So...its been awhile, I know

I know it has been a few months since we posted...sorry! I vow to catch up. Since we have last posted, we have been back to the states for a much needed visit with family and friends. We also went on a cruise vacation to the Caribbean that hit the spot. Armed with our two year visas, we are now back in the UK! Last weekend was Ken's 26th birthday and I planned a trip to Scotland to watch the British Open and sight see a little. We started off going up the west coast of England into Scotland, passing Birmingham, Manchester and then we landed in Glasgow, Scotland, for the night. We checked into our hotel, that I might add was a deal! It was definitely a small room, but we got it for half the listed price because we have a CAC card. We walked around downtown Glasgow that night and found a great little bistro to eat dinner. It was a champagne bar/bistro. They had a summer deal 3 courses and a bottle of wine for 50pounds. It was the best meal we have had in the UK, by far. It was called Urban Bar & Brasserie, delish!! If you are ever in Glasgow, eat there.
The next morning we headed off to Turnberry, where The Open 2009 (British Open we call it) is held. It started off a rainy dreadful looking day, but it actually turned out to be a mostly dry day. We had a few short bursts of rain, but not enough to stop play. I was so mad that they wouldn't let us take a camera in, so this is the only picture I got.

The grounds were beautiful! Now, it was not Augusta, but it was beautiful in its own way. Hotel and lighthouse set a great seashore atmosphere. It was extremely windy too! I couldn't believe it! I had to buy a sweater to go under my jacket and a headband that covered my ears. Tiger Wods teed off at 2:20 and we saw him tee-off at the third and putt at the 5th. After that, the crowd that followed him got too annoying, so we got lunch and tea and planted ourselves at the 17th green and watched all the players putt at the 17th. We stayed and had a front row seat to Tom Watson and then Tiger and Lee Westwood before we left. We also saw Davis Love III, Greg Norman, Sergio Garcia, Vijay Singh, and a lot of the other names in golf. I just wish I had a camera!!! Oh well. After The Open we were so dog tired, we got something to eat and went to sleep! Not mentioned we didn't fell well. We both woke up with an even worse sore throat than we already had. I guess it was the change in weather. We went from 90s in Mexico and back at home to 13C (55F) in Scotland. The transistion was a little too fast for our own good.

The next morning we headed over to Edinburgh. We had no plan, just punched it in the GPS and looked in an atlas to see what was around. I had heard from a guy at work that the Edinburgh Castle was something to see. So, that was our first stop. We go there and the line was hours long, so we just took pictures from the outside and walked around the city centre. We went to the tartan mill and saw all the kilts and woolen blankets. Ken bought two tartan ties and I got a cashmere scarf as a souvenir of Scotland. After the sightseeing, Ken wanted to find a place to taste Haggis. If you don't know what haggis is, it is sheep insides, spices, oatmeal and other ingredients stuffed into a casing- traditionally the stomach lining. So we found a place to eat that had it as an appetiser. It was called fried haggis balls. Appetising name huh?! Well, he dug right in, but it took me a while to get the guts- no pun intended- to try it. It wasn't that bad of a taste. I think it was the texture that got me. One thing checked off the UK bucket list- try haggis.Edinburgh was a great little city. I wish we would have had more time there. I fully intend to take a highlands tour out of Edinburgh sometime. We have a coworker that did it this weekend and I am anxiously awaiting his opinion. After Edinburgh, we headed to a scotch whisky distillery, Glenkinchie, right outside of the city. Again, no cameras were allowed, but we got a few of the outside. I would have to say that I prefer Tennessee whiskey, sweeter. It was interesting to see the process though. Glenkinchie is a single malt whiskey. That means that the one distillery produces all of the whisky with the Glenkinchie name; it is not blended. Glenkinchie is one of the single malts that is chosen for the biggest blended scotch whiskies, ie. Johnnie Walker black and red labels. Beauitful area around the distillery. Pictures just don't do it justice!
As we headed down the east coast of Scotland and England, I saw that there was an island with a castle in the atlas. It was called The Holy Island of Lindisfarne. What a site! Thank goodness we got there when we did. The causway that the access road is on goes under water during hightide. We got there pretty late and all the shuttles to the castle had stopped running, but we got to the island and saw the castle from afar. I fully intend to go back and explore the island more on another trip.
On the way to Newcastle upon Tyne and our hotel we saw a little sign for a town called Lamberton. Ken had to pull of the road and see where the road led. It didn't go too far and we ended up turning around because of the really small roads. But we have a town sort of named for Lambert!
We got to Newcastle and checked into the hotel. The hotel was awesome! If you are ever in England and looking for a great boutique hotel, check out Hotel Du Vin. Wonderful room, food and service! The whole hotel was a champagne and wine theme. They had flattened wine and champagne bottles framed, which was really neat. That would be a great idea for a special bottle of wine.

