Growing up in Oklahoma, my concept of “old” was the flour mill on Main Street that was built in 1893. Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Anything that predated that to me was downright prehistoric.

“Old” has a different meaning in the UK, of course. The Tower of London, or at least the White Tower, was built in 1078 by William the Conqueror. The castle was expanded greatly in the 13th century. The Tower of London is old.

I’ll tell you up front that Susan and I appreciated visiting the Tower of London for completely different reasons. Susan loves the English royalty. She loves every single thing about it, from the pageantry and all their ceremonies. She knows who’s in line to replace whom and watches every royal ceremony live, even if it means staying up through the wee hours of the morning.

I, on the other hand, am not particularly interested in any of that. That being said, I found the Tower of London itself — like, the physical place — to be an extraordinary piece of construction. As a life long fan of Dungeons and Dragons, it was mind-blowing to imagine such a place being build by hand, stone by stone and brick by brick. I loved seeing all the parts of the castle, from the old moat to the portcullis (which was a recent Jeopardy clue I surprised Susan by knowing) and the archer slits in the higher walls that were used a thousand years ago. I guess you could say Susan loved all the things inside the Tower of London, while my favorite part was the Tower of London itself.

On display inside the Jewel House vault are the British Crown Jewels. There are crowns, and scepters, and capes, and really important chairs. Everything is behind glass with guards standing watch and unfortunately, no photography is allowed. Susan loved seeing every single thing on display.

When we got outside I ran across this area, which quickly became my favorite part of the entire tour.

This is where Anne Boleyn was beheaded on May 19, 1536. Specifically, that spot in the middle is apparently where her head landed.

On our way out of the Tower we passed by the ravens. According to legend, ravens guard the Tower and if they were to leave, the Crown (and Britain) will fall. I think the ravens are usually in cages but this one was just hanging out, perched next to the guard gate. As we passed by we bid it and the Tower of London a fond farewell as we headed off to our next destination!

Each time Susan and I go on a cruise I copy a few movies and TV shows to my laptop for us to watch during downtimes and late nights. Ironically it was on our last cruise that we discovered the television show Ted Lasso, which we promptly binge watched. For those who haven’t seen it, Ted Lasso is about a London soccer (er, football) team being coached by an American named Ted Lasso.

A popular location on the show iis the Crown and Anchor Pub, which in reality is a real pub called The Prince’s Head. Susan really wanted to eat at there and made reservations for us in advance. Yes, the pub apparently is so popular now that reservations may be necessary.

Directly outside the pub is the iconic red phone booth and the bench that Ted Lasso and his assistant coach, Coach Beard, are frequently seen sitting. Directly across the street is the large park that is often seen in the show as well.

If you’re a fan of the show you’ll instantly recognize the bar where the fictional pub owner Mae can often be found.

Based solely from eavesdropping and accents, it appeared the pub’s patrons were split pretty evenly between tourists and fans of the show (like ourselves) and locals who were used to the attention and were just there to enjoy a pint.

So we ordered our meals and an appetizer, which all went pretty normal this being our first official meal in London. We picked at the appetizer a bit and waited for our food to arrive… and waited, and waited. After half an hour or so, our waitress finally asked us, “do you want us to go ahead and start preparing your meal?” She then explained to us that “there”, they don’t bring your meal until after you’ve completely finished your appetizer. I’m not sure if “there” means that pub, Richmond, London, or all of the UK, but we were unfamiliar with that custom. We told the waitress that yes, we’re starving, and 10-15 minutes later our lunch arrived.

I had the fish and chips and Susan had the whatever that plate of crap is.

After lunch we spent a few minutes walking up and down the row of nearby shops in Richmond. Unsurprisingly, almost all of them have capitalized on the show and offer Ted Lasso souveniers, from hats and shirts to little boxes of biscuits just like the ones Ted delivered to the team owner each morning.

Without the show this would be just another pub in another town, but the show convinced us to go there and I’m glad we did. It was a nice area to walk around and a fun spot to visit.

