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!

A Wicked Anniversary

Two years ago, we were saying our “I Do’s”

and celebrating with our family and friends...

This weekend, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Our official anniversary is actually on Monday, August 9. Unfortunately I have to fly to Ireland for work on Monday morning and I will be gone the whole week. So we decided to celebrate a little early by spending our weekend discovering parts of London we haven’t experienced before.

On Saturday morning, we headed out early to the Portobello Market in Notting Hill. We were told by some locals to get there early because it gets extremely crowded, but with the gloomy weather, we figured it wouldn’t be too bad. Man, were we wrong! There were so many people packed onto this one street trying to find a bargain.

The market sold everything from WWI gas masks to silver teapots to fresh fruit. We snagged some sweets, and then headed to Regents Park for lunch. Regents Park used to be prime hunting grounds for Henry VIII. Now it’s a large park with an open-air theatre, a lake where you can rent paddle boats and chase the ducks, and a huge rose garden.

The sun came out as we came out of the tube station. We picked up some sandwiches and crisps from Pret a Manger, our favourite sandwich chain in England, and found a perfectly shaded spot in the park to enjoy our meal and the desserts we picked up at the market.

After enjoying an afternoon in the beautiful weather walking around the park, we headed into the bustling city. We’ve never been up in Tower Bridge before, so we bought lift tickets and rode the elevator to the top of the bridge. We walked from end-to-end and explored the old engine room. By then, it was about 5:00 in the evening and we had pre-theatre dinner reservations across town at Kazan, a Turkish restaurant. So we ran back to the station and got to the restaurant just in time.

I have no idea what we actually ate for dinner… the only items on the menu I recognized were falafel and humus, but it was delicious and filling! For dessert, they brought us pistachio Turkish delight – my favourite! You can’t go wrong with sweet and salty.

Early in the week, we had decided to splurge and get tickets for Wicked as our anniversary present. I started reading the book about a year ago and did not like it at all. I finally finished it a few months ago, but it was tough. The book was hard to read because the author made up creatures and words and then never really explained who they were or what they meant. It was also really dark. Too dark for my liking. We’d heard the musical was brilliant, though, so we decided to try it out. It was rated the most popular musical in London in 2010, so we decided all of those theatre-goers couldn’t be wrong. And they weren’t! It was fantastic! I’m not a huge musical-lover, but the songs were great and the actors were amazing!

Earlier this week we started noticing signs around our neighbourhood for the upcoming London Mela. Both David and I had no idea what the signs were for, so I Googled London Mela. The Mela is a huge Asian festival held annually in a London park, with different zones for DJs, musical acts, dance, traditional foods, and a funfair. This year, the Mela was being held down the street from us in Gunnersbury Park. We slept in late on Sunday morning, woke up and relaxed at home for a while, and then walked to the park. We explored different areas of the festival and rode a couple of carnival rides, even though some of them were run by scary carnies like this guy:

House of Mirrors?  More like House of Horrors!

We drank out of coconuts, which reminded us of our plantation tour during our honeymoon in Jamaica.

I had Indian food for dinner and David had Turkish pizza. For dessert, we had falooda. We wanted to try this because the line was so long, so we knew it had to be good. Then we got to the front and noticed people being handed glasses full of pink noodles. We were both a little scared, but it was actually really yummy and I was proud of us for trying something new! BTW, Falooda is corn noodles (also known as vermicelli), rose syrup, sweetened condensed milk, basil seeds, and Kulfi (cardamom) ice cream.

We had a great time at the festival! This whole weekend has been so much fun, and has really encapsulated these past two years of marriage for us. We have such a great time together exploring new places and meeting new people. But one of the best things about our marriage is that we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to enjoy being together. Some of our best memories are of just sitting around on the couch with Kirby watching movies and eating popcorn. We’ve learned to rely on each other even more over these past few months with all of the changes and new challenges we’ve been taking on. We look forward to our future adventures that we’ll explore together… and with all of you through this blog!

My 1st Business Trip

My first week in London was very eventful! My second week in London… was actually nonexistent. In fact, the first day in my new office, I had to schedule a business trip for the next week to Bratislava, Slovakia to host a workshop and attend a team offsite.

