Rounding Out the Blog

I've gotten a lot of questions from people about whether I will continue this blog or even start a new one now that i'm in the Virgin Islands. The answer, simply, is no. I mainly used the blog to keep in touch with family and friends and, now that I have a US telephone number again, I think you all can just call me to see what's going on in my life.

Bobby is doing a blog where he posts one photo he takes from the islands every day, so you can follow our adventures somewhat there: www.usvidailyphoto.com

I do want to write one more post rounding out our stay in London, but haven't had the time to do that yet. Hopefully soon.

For now, goodbye, thanks for following all of our adventures over the last 2 years. They were amazing. I miss London already, but am confident that the VIs hold many new and exciting things for us.

Crazy Man

As most of you know, whether to leave London or not has been a very difficult decision for me. I love this city, its vibrancy and beauty. I think that it is the single greatest city in the world and that I will never be as constantly stimulated by a place as I have been here. Every day, I go back and forth with myself as to whether i'm actually ready to leave.

A few nights ago, I was having one such argument with myself as I was walking some trash to the dumpster around 9:30 pm. As I was returning to our flat, a man on the street walked right up to me and spat in my face for no apparent reason. I stood there, stunned, before yelling a profanity. The man then started yelling even louder and more vulgar profanities, which made me realize that he could do a lot worse to me than spit in my face. I ran back to the flat and locked myself inside, shaken from the experience.

So, I would like to thank you, crazy Bangladeshi man on the street, for confirming that leaving London is the right decision. I now think that I am ready to leave. When i'm sitting on the beach in St. Thomas, my heart yearning for the hum of London, I will remember how much higher my risk of getting Tuberculosis from crazy people with a habit of spitting in unsuspecting victims mouths is in London and be happy I left.

Things I Love About London, Part X: The Sunday Roast

A second blog about food I like in the UK? Well, yes, but I don’t think any of the food that is involved in a Sunday Roast (other than Yorkshire Pudding) is specifically British, so I’m not giving them credit for this one.

One of our favourite Sunday traditions while living in London has become sleeping in on a Sunday morning, only rousing ourselves around 2 or so that we can wander over to the pub and get a Sunday Roast. What is a Sunday Roast? Imagine a mini-Thanksgiving dinner once a week and you’ll be on the right track.

Traditionally, Sunday Roasts are served at pubs, but you can also get them at most restaurants and cafes. They’re generally served from about 12-5 on a Sunday afternoon and are perhaps the greatest hangover cure of all time.

A Sunday Roast usually consists of:

· Some sort of roasted hunk of meat (usually beef, chicken or lamb although we have found pork and vegetarian options in some places)
· Veggies (roasted or steamed carrots, broccoli, cabbage….)
· Yorkshire Pudding (*drool* see previous post)
· Gravy (enough said)
· Potatoes (mashed or “mash” as the Brits say or sometimes roasted)
· Pint of Beer (optional, but strongly encouraged)

After spending an hour or so at the pub eating your roast and watching a football (aka soccer) game, you’re just full enough to go home and go back to sleep- making your Sunday completely unproductive and incredibly perfect.

Things I Love About London, Part IX: Yorkshire Pudding

Since my time in London is rapidly coming to an end (less than a month now), I figured I should do a few final frantic blog posts on things I love about London. I often feel that there are too many to count, but these are a few I have been meaning to blog about for awhile.

Things I Love About London, Part IX : Yorkshire Pudding

You may have noticed that quite a few of my Things I Miss About America blogs revolve around food, but very few of my Things I Love About London blogs do the same. That’s because, quite simply, I find British food horrible. Everything is rather flavourless, deep fried, and overcooked. Yesterday, I saw a sign outside a restaurant advertising boiled bacon. Only the British could manage to ruin something as amazingly delicious as bacon.

There is one huge exception to my dislike of British food. That is the little bit of heaven that is known as Yorkshire Pudding. Now, let me start off by explaining that in England, pudding can refer to either a sweet or savoury bread-based product. Also, in England, all desserts are referred to by the general term “pudding.” So, it can be a bit confusing. What we (the Americans) know as pudding (aka- the custard-like deliciousness that is always associated with Bill Cosby in my mind) doesn’t really exist here- much to my disdain.

