2009 May Bank Holiday, Take Two

Last weekend was the second bank holiday weekend in May (gotta love the lazy English summers). You may remember that for the last bank holiday, bobby and I spent our 3 day weekend in Bruges. This time, we decided to stick around London.

We spent what ended up being one of the prettiest Saturdays of the year in Victoria Park. This is a beautiful, enormous park not too far form our flat. I finally got to use the picnic basket (or picnic hamper as it’s called here) that bobby gave me as a “welcome home from the hospital” present. We spent the afternoon hanging out with friends, playing soccer, and making friends with squirrels.

Me in Victoria Park

Bobby's New Friend

Saturday night we went to a performance by a cabaret band called the “Tiger Lillies.” I bought the tickets because they were only £10 each (ridiculously cheap for London). It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. The advertisement labelled it “black comedy cabaret” which I guess was a good description since all of the songs were about death. I actually found it quite entertaining and funny, but Bobby said he would have walked out if we had been on an aisle. I guess that’s what you get for £10?

We spent all day Sunday at a 7s rugby tournament in Twickenham. 7s rugby follows basically the same rules as regular rugby, except that there are only 7 people on each side (instead of 15) and they play 7 minute halves (instead of 40). This was our first sporting event in the UK, and we had a FABULOUS time. The atmosphere was unbeatable. The USA lost all but one game (to Georgia), but England won the whole tournament!!

Me and Bobby at Twickenham

Twickenham

On Monday, we went to a little town about an hour outside of London called Whitstable with some friends. Whitstable was a beautiful picturesque little beach town on the North Sea that I just adored. We spent the day walking along the shore, eating fish n chips, and watching some elderly people play English bowling. We had great weather until about 4:30pm, at which point it stormed, but it was still a great day! I would definitely go back to Whitstable to spend a quiet weekend and think it is a much better beach town than Brighton (even though I enjoyed Brighton as well).

Beach Shack in Whitstable

Whitstable

Dorthy and I in testing out the water

Watching some English bowling

Our next bank holiday isn’t until August, so I’m glad we got a lot in while we could!

Kuniyoshi Exhibit: Royal Academy Of Arts

Last week at work, I began flexing again.  That means that I work an extra hour each day and get every other Friday off!  Before my surgery, since I found even simple every-day activities exhausting, I spent most of my flex days just napping around the house and recovering in general from the week.  But now that i'm feeling healthy and energized again, i'm trying to take better advantage of London on my Fridays off.  

This Friday, I headed down to the Kuniyoshi Exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts.

I took a class on Japanese Art in college (in the same semester I took a class on Japanese Cinema, it was a bit of a Japan overload) and really enjoyed it.  While I find Western European art horribly boring until about the 19th century, Japanese art is interesting to me regardless of its age.  

According to the Royal Academy: "Kuniyoshi was a major master of the ‘floating world’, or Ukiyo-e school of Japanese art, and, together with Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864), dominated nineteenth century printmaking in Japan. Prolific and multitalented, Kuniyoshi considerably expanded the existing repertoire of the school, particularly with thousands of designs that brought vividly to life famous military exploits in Japan and China. Kuniyoshi developed an extraordinarily powerful and imaginative style in his prints, often spreading a scene dynamically across all three sheets of the traditional triptych format and linking the composition with one bold unifying element - a major artistic innovation."

This was my favourite Kuniyoshi print.  The colors were much more vibrant in person.

While the exhibit was very well done, I have to say, I didn't enjoy it very much.  Not because of the prints themselves, which I enjoyed very much, but due the general atmosphere.  First of all, I had to pay 9 pounds to get in.  For some reason, I resent having to pay to go to museums.  London, as do most cities, has some very good free ones, so why pay?  Secondly, it was WAY too crowded.  I thought I would be ok, as it was a weekday, but I was wrong.  The exhibit was crammed into 4 smallish rooms and there were probably about 120 people trying to view it at the same time as me.  This meant I wasn't able to follow the flow of the exhibit, but had to skip around to open sections to avoid the crowds.  Lastly, even with a little bit of knowledge on Japanese Art, I didn't really understand most of what the descriptions were talking about.  Maybe this is my fault?  Maybe I should have done some research on this period of time in Japanese history before going?  But they were just throwing names around like I should know who they were talking about.  A little more background information would have been helpful.    

 

I did enjoy Kuniyoshi's work, but I doubt if i'll be making a trip back to the Royal Academy of Arts on my next Flex Friday.

 

Beglium - Land of Waffles and Frites

After much nagging, I've finally written about our travels to Belgium. The first weekend in may was the first Bank Holiday, a glorious tradition that means everyone will be traveling and often enjoying three of the rainiest days of the year (Murphy's law strikes again). Luckily, this long weekend was the exception to the rule and we had brilliant weather on our 3 day adventure across Belgium.

