Fall Fun

The weather has turned cooler. The leaves have started to change colors. Pumpkins have been carved. Fall is here!

Back in September, on one of the first cold (well “cold” for our standards as Texans) days of the year, David and I got tickets to a “Royal Day Out.” The day out included a tour of the Royal Mews, the Queen’s Gallery, and Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is only open during the summer months, so we made sure to snatch up these tickets before the palace was closed to visitors.

I had no idea what the Royal Mews were until we showed up that morning for our tour. As I found out, the Mews are home to the carriages, horses, and vehicles that transport the royal family. The biggest attractions at the Mews are the working horses, the carriage that carried Princess Di to St. Paul’s on her wedding day, and the enormous Gold State Coach, which was last used in 2002 for the Queen’s Jubilee. The next Jubilee is expected in 2012 during the Olympics, so this carriage will stay locked away for another two years. In fact, the carriage is so large that the room it is housed in basically has to be taken apart to get the carriage out into the street.

After the Royal Mews, we visited the Queen’s Gallery. The current exhibition at the Gallery is “Victoria and Albert: Art and Love.” I recently saw “The Young Victoria” and LOVED it so I was excited to see some of Victoria and Albert’s prized possessions in-person.

Finally, we ended our day at Buckingham Palace, where we saw the state rooms filled with artwork and sculptures. We walked through Buckingham Palace’s gardens on the way out. I didn’t realize that there is so much green, open space hidden away in the middle of the city. David and I were fortunate to be able to tour the palace, since it is closed for the majority of the year.

On October 17, London Chocolate Week concluded. Throughout the week, different chocolate festivities took place. For example, restaurants around the city featured special chocolate menus, the world’s largest truffle was produced and then broken up into small, bite-size pieces to be sold for charity, and Divine chocolate bars created a signature chocolate cocktail for area restaurant and hotel bars.

On the last day of chocolate week, David, Karen, Jeff, and I decided to have lunch at Borough Market, a huge outdoor food market near London Bridge, and then head down the street to the wrap-up of chocolate week at the Vinopolis convention center. Bad planning on my part led to no lunch because Borough market is closed on Sundays. So we ate lots and lots of chocolate for lunch instead!

As you entered Vinopolis, you paid an admission fee and were asked to sign your name on the wall of chocolate. Just as the name described, this was literally a huge wall made out of chocolate. The pens were simply pointy plastic knives. We all signed our names, and then proceeded into a corridor displaying the history of chocolate.

Then came the good stuff!

The chocolate hall was filled with different vendors from around London giving out samples of their brownies, crepes, bars, spreads, and truffles. Our favorites were the brownies, chocolate crepes with peanut butter spread, truffles filled with sea salt caramel, and a make-your-own chocolate bar. This company was really cool! You go online to the company’s website, select which kind of chocolate bar you want (white, dark, milk, or a combination), and then for a few pence, you start to add ingredients to the bar. I made a dark/milk chocolate bar with sugared lilac and rose petals. David chose gummy bears, and Jeff chose pretzels. The company will inscribe your name at the top of the bar, and then ship the bars to anywhere in the UK or US. Coolest company EVER!

At the back of the room was a separate area displaying chocolate sculptures:

Chocolate Shoes

Chocolate Train with tracks made out of Twix, gravel made from Raisenets, and boulders made out of crumbled chocolate-chip cookies

King Kong Chocolate Cake

Eventually we all started feeling a little ill. We weren’t hungry, but we felt like we all needed some savory MEAT so we headed to Chipotle, Jeff’s favorite new restaurant in London.

Last week, I was in Slovakia again for work. In the fall in Eastern Europe, it is tradition for groups of people to get together and eat goose. So Tuesday night the entire European audit team drove to a small village outside Bratislava to a restaurant known for serving the best goose in that area of Slovakia. And probably also known for having the most dead creatures nailed to its walls.

I didn’t ask for a special meal because I was willing to try the goose. I was not willing to eat the foie gras, though. The meal started with pickles, pickled peppers, saukeraut, and rye bread. Then came the foie gras. Giant goose liver? No thanks. Then the main course was brought out. For our group, we ordered three geese. These came with red cabbage and potato pancakes, which looked more like thin tortillas. I was tempted to make a goose taco, but I resisted.

The goose was really delicious. It tasted like the dark meat of a turkey. For dessert, we each had different strudels. There was a poppy seed cherry strudel, cheese and cherry strudel, and walnut strudel. I chose the cheese and cherry strudel. It was a really fun night out with the team and I was glad to try a new tradition.

