Back in the States

Just wanted to let everyone know that we got back to the States last night. We flew into Atlanta and our flight was delayed, the gate changed 4 times and finally took off 3-4 hours later. When we finally got into Huntsville, they had misplaced our luggage, so luckily we were headed home and would have clothes back at the house and a second set of toiletries. We were able to pick them up this afternoon when they called to let us know they came in on a flight. We slept in this morning and headed to work and tonight we got our real mexican food!!! Sorry for such a short post, but we are going to get some sleep and rest up! Everyone please have a safe and Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year! Merry Christmas and God Bless!

Last Hoorah

Ok, so I think that we have hit that stage in a "vacation" that you are kinda ready to come home. I am really missing my nice comfortable bed and good southern food! Staying in a hotel for almost 3 weeks will really take a toll on you. Not to mention the eating out all the time. At this point, I would really just like a good turkey sandwich with iceberg lettuce and mayo, a cold glass of milk and fruit. All this pub food can really get old. We can't wait to be able to cook on our own and take our lunch to work.

This past weekend we did make it into London to walk around and do a small bit of Christmas shopping. We made it to the Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square (we could see Big Ben from there), Harrods, and Leicester Square. We even got to get the famous in the phone booth pictures. Talk about a crowd! I don't think that I have ever seen so many people in one place...Harrods! Although it was quite a spectacular sight in itself...7 floors of anything and everything you would ever need, even gourmet food floor! I found a gelato bar, but we had to eat it outside and not in the store, so we decided to pass. Once we had our shopping in the bag, we went to find some lunch. A friend of mine suggested that we try a place called Wagamama. It is an asian health food restaurant I think, Catherine...correct me if I am wrong. I have a noodle dish and Ken had a curry dish. Now curry and Indian food are really popular here in the UK. They are everywhere. Ken seams to like it, but I am not a fan. I could smell it for the rest of the day. Then we tried the wasabi fudge cake...it was AWESOME! Good suggestion Catherine!

I have a few more things to post, but that will have to wait til tomorrow. We are busy packing and getting things ready to go back home! We are moving into our flats on January 8th! The furniture is being delivered and we will be able to stay in them that weekend!! As soon as we know the complete address we will let everyone know.

Cheers for tonight!

British Word of the Day

We have noticed that here in Britain they shorten a lot of words. They like to especially take a word, shorten it and put an "ies", "ey" or "y" on the end. For instance, their word for cookies are biscuits. Well they like to shorten that to "bickies." This morning on the "tele" we heard the news anchor talking about their Christmas tree in the studio and how it had "pressies" under it. We are guessing they are talking about presents. So this sparked my idea of British word of the day. So from now on we will have a word of the day if we hear one or if we want to share an interesting and fun fact about Britain. Stay tuned!

Tonight we went down to the river and had dinner at "The Wharf." Apparently it is the oldest brewer in Britain. Both Ken and I had the Strongbow Cider. Cider is the local drink. It is basically fermented apple juice. It is really good and doesn't have the after taste that most beer has. Not too bad. I have sampled a few here and Strongbow is definitely my favorite so far. Ken had a great dish. It was a ham steak with melted cheese and pineapple salsa on top, really good! I had an antipasti platter with prosciutto, salami, chirizo and a baguette.

So we were talking at dinner and we all want to visit different countries while we are here and so close to Europe. And now that the Euro and pound are dropping so fast and it is getting cheaper to travel for us Americans we need to pick the best time to go to each country. For Germany, we want to go to Oktoberfest and Ireland we want to go to St. Pattys day. We will have to figure out when the best time to go to Scotland, Italy and Greece. Any ideas?

Cheers for the night! We might head into London this weekend, so if there is anything anyone wants let us know!

Our British Tex-Mex Adventure!

Let me just say that we had our first food adventure tonight. After work we came back to the hotel to relax for an hour or so and we were given the task of thinking of something to do for dinner for the group. I guess I was thinking of Little Rosie’s back home, because I really had a craving for Mexican…chips and salsa, tacos, cheese dip, the whole bit. So I fired up the computer and thought that it could be a long shot, but why not try to look up a Mexican restaurant in the Dartford area. Lo and behold, there was a Tex-Mex restaurant a mile and a half away from the hotel. We phoned up Brian to see if he had any thoughts on dinner and he mentioned that he had found a Mexican restaurant on the GPS unit. Turns out it was the same one that I found. We all agreed on the choice and set out on our way to the The Hideout Tex-Mex Diner down the way. Even the trip there and back in the car was an adventure in its self as Brian races autocross back in the states. Let me say that we took advantage of the “Oh S**t bar” a few times. Anyway, we made our way on to the restaurant. We are driving…and driving …and driving. The GPS took us the long way! Definitely not the 1.5 miles that it said it would be and we were kinda in a dark part of town…a little sketch from the outside. We decide to give it a try after taking a look at the menu. We get in there and it is completely empty except for two people getting take-away. The décor was quite a trip. There is a 48 state American flag on the ceiling, a confederate flag hanging from the rafter, a tootsie roll sign, and a mural of “The Godfather” and “Casablanca.” There was also a 3D mural of a mobster, a traffic light, a statue of a Texan holding a gun, and then strung across the room there was the typical Mexican colorful shiny streamers. Best of all there was a neon sign of Dos Equis XX- get this…Brian was really excited about the Dos Equis, he ordered one and the guy had no clue what it was and they didn’t even serve it!!! We were really hoping that there would be more Mexican on the menu but there were only fajitas, tacos, enchiladas, and burritos. The rest of the menu consisted of what looked to be Cajun, burgers, sports bar food, and steaks. Ken and I order the burritos. As the time goes by no one has joined us for dinner, so we start second guessing our choice. Should we get up and leave? Or should we stay and see what we end up with? Well, when the first plate made it out of the kitchen we were a little surprised at the presentation. A large side salad on the side of the plate and a large portion of yellow rice accompanied a burrito in the middle. Needless to say, it was not Little Rosie’s or Laredo’s. The rice was not seasoned at all and the only thing Mexican about it was the salsa and maybe a little chili powder in the seasoning of the meat. I give them props for trying though. Relatively, it was pretty decent for being so far away from Mexico and since they have probably never tasted Mexican or even America’s version of Mexican. We had our laughs and giggles though out the night as we tried the British version of Mexican. Let’s just say that we will being sticking to other types of food while here. There could be a fortune to be had if someone did start a REAL Mexican restaurant! I know Americans would flock to it! Cheers for the night!

