English Adventures

Last week we had a great trip to England. We spent the first few nights in London before heading up to see my friend Aly and her boyfriend Mike in Norwich.  It was so fun to start the trip in a big city and get to do things like see movies in English and eat different kinds of foods! We've been missing big city things since leaving SF, and London gave us a healthy dose to keep us going till we get back home! Or at least till we take the next trip this spring...

The weather seemed pretty cold to me while we were there, but for the English apparently it was pretty warm for this time of year. We had mostly highs in the mid-40s (Fahrenheit) and some pretty low lows. They got a bunch of snow in London and Norwich a couple weeks before our trip, so I think they were happy to be above freezing! 

After a delayed trip from Gatwick Airport into London (the EasyBus we already had tickets for never showed up, so we had to talk our way onto the next bus!) we met our friend Paoli at a pub near our hotel. Paoli took us to one of the historic local places where Jack the Ripper apparently used to find his victims. Charming, indeed! But seriously, it was a fun spot and it was great to catch up with Paoli and hear about his program at the London School of Economics, as well as some of his adventures in Europe. 

Here are the boys enjoying pints: 

We stayed at a hilarious little place called Tune Hotel. London is super expensive, so we wanted to stay some place affordable but still clean, safe, and well-located, so the Tune it was! One way the hotel makes money (and you potentially save money) is by having guests pay for additional amenities. For example, we had to pay a pound for the hairdryer and opted not to pay the 10 pound fee for the TV.  I have to include a photo of the room because it was just so teeny! From where I was standing taking the photo there were about a couple inches to my right before you hit the door to the bathroom and a couple feet behind me to the door out of the room. We actually ended up liking the hotel a lot - it was clean, everything was brand new, the bed was really comfy, and since we were so busy being out of the room the size ended up not bothering us. 

On our first day in London, we decided to explore in a few neighborhoods around our hotel. We were staying near Liverpool Street in a part of town called Shoreditch. There were a ton of cutesy little shops and boutiques - plenty of things to keep us busy. Here's a business park-type plaza near where we stayed. You can see the famous "Gherkin" skyscraper in the background! 

Along the way we stopped to get some fancy coffee (thanks for the tip, Paoli) and around the corner saw some pretty cool street art, including one of Banksy's pieces and this SCARY wall: 

For lunch we made the trek to Islington to go to the restaurant Ottolenghi. The food was amazing and the feel of the restaurant was very San Francisco (maybe they should expand there someday). They have a mostly vegetarian menu, good prices and a fun atmosphere. I swear they didn't pay me to say that, I really loved it! 

The way ordering works you get to choose either 3 or 4 of the salads and can either eat them alone or with an entree of various types of meat. The salads were so delicious and hearty, and were definitely a big enough meal for me! Here's the display of all the salads and vegetables: 

Since we were so happy with lunch, the waiter convinced us to order dessert too. WP got a passion fruit tart and I got this gigantic raspberry meringue!

Here's the window display of all the other desserts we didn't try: 

After lunch we headed over to the British Library, which is basically their version of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. The library has an awesome collection of old books and art, including lots of religious manuscripts and the Magna Carta. Here's WP in front of one of the special collections that lives in the center of the library sealed in this room. 

The library also had some hilarious leaning "chairs"; we had to try one:

After hanging out some more at the library, we headed over towards the theater district in the West End, where we met one of Will's old friends for dinner. Will's friend David and his wife Sarah live in London now, but are from Texas originally. David and Will went to school together when Will lived in England with his family, and they hadn't seen each other in 12 years! Needless to say there was plenty to catch up about. We ended up meeting them for dinner at one of the very few Chipotle locations outside the U.S. (so exciting!), and since the restaurant's computers were down we got dinner for free! Best. Day. Ever. In all the excitement we forgot to take a group photo though. It was great to meet David and Sarah, and hopefully we will get to see those two again soon. 

After dinner we went down to the Criterion theater to see the play The 39 Steps. The play is a comedy loosely based on the Hitchcock thriller of the same name (and originally on a novel by John Buchan), and is performed by only four cast members who sometimes changed roles by pulling on a hat or hurriedly changing jackets along with accents. The cast was hilarious, and the play was also pretty funny. They made a lot of references to other Hitchcock movies and didn't take themselves too seriously; it was a hoot! 

The next day we set out to explore Will's family's old neighborhoods in London. They lived in two houses in London and one outside the city before moving to the Boston area for Will's sophomore year of high school.

Here's Will at his old Tube stop, Belsize Park Station:

Here we are at the Payne's first house in London - 42 Glenloch Road! It looked pretty much the same as he remembered.  

On our way to the second Payne house, we wanted to stop at one of the family's favorite restaurants from the old days. The first one we went to check out was ASK Pizza & Pasta. Unfortunately, this ASK location is closed and has been replaced with a new place called Prezzo (the menu looked pretty similar, but not quite the same). 

Good news though, the family favorite Chinese restaurant Weng Wah House is still around and thriving! 

We ate a delicious meal here and Will even got to order one of his childhood favorites - the crispy seaweed with dried scallops on top. He says that as a kid he didn't know they were dried scallops he was eating! 

After Weng Wah, we headed on a rainy walk through the neighborhood to the second Payne house in London. Will was saying the cloudy, wet London weather was just as he remembered it!