I’m typing this blog now as trick-or-treater after trick-or-treater is ringing our bell for candy. Who knew there were so many kids in England that celebrated Halloween? When David lived here, his family basically stopped celebrating Halloween. He never got the chance to trick-or-treat again after he turned 11. It must be different in our neighborhood or the British are catching onto this great holiday because we are quickly running out of candy. I’ve had to resort to giving away my precious Mozart balls (nooooo!!!!) and David has made a mad dash down to the corner store for more sweets! We love passing out candy to all the cute kids in their lil costumes (and they're extra adorable this year with their accents) and David loves terrorizing them in his big bad wolf costume! As one less-than-scared kid put it, "Wow!  You proper dressed up!" 

Happy Halloween everyone!

Vienna

This week I needed to be in Bratislava for work and since I fly into Vienna and then take a taxi across the Austria/Slovakia border, I asked David if he could take a day off and come to Vienna early with me. Since he hadn’t taken any vacation days since we moved in July, that was an easy “yes!"

What wasn’t so easy was waking up at 3 AM on Friday morning to catch our 6 AM flight to Vienna. We kept telling ourselves we’d have the whole day in the city if we got there early, but it was so difficult to get out of bed and finish packing in the middle of the night. I slept the entire flight, but David was wired after his coffee and read the paper. We landed at 9 AM, ready to tour the town!

Vienna was beautiful, despite the cloudy, cold weather. Every building is stunning and the city is filled with so much history. We didn’t know a lot about the Austrian Empire before our trip, which meant we learned a ton! These are our top five highlights:

1) During the Roman Empire, Vienna was one of the centers of Germania known as Vindobona. For those movie buffs out there who love "Gladiator" as much as David and me, you’ll remember that the beginning of the movie features a battle in Vindobona against the Barbarians (aka Germans). So Vienna is where that battle took place, and shortly after, where Emperor Marcus Aurelius died (in the movie and in real life). While touring the city on Friday afternoon, we stumbled across the Roman ruins in Michaelerplatz.

It’s amazing that there are cities beneath cities around the world like this. How do major buildings get buried? The windows of the ruins are now filled with dirt beneath the street. It’s hard to imagine that a couple thousand years ago those windows faced open sky. Looking around us in Vienna, I couldn’t comprehend how the grand opera houses or palaces might one day be excavated hundreds of feet below where we stood. I don’t get it…

2) The delicious Sacher torte was invented at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna across from the State Opera House. After we landed on Friday morning and dropped our bags at the hotel, we headed to Café Frauenhuber for a traditional Austrian breakfast of rolls with different spreads and hot chocolate! This café is famous for being the oldest café in town and can also boast that both Mozart and Beethoven performed here. After our meal, we walked around the city for a few hours, and decided to skip lunch and opt for some sweets instead! Hotel Sacher, I have to admit, is a tourist trap (and infamous as being known as a discreet hotel for adulterers), but it’s worth it to taste the torte!

3) There is actually a patron saint of the plague, Saint Charles Borromeo. During the plague epidemic in 1713, Emperor Karl VI vowed to build a church dedicated to St. Borromeo once the city was healed. Karlskirche is the result of this promise. It is the tallest Baroque church in Vienna at 236 feet. We visited the church on Saturday morning after deciding to skip Vienna’s flea market and sleep in. Visitors have the option to view the artwork of the dome close-up by taking a terrifying elevator ride to the top, and then finish walking the last few feet up an even scarier scaffold to see the painted dove directly underneath the dome. Well of course we had to do this! I didn’t think it would be that frightening, but the scaffold was so rickety! My legs must have been tensed the entire way up to the dome because they were sore days later! I learned to appreciate the work of the artists hundreds of years ago so much more standing directly beneath the dome and watching other church-goers over 200 feet below me. They really couldn’t be afraid of heights at all to have such a steady hand to paint those beautiful images.

Karlskirche

4) Cocaine injections were commonly used as painkillers and antidepressants for women going through menopause or PMS a hundred years ago. On Sunday afternoon, David and I toured the old royal apartments.