We took the Eurostar across to the continent and spent 2 days and nights in Bruges, then a final day in Brussels before coming back across the water. I had a previously traveled to Bruges, which was a lot of fun, despite being much colder. Laura has now determined that I should be doing recon missions prior to all of our trips so I know where everything is and what to do when we get there.

As it turns out, there are three major activities to do in Bruges:

• Drink delicious Belgian beer
  
• Eat the greatest street food in Europe - Waffles and Fries with mayo
• Look at the medieval buildings all lit up at night

I can say with certainty, we accomplished each one of those activites with gusto. We did revisit my two favourite bars, 't Bruges Beertje and Cambrinus, each with hundreds of beers on their lists. Laura's pick of the weekend was a banana beer that was quite good.


In addition to copious drinking, we also indulged in the fantastic street food of waffles drenched in chocolate and frites (fries) covered in mayonaise.

Bruges has some fantastic canals (like a mini-Venice), so we took a canal tour on Sunday.


We also climed up the 366 steps to the top of the tower. Not a bad view from up there... but definitely not as good as it had been hyped. The fenced in view really put a damper on how beautiful a sight it could have been.


Our final day in Belgium, we woke up and took the train back into Brussels and planned on the whole day there. In hindsight, this was WAY too much time. Brussels has one main square, a cathedral or two, and some shopping streets, but otherwise is entirely skippable. Probably one of my least favourite cities. Part of that could be that we were pretty tired from two days of walking around Bruges, and just wanted to relax instead of sightsee. The other part could be that we didn't have a full guidebook for the city, just the few pages in our huge Europe guidebook.


Either way, I can't recommend Bruges highly enough. Make Brussels a very quick day-trip, but keep your sights on Bruges for any Belgian-based plans you have.

Here are some pictures from Bruges, as well as pictures from Brussels. Enjoy.

Things I Love About London- Part V: English Tea With Milk and Sugar

It took a year and a half, but living in England has officially made me a dedicated tea drinker. Now, don't get me wrong, I've always had a love of tea. But, in the states, this adoration was mainly restricted to herbaly teas of the green and mint variety. Not being a coffee drinker, in London every morning I start off my day with what I now consider the perfect morning pick-me-up: English breakfast tea with milk and 2 splendas.

On this journey to tea dedication, I have learned some important lessons that most British people already know:

1- There are different types of tea for different times of the day

2- Different types of tea need different water temperatures

3- Water temperature DOES matter (boiling vs. just before boiling)
4- Milk in tea is AMAZING
5- Sugar type makes a difference (white vs. brown- I am a brown/unrefined sugar fan, but, due to obvious caloric issues, I have now switched to splenda)

6- Steeping time is very important and varies from tea to tea

I never really understood why hotelrooms the world over had tea and kettles in the room. I mean, who drinks that much tea? Well, thanks to living in London: I DO! Often, when bobby and I are travelling, we will arrive at a hotel, set down our luggage, and the first thing out of either of our mouths is "fancy a cup of tea?" (Yes, we do say "fancy," this is said half jokingly/mockingly and half seriously because I fear that the British version of that word has now legitimately infiltrated our vocabulary. If we were REALLY British, we would just say "fancy a cuppa," but I'll save the state of despair that is grammar in this country for another post.) We will then sit in the hotel room for 15 minutes or so enjoying our cup of tea before we go face whatever strange new place to which we have travelled.


My dedication to tea may be one of the few life-long impacts living in London has on me. I could see myself loving it forever (using the word "fancy" on the other hand, I hope to drop upon my return to America!).

Belgium

We went to Belgium almost two weeks ago. It was amazing and we have some wonderful photographs. Bobby, however, is in charge of that blog which means nothing may be post for another month or so. If you speak with him, yell at him to blog on belgium. He's currently working in Chester (northern England) 3 days a week. What else does he have to do in his hotel room at night? He might as well be blogging.

oh yeah, we went to Dublin

About a month ago, we went to Dublin for a weekend to celebrate one of my London friend's 25th birthdays. I won't go into much detail, as I've blogged about Dublin before, but here as the highlights:

Well, the biggest highlight of course is the fact that it was Lynsey's 25th birthday. She decided that she wanted to drink away her quarter-life-crisis (a life crisis that I think people drastically underestimate-i'm still dealing with mine), so Dublin seemed like the logical choice.

Lynsey and I out for her Birthday

Amid all of the drinking, we did actually fit in quite a bit of sight seeing. We took one of the fabulous free walking tours that i'm always raving about, and actually saw some major sites that Bobby and I had missed on our previous trip to Dublin.

Bobby and I at Crist's Church Cathedral

Bobby and I at Dublin Castle

Bobby at the Guinness Factory

Me at Hapenny Bridge

We had a great time, but, nonetheless, Dublin continues to be one of my least favourite cities in Europe. I ADORE the rest of Ireland, but Dublin as a city is just always kind of underwhelming to me.