I flew into Vienna on Monday morning because flights directly into Slovakia are not convenient. I didn’t realize how close the Slovakian border is to Vienna. With a speedy taxi driver, we were in Bratislava within an hour of landing. We headed straight to the office and started working on our presentation for the workshop. Unfortunately the week was so packed with work activities, I didn't have any time to explore the castle atop the city or any other sites. Bratislava is really a hidden gem that a lot of people don't even know exists. They prefer to go to bigger cities nearby like Budapest or Vienna. So many large companies have started moving into Bratislava, i.e. Dell, E&Y, etc., that the city has completed transformed into a major business center with a charming, historical aspect to it as well.

We did spend a lot of time walking around the Old Town in the evenings after work. The Old Town is typical of a small European city: cobblestone streets, beautiful churches, and stone fountains centered in town squares. On Wednesday night we had a team dinner at Primi, a delicious pizza restaurant in the Galleria shopping center. The weather was beautiful, so we sat outside along the banks of the Danube River.

Bratislava Castle overlooking the Danube River

I had been having connection problems at work since I moved from America to Europe. My domain changed, which changed my computer settings. So in the evenings, I was a bit bored. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t watch TV because none of the stations in the hotel were in English, except for the news, which replays the same stories and can be depressing. I finished my book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, on the plane and didn’t think to pick up the second novel in the series before I left England. I found a couple of bookstores in Brat, but none of them carried books in English. I tried watching some TV shows through Hulu.com or ABC.com but apparently those sites are US-based and do not have licensing rights to stream overseas. (I am going to miss Wipeout this summer!) Next time, I will bring my tennis shoes so I can work out, and an extra book!

On our last evening in the city, we walked through the Old Town past the gorgeous Opera House to an Argentinean steakhouse for dinner.

Bratislava Opera House

While window-shopping in the area after dinner, I noticed Mozart candies!

I first had Mozart candies when I visited Salzburg, Austria with my family 10 years ago. We all fell in love with the chocolate covered nougat and pistachio marzipan center. My grandma found the candies in an international food store in Minnesota about 6 months ago and sent me some. But I haven’t had any since. I soon figured out that since Brat is so close to Austria, the candies are everywhere! I just hadn’t been looking for them! People told me to pick them up in the airport because there’s a hundred stores selling them, but I figured that would be more expensive and decided to purchase them in the Old Town. Little did I know that there are two types of Mozart candies! And I had just purchased the knock-off!!

I bought 3 boxes – one for David and me, one for Karen to thank her for helping us get settled, and one for my parents to thank them for taking care of Kirby. After dinner and shopping, some coworkers and I headed to an Irish pub. After a couple of drinks, we broke open a box of candy so they could try the chocolates I’d been raving about all week. They were sadly disappointed, but I was the most disappointed when I tasted the knock-offs. Right away, I tasted a difference, so I examined the box more closely. Then I noticed the background in Mozart’s picture was brown, not green (for the pistachio, I assume). The knock-off chocolates did not have pistachio in them. It was more chocolate inside (which goes with the brown background, I guess).

Real Mozart Candies - Notice the Green Background

We left early the next morning for the Vienna airport. When I walked inside, the first thing I saw was a huge store displaying hundreds of real Mozart candy boxes. I refused to buy a whole box of the real thing, since I had 3 boxes of the other candies in my suitcase already. So I found some individually wrapped real Mozart candies and purchased a few. When I got home, I did a taste test with David and he actually preferred the knock-offs to the real thing. And I have to say, they are growing on me. They taste kind of like chocolate-covered cherries. So I still gave them away as gifts! Needless to say, if you ever go to Austria, notice the real Mozart candies are called Salzburg Mozarts with a green background and the knock-offs are called Austria Mozarts and have a brown background.

Dude, Where's my Car... and my Dishwasher... and my Dryer?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love living abroad! I am learning a lot, soaking up the culture, and even traveling already! It may just take a little while to get used to the little things, like not having a car… or a dishwasher… or a dryer…

After arriving in the UK, I quickly realized that Americas, especially Texans, are spoiled! It’s true what they say – everything is bigger in Texas. Wide open spaces = big homes, big cars, and even bigger hair! David and I have had to adjust our lifestyle a little to happily settle in Europe.