The neighborhood was beautiful, with lots of old brick houses and big trees. Down the street a short walk from the house, we got to see Southbank International School, which Campbell and Will attended for three years. Will commented that all the walks between houses and restaurants seem shorter and the buildings seem smaller. I guess that's what happens when you grow up! I can't believe this beautiful building is a school: 

Unfortunately the day we chose to check out the neighborhood was the only day of our trip that it rained. It was getting pretty soggy and cold outside so we made an escape into a nearby mall, one that Will remembered from his time living here. This place saved our lives! We had a pint of delicious real ale, saw a movie, and waited out the worst part of the storm. By the time we left, it was barely drizzling. 

On our last full day in London, we packed a lot in. First off, we went to Brick Lane to check out the Sunday Market. They have a bunch of vintage clothes, food, records and pretty much everything else for sale. Plus they have some old school Jewish bagel shops so that was fun for us (can't wait to go to be in the NY area this summer and get some real bagels though!). On the way there we came across this sign, and then its pair pointing left 100 meters later. Ha. 

Here is a part of the Brick Lane market that was pretty chill. You can see some food stands leading into a building that had booths for craft sellers. Most of the market was super crowded, and I decided I should keep my camera safely in my purse while making our way through the throngs of people. Maybe I've been in Ciudad Real too long... People from Ciudad Real and surrounding small towns are always telling me "be careful, watch your purse" every time I tell them I'm going to Madrid or any other big city. Ah, the country life.

After the market we headed over to Kensington and ended up finding the new Whole Foods Market in London! It's funny how something as simple as a grocery store can be so familiar and fun. We got some healthy smoothies, and tried free samples of cheese and wine (the wine was left out unattended, which would probably never happen in the U.S. given the strictness of liquor laws), and got back on our way. Here's WP in the market: 

Then we took a very chilly (but beautiful) walk through Hyde Park. 

We came out of the park just in time to make it to the Natural History Museum before it closed! As a kid Will remembers taking trips to this museum, so it was fun to go back and see it again. Here's the main hall and Will with the big dino lit up in red.

This is the history of space part of the museum and clearly, one of my favorite parts. I've always been a space nerd, so this was pretty awesome for me: 

We were also impressed with the giant ground sloth skeletons. What?! How have I not heard more about these guys?

And of course, we had to go to the dinosaur area. This animatronic T-Rex was pretty silly, but worth the wait in line if for nothing else than to see the reactions of all the little kids around us.

Early Monday morning we hopped on a train leaving Liverpool Street to head up to Norwich to visit my high school friend Aly and her boyfriend Mike. The train ride took about two and a half hours and we got to witness the most polite "argument" between two passengers about one man's use of his cell phone in the "quiet coach." Oh man, British people are so polite and/or passive-agressive. The conversation they had is very different from what would have happened in Spain or the U.S.  if someone started loudly talking on their cell in a designated quiet area. This nice fight, coupled with the very apologetic train conductor (we were running a few minutes behind, but every announcement started with "This is the DELAYED train to Norwich, we do apologize...") made our train ride very entertaining.   

Once we met up with Aly, we headed over to her place for lunch and then walked to the University of East Anglia, where both she and Mike studied and now work. Here's a big field and protected wildlife area on the campus: 

We even got to see where the magic happens! Aly is a biologist and is working on a project about beetle sex. The photo fogged up a bit because we were in the "hot room" that is kept at 30 degrees celsius (86 fahrenheit) and high humidity to keep those beetles alive.

It was fun to walk around the campus, and to see where Aly and Mike work. We were fortunate enough to have Aly as a tour guide the following day as well (thanks for taking the day off work!) to see more of the sights in Norwich. 

Here's a cool building in the main square and an historic arcade (covered area with shops, kind of like an ancestor of the shopping mall). 

Norwich also has a crazy amount of churches and not one but two cathedrals! Here's a photo of WP and Aly in front of one of the churches. 

And here's the inside of the city's main cathedral (the Anglican one, not the Catholic one): 

The cathedral had some really cool (some would say pagan) faces carved into the ceilings. Inside the main building they even have a mirror set up so you can get a look at the ceiling without craning your neck. Here's one "green man" up close who we spotted outside in the cloister: 

And here we are in the cloister looking happy and a little cold: 

Aly also showed us some really adorable shops in downtown Norwich. Here's me in the candy shop, feeling like I should be getting a visit from Willy Wonka (or 50 Cent): 

And here's the amazing TEA shop! They had so many yummy types of tea to choose from. We ended up getting three different types to take home to Spain, including some lapsang souchong, which Will likes but basically tastes like a burned pine tree (it's smoked over pine wood).

Our last night in England was Fat Tuesday, and we went to a pub with Aly and Mike's friends to have dinner and participate in the pub's quiz night. Our team came in third, and we had a great time trying to come up with trivia answers; luckily only a few were UK-specific. We were so thankful to get to stay with Aly and Mike (and their cat Ewan) for a couple nights. It was a fun look into what life is like for a Gilroyan in Norwich. Pretty great from what we saw! 

Since we got home from the trip we've been busy celebrating Carnaval (Spanish Mardi Gras) with friends here in the CR and have been lucky enough to get some warm weather for the first time since the fall. Over the weekend it got into the 70s, yay!  I'll have a ton of hilarious and ridiculous photos to post and stories to tell from Carnaval, so stay tuned.