In the case of Yorkshire Pudding, “pudding” refers to a savoury bread-like product that is served with the main part of a meal. It originated in the Yorshire region of England (hence the name) in the 1700s because cooks wanted to make use of the leftover meat-droppings at the bottom of the pan after cooking a roast. They combined these droppings with batter, and Yorshire Pudding was born.

As these cooks found out, and I now know, batter + animal fat/juices = AMAZING. Today, Yorkshire Pudding is most often served with a Sunday Roast (see future blog post). If you’re lucky, it will come in little bowl shapes and be filled with gravy (*drool*). I should have let bobby blog on this topic, because he has actually made Yorkshire Pudding for me from scratch on a number of occasions. How something can taste so amazingly delicious and buttery without actually using any butter is beyond me.

Yorkshire Pudding may be the only culinary import I bring back to America.

Things I Miss About America, Part X: No Butter on Sandwiches

I first encountered butter on sandwiches when I was living in East Africa. The housegirl of the family I lived with in Nairobi would never let me do any of my own cooking, even if it was something as simple as a sandwich. So, when I asked her to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (more accurately, when she kicked me out of the kitchen after attempting to make my own), it would be delivered to me as a peanut butter and jelly and regular butter sandwich. I thought this was a weird East African custom because, when I moved to Uganda, I found butter on sandwiches there as well. Upon my arrival in the UK, however, I learned that East Africa had actually adopted this odd habit from its colonizers.

In London, you’ll be hard pressed to find a sandwich without butter on it. Ham and Cheese? Nope. Ham and cheese and butter. Turkey? Nope. Turkey and butter. I guess I could understand butter on its own in sandwiches, but they’ll often start with butter and then add mayonnaise or mustard on top of it. I just don’t get it. To me, butter doesn’t have much of a taste, so what are you getting out of it (other than the obvious extra calories)?

I’m looking forward to moving back to the states where I can order a ham sandwich without having to say “no butter please”.

Things I Love About London, Part VIII: American Holidays

This title may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but one of my absolute favourite things about London is celebrating American holidays here. I found that expats fall into basically two categories: 1- Those who have left the states, grow to feel more disillusioned by it, and plan on (or atleast say they plan on) never going back and 2- Those who have left the states, grow to feel more longing and love towards it, and definitely plan on going back (“once this whole European/African/Asian adventure is over”). I definitely fall into the ladder category. I have become a more proud and more defensive American than I ever thought possible while living in America.

One of the best ways I have found to express this new-found nationalism is to go all out on American holidays! This is great because, as it turns out, almost all the holidays we celebrate in America (save Christmas and New Years) are American Holidays. St. Patrick’s day- American holiday. Valentie’s day- American Holiday. 4th of July- well that one’s obvious. If the Brits don’t celebrate it, that means that the American expat community celebrates 10 times as hard.

Halloween is a great example of this (definitely an American holiday, as it turns out). The Brits have started to celebrate it a bit, but it’s still seen as a mostly American thing. So, this year we decided to go all out! Some friends and I went as the entire cast of the Wizard of Oz. I was the Wicked Witch (although I was trying to channel more of an Elphaba feel) and we had the Good Witch, a Cowardly Lion, a Tin Woodman, Dorothy, and a Scarecrow (bobby). We had a great time partying with other Americans and Brits who appreciate our festive sprit. We even won best group costume!!


I definitely see myself moving back to the states and becoming disillusioned by it again (Where’s the free healthcare??). But for now, it’s great to be patriotic.

Oktoberfest

Did I forget to mention that we went to Oktoberfest? Oh yeah, we went to Oktoberfest (at the end of September, which is when Oktoberfest takes place- don't let the name fool you).

We flew into Munich on Friday Morning and left on Sunday afternoon.

I wish I could tell you all about it, but to be perfectly honest, I don't remember much of Friday and I was so miserably hungover on Saturday that I didn't have that much fun. Those beers are MASSIVE. I woke up Saturday morning having realized that I lost my cell phone and had a HUGE bump on my head that turned into a nice bruise later. I did, however, gain a much-coveted stolen beer stein (if they find you stealing one at Oktoberfest, you can get a fine and kicked out!) so I guess it wasn't all a loss.