One of the first things we noticed when we moved into our new flat is the missing dishwasher. We could have sworn we confirmed a dishwasher would be installed in our remodeled kitchen. Unfortunately this confirmation was through the telephone, so we do not have any backup documentation to show the landlord. Every time we enter the kitchen, we think about what we really need to use. Because whatever we use, we have to hand wash. Let me tell you, there is nothing more fun than working a 10-hour day, sitting on a train for an hour and a half, and then walking half a mile home to a pile of dirty dishes! Can you sense my sarcasm? Dishwashers are apparently a luxury in the UK. When we were house-hunting, our relocation agent told us that dishwashers aren’t common and it’s actually the norm for the husbands to wash the dirty dishes. David scoffed, but now look who’s doing the dishes (but I help, of course)!

Another luxury in Europe is a washer and dryer. Most homes have a washer/dryer combo machine. The washing part of these machines works fine. The drying part – not so much. So we bought an indoor rack to dry our clothes. It isn’t really that bad, it just takes time.

Being without a car is probably our biggest issue right now. Or my biggest issue. David has a lovely commute to work. He walks ½ mile to the tube stop, hops on the subway, and gets off 3 stops later. His office building is across the street from the tube station. Must be nice! For me, the Dell office is in Bracknell, about 35 miles west of the city. It should only take about 40 minutes to get to work, but traffic is really terrible here, even going against the traffic flow in the morning. There always seems to be some kind of delay or accident. One day, we left the office at 5:00 to get home somewhat early and I did not walk through my front door until after 7:00 because of an accident on the M4. I usually carpool with my manager, but one evening during my first week my manager needed to stay late so I decided to test out the train system. Total commute time was an hour and a half. This will not do. Also, we would like to have the freedom to run to the store without worrying about how we’re going to lug our goods back home. It would also be nice to have a car for road trips around England, Scotland, and even France and Ireland.

We’ve also realized that things take much longer to get done in England compared to the states. For example, when David first moved in July 3, he immediately called the cable/internet/phone company to get our connections set up. They came out to the house and got the cable for the TV set up about two weeks later, after we got a TV license. Yes, you need a license to watch TV in the UK. It baffles my mind. I understand a license to drive a car or own a gun because only responsible people should drive and carry guns. But watch TV?? Anybody can watch TV… but not in the UK if you don’t have a license!

Anyway, so after the cable got set up, the company texted David an installation date for the internet and phone, which happened to be 2 more weeks later. If you called Time Warner Cable in the US and asked for their business, they would be out to your house later that day setting up your bundle. WHY would it ever take 4 weeks to get the internet?? We’ve also experienced issues trying to get cell phones. Right now we’re both on pay-as-you-go plans because credit is basically impossible to establish over here. And you can’t get a phone (or a car for that matter) without credit. Vodaphone, a cell phone company we visited on Sunday, told us to wait 3 months and then re-apply for a cell phone account. Patience is a virtue we must learn to master!

Good things are coming out of these inconveniences, though. David and I spend more quality time together doing the dishes or hanging laundry. We are more active, too. David walks to and from the station every day, which is at least a mile. The other morning we were out of milk for cereal, so we jogged to the corner store together. We know that when we move back to the states, we will need to re-adjust, but that’s just normal with any major move.

London: Week One

I finally arrived in London!

David met me at the airport with a large bouquet of flowers and together we rode the tube back to our neighborhood and walked home. Then David had to head back to work. After sleeping off some of my jet-lag, I got to work organizing the house. David did a great job unpacking boxes and putting things in the correct area. All I basically had to do when I arrived was organize. I’ve attached some pictures of the flat at the end of this post.