Michaelertor, home to the royal apartments and Spanish Riding School

The first floor exhibit featured all of the royal china and silver. The first few rooms were interesting, but there was so much china that after about 20 minutes, David and I gave up listening to the audio guide and practically jogged through the remaining exhibit. Seriously, how much china does the royal family need? There seemed to be a different set for each day of the year. The second floor of the apartments was called the Sisi Museum. We had no idea what that meant, but when we walked inside, our audio guide explained that this tour would explore Empress Elisabeth’s fascinating life and all of the rumors surrounding her. Sisi was Elisabeth’s nickname, hence the name of the museum. She was promised to Emperor Josef when she was 16, married and had her first child by the age of 18. Obsessed with her appearance, her ankle-length hair took 3 hours to do every day. She was 5’8 and only weighed about 95 pounds because she regularly fasted or drank meat juice. She wasn’t content with her life in the Austrian court and travelled abroad often. In one of her medicinal travel kits, there was a syringe her doctors used to inject her with cocaine. Empress Elisabeth became more and more depressed the older she got. Her son, the Crown Prince Rudolph committed suicide at his hunting lodge after he murdered his 17 year-old mistress. After that, she fell into a deeper depression and was eventually assassinated during one her visits to Switzerland.

5) Mozart was a freemason. On Sunday evening, David headed to the central train station to catch the “CAT” out to the airport. I walked with him so he wouldn’t get lost, as David is known for easily getting lost in both familiar and unknown cities. After our goodbyes, I walked back through Stadtpark, but then it started to drizzle and I had left my umbrella in the hotel room, so I hurried through the city centre to Mozart’s house. The house was fairly empty. In fact, the only other tourist inside was a fellow Texan wearing a Longhorn sweater. I was too depressed about Saturday’s game to say anything, plus we both had our audio guide headsets on, so I wasn’t even sure he’d hear me talking to him. It’s funny that on a random Sunday evening in Vienna, I can meet a fellow UT alumnus in Mozart’s house. It is a small world after all. I had toured Mozart’s Salzburg house with my family about 10 years ago on our big European vacation. This was very similar, except the apartment was much nicer. Mozart was a struggling artist in Salzburg and hit the big-time in Vienna. One of the things I either didn’t remember from my Mozart Salzburg tour, or learned on Sunday, was that Mozart was a freemason. As part of the exhibit, his admission certificate into a Masonic lodge was on display, as was an attendance form with his signature. I always associate the Masons with the US founding fathers and myths straight out of "National Treasure" or The Lost Symbol. But I guess this secret society has a lot more famous international members than I thought!

Mozart's Home

Here are some more highlights:

We had dinner at Figlmuller on Friday night.  This restaurant is known for its HUGE Wiener Schnitzels.  Even though David was hungry, we split this one!

St. Stephansdom is in the heart of Vienna.  It was almost destroyed during WWII but has been restored.  Its soaring spires are currently under construction.

On Sunday afternoon, David and I were lucky enough to score tickets to the Spanish Riding School.  Cameras are restricted during the performance because it distracts the horses, but this is the Winter Riding Hall where the entertainment took place.

The State Opera House

Hook 'Em Horns!

American football season has started.

How long do you think it would take to get ESPN America as part of our cable package? Keep in mind it took about 6 weeks to get our internet and cable set up in the first place, about 2 months for me to get a debit card (even though David and I have had a UK joint bank account since April), and we still don’t have cell phone plans. So naturally, with everything else taking forever here, I thought a change to our cable package would take at least a week or two.

I was wrong.

Before the first NFL game of the season a few weeks ago, David called Sky Cable to inquire about the ESPN sports package. And whatdayaknow? They were able to instantly grant him access to those channels and I couldn’t even argue the cost because it’s free for the first 3 months and only 8 pounds per month after that. Great!

So David set his alarm for 2 AM that night to wake up and watch the Saints/Vikings game. Fortunately he was really sleepy when he set his alarm and set it wrong. So he didn’t wake up. But he did record it correctly and rushed home from work that evening to watch the game. On Saturday, after a lovely theatre evening out with his sister and wife, David rushed home again to catch some college football. I think he came to bed that night around 3 AM. And the other night (or should I say morning) I woke up at 5 AM and noticed David wasn’t in bed next to me. Where did I find him? Asleep on the couch with ESPN on the TV. He swears he fell asleep around 1:00…

Football isn’t all bad though. I had never watched a football game in my life before I moved to Austin and became a Texas Longhorn. Since then I’ve watched almost every Longhorn game, either in-person or on TV, for the past 7 years. With football season approaching, David signed us up for the Texas Exes United Kingdom chapter hoping there would be game-watching parties. And there are!

