We are flying to New York from Nashville so we had to head back to Nashville yesterday. We left at the check out time (10am) and decided to not take the interstate but rather to take the back routes to get back. It was obviously a lot slower (took over 4 hours) but it was much more scenic and pleasant drive.

We stopped on route back for lunch at Cracker Barrel which is a Southern chain restaurant. As we were in Kentucky we thought it essential to at least have Southern Fried chicken on one occasion. Only S and I had the fried chicken in the end but M, O, C & K had chicken strips (so it was close to fried chicken) and H had a grilled chicken salad (healthy option). Of course you also get the local ‘sides’ of a biscuit or corn bread and then a choice of another 2 sides as well. You’ll never lack for food in America! The other amusing thing was that before C had even drunk 1/4 of her iced tea, they brought her another refill! When we were finished eating the amount of leftover could have probably fed another family. I guess that all just gets dumped afterwards and so it really is a lot of wastage. It really strikes us when we are in the US as this just doesn’t happen in SA.

We got to the Embassy Suites hotel at the airport at just after 3pm. We decided to stay there as our flight was in the morning to NY (in fact we are at the airport now as I type this) and it would be convenient to get rid of the car last night. After we had checked in, S came with me to refill the car and then take it back to the airport and then we caught the courtesy bus back to the hotel. We had dinner in the hotel last night. When S ordered a beer they asked for ID and he had to go up to his room to get it. When I ordered one the waiter also asked me! While I could be flattered, I actually think that is somewhat ridiculous as I am clearly over 21!

We are now at Nashville airport waiting to board our flight. The incoming flight has just arrived so I reckon it will be a few minutes before we board. In order to send this before we board I am posting it now without pictures and will try do a few pictures later.

Until tomorrow …

P, S (because he ate fried chicken with me and helped me return the car), H, M, C, O & K

Jet lag remains a problem for some of us though we are all seemingly improving. I was awake at 3:30am again this morning but managed to get back to sleep until 5am. Helen woke just before 6am. At least one person was awake upstairs again because I could hear the floors creaking but no one has made an appearance yet. I had a teleconference call today at 6am so I needed to be up early anyway.

Yesterday morning we went to downtown Louisville in the morning and walked around the Louisville Waterfront park. It is privately operated park that runs alongside the Ohio river and has numerous features including an Abraham Lincoln memorial (Abe was born in Kentucky), a water play area and series of walkways and paths running alongside the river. We parked at the one end and basically walked to the other end and back.

It was well into the 30 degrees C yesterday and relatively humid as well. When we got to the water play area some of the children (including H!) took the opportunity to run through the water sprayers. M got so wet he had to take his shirt off to ring it out. All of the other adults were sitting watching their kids play and were clearly amused by this bunch of adults playing in the water as well.

Louisville also has some famous bridges that cross the Ohio River. One of them (Big Four Bridge) was completed in 1895 already. It was originally a rail bridge but now is open only to walk or cycle over. It is 770m long (2500 feet). It has a ramp from the Waterfront park. We didn’t take it over but elected to rather drive across one of the other road bridges (they are also named including, yes you guessed it, the Abraham Lincoln bridge). The other side is Indiana so we have now been to Tennessee, Indiana and Kentucky on this trip so far. We needed to do some shopping so we found a Walmart in Indiana. It was massive. K described it as a mall not a shop. It has everything you could need so that is a pretty accurate description.

We headed back to our house for lunch and then after lunch we headed to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You might wonder why we would go there but actually we had two good reasons. Firstly, K was taking some SA goods to people they know who are studying there. Secondly, the President of SBTS is pretty famous in Evangelical circles – a guy called Al Mohler and both H & S regularly listen to his podcasts. Al Mohler has transformed the seminary since he was appointed in 1993. His story is worth watching if you haven’t already. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/b5vS3dgyams

The people who K had gifts for had agreed to show us around the seminary. It was a great experience and one that S described as a highlight of the trip so far. The facilities are fantastic and include their own hotel even. If we had known about the hotel we probably would have stayed there rather than in the AirBnB that we booked. They have a gym, an indoor pool, an indoor running track and obviously everything they need to run a seminary including an impressive library. The library covers 4 floors and included displays of a mummy (not kidding), coins from Biblical times, a Talmud scroll, CH Spurgeon’s Bible he used up until his death and numerous other artifacts. It was like walking around a museum and not really a library! They also have an incredible faculty including numerous well known scholarly authors (Schreiner, Ware, Whitney, Mohler, Jones, Hamilton, Blount, Bosch, Haykin, Gentry) to name just a few.

