When possible I like to post about something I think is out of the ordinary that might be new to someone reading my boring travel blog. This is one such post. The UN? You thought it was in New York City?

This UN is cooler.

In this case UN (which they do go by) stands for United Nude. It is a shoe store with locations around the world. We were attracted to it because we thought their product display and store environment were among the coolest retail presentations we had ever seen. If you like contemporary design and women’s shoes that your wife is probably unwilling to wear even though you’d want her to, you should check it out. They also have men’s shoes that your husband probably wouldn’t wear to the office but they too are very cool. I am very tempted to go back for those rainbow colored loafers to wear to my next board meeting.

Many boundary pushing retail environments will not allow photos and there are even some malls that don’t allow cameras. The people at the London UN were very nice and let me take some shots. I didn’t want to take advantage of their generosity so I didn’t spend a lot of time setting up shots because the lighting is changing constantly…to the music of course. A very cool presentation. But here are a few for the flavor. For professional pictures, go to unitednude.com

.

Now that we have our luggage, we can be out and about seeing new things. But it was not until 26 hours after our arrival that the last of the bags arrived. In a nutshell:

Our Tuesday night flight to London was cancelled while we were in the air going to Washington. To United’s credit, they were ready with alternative arrangements when we disembarked the aircraft in DC and they even were able to assure us that our baggage would be re-directed just as we had been. It was not a non-stop but rather a connection through Paris.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 7 am on Wednesday morning and it was easy to kill the four hour layover by wasting time trying to find the correct terminal without the assistance of any signage and no visible airport personnel. Not just no signage in English but we found no signage at all in any language even telling what airlines were in which terminals.

Upon finding British Airways, our next carrier, we checked in with them so as to be sure they had our baggage information even though a call to United’s baggage service told us that our bags were still in Washington on Wednesday morning in spite of three flights subsequent to our cancellation having left for London.

We left late from Paris for a 40 minute flight, were delayed in the air another 30 and arrived shortly after twelve noon and, of course, no bags. But BA claimed to have found them in the United baggage claim area in a different terminal. A $30 cab ride to the United terminal (Heathrow is very spread out) resulted in our being told by United that the bags had been picked up by the BA courier maybe 10 minutes earlier and were on their way to our flat (why this responsibility became BA’s who never touched our bags during our trip is not clear).

After calling and waiting in the flat the rest of the day, we were awakened by a 10 pm call with the good news that the bags would be at the flat between midnight and 1 am. The 12:50 am wake up call from the courier had me going into the London street barefoot and wearing only my brand new British flag boxer shorts purchased just hours before from a late night souvenir stand (after wearing the only clothes we had for nearly 36 hours, they were still in the 2 hour and 40 minute wash cycle) to learn that there were only three of the four bags in the truck.

So up all night, on the phone in the morning with British Airways and the bag courier and continuing the wait through the day, bag number four arrived at 2:20 pm on Thursday. So we are finally seeing the sights of London again. And thanks United for not knowing where the bags were at any point in time including when you told us they were still in Washington. At that time they were on a plane about to land in London. You can check out my “Airlines Lie” post about this same topic in January 2011.

One of the larger lessons from this experience was that British customer service persons are incredibly nice. Immediately empathetic in such a way that one could never justify getting angry. I was impressed.

Tomorrow our visit to the UN.

Ah, Paris! We arrived here about 7 am local time. Yes, we said we were starting this trip in London for five days, followed by a week in Scotland and nine days in Ireland. But today is the fifteenth anniversary of our first date so where better to celebrate it than the Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris?

The truth is that our flight to London was flat out cancelled and they routed us through Paris. And aren’t those smart phones great. You get to find out your next flight is cancelled before the arriving flight’s wheels stop turning. We are scheduled to arrive at Heathrow Airport outside of London only about five hours late. As for our luggage, who knows. As of now, United has no idea where it is.

These pictures are merely to show that we are in Paris. Hopefully the next update will be from London.

Right now our focus is on seeing baseball games because sports is what
they love at their ages. But I do try to schedule in some other
activities when time permits so that Ryan and Logan can see other
things their new cities have to offer. So for Washington, we built in
just a small amount of extra time to hopefully wet their desire for a
return and deeper visit when museum and exhibition tolerance has
matured.

