Across the Pond

So...its been awhile, I know

2009-07-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-04-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-01T14:39:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-03-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-02-18T12:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

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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Please bear with us!!

2009-01-25T12:23:00.000-08:00

Hello all! We moved into our apartment this past Tuesday! Never have I ever seen so many boxes in my life. All the furniture showed up in boxes and we had to put together everything. A co-worker and myself went to IKEA and furnished 5 apartments! You could imagine the amount of cardboard we recycled! I think we filled up Tesco's recycle bin numerous times between all 5 of the apartments. Never in a million years would I have thought that it would have taken as much mental and physical strength as it did. We were exhausted by the time that we got everything handled. But I do say that our apartment looks really good! I was talking to someone the other day and I have decided that I would have to have 4 different houses to satisfy all of my decorating tastes.

1. Classic/Traditional with antiques- most likely my all around favorite and will probably be the house that we buy
2. Comfortable/Clean Modern
3. Elegant but Rustic- lake or mountain cabin
4. Beachy with bright and bold colors, seashells

So, as Jenny pointed out, I can satisfy my Modern urge now and not worry about being stuck with it! Now I just have to work on the other three!

Wehave found the local grocery and we were able to cook for a couple of nights! Spaghetti was first, then mexican and now we are stocked for the rest of the week. Hopefully we will pick up some really good recipes to try out of people when they visit. It is so nice to be out of the hotel and have a little bit of a routine now that we are in the apartment.

Well, a little bit about English living. First of all, we have a much smaller frig/freezer space than back in the US, especially freezer space! We have three tiny ice trays that we are filling up constantly! The milk jug are a lot smaller, I think closer to .5 gallon. If any of you know how much Ken drinks milk, that is just not going to cut it. So I bet we will be in the Tesco buying milk 2-3 times a week. Take your fridge and maybe 1/3 it and that is about how big we have. It is a nice frig, but not very roomy. The wahser and dryer is a washer/dryer combo. It washes, dryes, or wash/dry combo. It can hold 3 towels or two sheets or maybe a couple pairs of pants and three shirts or so and maybe some undies. Needless to say we do laundry a lot!!! The heating system is actually an underfloor heating. Hot water runs under the floor and heats each room. This is really common in newer construction here. Every room has a different thermostat. It is really nice to wake up and the bathroom tiles and kitchen tiles are warm. There is no air conditioning-we are hoping for a mild summer. Over all we are very comfortable and can't wait to explore the little towns near us!

We went to the grocery today and the food at the grocery has a very short shelf life! I am pretty sure most of them have no preservatives. So hoping that a loaf of bread will last even 5 days is a far stretch. We were hoping to find some smoked sausage, but it looks like we will have to go on the search. We are craving red beans and rice, it will have to wait. They have just about everything though. It just takes a little looking around to find what you need. No real short trips to pick up something until we get used to the new packaging. They aren't real into convienence foods, like shredded cheese. We will just have to adapt and grate it ourselves. Nothing wrong with a little elbow grease! I was looking for shredded mozzarella today and had to settle for the real thing- buffalo mozzarella...DARN!! For those who don't know me and buffalo mozzarella, I love it!!! It is the total opposite in the US, you can't find a great variety of mozz except the block or shredded kind, but here I had to choose between 6-7 kinds of buffalo mozz. Little things like that I really love to figure out.

Well, we will hopefully get internet by next week. We will update shortly! Love yall!

Sorry for the delay, the pictures had to thaw!

2009-01-16T13:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone, it has been such a busy week for the two of us that we haven't had a chance to post anything. We wanted to share some more pictures from last weekend.
Last week was very cold (sounds like what you are getting right now)! Last friday night, we decided that a trip to Stonehenge the plan for Saturday. We got going around 10 for two hour drive. The car's thermometer said -5.5 C when we left, and didn't pop over 0C all day. It was so cold that the windshield washer fluid was frozen most of the day. Here's a video from our drive to Stonehenge.

We had fun walking around and seeing Stonehenge, although it was about as you'd expect. We signed up for the English Heritage annual pass, which allows us to go to over 400 historical sites across England. Since we got this pass, we will have to go back to see the stones when they (and us) are not frozen.

After our short tour of Stonehenge, we decided to eat lunch at the nearby town of Salisbury. We found a delightful pub to dine, and had some of the best food so far. After lunch, we wanted to see what the town had to offer, so we walked over to the Salisbury Cathedral.

The cathedral was built 14th century and housed the oldest known working tower clock in the UK (possibly the world) and an original copy of the Magna Carta. The cathedral's history and architecture were quite impressive, and it was neat seeing the historical document.

Sunday we went to Ikea to pick out the furniture that we are going to have for the next year. The rest of the week has been mostly filled with work and purchasing housing goods for the flat. We currently have around 50 Ikea boxes of furniture waiting to be assembled. That's what we are up to this weekend. We got the keys to the flat, but now we have to put everything together and get it ready for us to move in.

On a side note, we found that the SkyTV Sports tele channel is showing the NFL playoff games late nite on Sunday. Last week we got to watch the Ravens! We'll see if we can stay up this weekend to watch them again.

Sorry we haven't gotten a chance to call anyone lately. Our cell is very low on minutes and we haven't had a minute to top up. Hopefully we will get a chance this weekend and will give everyone a call sometime soon.