It might seem strange to y’all that it was a highlight so far of our trip that we visited a seminary but I guess it shows that seeing things that have meaning to you personally are more valuable than visiting places without any personal significance. It really was an enjoyable afternoon. The people who showed us around were really lovely and they are sacrificing significantly to be at the college. To give you an idea how much they are sacrificing, they don’t use their air-conditioning in their apartment as they can’t afford the electricity cost. In the current heat I am not sure how they are possibly coping. He also has to work 20 hours per week to supplement their savings so that they have sufficient cash to live on during their visit. It was a privilege to meet them.

We spent the rest of the day at the house and cooked our own dinner of steak and ratatouille (both of which were excellent).

Until tomorrow …

P, K (for organizing the visit to SBTS), S (because he cooked the steaks), H, C, M & O

It seems the boys don’t suffer from jetlag. They slept until about 8am and S had to actually wake M up otherwise he might still be sleeping. We went to breakfast at Union 417 which supports Military vets (and employs them in the running of the restaurant). You do know you’re in the South when they have fried chicken as a breakfast option! Pancakes though were the definite order of preference except H & I who had your standard fried eggs though H did get the biscuit (scone type of thing really) with her breakfast.

After breakfast we walked down to the river (Cumberland River according to google) and then along the river. It was already pretty warm (around 80F = 26C). We then walked down to Broadway (the honky tonk area) and back to the hotel. What struck us is the number of homeless people. It seems worse than other cities we have been and after a quick google search today it does seem to be a particular issue in Nashville (though it also seems no one knows why).

We checked out of the hotel at 11am and headed toward Louisville, Kentucky where we are staying for 2 nights. It is about 175 miles (225km) and takes about 2.5 hours to drive. It is an interstate motorway which started out as a 6 lane highway and for most of the time was a 3 lane highway. The sheer amount of people driving always staggers me in the US. Where are all these people going? The enormous number of (enormous) trucks is the other noticeable thing. While the roads are wide, the surface of the roads isn’t great (generally because of the extreme weather conditions in these parts). We noticed how much rubber from blown out tyres there is on the interstate – about every 500meters or so there are the remains of a tyre. I guess that’s a combination of the poor road surface and truckers not changing their tyres frequently enough.

We stopped at a small town and found a grocery store (Krogers) to do some food shopping for the next 2 days. That experience always takes longer than just to buy the food as everyone wanders around the store being entertained by the differences to home. I’m sure in future blogs I will post some shots of some of things. We did the self-checkout option which ending up needing constant assistance from one of the store people. It started off because we bought alcohol and so had to do a check that we were over 21 but then seemingly M & S (who were doing the checkout – not to be confused with M&S the store in UK) were either too fast or too slow at doing what they were doing. The store assistant was very helpful though and she gave us a Kroger’s card too which ended up saving us $20 on the $130 grocery bill.

It was around 1:30pm when suddenly the clock on my cell jumped forward to 2:30pm that we realised that Louisville was in a different time zone and we had lost an hour of our day and we hadn’t had lunch yet. So we stopped at another small town and had Wendy’s for lunch. H & C went for the healthy salad lunch. K had chicken nuggets and the rest of us had Wendy’s burgers (which are definitely better than MacD’s). It was also at this point that S logged onto WiFi to discover that our AirBnB that we had booked had been cancelled (basically at the check in time!). So now we were suddenly accommodation-less. Some quick searching found us another 6-bedroom house (cheaper than the first one) which means everyone got their own bedroom. S quickly booked it and while we were heading into Louisville (we had about 45 minutes still to go) we got the Pin code for the key. Pretty annoying that they cancel at the last minute and S complained to both the owner of the property (who said they had de-listed from AirBnB though surely not yesterday at 3pm!) and AirBnB (who have given us a credit to use in the next 30 days). All a bit annoying but fortunately relatively easily sorted with new accommodation.

We made our own dinner last night (trying to limit the number of restaurant eaten meals) and then after dinner we went to Walgreens (pharmacy chain) to try get SIM cards for the others and (more importantly) ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s) for desert. It was 10:30pm by the time we were in bed and unfortunately I was awake at 4am again though did manage to doze off again from just after 5am until about 6am. H got through to 5am. Someone upstairs is awake (hear them on the creaking floors) but otherwise it seems the rest of them are still sleeping.