So in a total of about eight hours of walking to get a glimpse of our
nation’s capital, here is what we saw: the Capitol Building, Library
of Congress, Supreme Court, White House, Washington Monument, World
War II Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War
Memorial, FDR Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, and a couple of hours in
the Air and Space Museum. It seemed like it was a great first visit
for them.

So another bunch of pictures for friends and family who are
“interested” in our activities and for them to have to look back on 80
years from now.

I am grateful to Konnie for allowing me to be away for yet another
week of our lives, to Kristin and Rob for trusting me with these guys,
and to Ryan and Logan for their good behavior, cooperation, great
interest in all that we do and this year for their tolerance of some
incredibly miserable heat. We will move westward for Baseball Tour
2012 having now been to all of the east coast Stadiums.

Next up? Konnie and I head to England, Scotland and Ireland in September.

We left Philadelphia this morning for Washington, DC with the primary
intention of seeing the Nationals host the Florida Marlins. Good to
get the boys to DC before the city self destructs. Or maybe it
already has? Anyway, after lunch we did a nearly four hour
introductory walk of the east end of the city. Those pictures should
be posted Wednesday night.

Tonight was game six of our Baseball Tour 2011. Our final game was an
11-2 blowout of the Nationals by the Marlins. It had some great
hitting and pitching by the Marlins (a three hitter) and some terrible
pitching and no hitting by the Nationals.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this trip, I purchased all of the
tickets online before our departure. Tonight’s seats were Row D but I
was unaware that Row D in our section is the first row behind the
visitor’s dugout. So in spite of some row fours and fives in other
stadiums on this trip, these were our closest seats as demonstrated by
a few of the pictures. And between being there two hours before game
time to witness batting practice and our first row seats, Ryan and
Logan walked away with five major league baseballs.

So concludes the games of our second tour. With only two years under
our belts, we have seen twelve games in seven cities for 108 innings
without a postponement or even a rain delay, have seen a nine run
inning, a grand slam and a three run homer in the same inning, a fan
on the field, ejections, a three hitter, great plays, lousy plays, a
praying mantis on a hat and many more potential memories. And the
boys have garnered a mere 11 baseballs for their memorabilia
collection. I’m still 0 for 62 years.

Thanks for following us. A little on our tour of Washington tomorrow.

It is hard to believe that today was game five of our six game
Baseball Tour 2011 with only our game in Washington, D.C. tomorrow
remaining. We arrived at Citizens Bank Park today two hours before
game time to watch the teams warm up. With Philadelphia ace Cliff Lee
on the mound we were expecting a Philly victory but he gave up five
runs and ten hits in but four innings to allow San Diego to prevail
5-4. I do love one run games as the outcome is nearly always in doubt
until the last out is made. So for me, this was a good baseball day
plus being a bit cooler than the prior three games on this tour.

So just a few shots of some of the action (and inaction) as well as to
show what great seats we had. That is all we did plus get dinner at a
fine “upscale” Mexican restaurant called El Vez. Speaking of food,
Citizens Bank Park, in addition to being a beautiful and functional
stadium, did receive my vote today for the best food, both quality and
selection, of all the stadiums we have visited during the past two
seasons.

Take that Yankee Stadium.

We finished our visit to New York City with another Yankees-Oakland
game in 100 degree heat on Saturday. An uneventful but exciting 4-3
victory by the A’s. I wised up and took the boys to the souvenir
shops after the game to avoid the massive crush for the train which
made the ride, and especially Logan’s because he gets overlooked by
the crowds, hugely more comfortable. We had a lovely dinner at a 20
seat Italian restaurant on East 53rd Street called Radicchio Pasta and
Risotto.

We arrived in Philly by Amtrak on Sunday afternoon and headed straight
to the historical area. We managed to visit the Liberty Bell Center,
Independence Hall and surrounding buildings and the wonderful
Independence Visitor Center. Afterwards we hiked for a few score more
blocks in search of dining and observing Philadelphia along the way.
The large older cities of the US are interesting in how the cityscape
changes from block to block as well as building to building as some of
the pictures demonstrate.