UT alumni living in London get together every weekend at Bodeans, a BBQ joint in the city. We usually either watch the games live on Saturday night (like this weekend’s Nebraska game) or we watch on Sundays if the time difference is too great. We have all sworn an oath that we will not watch the game ahead of time and do everything in our power NOT to learn the score. That means we are usually phone/internet/ESPN-free Saturday nights through Sunday afternoons.

The first weekend we headed into the city, we had to admit we felt a little ridiculous wearing our burnt orange jerseys on the Tube, but we’re used to the strange stares now. It’s definitely better, though, to meet up with others and head to Bodeans together. Then people seem to understand you’re part of a group going to an event instead of one of those couples that like to wear matching outfits.

Enjoying some good old fashioned American beer (and root beer for me) at the Texas-Texas Tech game.  Karen just HAD to wear her red Tech jersey, but it didn't bring the Raiders very much luck!

Even though the Longhorns have been sucking it up lately, we still like going to the games to socialize with other Americans and eat some decent BBQ. Hook ‘em horns!

Let's Get Physical

As I mentioned in our last blog, I finally joined a gym!

Before I could officially join the gym, I had to complete a tour of the facilities and equipment and take part in a “fitness assessment.” I wasn’t sure what to expect with the fitness assessment, so I showed up to the gym after work, scared to death they’d make me run a mile or something. Instead, the trainer hooked me up to a heart monitor and told me to lie down completely still on the couch for 5 minutes. Weird, but okay. It turns out he was measuring my resting heart rate. The results showed my heart beats an average of 65 times per minute, which apparently means I’m lazy. So on the scale of very poor, poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent, my fitness level is…

POOR!

Waaahhhh!!! But am I that surprised? No, not really. I haven’t worked out religiously since we got Wii Fit this past Spring. And before that, I ran with Kirby to get in shape for my wedding and honeymoon. But that was a while ago….

The trainer could tell I was disappointed and assured me that my fitness level would improve with some circuit training to strengthen my heart. My next test is in three months, so I have to stay motivated for at least the next 90 days.

The gym is restricted to Dell employees and paying gym members only, so I had to get special badge access to enter. As I was setting up the elliptical equipment, I asked the trainer when my badge would become gym-activated. “When you drop 20 pounds,” he replied.

WHAT?!

It wasn’t my weight that was poor, right? There was no way! 20 pounds is too much for me, unless I want to look like skeletore. I just stared at him thinking, “Are you an idiot? I’m not dropping 20 pounds! What kind of a trainer are you – putting your clients underweight?!” After a few awkward moments of my stare of death and his serious return stare, I realized he meant the 20 pound induction fee. And of course! Weight is calculated in kilograms over here!

Whew!

This is my third week as a gym-member. I’ve started off by training most days on the elliptical and treadmill at embarrassing low level settings. I may start taking classes during lunch once I build up some endurance. The instructor would probably kick my butt, though, and then wipe the floor with my lifeless body after I’ve passed out from exhaustion… so maybe not.

In the Jungle, the Concrete Jungle

David and I have not always been that great at giving gifts… especially when it came to shipping presents to his family in the UK. But now that we’re here, we’ve vowed to turn over a new leaf... and not fall into bad habits with my family back in the states!

As part of Laura’s graduation present, we invited her to come and stay with us for a couple of weeks while she completes an internship at a book publisher in Notting Hill. And it turns out I got a bit of a present myself – books on loan from the publisher’s library! Yay! I love books.

If Laura lived at home with her mom, the commute would be TERRIBLE (trust me, I know). So instead, she has moved in and now enjoys a 17 minute tube ride to Notting Hill Gate every morning… except early last week when the tube workers decided to go on strike for 2 days. Not cool. It amazes me how they can just strike and shut down the whole city. Is that really going to save their jobs?? Probably not. The problem is things are so automated now with card readers and ticket machines, that the Underground doesn’t need 18 workers per station anymore. It’s called efficiency. Sorry…. On second thought, I’m not really sorry because they’re planning on striking 3 more times before Christmas!