Until tomorrow …

P, S (for sorting out AirBnB), O (for trying Wendy’s hamburger – she would go ahead of me for trying a MacDs one), M (for self-scan work at Krogers), H, C & K

Monday morning was spent cleaning the flat and washing the linen for 7 people – not an easy task to do in a few hours. We had a car pick up at 11am to take us to Heathrow and we arrived at the check in about an hour later. The check in process took quite awhile as we are booked on 4 separate bookings and they had to check visas for everyone, check the luggage in etc. Fortunately that all went through without a hitch and we had about 2 hours to kill in the BA lounge before our flight.

We boarded on time for our flight to Nashville. One of the things I always do is check to see my seat works before we take off and I did that as usual to find that it wasn’t working. I told the cabin crew and they called an engineer to come and fix it but he wasn’t able to resolve the problem. The cabin service director (CSD) was extremely apologetic and kept saying ‘You’re our most important customer on board today and we have to make a plan for you’. Even the captain knew about my seat issue and he told the CSD “I can’t believe the seat doesn’t work for the guy who flies the most with us on the plane today. You better make a plan to sort it out”! No pressure on the CSD. To be fair they were very apologetic and after take off they offered that I could use a First class seat when I wanted to sleep. However, amazingly after we took off the seat suddenly started working again. It is clearly an intermittent fault because by the time we landed the seat wasn’t working again.

The flight was 9 hours into Nashville and was pretty uneventful. S, M, O & K were not traveling in the same class as me, H & C but they were impressed that they got served pizza and magnums mid-flight. We landed in Nashville at just after 5pm (Nashville time). Immigration is immediately you walk off the plane (it seems only one international gate at Nashville airport for international flights). It took some time for O & K to get through because they had to go separately whereas we all went together as a family.

6 pieces of our luggage arrived before O&K got through and then we waited and waited and waited. It was S’s suitcase that wasn’t arriving but just as K came through immigration, his suitcase came off as well (basically 2nd last one). We were picking up a van but S & M had the bags on trolley’s so they had to use the elevator to get downstairs. They never arrived and eventually panic set in when we realised they had gone awol. Communication seemed to have been lacking as to where to meet us but finally one of them thought to go onto WiFi and send a whatsapp and we found them.

We are staying in downtown Nashville at Hotel Indigo just for one night and we were in the hotel at around 7pm. It did take me about 15 minutes to park the van though. It is so big it is quite ridiculous. It is actually a bus not a van. We have an extra row of seats to pick up waifs and strays. We could fit another family in the van with us as well.

We decided to try and keep ourselves going we ought to walk around the downtown area. O has been to Nashville before so she directed us to the Honky Tonk area where we walked around and marveled at the home of country music. Each pub/restaurant had live music pumping out of it. Very vibrant but after 20 minutes or so we were feeling overpowered and headed to try and find a restaurant that was quieter for dinner. We did eventually find that as we headed back to the hotel. Nice place, good food, good service. A little slow in bringing the food and we were tired so by the time bought it we were ready to eat and then head to bed.

Unfortunately Helen and I were awake at 3am and from our whatsapp conversations O & K weren’t far behind that either. Hopefully breakfast isn’t too far away as I’m feeling pretty hungry given I have been up for 4 hours already!

Until tomorrow …

P, O (she blatantly sucked up to me which is worthy of being moved up for that alone), C, H, K, SM (they got lost in Nashville airport and if you’ve been to Nashville airport you might appreciate how difficult that is to do!)

It is World Cup Cricket time in the UK at the moment and we (me and my 3 children) had tickets to the SA v Pakistan game. It was my birthday present to myself and what made it special was having all 3 of my kids come along with me. As it turned out it was another poor SA performance but it was a still a nice day because watching cricket for a day generally beats doing anything else. And watching cricket at Lord’s Cricket ground is also always special.

What made the defeat hard to swallow was the ridiculous amount of support for the Pakistan team at the ground. It felt like it was a home game for Pakistan. Besides an SA supporter sitting next to us, we were surrounded by Pakistan supporters who cheered every run, jumped up and signaled 4 or 6 every time they hit a boundary and constantly were chanting “Pakistan, Pakistan”. They even played some Pakistan song over the loudspeakers on a regular basis which got the whole crowd singing along. Really did feel a little biased towards Pakistan and unfortunately the SA cricket team contributed with their poor performance to the celebrating Pakistani’s.