I was exposed to the legend of Jack the Ripper at an early age. I remember reading about the murders in the Time Life book Strange Stories, Amazing Facts which I was obsessed with in early grade school, and also seeing David Warner as the Ripper himself committing a murder and escaping in H.G. Wells’ time machine in the fictionalized Time After Time, released in 1979 and a regular HBO staple. As a child I didn’t grasp all the implications or brutality of the murders. At that age, Jack the Ripper was just another unsolved mystery, no different than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

Back when we were originally planning our time in London, I asked Susan if there was a Jack the Ripper museum and, if so, could we visit it. As it turned out, the official Jack the Ripper museum is in Whitechapel (where the murders took place) which was only three miles away from our hotel.

To be fair I don’t know what I was expecting to find at a Jack the Ripper museum… but it definitely wasn’t this.

The museum is nestled into a Victorian townhouse in Whitechapel. It consists of six rooms, each relatively small and each on its own floor. For those of the faint of heart (or in our case, bad knees) there’s also an accessible lift.

Each room of the museum represents one facet of the murders, beginning with the one you see above which depicts Catherine Eddowes’ body being discovered by a police officer (with a bit of help from your truly).

While the museum has replica newspaper articles and information about the crimes seemingly everywhere you look, it doesn’t take long before you begin to realize that a few liberties have been taken along the way. Along your journey you’ll get to see what Jack the Ripper’s study “might have looked like” along with what the police investigation “could have been like” and what a room for rent “mostly looked like.”

After climbing up four flights of stairs and then back down to the basement you’ll find a recreation of a local pub several of the women frequented. Some people suspect that Jack the Ripper may have met some of his victims in the pub. In the “pub” there’s a mannequin bartender and another of the Ripper’s victims sitting at a table, whom I decided to join because I’m silly.

It was actually in this room that I had the most fun. For the majority of our visit, Susan and I were the only people inside the museum. While I was sitting in the dimly-lit pub, another group of visitors entered and so I immediately froze stil, acting like one of the mannequins. It wasn’t until one of the men approached the table that I spring up and shouted “HELLO!” The guy was startled but quickly laughed and I told him it was now his turn to sit there and wait for the next group to come by.

I read online that the museum can take up to two hours to fully explore, but within half an hour we felt like we had seen everything. The fake props didn’t interest me all that much and although the replicas of Jack the Ripper’s letters and newspaper clippings were interesting, if you have more than a passing interest in the case, you’ve probably already seen them. In the museum’s defense I will say that many people rave about the additional walking tour that takes visitors to some of the crime scenes (none of which exist in the same way they did 140 years ago), but we weren’t able to fit that into our schedule.

Despite hopes and the occasional claim that DNA testing will someday reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper (including one that happened while we were in London, which has already been debunked), the crimes remain unsolved to this day. If you want to take a stab at solving the murders, check out the Jack the Ripper museum in Whitechapel, London. They could use the help.

Scattered around the Lido deck of every Carnival cruise ship are self-serve ice cream machines that will dispense any flavor of soft-serve ice cream you want as long as you want chocolate or vanilla. Turns out, the easiest way to feed a couple thousand people is to offer a few items with a wide range of appeal. Each night the buffet changes a little but they always have hamburgers and hot dogs and pizzas and salads and all sorts of non-offensive things for people to eat. The scrambled eggs are bland and the cake is tasteless and all of that is by design. That being said, six floors down tucked away next to the casino is a small sushi restaurant, and a couple of times throughout the cruise the dining room serves lobster tails. There’s good food on most cruise ships, you just gotta know where to look.

The entertainment on most cruises is no different. Every cruise ship has Bingo and trivia contests and dance parties and comedians telling the same tired jokes about the good on the buffet… but if you dig a little deeper through the list of daily activities and venture off the beaten path, you might find something with a bit more flavor than vanilla. You might even discover something so unexpectedly unique and profound that it could possible change your life.

You might discover Tim Tamashiro.

Susan and I discovered Tim after attending his photography presentation on the ship. For about an hour Tim talked about the rule of thirds and leading lines (something I’ve written about in the past) and gave some simple but effective pointers like turning on the gridlines on your phone’s camera app to help frame pictures. At the end of his presentation, Tim mentioned that he was doing a few more classes including one on self-meditation, one on finding happiness and “that time he decided to become a monk”, and one on Ikigai.