Anyway – don’t get me started. The other part of Laura’s graduation present was a night out on the town. She chose Cote for dinner and The Lion King. Cote is a chain of French bistros throughout London, and in the West End the restaurant offers a pre-theatre set menu. David ordered sardines as a starter, even though he’s never had them before. Risky! But he enjoyed them. Laura had salad and I had soup. For dinner, both David and Laura had the sea bass and I had steak with frites. Waiters have often mixed up my meals with David’s. He’ll order the grilled chicken and I’ll get a huge burger. Or he’ll pick a salad while I choose a steak. Saturday night was no different. David doesn’t have a sweet tooth, though, so he ate off of Laura’s crème caramel and my chocolate pot for dessert.

Well the good news (or bad news) is that I have finally decided to join a gym! I have never belonged to a gym before in my life but the Dell gym is only 2 pounds/month and all these lean Europeans in their damn skinny jeans and leggings are totally showing me up, so it’s time I started working off all the 3-course meals I’ve been enjoying. And I really need to start helping out my metabolism because it can’t possibly stay this high forever…

Back to the Lion King. It was gggrrrreat! The theatre was a bit smaller than the enormous Wicked theatre we were at during our last theatre night, but it was perfect because the cast really involved the audience. The animals walked through the aisles on their way up to the stage while the drummers and bird-handlers hung out in the balconies banging on their drums and flying their birds above our heads. The best part was the costumes! I loved the way the gazelles leapt across the stage and the giraffe singers were so coordinated on their stilts! I would’ve fallen over and broken all my legs and arms if I had to wear one of those giraffe suits! It was really entertaining and we all had a great time together.

Laura will leave this weekend and then Eric, one of David’s groomsmen and best friends from high school, is coming from Boston on Saturday to stay with us for a few days. This means it will no longer be two girls against one boy with the remote and I will be banished from the living room/study/dining room. The boys will take over the living room/study/dining room with their pizza and beer and football (more to come on that in an upcoming blog) while I take refuge in our bedroom trying to change the VPN of our laptop back to a US address to trick hulu.com into letting me catch up on the Amazing Race (this is the first season I’ve ever missed and I going through WITHDRAWALS) and True Blood.

Splish Splash, We Took a Trip to Bath

Monday, August 30th was a bank holiday in England, which gave us a nice long three day weekend to venture outside of London and explore another part of the country. So Saturday morning we boarded a westbound train for Bath, about an hour and a half from London.

Bath City Center

The town of Bath is famous today because of its natural hot spring the Romans discovered two thousand years ago. They believed the waters held healing powers, so they built the Roman Baths, a huge temple complex built directly over the spring. By about 70 AD, the city was thriving and travellers would come from all over the Roman Empire to take a dip in the powerful waters. The only problem was that one of the most common ailments of the day that was thought to be curable by the baths was leprosy – so one of my buddies and I might be hanging out after a long, hard day’s work of killing Celts, just minding our own business discussing the value of our Gladiator trading cards, when all of a sudden, a foot floats by, followed by a pinkie.

Davidus: “I thought you wrote a strongly-worded letter to maintenance about this??”
Jeremius: “Curse the gods, let’s get out of here!”

And so, the Roman Baths were eventually deserted, not to become popular again until the Georgian era in the 1700s. The hot spring water is still bubbling up today. As part of the tour, you can even drink some to give the healing powers a shot, which we tried. Trust me, the only power this water has is the ability to make everything taste like metal for the rest of the day.

Inside the Roman baths

Bath water fountain in Pump Room 

Another hot-spot we visited that afternoon was Sally Lunn’s, the oldest home in Bath and a restaurant. The home was built in the 1400s. Sally Lunn moved in in 1680 and ran a teahouse and bakery from the kitchen basement, which is now a tiny museum. Honestly, it is just a basement with some pots lying around and a mannequin cook, and if we had been charged admission I would have stolen the mannequin as a souvenir.

Creepy Sally Lunn basement (with stalactites growing in the corner)

Sarah and I both had tea and buns. Both recipes are passed down with the deeds to the house and have not changed since 1680. It was really cool eating a meal that’s been prepared from the same recipe that’s 100 years older than the United States.

After having tea and touring the baths, we headed over to our B&B to check out the room, have a glass of wine on the balcony, take in the views, and relax a bit before dinner... Oh yeah, I also had to Skype-in to join some friends in Texas for a Fantasy Football draft – talk about romance! It was actually really nice for both of us to get to see and talk to our friends in Austin and stay involved with the group like we were still there. 