The other three all went their own ways yesterday (none of them wanted to come to cricket). H went to All Souls Church, O went to listen to hear her Dad at St Simon Zelotes (https://www.stsimonzelotes.com/) where he was guest preaching and K toured across London and visited the V&A Museum of Childhood Victoria and Albert Museum and Freud Museum (https://www.freud.org.uk/) which apparently is in his home.

We then all had a birthday celebratory dinner together at the flat afterwards. I figured given we are likely to be eating out a lot over the next few weeks we should rather have a home cooked meal on our last night in London.

We fly later today to the US. Besides me, everyone else had trouble checking in for the flight. I eventually managed to sort out H & C (they are on the same booking) and got them checked in. We also discovered that the other 4 of them didn’t have ticket numbers in their bookings and on calling BA it turned out that their tickets had actually never been issued! Helen had already spent about an hour trying to solve S&K’s ticket issue so we have no idea why it wasn’t resolved the first time. M&O though had exactly the same issue. O spent an hour sorting out their tickets on the phone to BA and then S spent about the same time doing that as well. We finally got them resolved at about 8pm last night but we still struggled to get everyone checked in. O managed to check in but M couldn’t and S&K couldn’t at all either. I decided to move the car pick up earlier so we could resolve at Heathrow but then suddenly this AM we discovered that BA must have checked S&K in (because they were checked in) and then I managed after multiple attempts to get M checked in. You just have to wonder at the BA systems!

Until tomorrow (when we will hopefully be in the US) …

P, M (because he stayed with me until I was ready to leave the cricket), S (because he left after C), C (because she came to cricket), H (because she was the only one to give me a gift yesterday), O (because she spent an hour on the phone with BA), K (sorry … she did navigate herself around London yesterday but someone has to be last!)

We are all finally in London together. Unfortunately it didn’t all go to plan though. On Friday I finished the conference in Montreal and as I had nothing to do in the afternoon I headed for the airport. While I was in the taxi heading for the airport, S & K were boarding their plane to London. They left on time and so we due to land in London at around 6:30am. The plan was that I would meet up with them at the airport as my flight from Montreal was due in also at 6:30am.

By the time I had cleared security, I had about 5 hours to wile away at the airport. My plan was to do some work as it was my last working afternoon before I started my leave. The set up in the Air Canada lounge though wasn’t ideal for working though I did manage to do some emails at least. I was constantly checking that all was still on time with my flight and at about 4pm it actually updated saying we would arrive at 6:15am so all seemed on track. Then suddenly at 5pm I got a notification that the flight was delayed and arriving now departing at 8pm (instead of 6:50pm) and then a few minutes later another one saying 8:35pm and then another one a few minutes after that saying 9:35pm. At about 8:45pm it updated then to a 9:50pm departure and I started to doubt I was ever going to leave Montreal.

There is a limited amount of time you can spend in a lounge in an airport and I was fast approaching that limit especially since the last 3 hours were unplanned. I had eaten everything there was to eat and watched enough Netflix and now wanted to actually get on a plane and leave. The added irritation was that I had specifically kept myself in UK time and with the 5 hour time difference it really did feel like 2am in the morning for me and I really wanted to go to sleep. I was now starting to have my doubts we were going anywhere that night. It didn’t help then when we were queuing to board (this was now at 9:30pm and I was starting to doubt the 9:50pm departure time), the two guys behind me were giving a running commentary on how stressed the gate departure staff were looking. Each time the leader got a call they would make up the conversation between the two of them like “I’m not telling these people that we are further delayed” or “You come down here yourself and tell them the flight is cancelled” or “What did you say – there’s a technical problem we can’t fix”.

We did eventually board at 9:45pm though and we took off at 10:30pm with the expected arrival time into London of 9:30am (3 hours late). No explanation ever given, no apology either at the gate or on the plane. Seemed like a standard thing that happens and when I tracked the on time performance of the flight I found out it is actually a regular thing. 20% of the time that particular flight is late by more than 2 hours. Air Canada were just ‘proudly’ voted number 1 airline in North America. You can just imagine how bad the rest of them are!