We had a great time on this trip. It was a lot of traveling, driving and seeing beautiful countryside that unfortunately pictures cannot do justice. I cannot wait to go to the highlands of Scotland.

I will post a link to more photos soon.

Here are some pictures to hold every one until we get to posting the last months worth...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2329240&id=7008058&l=933db1ba3b

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2329234&id=7008058&l=a2786e0ee2

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2329230&id=7008058&l=0985e08db5

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2329226&id=7008058&l=405616af07

Cheers!

Tourists for a day!

The other weekend was so beautiful we just had to take advantage of the weather. It got up to 16C! Which I think is around 60F. We decided to train into London and do some sightseeing. We were tourists for a day. We started by waling across the Thames to the London Eye. We bought our tickets and stood in line, which went by really fast for such a long line. Our bubble came around and Ken was amazed at the construction and pure physics of the Eye. We learned from a coworker that the Eye was built horizontal over the Thames and then when it was done, they lifted it vertical with pulleys, I think. Look it up online, it is really cool! But here are some pics when it is vertical and the view from our bubble. It was a great way to orient your sense of direction by seeing where everything was from above. Big Ben and Parliament was a site to see from above and the vantage point was great for pictures.

After the London Eye, we were walking along the side of the Thames and there we spotted a doughnut vendor. We decided to split one since we are watching are figures :-). It was so different than any other we had ever had. It was really cakey, moist and delicious! You have to get one when you visit!





















We walked over Westminster bridge and past Big Ben from the bottom end this time. Originally we were going to head to the British Museum, but we couldn't waste such a beautiful day inside. So we headed to Trafalgar Square and lo and behold there was a big St. Patty's day festival. Everyone was dresses in their Irish pride and green crazy hats. We saw that there was going to be a parade coming through in an hour and so we stayed around and ate lunch nearby at the Texas Embassy. No Texas does not have it's own embassy, I thought it did at first, then I realized it was a restaurant. I couldn't believe that we were going to try tex-mex/mexican again, but we decided to give it another go. I would have to say that it was the closest to what we think is mexican that we have had. Even free salsa and chips! At the end of lunch the parade came through and we saw quite a few leprechauns and crazy Irishmen. We even saw a group of smart cars that were covered in sod (or fake grass)!

On a full tummy, we walked toward Buckingham Palace. We walked through the grounds around the palace and all the daffodils were blooming and there were thousands and thousands! I think there is a daffodil fairy that goes around England and throws out bulbs because they are absolutely everywhere. They are even randomly on the side of the road and at intersections around the signs, just in the most desolate places! But it sure does make the countryside bright and sunny! It jsut makes me want to go and pick tons of them!
Buckingham Palace was huge, but not as impressive from the front gate as I was imagining. I guess all the tourists in the driveway kind of ruined the majestic views. It was still beautiful though. We walked down Constitution Hill towards Hyde Park. Everyone was laying in the grass with picnics and wine and ice creams cones were everywhere! Spring has sprung! In the middle of Hyde Park is the Serpentine, a lake, that people were rowing boats. It looked like a movie. We sat on a park bench and had a coffee and just watched people walk by, very relaxing.
We had heard about a Speaker's Corner from a friend, so we decided to check it out and see what people were speaking about. For those of you who have never been, it is a corner of Hyde Park where people gather to speak their minds. They get on little step stools and lecture about anything and everything and people gather round and shout in agreement or mostly disagreement. We definitely heard some people disagreeing. So much so that we decided we propbably needed to leave. But there were actually some there that were pretty funny, they were in essence making fun of the other speakers, more like stand up comedy in lecture form.