After the draft, we hopped in a taxi to get dinner at The Bathwick Boatsman, a nice little restaurant on the banks of the River Avon. The food did not disappoint, but I would like to warn everybody that there is such a thing as eating too much melted truffle butter, and the result is a very sad and uncomfortable David House. It was difficult to get to sleep that night, and I thought I would never want to eat butter again, but seeing this kid’s reaction to his fried butter at the Texas State Fair has brought me back to reality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alzQ64kwsTw

On Sunday morning, after starting our day with a delicious full English breakfast and pain au chocolat at the B&B, we headed out to explore more of the city. We walked through Victoria Park to the Royal Crescent, a row of very expensive, luxurious apartment buildings. This street then leads to the Circus, more apartment buildings arranged in a circle around a roundabout. We were hungry from all of our walking, so we stopped at a European market in one of the smaller parks. I had Spanish paella and Sarah had German potato salad. We ate and walked to the bus stop for our tour to Stonehenge.

On our hour long ride to Stonehenge, our tour guide showed us the famous Wiltshire white horse carved into the side of a hill, some burial mounds, thatched roofs, and a prison from the 1700s.

Stonehenge was not very crowded, but as always, it was very windy! We tried not to blow away while walking around the stones and listening to our audio guides. It’s amazing that with all of the knowledge and technology available to archaeologists today, there is still no clear, agreed-upon understanding of Stonehenge. It’s unbelievable that the ancient builders somehow transported the stones, some of which weigh over 40 tons, all the way from Wales just using log-rollers and then arranged them without any modern machinery to do the heavy lifting. Even though this was my third trip to Stonehenge, it was great to experience it with Sarah.

The best part of the trip took place as soon as we got back into the city... we went shopping!!! Yaayyy! It was so awesome holding Sarah’s purse and looking at all kinds of neat dresses, tops, and jackets! We should do that every weekend! Luckily, we actually made a couple purchases so it wasn’t a waste of time.

After the shopping extravaganza, we wanted to eat at Jamie Oliver’s new Italian restaurant in Bath – Jamie’s Italian (original name!) – but they don’t take reservations. So we went extra early to avoid the crowds. It took a while to find the restaurant, as it’s hidden upstairs in the middle of a shopping center. And you can’t open the doors... you have to be invited in. Luckily, there weren’t that many people there at 5:30 so we got in! Sarah had Italian nachos (crispy mini cheese ravioli with a spicy arriabata sauce) and (against my expert advice) truffle butter and parmesan tagliatelle. For dessert, she had an amaretto and raspberry brownie with vanilla ice cream. I had an antipasti platter to start, and spaghetti bolognese. For dessert, and I know this is weird, I had a bloody mary and “the world’s best olives” (HEB’s olive bar is way better).

The good thing about eating early is that we had time to see Jane Austen’s house and make the Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk at 8PM.

Sarah in front of Jane Austen's Bath home

The Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk is a 2-hour walk around the city led by a comedian. No, it is not a city tour. No, there is nothing historical or factual about the tour. It is simply a comedy show, but you’re making your way through Bath during the performance. They don’t take reservations and there is no size limit, so the crowd on Sunday night was about 100 people. The comedian was great! He involved the audience a lot, even making Sarah and me the butt of one of his jokes. And Sarah walked off all that truffle butter, so she didn’t have an upset stomach that night!

When we got back to the hotel Sarah watched a movie and I took a bubble bath. I’ve been made fun of before for my bubble baths, but I love them! We had one of the suites at the B&B with a jacuzzi tub so I definitely wanted to try that out. Unfortunately, I got a little greedy and put too much bubble bath into the tub so I couldn’t turn on the jacuzzi without bubbles overflowing and flying everywhere! The good news is the next day we had a whole spa day planned so I could enjoy the water then! Hooray!

After another full English breakfast and more pain au chocolat on Monday morning, we went to Thermae Spa for a 4 hour spa session in the magical waters of Bath (sans lepers and floating body parts). The water was really warm – hopefully not a result of all the geriatrics swimming around with uncontrollable bladders. First, we hung out in the Minerva pool indoors. Then we braved the chilly air in the rooftop pool, which was actually really warm too, and had great views of the city. We were just a little cold running from the changing area into the water. Then we tried out the steam room. There was a jacuzzi foot massage area, but I had to share my foot pool with Sarah because my jacuzzi was broken. I had bad luck with jacuzzis last weekend... There were four different steam rooms surrounding a rainforest shower. We tried the mint and eucalyptus room and the lavender room. Then we cooled off in the rainforest shower. After we had a light lunch in the cafe, we went back to the pools to relax a bit more.