By the time I arrived, S & K had arrived in London, gone to the flat for a shower and already headed out with the rest of them to Natural Science Museum. I drove past the museum at 10:30am when they were touring around it. As I had slightly less than 4 hours sleep on the flight, I had had a quick nap when I arrived and Helen went off to sit in St James Park and read. As you can tell from that the weather was quite nice (which in London means not raining). In the evening we decided to have a picnic in St James Park as well and joined the numerous other people sitting on the grass doing likewise. It was nice to have the whole bunch of us together and on holiday.

I am busy typing this quietly in the lounge because M & S are sleeping in here (lack of beds for all of us) and I have been awake since 5am (not sure my body knows what timezone I am in at the moment).

Until tomorrow …

P, H (because she was only one at flat when I arrived), C (because she’s my favorite daughter), S, M, O & K

M & O arrived safely into London on Wednesday morning and were in the flat at around 8:30am. After a quick shower, H, M & O headed out for breakfast at Abuelo (https://www.abuelocafe.co.uk/) which seems to be Helen’s new favourite breakfast spot in London. After breakfast they headed to Westfield Shopping Mall (which is probably London’s biggest mall – I haven’t fact checked that but I would be surprised if it wasn’t). While they were doing that I was heading to Heathrow to catch my Air Canada flight to Montreal which left at 2pm.

I arrived in Montreal at 4pm (Canadian time) which was 9pm UK time and the first thing I did was check the cricket score to find out we had now definitely been knocked out of the World Cup. I wasn’t hopeful before I climbed on the plane after seeing how slowly we were batting but I was still praying for a miracle that unfortunately never occurred. On an entirely different note, I do love Canadian immigration. You scan your own passport, answer a few questions, it prints a slip of paper and you walk over to customs who look at it, ask where you come from and off you go. From landing to being in the taxi took me only 30 minutes. I’m staying at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth (https://www.fairmont.com/queen-elizabeth-montreal/) which is in downtown Montreal. Nothing special, just like any other hotel in a downtown area. The picture is the view from my room. And yes the weather is that lousy – 16 degrees and raining.

Thanks to jetlag (and very little attempt for me to get into the Canadian time zone), I went to sleep at around 7:30pm and woke up at 3am. Same thing last night. I am hoping that (because I fly back to London tonight) I will avoid jetlag entirely as I will be back in London for the weekend. It does also mean I can answer emails and do some work before the conference starts each day. Canadians seem to love starting their conferences early. 7:45am start for the first session each day – definitely the earliest I have started a conference anywhere in the world.

While I was conferencing yesterday, the other 4 (H, C, M & O) went to Regent’s Park and then up Primrose Hill. H & C then went to Taste of London which is happening this week until Sunday in Regent’s Park. Not sure why it is called Taste of London though because from the looks of what Helen and Chloe ate there it should be called Taste of the World.

One more day of conferencing awaits me and then back to London tonight for me. S & K also leave tonight for London and if all goes well we will meet up at Heathrow tomorrow morning!

Until Saturday …

P, H, C, M & O

We are just starting a family holiday to the UK and US. For a variety of reasons we are leaving SA on 4 different flights. H & C left on Saturday night, P on Sunday night and M & O are leaving tonight. S & K still to depart on Friday night. Everyone is flying into London.

H & C spent Sunday walking along the South bank of the Thames and then (after a drink at a pub as one does when in the UK) spontaneously went to watch Henry V at the Globe Theatre. They did the original thing and bought a standing ticket for £5 and spent the next 3 hours standing. They said it was excellent and worth repeating. They were doing this while I was on a flight from Cape Town to London which fortunately was uneventful.

I have spent the last 2 days working while H & C have enjoyed a few days in London. Today C went to York to meet up with some friends and will spend the night up there before returning tomorrow to London. M & O arrive tomorrow morning from Johannesburg (they flew via Jhb and have just taken off). I am going to Montreal (for business) for the next 2 days and I will overlap briefly tomorrow morning with M&O before I head to Heathrow for my flight to Canada.

When you’re in London you must mention the weather. The temperature has been quite mild (around 20 degrees C) and until midday today it has been dry. At lunchtime though and most of the afternoon it has been raining and they’re predicting thundershowers for the rest of today and tomorrow as well. You can’t expect to come to London and not have it rain though!

Until I write again … won’t promise when because I don’t know when I will write given I am still working!

P, H & C … with M & O on the way