Looking over the side of the cruise ship. (photo by Tui Snider)

Gone Traveling

Thought I’d better let folks know that I’m off doing what travel writers love best: traveling!

Over the next several weeks, the hubby and I will be hitting up NYC, Long Island, London, Barcelona, Cartagena, Cadiz, Ponta Delgada and New Orleans. Plus, we’re taking the slow way home – a transatlantic cruise. Internet access on cruises is the worst of all worlds: it’s not just slow, it’s pricey. As a result, my ability to respond to blog comments and emails is going to be pretty iffy until our return, November 15th.

However, not only do we have a capable house-sitter making sure our kitty and fish are happy, but I have a couple of capable blog-sitters who will be hosting my Traveler’s Show & Tell blog carnival while I’m away. Phew!

On Saturday, October 29, 2011 Andarin from Byteful Travel will host Traveler’s Show & Tell at his blog. Andarin is a mindful traveler who looks for meaning in his journeys. He hosts an excellent blog carnival each month at his travel site, so I know my carnival is in good hands.

On Saturday, November 12, 2011 Paula Puffer from Don’t Be a Pickle Bump will feature Traveler’s Show & Tell at her place. Paula’s been traveling through the southwest lately, and she is a fabulous photographer, so that will be a good one, too.

If you’re a blogger who has written about your travels (or even something interesting about your home town), or you have a travel-related photo essay that you would like to share, check out the Traveler’s Show & Tell to find out how you can submit your post to this blog carnival.

Meanwhile, have fun wherever you may be. I’ll return to the blogosphere in November!

An angel at Kensal Green Cemetery peers through the trees. (photo by Tui Snider)

Earlier this week, I wrote an article called Visiting Kensal Green Cemetery in London for The Traveler’s Way. As often happens, researching an article renews my interest in the site, and makes me want to visit again! I always end up learning way more information than the article’s word count can fit, and when using my own photos, I wind up with extras that I wish I could have shared. This time around, I figured, “Hey, why not post a few of those extra photos on my blog?” So here you go, gentle reader.

Kensal Green leaning headstones. (photo by Tui Snider)

The Magnificent Seven

Kensal Green Cemetery first opened in 1832. It was the first of London’s for-profit cemeteries, a group which came to be known as the “Magnificent Seven.” There was a great need for these new burial grounds, since the public cemeteries were out of space. Fortunately, the city of London has decreed that this beautiful garden-style cemetery shall continue as a memorial park once it runs out of room.

Just as in nature, you don’t find a lot of right angles at Kensal Green Cemetery, and it’s quite overgrown in places. This is one reason I don’t find old graveyards depressing; they provide such a haven for the living as well as the deceased. Kensal Green Cemetery is a great spot for bird-watching and taking photos, so bring your binoculars as well as your camera. If you’re lucky, you might even see a fox!

Pathway leading to the chapel at Kensal Green. (photo by Tui Snider)

Catacomb Tours

On certain Sundays, a volunteer group called the Friends of Kensal Green lead tours of the cemetery as well as the catacombs beneath the Anglican Chapel. These are some of the only catacombs in London, by the way. The tours last two hours and end with biscuits and tea. How very British, eh?

The Friends of Kensal Green are quite passionate about the history here and will even arrange tours related to your specific interests (poetry, architecture, cirsus performers – you name it!) if you contact them in advance.

As you can see from the photo above, Kensal Green Cemetery is very lush. The tree-lined path in the photo leads to the Anglican Chapel in the center of the graveyard, and is where the tour groups meet up.

Parts of Kensal Green Cemetery are overgrown. (photo by Tui Snider)

As an aside, I first visited Kensal Green Cemetery on April 19th, 2011. Some of you may recognize this as the date for which some people had predicted The Rapture would occur. This was a complete coincidence on my part, but I remember joking that while a cemetery was the perfect place to be on such an occasion, we were going to miss all the action, since the place closes at dusk, and that’s when the dead were supposed to rise from their graves. On our way home my son-in-law wryly noted that, “We must all be sinners,” since it was past the predicted Rapture time and we were all very much still in London.

No matter when you visit London, I highly recommend spending a day wandering through Kensal Green Cemetery. It’s a fascinating place.