When our 4 hours were up, we still had some time to kill before our train back to London left, so we left the spa and took a tour of Bath Abbey. Our two tour guides were about 12 years old. One of them was just like Quasimodo (his name was George), swinging around the bell tower like a hyper kid (which he was). They were pretty knowledgeable though, and just like little old men (see video above of fried butter kid dancing like a little old man).

Abbey overlooking the Baths - we had a great city view from the roof

After the tour, we headed back to the B&B to pick up our bags and get on the train back home. We haven’t yet decided where our next trip will be, but we’ll keep you posted!

London Calling

I mentioned in our last blog that I would be travelling to Ireland for a week for work. Amazingly, Ireland looked just like the inside of a Dell office building… which means that I didn’t have the chance to do any fun site-seeing while I was there. But then again, I was sent to Ireland for work and work is what I did! And I may have also eaten A LOT of delicious Irish food (potatoes every which way possible and custard topping on the desserts)! But anyway, since I didn’t get my site-seeing fix in Ireland, I vowed to spend our next few weekends touring places we, or at least I, haven’t yet seen in and around London.

View of River Shannon and King John's Castle from hotel room in Limerick

I returned from Ireland on Friday night and Saturday, Jeff turned the big 1-8. To celebrate, Karen and Jeff met us at our flat and then we headed to nearby Westfield Mall to do some birthday shopping. We visited the Apple store (sorry Dell) to pick up Jeff’s bday present. Then Karen and I went shopping while David took Jeff to the pub for his first pint.

There is really just one word to describe Westfield – AMAZING! It was just as good as, if not better than, an American mall. It had a bunch of normal stores like Monsoon and H&M and then the high-end places like Chanel and Louis Vuitton. The movie theatre actually assigns you seats, and gives you the option to pay a premium for VIP leather semi-recliners. There was one pretty ridiculous part to the mall, though. One of the stores had 2 lines out front. One line was formed around a velvet rope. The second line was a line to get into the velvet roped line. “Which store was that?” you ask. No, not Gucci. No, not Prada. It was… Hollister. Hollister? Yes, Hollister. You would not believe the number of kids (and some adults) waiting to be admitted into Hollister. I wanted to run up to those stupid kids (and adults) and tell them, “HOLLISTER’S NOT THAT GREAT! STOP WASTING YOUR TIME IN THIS IDIOTIC LINE!” Personally, I think their clothes are WAY overpriced and really bad quality. I don’t care how cute they are, I wouldn’t waste my time standing in 2 lines to get a chance to buy a shirt from Hollister. There were perfectly good comparable UK stores without velvet roped lines. Dumb kids (and adults).

The best part of Westfield is the restaurant selection. Ankeeta, my college roommate of 3 years and maid of honor, visited us last week. We were headed out to dinner on Thursday but weren’t sure what we were in the mood for, so we headed to Westfield. There are so many good restaurants at Westfield. There’s a place called Yo Sushi! The sushi plates travel on a conveyor belt in circles around the bar. You just pick up whatever you feel like as it comes to you. Once we tried Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Yum! That has replaced my Red Robin fix, though the selection is not as great as Red Robin. On Thursday we went with Wahaca with Ankeeta for some Mexican and it wasn’t bad. Speaking of Mexican food, for Jeff’s birthday dinner on Saturday night, Karen took us to the new Chipotle in downtown London. Jeff had actually just gotten back from America, but he was still dying to try it out to see if it tasted like the real thing. And it did! I asked the manager where he gets the Tabasco because I can’t seem to find it anywhere here and I’m not going back to the states until October. He was nice enough to give me a bottle of theirs – for free! So nice! We will definitely be heading back there often.

Since Friday was spent sleeping after my long week abroad, and Saturday at Westfield mall, my London excursions started on Sunday. It was a beautiful day out, so we strolled through Hyde Park – end-to-end. We started at the Wellington Arch, which was free to get into with the National Heritage Membership David got for his birthday. We ended our walk on the other end of the park at Kensington Palace.

Wellington Arch

The palace is currently undergoing a major makeover, so most of the wings are closed. I actually didn’t know that the palace remained in use after Buckingham replaced it as a royal residence. In fact, it was Princess Di’s official home. Even though much of the palace is off-limits, officials have put together a fun game to draw in visitors. The object of the game is to find 7 princesses that lived in the palace by travelling from room to room searching for clues. As you can imagine, David was not exactly thrilled to participate in this site-seeing adventure, but we ended up having a good time and we aced the test by correctly naming all 7 princesses!