It was that last one that caught Susan’s attention. Not only has Tim written a book on Ikigai, but Susan has read it. Ikigai (rhymes with “sneaky-guy”) is the Okinawan concept of finding your life’s purpose. At its core, Ikigai is a Venn Diagram with four overlapping things: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be rewarded for. A person’s Ikigai is boiled down to a two-word phrase — to “something”. Some examples Tim shared were “to teach” and “to nurture”. Tim’s Ikigai is “to delight” and everything he does both professionally and in his personal life starts there.

Tim is so personable and likeable and such a good presenter that we could not believe he wasn’t a big deal. Apparently, he kind of is. According to his (woefully unpopulated) Wikipedia entry, Tim was the host of Tonic, a CBC Radio 2 program for an entire decade. His credentials come from the six jazz albums he recorded. Oh, he was also a music executive for MCA Records for a while. And a monk. And a podcaster. And an author. And a YouTuber.

Needless to say, Susan and I made a point to attend all of Tim’s remaining presentations. At one, he led a hundred or so people through a guided meditation session, teaching some simple breathing and meditation techniques. In his final presentation of the cruise, “i am the i in happiness”, he shared his motivation and experience as a monk in Thailand. His story was touching, insightful, emotional, and even humorous.

I got the opportunity to chat with Tim after one of his presentations. Unsurprisingly, a guy who “lives to delight” is pretty generous with his time. I let him know how inspirational I found his presentation on Ikigai and was a little embarrassed when I choked up for just a moment.

If you’re worried that I’m about to sell my worldly possessions and join a monastery, don’t fret — I’m not planning to shave my head (and apparently, eyebrows) anytime soon. What I will say is that Tim Tamashiro is one happy guy, and it’s impossible to interact with him and not walk away feeling as though, somehow, he just made you a little better — or at least shared something with you that will allow you to make yourself a little better.

(Yes, I intentionally wore a “Nirvana” shirt to a presentation about monks and meditation.)

On the last night of our cruise we saw Tim Tamashiro again, this time dining alone on the Lido deck. It took everything I had not to join him at his table. I had already talked the guy’s ear off once and didn’t want to take up more of his time, but that’s the kind of guy Tim is. He doesn’t just make you feel better about yourself. He empowers you to feel better about yourself.

If the concept of discovering your life’s purpose sounds even remotely interesting to you, I highly recommend picking up Tim’s book “How to Ikigai” from Amazon. It’s available both in paperback and as an Audio CD. Tim has some other books on Ikigai for sale as well so I definitely encourage you to check out his content.

Tim Tamashiro is not vanilla ice cream. He’s a guy who lives to delight, and on last week’s cruise that’s exactly what he did.

Link: How to Ikigai by Tim Tamashiro (Amazon)
Link: TimTamashiro.ca (Website)

On March 11, Susan and I drove to the airport and began three weeks of vacation. On March 30 we flew from Miami to Houston to Dallas and, due to a flight cancellation, rented a car and drove from Dallas back to Oklahoma City. On March 31 we drove back to the airport, returned our rental car, picked up Susan’s car and collected our luggage, officially marking the end of our vacation. Over the past three weeks we’ve touched states amd five countries. We flew across the Atlantic Ocean, took two high speed trains, and spent two weeks on a cruise ship making our way back from Barcelona, Spain to the United States!

My plan was to document our vacation a little bit each day by posting blog entries and sharing pictures and videos here on RobOHara.com along the way. Unfortunately, I ran into an unforeseen technical issue once we boarded the cruise — either Carnival’s WiFi is blocking access to websites hosted on HostGator, or HostGator is blocking access from Carnival cruise ships. Either way, the result is the same; I was unable to update my website from the ship. The few things I was able to get our were done by phone whenever we arrived in a port and were able to use our international data plan.

What that means is that over the next several days I’ll be sharing more vacation stories and pictures from our visit to London, Paris, Barcelona, Portugal, and all the other places we visited over the past three weeks. It has been a truly fantastic vacation and I still have no idea how Susan was able to plan all the stops, hotels, and everything else!

I’ve ridden trains in Atlanta and Boston and even took an Amtrak from Chicago to New York City and back once, but I’ve always wanted to ride one of the superfast European ones. Over the past couple of days, I’ve now done that twice — once from London to Paris, which took about two hours, and another from Paris to Barcelona, which took almost seven. I read online that the train travels at speeds new 200mph. It didn’t seem that fast while looking out the window, but it did seem fast, efficient, and comfortable.