On Friday, I also stayed home, deciding that my first day in the new office would be Monday. After David got home from work, we headed down to the high street to explore the area, eat dinner, and do some grocery shopping. We ate at an Italian pub (very strange, I know) and the food was great! Then we continued walking to the grocery store. When we arrived, we bought some staples and a couple of heavy-duty bags since we had to carry the groceries all the way home. The store is a 20 minute walk from the house, so we walked 40 minutes round-trip, half of the time carrying heavy groceries. I decided this was not going to work, so luckily I have discovered the greatest idea EVER – online grocery shopping! The Tesco delivery boy is my new best friend! It was always a chore to go to the store in Austin, especially after a long hard day at work. If we put it off to the weekend, we dreaded going to HEB when it was most crowded. In fact, David despises grocery shopping so much that I have to bribe him with treats to get him to come with me. I tell him that he can pick out one treat for himself… and it works! Anyway, I had heard about online grocery shopping during a business case study in college, but didn’t think that anyone actually used the service. During our house-hunting trip to London in April, Karen mentioned that she uses online grocery shopping. She showed me how to set up an account. The best part is the store tracks what you bought during your past visits and if there are sales on that item, they’ll send you an email. Or since they track your purchases, you can easily select whatever you bought last time by visiting your history page instead of searching back through the system for staples or brands you like. This saves so much time! I HATE hunting in grocery stores for obscure items! I don’t know how many times I’ve called my mom asking her where the so-and-so is kept. There’s no hunting in aisles here! You just type in the item you need and it gives you a list of items that match that description or brand. And the delivery is only a couple of pounds. If you select delivery during down-times like 9:00 on a Friday night, it’s even free!

On Saturday we explored the Richmond area. We found a chocolatier that was voted Britain’s best chocolatier for the past 3 years. So of course we stopped inside and bought some chocolate-covered sea-salt caramels and a bottle of dessert wine. We ate all of the chocolates, but haven’t opened the wine yet. Maybe we’ll save it for our anniversary in a few weeks. We also bought some cute furniture pieces and carried them back to our house. Later that night, we went out with one of David’s coworkers and met some other expats from Oregon. We had a great time hanging out at the pub meeting new people.

While I was still in America, David discovered his green thumb and started a flower and herb garden in our backyard. Sunday evening, we made margherita pizzas using some of the fresh basil from our garden. We ate outside in the garden, drinking wine and relaxing before my first day of work.

The first week in the new office on my new team went well. My new manager actually lives just around the corner from me (which is a huge coincidence considering how BIG the London area is) so he has offered to let me carpool with him. The commute is about 2-3 hours a day, though, so it makes the work week seem a lot longer. I left the house around 7:15 every morning and usually wouldn’t get home until about 7:00 at night. Luckily, the Dell Bracknell office encourages employees to work remotely, so I plan on becoming a part of that program very, very soon!

After a long week at work, David and I decided to treat ourselves by going out on Saturday. We bought tickets to Jeff Goldblum’s play “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” It was really entertaining. Jeff and his co-star, Oscar-winner Mercedes Ruehl, were great! That was my first time being back in the heart of the city since April. The theatre district is right around the corner from Trafalgar Square, which I haven’t been to since 2004. After the play, we found a pub and ate dinner, and then walked around the area. We saw the coolest bus ever cruising down the street – a double-decker party bus! It was so big there was room for a bar, some couches, and a dance floor!

On Sunday afternoon, we had to stop into David’s office to print my boarding pass for my upcoming business trip and scan some documents so I can get a national insurance number (it’s like a SSN in the UK). While in the area, we decided to check out the mall and see a movie, “Inception.” It felt really strange to walk to the movies. It made us feel much less guilty about ordering popcorn and candy, though. By the way, they do not butter their popcorn over here, which makes us sad. But to offset the healthy popcorn, movie theatres do offer ‘Pick n Mix.’ Pick n Mix is just like the candy stores in the mall. You get a bag and fill it up with all sorts of different candy, and then you’re charged based on the weight of your bag. David was like a kid in a candy store (literally!) when we walked into the theatre. For anyone that’s ever had DIY FroYo with David, you know this is not good. David is always the guy who tops his frozen yogurt with gummy bears, bubble gum, M&Ms, fudge, etc. His FroYo is always around $10 because of his heavy, childish toppings! But I have to admit, we didn’t hold back and the Pick n Mix made the movie-going experience THAT much better!

We had a busy first week in our new home but we’ve enjoyed spending time together and exploring our new city!

Our flat

Entry-way

Our bedroom

Guest bedroom

Bathroom

Dining area

Study

Living room

New kitchen

Garden