From there we walked down Park Lane where a lot of the car dealerships are and we ran into the Hard Rock Cafe. We went in and had a few cocktails to relax and then we ordered the BBQ trio platter to share; BBQ ribs, BQ chicken and pulled pork! Definitely hit the BBQ spot! I remeber in Italy we would go there to get our BBQ fix. After dinner we went to the Hard Rock Vault across the street. It is below the Hard Rock retail shop. There they have pieces of rock and roll memorabilia. We saw Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Kobain, and Eric Clapton's guitars, Madonna's cone corset, Elvis's red velvet jacket and lots of other stuff.













All in all we did a lot of walking and sightseeing and really just getting to know London. There are still a lot of things we still have to see and do. But we are slowly checking the boxes off.

Here is a link to more photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2317179&id=7008058&l=1e9673420a

Cheers!

Trivia Night & Brighton Beach

After hearing about how much fun Trivia Night was last week for some of our coworkers, we decided to give it a shot. We all met there around 7 for dinner before the trivia, which ended up starting at 9. Luckily five of us managed to stick around for the fun and we were known as "The team of Americans in the bay window" since everyone else was a regular. Rounds 1 and 2 consisted of 10 questions each, mostly with questions about British pop culture. We held our own since we did have a British expat with us. After a brief intermission, sheets were passed out with 40 snapshots of movie scenes where all of the people in the pictures were made invisible, but the clothes still remained. Examples of the movies selected were "Beetlejuice", "Bend it Like Beckham", "Cool Runnings", and "Uncle Buck". Luckily, our eclectic team had seen a good range of movies and we ended up tieing this round with a score of 33 out of 40! The tie breaker for the round was to guess the year that Baby Jessica got stuck in the well. Our guess ended up being closer than the other team's, so we actually ended up winning the round and a bottle of wine. Rounds 4-7 consisted of 5 questions each, with the last being questions about Baseball (the team of coworkers who went last week came in last place, so they got to pick a topic for this week). Most of rounds 4-6 were more questions about British culture, so we maybe got 3 or 4 of them right, but we dominated the Baseball round. At the beginning of these rounds, we were asked to make one of the rounds our "joker" round, which meant double points. SO we picked the baseball round. It was made up of questions mostly about the movie Field of Dreams (where did it take place?, who played Shoeless Joe Jackson?, etc...). I guess they did that because they didn't know too much about the game and none of the Brits woulkd have gotten any of the questions, so they attempted to make it easier. One of the questions was, where was the movie based? The teams paper we graded said Arizona! After it was all over, we ended up coming in 3rd place (out of 5) and won 5 pounds, which we donated to charity.

On Saturday, we ended up driving south to the beach town of Brighton. We took back roads in the morning and it took around an hour and a half to get there, and another half hour to find a parking place somewhere close to town. We walked around town for a while and went down the Brighton pier where they had carnival rides, food, and games. Once we got hungry for lunch, we walked around for a little while and found a small Italian restaurant called "FatLeo". We both had the steamed mussels for an appetizer and a pasta dish for our main course. The food was great! We left stuffed and went for a long walk to check out all of the small shops. Brighton is a very eclectic place with lots of shops and we saw most of it. Very cute little town...of the main beach road.

We also got to see the Royal Pavilion, an over-the-top mansion that King George built in the early 19th century. The decor in this house was crazy! The dining room had a 40 foot chandiler that weighed over a ton and was clutched in the claws of a large wooden dragon. There was also the music room that was covered in gold including some thousand something gilded shells covering the whole dome. We were not allowed to take photos inside the house, but I found a couple online that show how elaborate this house is. It's amazing to think how much this house must have cost to build. We ended the afternoon with some coffee at Starbucks and some long-awaited sushi. Most of the sushi restaurants over here have a rotating conveyor belt where you grab what you like when it comes around. It was good, but not quite as fresh as back home. Overall, we had a great trip and might go back when it warms up.

A little about the physical beach...it was pebbly! Not sand!! There is no way that laying out would be comfortable. I have laid out on a pebbly beach in Italy and let me say that it is not the kind of relaxation you would hope for. I would have to say that the Brits should come a take a look at our beautiful Gulf beaches, especially Destin and its sugar white beaches and blue waters. Brighton had more of a Jersey shore atmosphere. It was still a nice little getaway!