Cheers!
- Chamee and Ken

Busy bees

2009-01-14T02:28:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Sorry it has been awhile since we posted. We have been busy bees the last couple of days. As soon as we get a little down time we will post about our weekend. We were able to take a trip to Stonehenge and Salisbury. Details to be posted!

Winter Wonderland

2009-01-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

Last night we were feeling adventurous on the food front and wanted something a little different. So we all decided on Indian food. We had all seen an Indian restaurant down the road from the hotel...off we went. I don't believe that any of us had ever been to an Indian restaurant before, so we were all new to the menu. There was a little bit of a language barrier too. Needless to say we were confused. I ordered the safest looking dish that had no curry, Manchurian chicken- thinly sliced chicken in a thick sweet and sour sauce. I am not a big curry fan at all. Ken dove right into one of the "one pepper" curry dishes (you know how asian restaurants will have a legend with mild to hot dishes represented by 1-3 peppers shown). For an appetizer they suggested this multi sauce platter with crispy chips called papadams. It came with 5 sauces that ranged from yoghurt and chive sauce, to a mango chutney. My favorite was the mango chutney. The chips tasted like Munchos-Frito lay- chips. I think they were all laughing at us for asking so many questions about the food. When it came out, mine was is in a medium red sauce and had stewed tomatoes and mint. It was really good with the rice. Ken's was great. I actually liked his better than mine. It didn't have too much curry in it to where you were knocked off your chair. It was very light and I really liked the flavor. I think his was called Bhuna chicken curry. It was quite a different taste than any other food I have eaten, but I would say that we would try it again. I am going to have to do some research on the different kinds of dishes so I will know what to order next time.

So we woke up this morning to find that all of the trees and other vegetation were FROZEN!! and it was -3celcius. I think because it is wetter here it seems colder than it would in the US if it was 25 F. Here is a picture of the road and the trees covered in ice. We also saw a truck that had frozen spiderwebs! They almost looked fake.

We also went to the apartments today and took some really good pictures of this awesome tree right outside our window. It almost looks like one of those spooky trees from a cartoon or something. It sure does make for a good picture. We are off to dinner! To the pub we go! We are actually walking in this crazy weather!

I drove for the first time!!

2009-01-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

Hey there! Sorry yesterday's post was so short, but we were tired. But here are the details that I wanted to add to yesterdays post.

For lunch we went to a little place down the road called The Rose and Crown. It was fairly early to serve lunch for the English. I think we arrived around 11:45am. We went to a few places before we ended up here because they weren't serving lunch until 12:00 or 1:00. Us Americans like to eat lunch early I guess. But I think it has something to do with how we like to get to work early and leave early. We ordered at the bar. I had the chili jacket potato (baked potato) and Ken had the club sandwich. I wanted to sit by the fire, so I grabbed us a table in the back on the other side of the double sided fire place and awaited our food. I got the jacket potato because my mouth was still hurting from the dental work that I had done the day before and I wanted something warm. When the food came, it was beautiful! It was a fancy jacket potato with a salad on the side. Ken's club sandwich was a monster and it had Arby's style seasoned curly fries! They were really good. He also had a half pint of the draft Strongbow ( hard cider). Strongbow is definitely our favorite cider. It has more of the apple flavor than some of the others so you actually feel like you are drinking hard cider.

We made our first trip to TESCO after lunch just to get a few things and to see what all they had and guess what! We found a section with mexican stuff!!! It is all Old El Paso, but hey...they have it so now with the taco seasoning that Kim and Chris gave us for Christmas, we can make mexican at home!! We also found their version of Frosted Mini Wheats. So Bob, when you come over we will have some. We also wanted to take a picture of how they do not refrigerate their eggs. I guess they don't because they are so fresh? If anyone knows the answer, please comment. I am still kinda scared to buy them and it would make me feel better if I knew why.

Oh...and today after work I drove back to the hotel. Now mind you, there was only two turns. But I braved the road and did it! I will elaborate when I get more experience under my belt. We are off to dinner! Talk to you soon! Cheerio!

We're Here!

2009-01-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! We made it here safely. I think we are a little more tired this time around than last. We got in around 7am and got our luggage and headed straight to pick up the car. And what do you know, we are leaving the airport and...bam! the M23 is closed northbound. So again we are forced to use our trusty Garmin to save the day. We ended up just going up an exit southbound and turning around. Not as bad as we thought. Turns out it was only a frozen on ramp (slip road as they call it). Apparently it has been really cold for the past few days. There was about an inch or so of snow on the ground and we heard on the radio that it had gotten down to -12 celcius in some parts of southern England. IT IS COLD!! We tried a new pub today for lunch. I will post pictures later. Then we headed to TESCO, a grocery store, a bought a few little things...bananas, water and granola bars. We went back to the hotel and took a couple hour nap to snap out of the daze of being on a plane for that long. Got up around 5:30 and headed down to the restaurant in the hotel to eat dinner. And now...we go to sleep! We will post more details of today tomorrow! Hopefully we will get our keys to the apartments soon! Cheers for now!

Back in the States

2008-12-19T17:50:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-10T13:49:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-06T05:03:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

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!

Welcome to our travel blog!

2008-11-11T18:49:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone! We have set up this travel blog to help us keep in touch with everyone and to post our travels in London and Across the Pond! We hope you will check it out! As soon as we know where we are going to live and our contact information, we will post it!

Our first trip to London is Dec 1st - Dec 18th. We will be looking for housing, setting up phones and checking out the area! Please let us know if you are ever going to be in the area, we would love to see familiar faces...we may even have a bed or two for you to crash!