We had first class seats on the train. I didn’t see any other seats so it would be tough for me to compare, but the first class seats were plush and came in multiple configurations, none of them private. Ours ended up being in a two-by-two configuration. Susan and I sat next to each other across from two other people, with a shallow table between us.

On the first half of the trip we sat across from two men who were not traveling together. Both of them immediately opened their laptops and worked the entire time they were on the train. Susan and I played on our phones to kill the time.

About halfway through the trip, the train stopped and both of our seatmates left. We were hoping no one would join us but right before the train began to roll, a small Japanese woman entered our car. It was obvious English was not her first language as she was having a difficult time finding her seat. Susan eventually looked at her ticket and confirmed that she seat was across from mine. After she was seated she began reading a book, I went back to watching movies on my tablet, and Susan went back to her phone.

About an hour into the second leg of our trip, Susan dug a few Starburst out of her purse and handed me one. On a whim I asked her for another one (which turned out to be the last one she had) and slid it across the table to the woman across from me. She reacted in the most traditional of ways — bowing and thanking us multiple times before unwrapping the candy so carefully I knew she was going to save the wrapper. After eating it she thanked us again and told us what a delicious treat it was. Secretly I was laughing a little, thinking of the hundreds if not thousands of Starburst I have eaten throughout my life and never given them a second thought.

A few minutes later, the woman got up and left. Once the train gets rolling people occasionally cange seats and we just assumed she wanted to sit somewhere else. She quickly returned with two small boxes of candy, one for each of us. Through broken English we discovered the candy was Toraya Yokan in some sort of limited edition packaging noting the year. Susan’s said 2024 and had a picture of a dragon; mine was 2025 and had a picture of a snake. We heard the words “special” and weren’t sure if we were supposed to open them or not so we just kind of sat there staring at them. Everyone was trying their best to converse, but there was a pretty big language gap between that small table.

Again the lady left and this time she returned with her nephew, who was also traveling with her and had been studying English at school for many years — a translator!!

And then, it was on.

The woman, who I thought was maybe 25 years old, was actually a few years older than me or Susan. Some of the translation was a bit sketchy, but I believe she is an interior designer and her husband is an architect. Her nephew, Taro, is attending college and is a karate champion. A lot of the conversation involved picking up on keywords and then pulling up pictures on our phones to show one another.

We talked about houses and what our cites are like. We showed them some recent pictures and Susan showed them one from the toy show. I mentioned Marie Kondo (the Japanese organizer) which they knew. We talked about food — sushi and sashimi and bento boxes and giant American hamburgers.

While time on the train seemed to drag when we were sitting quietly in our seats staring at the backside of strangers’ laptops, things changed when we were able to actually make friends with someone. We had such a good time talking to our new friends. Taro (the nephew) travels all over the world and hikes and we were sure to tell him if he comes to Oklahoma, he has a place to stay!

We have had such a good time wandering around London, Paris, and Barcelona seeing the sites, but our favorite part has been the conversations we’ve had with locals and other travelers.

When Susan asked if I was interested in visiting the London Eye, I thought she was talking about the city’s well-known camera/surveillance system or something. She wasn’t. She was talking about the 45-story tall Ferris wheel in downtown London… which we rode.

Unlike a traditional Ferris Wheel, the London Eye consists of enclosed capsules. There are 32 capsules, numbered 1-33 (there is no capsule 13). They say each capsule can hold up to 25 people, although there were only 7 in ours. There’s around bench in the middle people can sit on and handrails all the way around so you can look out the glass walls.

The Eye doesn’t really stop so you have to watch your step when entering your capsule. The whole thing rotates pretty slowly so it’s not too hard. Once inside… off you go.

There are a few buildings next to the river that you can use to gauge how high you are. You can see Big Ben and other sites… but you keep checking those buildings. We were even with the 5th floor… and then the 10th flood… and then the 20th floor… and then over the building. And then way over the building. If you’re looking for an aerial view of London, the London Eye offers one heck of one.