I always find it thought provoking to view history in Washington, DC
or someplace like here that focuses on our country’s founding and early
history. The film “Independence” that we viewed at the Visitor Center
was inspiring and yet another reminder that those people were able to
compromise enough to put together a whole country. Wouldn’t they be
embarrassed by our “leadership” today.

Phillies and Padres on Monday then off to Washington on Tuesday. This was fast.

Yep, that was the temperature and heat index in New York City today.
The bad news is that it was absolutely miserable outside. The good
news is that I think it kept the crowd down for the trip to the Statue
of Liberty. Thus, we completed that trip in a couple of hours and
still had time to visit Ground Zero, eat lunch and go shoe shopping in
Times Square before heading to Yankee Stadium in time for batting
practice.

We had a productive visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as
Logan met his objective of seeing the family names among the
immigrants as well as enjoying other names including the Zyzyk
families who have the last immigrant name on the walls and, after
their arrival in the USA, whose children were always last in line in
grade school.

Game time (7:05 PM) weather conditions were 100/105 but a cooling
trend brought it down to 91/95 at 10:45 pm on our walk from the subway
to the hotel. We saw an exciting and then boring game with the
Yankees scoring 14 runs in the second and third innings on their way
to a 17 to 7 route of the Athletics. A three run homer by Nick
Swisher and a grand slam by Mark Teixeira in the same inning were the
highlights on a night that saw the highest temperatures yet recorded
at the new Yankee Stadium.

Back to the Stadium tomorrow unless I play the “elderly need to stay
indoors” card with the grandsons.

Fortunately I was not the only person at Citi Field today who
had the potential of being accused of child abuse. With a
temperature of 95 and a good old fashioned east coast/midwest type heat index of
104, I managed to have finally taken the lifetime Phoenix residents of
Ryan and Logan to a place that they thought was HOT. And boy, was it
ever. We were soaked by game time.

We did escape to the concourse level (which is open to the field like
Coors Field…a big plus today) for a few innings and the Mets and
Cardinals helped as best they could with a slightly over two hour game
which is nearly unheard of these days. Oh, the Cardinals prevailed
6-2 and we were fortunate to see Albert Pujols put one way out of the
park in the first inning. Logan managed to leave the park with one
more ball for his collection. I left still 0 for 62 years.

We will try to get Logan to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
tomorrow where he will get to be the last of my son-in-law’s children
to see his grandmother’s name on the wall of immigrants. If we
survive a predicted high of 101 and a 110 heat index it will be off to
Yankee stadium for a night game. Will that be a relief from today?
Maybe not. As of this 10 pm writing it is 88 with a “feels like”
temperature of 98.

Baseball Tour 2011 has in fact begun. We arrived in New York City
this evening but our adventure is not beginning here. I flew to
Phoenix on July 18 to pick up Ryan (11) and Logan (almost 10) and then
returned to Denver to begin this year’s adventure.

On Tuesday night we attended Coors Field to watch the Rockies take on
the Atlanta Braves to kick off the Tour and for the first time we
filled a fourth seat as Konnie joined us for this year’s inaugural
game. We were treated to a Rockies’ romp as they battered the Braves
12 to 3 behind a great outing by Ubaldo Jimenez. Ryan left the
stadium with another ball, bringing the boys’ total take to five balls
in the first seven games of our tours. I am still 0 for 62 years.

The rest of our schedule is Citi Field to watch the Mets take on the
Cardinals, Yankee Stadium for two with the Athletics, back to
Philadelphia to see the Phillies and Padres and wrapping up on July 27
at Nationals Park in Washington to see the Nationals and the Marlins,
completing the Tour which has us seeing every National League Eastern
Division team in action in one week.

Tonight it was dinner at Sinigual (excellent “Contemporary Mexican
Cuisine”) and a stroll around Manhattan including the incredibly
crowded Times Square. Off to Citi Field tomorrow.

This trip marks the one year anniversary of this blog which was
started so that family and friends could follow Baseball Tour 2010. I
ended up continuing it to cover all of our other travels and have
enjoyed hearing from all of you who follow us. Thanks and stay tuned.

PS  Perhaps I should mention that you can see a larger image and usually a caption by double clicking on the thumbnail image.