the bathroom. I'm speechless...

Here's the story on Reuters. My favorite part is how the Ryanair spokesperson confirmed that the CEO said this, but then added the caveat that "he often just makes things up at will."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/allBreakingNews/idUKLR88835420090227

Annual travel report from Dopplr

Dopplr.com is a great site for anyone who travels frequently... it's beautifully designed and lets you do a lot of cool things, like get tips about the places you're going and find out if other people in your network are going to be in the same place as you at any point. And they now create a personal annual report based on everything you've entered over the past year. I just looked at mine and it's pretty cool. There are a few things missing, but it gives a great snapshot of the miles we traveled in 2008... I'm going to be better about entering every trip this year so it should be a complete look at everywhere we've been.

Here's a link to the report if you want to see it: http://reports.dopplr.com/2008/fbf1765d829e2e63.pdf

If you sign up and "friend" me you'll be able keep track of where Ric and I are in the world at any given time :) And even cooler, the Dopplr team works right next to me in MOO's office!

Sunny day in the Heath

Ric and I took a nice walk in the Heath yesterday to celebrate the fairly warm (50 degrees), sunny day. We stumbled upon a race that turned out to be the English Cross Country National Championships. There were a ton of people running - all in uniforms representing different clubs - and they were covered head to toe in mud. It hasn't rained much here lately, so we're not totally sure where the mud came from, but the Heath was definitely a huge mud puddle. And these guys were running right through it. The distance was about 12K, so not too far, but the numerous hills were taking their toll.

Here are some pictures:













The first signs of spring:

Two pics

This is all we came back with from our last trip to Paris, but the first one shows how blue the sky was and the second is a pic of one of the place we ate for lunch on Saturday. We got the recommendation from a really cool site called www.theplaceswelike.com. There were only three couples in there and it was tiny, but the food was amazing and it had a ton of character.

Bits and bobs

Just a quick little smattering of updates from the weekend:

1. Le Gavroche - we've been wanting to eat at this restaurant almost since we moved to London and finally went 0n Friday night (celebrating Valentine's Day a night early, minus the crowds, inflated prices, and set menus). It was delicious, but very old school French. LOTS of cream, cheese, heavy cream, double cream, and m0re cheese. Not that I have anything against either of those ingredients. Really happy we went and can check it off our list!

2. Hampstead Theater - for actual Valentine's Day, we went to a play at the Hampstead Theater, which was celebrating its 50 year anniversary by showing the same play it did when it opened. We were the youngest people in the crowd by about 50 years, but the play was amazing. It was called Private Lives and Ric and I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

3. La Vie En Rose - over a plate of home-cooked chicken parm (Ric's own special recipe) we watched La Vie En Rose, the life story of Edith Piaf. We were both surprised by how good the movie was and how much we liked it. I didn't know much about Edith Piaf going into this movie, but it was really well made, the singing was fantastic, and the story very interesting. We both loved it and would highly recommend!

4. Recipes - have a couple new things that I've tried out lately that you might like... Lomo Saltado (Peruvian dish with rice, french fries, and steak) and a yummy mac and cheese with cauliflower. Will find the recipes online and post them next week.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!! Summer's just around the corner, so start planning your visits! :)

SUN!

It's sunny in London today and, while still bitterly cold, I can actually see a color in the sky other than gray. This is very exciting.

I realize that all I've been writing about lately is the weather, but there really isn't much else going on. We've had a couple low key weekends (after a great trip to Paris) and are really trying to focus on training for Lisbon becuase we're a little behind. While much of that is a lack of motivation on our part (when it's pitch black outside and zero degrees), the weather (yes, we're back on the weather) hasn't helped this year either. Last year when we were training for Cape Town, there were a handful of days when we got rained out, but no more. This year we've had a ton of rain and snow, making it harder to get into a consistent routine. But no excuses! We're getting into crunch time and need to ramp up from the 6 1/2 miles that we're doing on the weekends. Please help us wish for no more snow! The race is March 22nd, so we've got about five more weeks to go...

SNOW!

London got more snow today than anytime in the past 18 years and the entire city has pretty much shut down. You can tell that heavy snow isn't a common occurrence becuase they suspended all bus services, most tube lines are down, and very few trains in and out of town are running. Luckily we made it back from Paris on the Eurostar this morning okay, but when we arrived at King's Crossed it was closed and we had to walk down to Euston to get anywhere. As you might imagine, the Heath is gorgeous and packed with snowman builders, sledders and snowball fighters.

Here are a few pics, with the whole set on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/rachelbremer/











Holly Bush, of course...