From what I remember, Oktoberfest consists of sitting in large tents with lots of very friendly Germans, eating surprisingly delicious food (Ox meat, pickles, pretzels, chicken...), and drinking the LARGEST BEERS YOU HAVE EVER SEEN. You also sing Germans songs, the words to which we never actually learned- even after having our new german friends say them over and over again to us very slowly. We went all out and bought lederhosen and dirndls- everyone thought we were locals!

Enjoy the following pictures and help me try to piece together the weekend......

Us in our dirndls and lederhosen

To be a waitress at Oktoberfest, you have to be able to hold A LOT of those HUGE beers at once.

Inside and outside at Hofbrau Haus- one of the main tents at Oktoberfest.

We're Moving to the Virgin Islands!!!

That’s right people, we’re abandoning Europe for the beautiful beaches of St. Thomas!! We plan on leaving London in mid-December, spending Christmas at home and being in the Virgin Islands for new years.

If you’ve every hung out with bobby, you’ve heard him talk about his best-friend/life partner, Jacob. Well, a few years ago Jacob started a computer company which he recently re-located to St. Thomas (for tax reasons). Jacob’s been trying to get Bobby to work with him for ages, but it took moving to a tropical paradise to entice us to leave London. Right now, the plan is to be in St. Thomas for 2-3 years. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing down there yet, any suggestions in that area are welcome.

Obviously, we’re super excited about living on St. Thomas. I’m looking forward to a much more laidback and healthier lifestyle. However, part of me is really sad to be leaving London. I adore this city and everything it has to offer. Hopefully we’ll be back some day.

We plan on getting a place big enough to have a guest room, so visitors welcome!!

The fate of the blog is, as of yet, unknown. Now that I’ll have a US telephone number again, I feel like it will be easier to keep in touch with people without it, but we’ll see how things go.

Laura Update

I'm not sure how many people actually read this blog (you all are not great about commenting), but I've had a lot of people asking about how i'm doing so I thought I would give a little update.

I feel AMAZING!! The surgery went better than I could ever have hoped. I had a little bump in the road about a week after returning home from the hospital which landed me back there for a few days, but that was my own fault. I got a little excited and introduced new foods into my diet too quickly. I now have that back in control and am feeling great!! I'm already months ahead of where to doctors said I would be at this point. So yay!! If British people weren't so stand-offish and afraid to show emotion, I would give my surgeon and big hug and kiss next time I saw him.

Also, thanks to nationalized healthcare, it was all FREE!!

Bodies in Urban Spaces

This weekend a performance came to London that was simply fantastic. A photography group I've joined alerted me to Bodies in Urban Spaces, a group of dancers that cavort around the city and form crazy sculptures with their bodies. There were probably 200-300 spectators that trailed behind the performers for about an hour as we walked along the south bank of the Thames.

I'll let the pictures below speak for themselves. I've uploaded a bunch to Flickr, so you can check the full list out if you want to see more.

Phantom of the Opera

We finally got around to seeing Phantom of the Opera in London. I have little to say about it other than that it was FANTASTIC!!!! I mean, SPECTACULAR!! I'm listening to the soundtract as we speak and haven't stopped singing it for the last week. If you've never seen it, you must go!

I was really keen on seeing Phantom after seeing Wicked and being somewhat disappointed by it. Everyone said that Wicked was the best musical ever "next to Phantom of the Opera" so I thought that it may pull through for me where Wicked failed- and it did! We saw it performed at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End and it was the perfect experience. The theatre is actually quite small, which means that every seat gets the full spectacular experience. The cast was beyond words- their performance was truly perfection.

A big thanks to Kim for buying us the tickets! I would go back and see it again tonight if it weren't so darn expensive!!

I'm still a huge fan of Avenue Q, and it might actually remain my favourite musical, but if you want the true West-End experience, nothing beats Phantom!

Stonehenge

Now that I’m home from the hospital and recuperating nicely, time to catch up on what we were doing for the few weeks leading up to my operation.