Because the thing moves so slowly, it never really feels like you’re moving. It’s just up and up and up and then down and down and down and all of a sudden, it’s over. The time flew, but according to my watch it took about 30 minutes to go all the way around.

My wife, who has traveled to the UK a few times, warned me about jetlag. I told her that stuff like time zones and daylight savings time doesn’t really affect me and, frankly, I think jetlag is something that tired travelers just made up. I am typing these words at 2:45 AM local time, and stand (sit) corrected.

The first leg of our flight was from OKC to CLT (Charlotte, NC) and was largely unmemorabTle. At CLT, we were granted access to the Admiral’s Lounge, which sounds really elite until you realize there are 200 people in there. We did get some free snacks and WiFi while we waited 2 hours for the next flight.

The next flight was from CLT to London, almost 8 hours. My wife tried explaining to me what our seats would be like, but I didn’t quite get it until we boarded the 777. They were almost like mini cubicles at work. Each “seat” had a TV, multiple outlets (120v and USB), headphones, multiple touchscreens (one for the TV and one for the seat). The motorized seat went from upright to sorta-reclined to really-reclined to flat-as-a-board. The seats down the middle of the plane are joined but have a little divider in case you’re sitting across from a stranger.

On the flight we crossed another 4 time zones, plus the one from Oklahoma. We slept overnight on the plane and woke up and it was 8 AM… except it was really 3 AM for us. We’ve had a really good day Ubering around London and seeing stuff, but boy, am I tired. Except not right now, at nearly 3 AM, when I should be.

Our bags are packed and the itinerary is set. In an hour from now, Susan and I will be heading to the airport to begin three weeks of vacation! This time just Susan and I are going and the kids will be staying at our place.

With assistance from drugs and alcohol, I’ll be taking two flights today — one to Charlotte, NC, and a second to Heathrow Airport in London. We’ll be spending two nights there before zooming off to Paris for another two nights. Next is Barcelona, where we’ll spend a day before boarding a cruise ship and spending the next fourteen days leisurely cruising back toward Miami, making several stops along the way. I’m not sure what ports we’re stopping at but the one I’m the most excited about is Bermuda because, hey, Bermuda Triangle.

While Susan has been “over the pond” before, I never have so I’m looking forward to seeing something new. I’ll try to update the blog during our trip and of course we’ll be posting lots of stuff to Facebook. With everything that’s going on at work it’s probably not the best time to take a vacation… which on the other hand makes it the perfect time to take a vacation!

Last Saturday, Susan and I filled my van up with tubs full of toys and attended our fourth toy show. So far we’ve done two shows at the OKC Fairgrounds, and this was our second one to do in Del City.

We continue to up our game at each show. Most of these shows have a setup period the night before when most people set up their tables and many set up their entire displays. On the day of the show, doors open to vendors two hours early and up until this show we’ve set up our entire display in that two-hour window. This time, we actually drove out the night before and set up our tables and about 1/2 of our stuff. Saturday morning we brought the rest of our stuff and were much less rushed.

At two of the four shows we’ve attended, vendors who rented space directly next to us did not show up on the day of the show. In both cases we were invited to spread our tables out to fill the empty space. The first time this happened we were unprepared to really take advantage of the additional space. We spread our stuff out, but it was a lot like taking the ingredients of a small pizza and spreading it out to cover a large. This time, we brought additional stuff “just in case” and ended up with enough space to put it all out on display.

While it takes more work up front, we had 80% of our stuff pre-priced. That made setup go fast. Susan brought plenty of cash for making change and printed QR codes for using Venmo and CashApp… and then we had two people want to use PayPal, and a few more wanting to use debit cards. We’ll try to account for that next time.

We sold a lot of items for less than $5 and things priced for $10-$20 sold well, but almost none of my more expensive things sold. I brought two 31″ Jakks Star Wars figures from 2014. I checked eBay and the last two sold for $135 and $112. At the last show two weeks ago, I priced them for $100 each. On Saturday I marked them down to $60 and would have sold the pair for $100. Nobody gave them a second glance. When we get back from vacation I guess I’ll put them on eBay.

These sales are a lot of work, but just like last time we made more money in six hours than we make all month at our toy booth so that makes them worthwhile to do. We’ll keep doing these shows as long as we have inventory to sell, which should be at least 5-10 more years.