New digs!

The flat is ours! We didn't really want to broadcast and jinx ourselves with this flat. We had a little trouble getting all of the paperwork to go through with us being from the US. Apparently it is hard to get any sort of credit approval over here. But all the stress is over and hopefully we will be moving in in mid January!

We went to a pub last night called The Bricklayers Arms. It was really really good. Something really funny that happened: there was a guy with a cute border collie in the pub. Ken went to go look at the ciders they had on draft and the dog acted like he wanted to smell him, ya know how you stick your hand out and dogs usually smell you to get familiar...well the dog went bizerk! Barking, growling and showing its teeth, very scary, but quite funny after the fact. Ken didn't do anything wrong...I guess the dog didn't like Americans. Anyway, we sat by the fire and Ken and I both had the Ploughmans dinner: a hog shaped cutting board with a few slices of ham, a baguette, a few pieces of cheese (brie and cheddar), sausage, grapes, apples, a side salad and something called Branston pickle. You are gonna have to look that one up...I didn't like it. Ken did and he thought that Grandpa would, so he is bringing him back some. It is just something that he would like. Here is a picture of the table where we sat.

Today was really cold here -2Celcius! We had a good day at work. Things are coming along and going a little faster than expected. We ventured out to COSTCO and had a dinner of hot dogs on the run! All for 3 pounds!

Cheers!

Housing and British Food

Well...we have found some flats that we absolutely love! Hopefully all the paperwork will go through soon and we are able to get them. As soon as we do we will post pictures...don;t want to jinx anything!

On the food front...The food is not bad. My first real taste of a proper pub was Thursday while I was in London meeting with some people. We went to a pub called "The Coal Hole." It was extremely authentic, lots of pies and ales. I had the traditional fish and chips with mushy peas and Shai had the steak and ale pie. The both were really good. Mushy peas aren't as bad as they sound. They are basically mushed up english peas, very green though. I took a couple of pictures of the food as Shai's plate was something to look at! The hotel food is quite delicious. We have made a great friend, "G", which has hooked us up with anything that we need, most of the time...no charge! In the mornings we usually have a breakfast bap- a fried egg, ham and cheese on a bun with hasbrowns. Really good, but it is a lot of food so Ken and I share it. The ketchup is Heinz, but it still tastes like Jamaican ketchup to me...a little too sweet. The last couple of days my diet has consisted of fruit, water and juice. My stomache is dictating everything I even think about. I have also found that bickies...shortbread cookies have helped too. This afternoon, I sent Ken down to the lobby to get some fruit and ice and our friend "G" came through with 4 oranges and a whole bucket of ICE!!! I was so happy!! As most of you know, ice is very scarce around London, let alone Europe in general.

We also wanted to go and get some extra fruit, drinks and breakfast foods from a store down the road called Asda because spending 6 pounds on a breakfast sandwich and 3.50 pounds on a bottle of water, we needed to do something. Asda is in the Wal-Mart family and is just as busy! I think Ken was more nervous in there than driving. We have also learned that our credit cards, debit cards are not well taken in certain stores, mostly larger chains. Your cards now have to have the "chip and pin" feature to be taken. So we are going to have to figure out how to obtain one of those through our card companies. We have heard that Amex and Visa have an option to get them.

Tonight my tummy let me venture out of the hotel and Robert, Ken and I went to a local mall to eat. This mall is like no other mall we have ever been to. It is called Bluewater. I think it has everything from 3 food courts and a cinema to a CVS like store. It is absolutely HUGE! It is pretty cool to look at too. I think it has to be bigger than Lenox. We ate an Italian place called Carluccios. It was really good. I had a prosciutto and cheese panini and soup. Ken had prosciutto wrapped breadsticks and ravioli. After dinner we walked around the mall to walk off dinner and look around to see what kind of shops were there. WOW, do they take Christmas seriously around here!

Well we are going back out tomorrow to find the Costco. We will update tomorrow night!

Cheers!

First Couple of Days in London!

We have made it across the pond safely! Sorry it has taken so long to post. We have been pretty busy getting housing and everything in line. We arrived in Gatwick at 6:30am Tuesday and pretty much hit the ground running. Apparently there was a pretty hefty tail wind. We left Atlanta 30 minutes late and arrived 30 minutes early. I think they said there was a 60mph tailwind. All in all we got there early, got our luggage and headed to the rental car counter. Let me say that it was really weird getting in the car on the "wrong" side of the car, let alone driving! Roundabouts were kinda hard getting used to, but we are getting the hang of it. The food is pretty good so far, but it's a little greasy at times.

We went into London on Wednesday night and had a great time. We walked around in the freezing weather and ended up eating dinner at this great little Greek restaurant.

We will post more details soon, but just wanted to let everyone know that we are here and are working hard. Chamee is trying to get over a stomach bug that's due to lack of sleep, different food, cold weather, etc... Hopefully a long night and some Tylenol PM will be the trick.

Cheers!