My friend Sarah (who I met in Kenya and subsequently worked with in DC) came out for a visit, so I was able to explore some new parts of England with her. She wanted to go to Stonehenge, a place I had yet to visit, so I was happy to join her for this day-trip from London.

We woke up early and took the train from London’s Waterloo station to Salisbury, about a 2 hour ride. Once we arrived in Salisbury, we paid to take have one of the touristy buses take us out to Stonehenge itself. The mystical monument is only about 25 minutes from the town of Salisbury, but a taxi will charge you £35 for the round-trip ride and doesn’t include the informative and mood-setting dialogue that the £17 tourist bus gave us, so I would definitely recommend the bus choice.

On the way to Stonehenge (“The most impressive stone circle in the world” according to the tour), we learned important information like the fact that it is super old, nobody knows why the hell it exists or who built it, and that its probably not as mystical as all the rumors and folk lore make it out to be. There is little information on Stonehenge not because of its mystical nature, but because its just too old for us to hazard a guess as to its use. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in this aspect of Stonehenge. I would have been much more impressed if they would have just played up to the fantastical rumors. Instead of “early people of England built this stone circle a long ass time ago probably for some boring purpose like a calendar,” I would have liked to have heard “we don’t know why this stone circle is here- it was probably aliens or some kind of druid human-sacrifice altar.” It may be historically inaccurate, but it would have been much more worth the £6 entry fee I paid.

I was also a little disappointed by the scale of Stonehenge. I mean, sure, those rocks are big. I mean, I couldn’t move them and according to our tour the biggest one weights as much as 25 elephants, but they didn’t actually look all that impressive in person. Maybe its because you can’t get that close to them (the circle is fenced off), but pictures I had seen of Stonehenge made them seem much bigger.

The thing I WAS impressed with from Stonehenge is the fact that the stones from the inner circle came from the mountains of Wales- 250 miles away. They managed to move stone pillars weighing nearly 6 tons 250 miles without the use of modern machinery. Historians are still not sure how they did it.

After we finished our tour of Stonehenge, we headed back to Salisbury to explore the town a bit. I would call it a fairly typical British town. One item of note is that the Salisbury Cathedral houses one of the few original copies of the Magna Carta.

So, would I go back to Stonehenge? No, probably not. In the end, it was just kind of underwhelming. I’m glad I saw it once, but that’s definitely all you need. If you have an extra day in London or if you’re driving by Salisbury anyways, it might be worth your trip, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. There are much better day trips from London that I would recommend first.

LAURA IS HOME!

Hooray!!!!

Recovery Update

Hooray! Laura is feeling quite well and starting the road to recovery (and is even eating some food now).

She will be coming out of hospial on Wednesday, less than a week after going under the knife. I will be very happy to have her back at home and resting.

Surgery Complete

Laura is out of surgery and recovering nicely. She's already been up walking around, but is (obviously) very tired after the ordeal.

Thanks for all of the warm wishes, I'll keep updating the blog as we progress.

Surgery Tomorrow!!

So, this second surgery kinda snuck up on me. It's tomorrow!! I just had my pre-op appointment, and it looks like everything's a go. I should be under the knife around 11, so positive thoughts welcome at that time. As per last time, Bobby will be updating the blog with any post-surgery announcements. If everything goes according to plan, I hope to be home from the hospital on Monday!

Wish me luck!!

The Wizard of Oz

Watching the original version of The Wizard of Oz, in all of it's Technicolor© glory, is quite a strange experience in your mid-twenties. Sure, I remember the story (wicked witch, crazy chick in a tornado, lots of little munchkins), but the details are both fascinating and kind of disturbing.

Last weekend, one of our first stay-in-London weekends in quite some time, we went to the Prince Charles' Cinema with some friends. In the "Upstairs" part of the theatre, they have new releases, while "Downstairs" they show lots of movies that aren't running elsewhere for super cheap.

There were a few general things that struck me while watching The Wizard of Oz. First, for a movie release in 1939, this film has some fantastic production value and staying power. Second, after having seen Wicked (but not read the book yet), my whole world view of The Wizard of Oz is completely skewed. And finally, a whole lot of this movie is quite campy - the theatre cracked up during the munchkins scene, and just about every time the Cowardly Lion opened his jaws.