Cruising (photo by Tui Cameron)

Ahoy matey! It’s me, Tui, at the helm and I’m off doing what we travel bloggers love best:

TRAVELING!

Don’t worry, though. I have not completely abandoned ship. You are in good hands with guest posts from the delightful Laree’ Griffith and the dynamic Cherrye Moore in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Also, the Saturday Show & Tell blog carnival (a round up of interesting travel-related blog posts) shall continue. The talented Paula Puffer hosts the the May 28th, 2011 edition, so that ought to be good!

Where have I run off to? My brand new hubby (so new that it still feels odd calling him husband!) and I are on a fabulous five week long honeymoon, the first leg of which is a two-week transatlantic cruise.

Romantic, eh? We will also spend time in Barcelona, London, Rome, Naples, Sicily, Venice and even New York City.

I am not sure how often I will have internet access, but I will do my best to answer any blog comments as often as I can. (I feel sheepish visiting McDonald’s while traveling, but they have free Wi-Fi and surprisingly good espresso – in Europe, anyway.)

If I have your snail mail address, keep an eye out for a postcard from me. Otherwise, see you in June when I shall return with a heap of new photos and traveler’s tales to share with you.

~Tui

London window reflections on Brick Lane. (photo by Tui Cameron)

This week’s Saturday Show & Tell is short and sweet thanks to a technical glitch. Turns out that items submitted through the blog carnival site got tossed to the ether and are now cavorting with Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and all the socks that go MIA each year from my washer.

I usually get half a dozen really spammy submissions in addition to the sincere ones, but this week – nothing – which I found odd. Fortunately, Mad Kane sent an email to me directly asking if her submission had made it through. It hadn’t.

So, our first submission this week comes from Mad Kane, herself. It’s called Limerick Ode To a Vigorous Old Lady. Having won the Robert Benchley Society Award For Humor, Mad Kane continues to be widely published, both in print and online. According to her bio:

I live in New York City with my humor-inspiring husband Mark, who puts up with my writing song parodies during dinner, even though the poor guy thought he was marrying a nice Jewish lawyer.

Continuing in a lighthearted vein, my contribution this week is a post called, Armageddon Knock Knock Joke, in which I use humor to deflect a long-winded fellow who was trying to convert me to his religion on a sunny day when all I wanted to do was work in my garden.

Here’s a brief excerpt to whet your whistle:

As we sat in the shade sipping iced-tea, the man told me that the world was about to end, but if I worked it right, I could be one of the head honchos in the afterlife. The guy made it sound like I would be a post-apocalyptic manager of lost souls.

Follow this link to learn why I won’t be under-souled.

That wraps up this week’s edition of the Saturday Show & Tell blog carnival. See you next time! Speaking of…

Would you like to highlight one of your older blog posts on an upcoming Saturday Show & Tell? If so, send the link directly to me via tui [at] mentalmosaic.com. (I don’t want to risk using the blog carnival link until their site is working again.) If you have any questions, shoot me an email, or ask in a comment below.

Speaking of comments, if you enjoyed this week’s post, give us a shout out. If you didn’t, well, just remember what your mama told you about doing when you don’t have anything nice to say.

I love to jump around, move, and gesticulate. When I’m in a good mood, I kinda dance around the house, whether there is music on or not. It may look odd, but just because *you* can’t hear the tunes in my head, doesn’t mean they aren’t worth grooving to! It just feels good. That’s one thing I really miss about Italy and Spain, people don’t mind if you wave your hands around when you talk.

Why do we love to move our bodies so much? Even at the cellular level, heart cells sync their rhythms. I wonder if there is a culture that doesn’t have some form of dance. Last year, I saw some Cuban Folkloric dancing and noticed that their dances were very chicken-like. If you’ve ever had chickens, you know what I mean. The choreographer took stuff straight out of the rooster playbook. I wonder how many dance moves originally came from humans imitating animals? Personally, I’d like to be able to dance like a squirrel. I like how they slink along so slowly, then suddenly leap like Barishnikov.

A while ago, I saw a video on A2eatwrite’s blog that showed a bunch of hospital employees dancing in pink gloves (it’s a breast cancer awareness video.) At the time, I commented on her post that:

“There’s something touching about seeing people bust a move while going about their daily lives. It reminds me of how, after I’d seen a musical as a kid, I secretly wished that people would do that in real life, that they would just drop everything and dance from time to time, just for the sheer joy of living.”