Valentines Day!

I know this is late, but Happy Valentines day! We had a great weekend. We didn't do too much. We wanted to get tickets to a show in London, but I guess we thought of that too late because most all of them were sold out. So we decided to just go to dinner and maybe catch a show the weekend after. We had a great Italian lunch of bruschetta and an antipasto platter that we made at home. My sweet husband got me some beautiful roses. We had dinner a at local place in town called BluBeckers White Hart. We have both learned to like mussels and we had some of the best steamed mussels in white wine and garlic butter sauce for an appetiser. Ken had a chicken breast wrapped in parma ham and I had seabass with asian vegetables. If you look a the pitures, the desserts did not last long, not even long enought to take pictures!
























The next weekend we went to London and did some sightseeing. We got off the train and went to Leicester Square to see if we could get some discounted tickets to a show. We ended up with great tickets to "We Will Rock You" a musical featuring the music of Queen. It was really good! So we are gonna try to go to another one in April. I really want to see Wicked!! After the show we went to get some Italian gelato in Leicester Square. Even though it was freezing it was still delicious! Then we went and walked across the Golden Jubilee bridges. It had a great view of the London eye and of the Thames River. I can't wait to take our tour of the city that we got for xmas, but we want to wait until the weather is a little better and warmer.



















Tata for now!

Our quest for decent mexican...

We have come to the conclusion that it is virtually impossible to get decent Mexican food here in the UK. It is either more Spanish in nature, probably because of our neighboring country being so close, or just not good at all!! We have yet to get the melty ooey gooey cheese covered burritos and enchiladas that we all know and love from back home. You can also forget the notion of free chips and salsa. The chips are store bought and the salsa tastes like it too. We did have some decent guacamole though at the restaurant here in Sevenoaks called Zapata. The decor there was pretty mexican, but it definitely was not the cheesy decorations, christmas lights and maracas with bright colors like some of our favorite places. We also went to London the other weekend and was told of a Tex Mex place in Leicester Square, so we tried it out. Now it was definietly a little close to what we are used to, but still not the same. We have given up and have been satisfying our cravings at home with homemade tacos and burritos. We have even come up with a really good recipe for margaritas! We made some the other night. Fresh lime juice, orange juice, ginger ale and of course tequila. If it is too tart , add some splenda or sugar. When we come back in town don't be surprised if we suggest Mexican, so don't fill up on it the week before we get there. Here are some pics of our mexican tour! I can't wait to actually go to Mexico and get the real thing!

The snow has melted...

Now that the white stuff has left, it is really starting to warm up here on the island! It has been around 5-11 celcius this week. We have started to hit the gym and hopefully we will be in shape and feeling good by summer! Work has been pretty busy getting ready for our important visitors that will be here for the next couple of weeks. We have some blog topics and pics to share, but we will post after we go to London this weekend. Hope for good weather for us! Talk soon!

P.S. If anyone has a gmail account and would like to voice or video chat send me a message and we can email you back the link and instructions! Even if you don't have one, they can be easily created and you can just use it for chatting! Its just like a phone and you can see us if you have a webcam!!

Snow Day

It has been called the worst snow storm in 15-18 years here in London and we are in the worst of it. I wouldn't really call it a storm. It is more like snow with a lot of wind. We had heard that they were forecasting cold weather and snow for this weekend and beginning of the week, but we didn't take it seriously. I just thought that it would be another Alabama forecast of snow and we would get a few flurries or a dusting. Well, they were more than right. Most of the public transportation has been shut down and the major motorways are pretty bad. I don't think that it has stopped snowing since yesterday afternoon around 1:00pm. We woke up and wondered if we would be able to make it to work with the roads so covered and icy. We watched the news and weather and they told us about the roads. We called a co-worker and he said that work was closed. So, we called it a SNOW DAY!! We met the neighbor kids and had a snowball fight with about 6 of us. They even had their snowboards out and went snowboarding around the apartment. The snow is really different than Alabama snow. It is really dry like Colorado snow. It was hard to make a snowman. The best we could do was a really small one. It would make a great snow cone though! It is going to snow for the rest of the evening and into tomorrow. We will see what the outcome is! It makes the English countryside look really pretty!

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