The details that I had forgotten, or never saw in the first place, were what really stuck out watching on the big screen.

• After the wizard demands that the group bring back the broomstick of the wicked witch, the scarecrow somehow comes up with a gun. A gun?!? What kind of message is that in a land 'over the rainbow'?
• The Scarecrow - immediately after being granted his Diploma - states "The sum of the square of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square of the remaining side." WRONG! C'mon, we all know that the Pythagorean Theorem only applies to right triangles, not isosceles.
• The cables holding up the Lion's tail, or carrying the flying monkeys, are something you really only see on the big screen. I'm sure the 'digitally remastered' version has photoshopped those out, but it carries a certain spark of realism and grounds the movie into the era in which it was made.
  

In any case, it was a lovely day out and a fun way to spend time on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

The Lake District

For the final phase of our whirlwind UK tour with Kim and Ed, we headed to the English Lake District. A popular retreat for hikers and campers, it is famous for its lakes and its mountains (or fells), and its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth and the Lake Poets.

We decided to stay in a little town called Ambleside, which is just near the largest of the Lakes, Windermere. We lucked out and had fabulous weather the entire time we were in the Lake District, so we spent our time hiking around the mountains and even took a nice little boat ride out on lake Windermere. There are many pre-planned and well marked hiking paths, so we opted for one that was supposed to take about 4 hours and looped around to lake Windermere, a little town called Troutbeck, and back. The hike actually ended up taking us about 6 hours (maybe we’re slow walkers?) but it was some of the most breathtaking scenery I’ve ever seen in the UK.

We stayed at a fabulous little B&B in Ambleside called 3 Cambridge Villas. We were treated to a full English breakfast every day (toast, eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, roasted tomatoes, tea, coffee) and the owner Sue was simply fabulous.

After our jaunt in the Lake District, we headed back to London.

Scotland, Part II: Edinburgh and Stirling

We arrived in Edinburgh to find that there were cops everywhere and that many of the streets were shut down (much to the chagrin of our driver, Bobby, and to the confusion of our TomTom navigation system that we named Sean). It turns out that there were so many street closures because we happened to arrive on the last day of the Edinburgh International Festival. I was kind of bummed that I hadn’t found this out beforehand because we might have attended a day or two of the festival if I had planned for it. We did, however get to catch the closing fireworks which were fantastic as a background for Edinburgh very gothic-feeling skyline.

The next day, we took one of the free walking tours that I’m always pimping out on this website. As per the usual, our guide was young and quirky and took us on a fun and informative tour of the city. We learned about the history of Edinburgh castle, the Stone of Destiny, some stuff about Harry Potter that I wasn’t especially interested in (I guess it was written in Edinburgh?).

I was, however, highly entertained by the history of witch trials in Edinburgh. I guess Scotland was at the forefront of witch-hunting in the middle ages. I don’t find this especially surprising; I just found it humorous that, according to our guide, witches were accused based on three characteristics - red hair, freckles, and a third nipple. If they had all three of these characteristics they were thrown into the Nor Loch (a lake that used to exist adjacent to Edinburgh but has since been drained) to see if they floated. If they did float, they were a witch. If they didn’t float, well, then they were just a dead regular human. I guess Monty Python is surprising historically accurate after all.



Once we finished our walking tour, we proceeded to do what is always my favourite activity in any new city/country we visit: test the local food!! In the case of Edinburgh, this consisted of three things:

1- Haggis: a dish containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours. This was surprisingly delicious! It ended up tasting like a spicy sausage and was served with mashed turnips and potatoes (“neeps and tatties”). I’ve learned from my Scottish co-worker that M&S sells a nice haggis in London, so I plan on buying more here!
2- Deep-Fried Mars Bar: um, the name kinda says it all. A mars bar is like a milkway bar. They dip it in some kind of batter and then deep-fry it. This was (unsurprisingly) AMAZING!!! It seems that the Scotts deep-fry everything. In the same shop that was selling the deep-fried mars bar, deep-fried haggis, hamburger patties, hot dogs and pizza was also being sold.
3- Irn-Bru: This is a soda produced in Scotland. It is of note that this soda outsells coke and pepsi COMBINED in Scotland- the only country in the world that can say this about one of its home products. It tasted like crème soda.