These giant bushes outside the palace look like big green Dots! 

When we came to London back in April to find a flat, our relocation agents gave us a ton of maps and tour and restaurant guidebooks. Wagamama was voted the #1 UK restaurant last year in many of those guidebooks. So yes, I’ve been dying to try it. Strangely, there’s a Wagamama in the basement of Harvey Nichols, a high-end department store near Harrods. After a long day walking through the park and palace, we chose to take a double-decker bus back down the high street to the restaurant. Believe it or not, that was my first time on a double-decker bus. So of course I made David take a picture!

The bus looks like it's going really fast in this pic - but it wasn't!

Dinner was delicious of course. I had a teriyaki steak bowl and David had some kind of ramen, curry chicken noodle bowl.

This past weekend we were planning on going to Hampton Court, but that is really a whole-day affair and we wanted to sleep in after our long weeks at work. So instead, on Saturday we visited the Natural History Museum. It wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought it would be (my reference being “Night at the Museum” with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson). It was fun, though. We saw lots of big animals like lions, whales, dinosaurs… and a giant lobster!

I don't know what that expression means....

After the museum we ate at a nice Italian restaurant on Exhibition Road. The museum district has so many great little food shops! There are a ton of crepe bars, a cheese store, and a Belgian waffle shop! David is not a huge sweets fan, but I almost always get dessert. I declined dessert at the restaurant because I wanted one of those Belgian waffles I spotted earlier. David said he was too full and he would just have a bite of my waffle, but the moment we stepped into the shop and smelled the waffles baking and chocolate warming, David turned to me and declared, “I’m getting my own!” So he enjoyed a chocolate cream waffle, while I chose the chocolate covered cherry waffle.

While we walked home that night, we made plans to wake up early on Sunday and head to Hampton Court via the Richmond train. However, there were problems with the District line tube on Sunday morning and we ended up waiting almost an hour for the stupid tube to stop at our station and take us to the Richmond train station. At that point, I was so frustrated with public transportation that I decided we HAVE to get a car. So we vowed to purchase a car (and learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road – scary!) by the end of October. That will also make it easier to get places with Kirby, like the dog park or vet or boarder (aka Karen), when he comes over in November.

Moving on, we never did make it to Hampton Court because we lost too much time waiting for the tube. Instead, we chose to stay closer to home and see Kew Gardens. Kew Gardens are the Royal Botanical Gardens of England. The place is absolutely enormous! It was about a 4 mile walk around the park, which would have taken way too long and I didn’t wear my tennis shoes, so we bought tickets for the tram. It was actually a great decision because our driver gave us a tour of the park as we cruised around. We saw the Japanese pagoda, which used to be the tallest building in England and covered in gold. We also saw the largest indoor plant in the world, a Chilean palm tree. We climbed up to the tree tower, a circular walkway above the trees. I have to admit, it was pretty scary. The walkway was swaying a little bit in the wind. There were actually little kids screaming and crying that they wanted to go back down. David was screaming and crying on the inside.

One of the glass houses inside Kew

A section of the treetop walkway

Kew Palace is on the grounds of Kew Gardens, go figure! I hadn’t heard of Kew Palace before our tour of Kensington Palace a week before. Interested to find out more, we bought tickets and headed inside the tiny palace. We ended up being the only visitors there! One of the guides remarked that we had the whole place to ourselves. The palace was King George the 3rd’s home. He married Queen Charlotte and they had 15 kids! The palace was too small to house all those kids, so only the girls lived in Kew. The boys lived elsewhere. We learned that King George suffered from porphyria, which used to be called “madness.” We saw the locked door to the room where they used to chain him up during his “fits.” King George eventually went blind and people thought he was so crazy that he spent the last 10 years of his life in isolation at Windsor Castle. In Queen Charlotte’s bedroom, we saw the chair she died in. No one told King George his wife had died. They had to put straw outside the castle so he wouldn’t hear the funeral procession passing by.

Kew Palace

We’ve learned a lot over the past couple of weeks. Museums are free in England and we have the membership with the British National Heritage, so we can easily continue to learn more! Monday is a holiday in the UK, so to take advantage of the long weekend, we’re headed to Bath for a relaxing spa getaway. We are taking a tour to nearby Stonehenge on Sunday, though, so we can soak up some more culture!