Take, for instance, the guerilla version of The Sound of Music in a Belgian train station, or this infamous video in which a couple’s entire wedding party dances down the aisle. And check out this chick who dances with her dog. Looks like fun.

Lastly, here’s a literal version of The Safety Dance which I’m including because it popped up when I searched for these other videos, and it really cracked me up. The guy does a great impersonation of the original vocalist, too.

As for today’s photo, it’s one of a series of tongue in cheek parking spots I saw in London. And on that note, I’m gonna dance on out of here!

When I tell people I’m going to London, they inevitably rattle off a list of the top 10 tourist attractions – the Tower, Big Ben, London Eye – and ask which ones I’ll be seeing there. I always laugh and tell them I haven’t a clue. What people don’t realize is that for me, London means visiting my step-daughter. She’s the main dish, and everything else is gravy. (Actually, everything else is usually cheese or chocolate when we’re together!)

The bottom line is that I fly to London to see Naomi. Like any parent, I want to make sure that he is happy, healthy and getting the most out of her life. After that, I yearn for heart to heart conversations, belly laughs and simply enjoying her companionship. She’s one of those people I can have fun doing nothing in particular with. You don’t live on a tiny island with someone for 5 years without learning how to entertain yourself (but that’s another story.)

Naomi and her husband always ask if there’s anything in particular I’d like to see in London, and while I’d love to do all sorts of touristy stuff, I tend to go blank when they say this. As I mentioned in a previous post, we usually have a picnic in Richmond Park when I’m there. (Tasty meals are always on the agenda when I visit them.)

This time, aside from fox sightings, excellent cheese and trousered turkeys, we went window-shopping (or window-licking, as they say in France) through Bricklane. Naomi shares my goofy sensibilities and love of the absurd, so the sight of this chipmunk wearing a beret stopped both of us in our tracks. We both whipped out our cameras and started snapping away. I haven’t seen her photos yet, but I’m sure they came out great. She’s quite an accomplished photographer.

I recently bought a Fodor’s guide to London, however, as well as Frommer’s, Irreverent Guide to London,so the next time I visit my son-in-law and Naomi, I will be prepared!

Voila! I have, at long last, visual proof that turkey pants, err, trousers, I mean, were actually worn by our London bird. In England, you see, ‘pants’ means ‘underpants.’ I discovered my faux pas after cheerily announcing that I had brought a pair of turkey pants, only to have a dinner guest reply, “I beg your pardon?” in that quintessentially British way, the very tone of which informed me I had – yet again – put my Yankee foot in my Yankee mouth.

My step-daughter, Naomi, created a fantastic Thanksgiving feast, starting with scrumptious bruschetta and ending with a key lime tart. We had all the usual suspects, too: mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, but the cranberry sauce was homemade, and there were some incredible turnips au gratin in the mix, too. She and my son-in-law are foodies extraordinaire, so there were plenty of photos taken of the spread. It was pretty as well as tasty!

There was no need to thaw our trousered Tom since he came from a nearby farm. That’s something I love about London; once you get out of the city center, there’s a surprising amount of countryside and greenspace. There are cows, crops, and sheep a-plenty right by Heathrow, for instance.

Our main London wildlife sighting this time were foxes we’d see darting through the chilly night as we walked home from restaurants and pubs. Naomi told us about one who frequents her backyard. The wily vixen stole a pair of her shoes, returned one nibbled sandal, then made off with a glove. (Did I get that right, Gnome? I was pretty jet-lagged when you told the tale.)

Apparently, fox have a thing for shoes. I typed “shoe stealing fox” into Google and found a bunch of incidents, including an article about a German fox who stole over 120 pairs of shoes for her kits to play with.

I usually visit Naomi and Max during warmer weather, which means that a picnic in Richmond Park is in order, but it was way too cold to ponder that. Still, I love the huge herds of deer roaming there. Plus, the trees and undergrowth remind me of what I’ve seen depicted in children’s book illustrations, which gives me a delightful fairytale feeling. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear the Pipes of Pan when I’m there, or to fall into a fairy mound. However, fairy mound or no, our Thanksgiving in London was truly magical and went by way too quickly!