We spent the rest of the day stuffing ourselves full of local grub and tasting more whisky in bars around Edinburgh. The following morning we headed towards the English lakedistrict, taking a little detour to visit Stirling and its historic castle.

Major battles during the Wars of Scottish Independence took place at the Stirling Bridge in 1297 and at the nearby village of Bannockburn in 1314 involving Scottish freedom fighters William Wallace and Robert the Bruce respectively. Stirling is also home to the William Wallace National Monument. I really enjoyed Stirling. It was much more of a proper castle than Ballandoch and we were led on a wonderful tour that gave us a history of not only the castle itself, but also the fight for Scottish independence.

After Stirling, we headed onto the lakedistrict.

Scotland, Part 1: Inverness and Speyside

Bobby’s mom Kim and step-dad Ed came out to visit us last week. We decided that we didn’t want to do anything too travel-intensive, so we opted to stay in the UK for this trip. We wanted to start the adventure with a train ride to Inverness, Scotland, but, after learning that it takes 8 hours on a train to get to Inverness, decided to fly instead.

Inverness is known as the gateway to the Scottish Highlands. Most people begin their journeys here and go on to explore northern Scotland and the Isle of Sky. It’s also very popular because it’s right next to Loch Ness! We opted to drive south after Inverness, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to drive around Loch Ness and look for its most famous inhabitant: Nessie. The weather didn’t really cooperate with us, but Inverness and Loch Ness were beautiful all the same.

Some pictures around Loch Ness

I found Nessie!

After Loch Ness, we decided to drive down to Edinburgh. We took a little detour along the way to visit Ballandoch Castle and the Speyside Whisky Trail.

As far as castles go, I didn’t find Ballandoch all that impressive. It was rather small and, well, just not very castle-y. It is still privately owned, which seemed awesome to me beforehand because the family still actually lives in the castle! However, once we were inside, the fact that it was still inhabited made it kind of creepy. There were family photographs everywhere and the furniture didn’t seem very historically accurate (because, really, who wants to actually sit on a 14th century sofa?). I felt like I was sneaking around someone’s house instead of exploring a castle- which I guess is exactly what I was doing.

To Ballandoch’s credit, however, it did have some very beautiful gardens!


After raiding the private home of a wealthy family for awhile, we continued on to the Speyside Whisky Trail. Ed wanted to visit Glenlivet, the only Scotch whisky distillery he’d every heard of, and that’s exactly where we ended up! We were led on a nice little free tour around the distillery by and elderly gentleman who obviously had no idea how much Ed, Kim and Bobby already knew about alcohol production. Bobby and I have visited quite a few breweries in our travels and Kim and Ed brew their own beer. I was excited because, while I find brewery tours HORRIBLY boring, this was a distillery, and maybe it was more exciting? Wrong. It turns out that whisky is made exactly the same way as beer (the first step to whisky is infact beer), you just distil it over and over until a lot of the water is gone. Or atleast I think that’s what the guy was saying, I don’t know, I zoned out due to too much standing and boredom.

However, whether it be brewery and distillery, you always put up with the tour because you know at the end there will be the magical prize of free booze. We were presented with 3 different “drams” of Glenlivet whisky at the end of the tour. A 12-year-old (the youngest they sell), an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old cask-strength (aka, not watered down at all). I grabbed my free glass, took a whiff, and realized in a moment of utter disappointment that there was no way I was ever going to be able to convince my body to swallow something that smelled like that. It turns out that Kim is also not a fan of whisky, so Ed and Bobby got to drink all of our free samples.


After Glenlivet, we headed south, leaving the highlands on our way to Edinburgh.

Tips from Part 1 of our trip:

1. Inverness is totally skipable. I guess you should go if you want to see Loch Ness and this is definitely the best jumping-off-point for the highlands, but as a city by itself, it doesn’t have much to offer.
2. If you’re going to try and do whisky distillery tours, don’t choose to do them on a Sunday. Most are either not open at all or close early.
3. I wouldn’t recommend Ballandoch castle- choose to visit a government owned castle or one held in trust instead. It’s the same price and you won’t feel like you’re invading someone’s privacy!