England 08 in juicy detail - part 4

London

On the day before Christmas Eve Ruthie had kindly organised a day in London for us, including dinner and a show! Joining us on our London adventure were Ruth, Bridget and Katy, a friend of Ruth's from school. Katy was a blessing as she acted as our tour guide for the trip, and she was tall enough that we could keep an eye on her in the crowd! Actually, London was surprisingly uncrowded given that Christmas was moments away.

It was comforting to see a local using a map, and she'd even brought a guidebook with her so that we could swat up on the train. We caught the train from Bedford to St Pancras (missed the fast train by moments but I enjoyed the trip) and then the tube to St Paul's, our first stop, so that we could check out the cathedral. I love that it's in cheapside! Does this look like cheapside??

Not sure what these guys at the bottom did but it looks like they're in trouble!

From here on in my memory of the actual route we took gets a little muddy, partly because I was too busy looking at other stuff like phone boxes and taxis and bollards and architecture, and partly because I was totally and utterly lost the minute we stepped foot outside St Paul's station! London was big and maze like and confusing as anything but also so uniquely wonderful that I'd go back in a flash.

I loved this random wall (somewhere in Cheapside I think...)

My obsession with phone boxes continues

I think maybe we took the Tube to Covent Garden. I was terribly confused by the lack of garden and spent a few hour surreptitiously looking out for it before I finally asked where it was! Seems it used to be a garden market. Now it is just plain trixie. I just loved being there, partly because it is featured in one of my favorite books but mostly because it was so alive and full of interesting shops and cobbled lane ways and good food smells. Speaking of good food, one of the big draw cards for hitting Covent Garden in the first place was so that I could stick my head into Neal's Yard Dairy (farm cheeses from the British Isles - who could resist such a byline!!), however this was the only time that being so close to Christmas bit me in the bum. The line to get into the cheese shop was ginormous, and since it was freezing I didn't want to subject our merry crew to standing around just so that I could wander in and sniff cheeses. Oh well, next time!

Neal's Yard Dairy cheese shop... And I bet it is totally worth the queue!

While in Covent Garden Katy managed to talk her way (with us close behind) into the Royal Opera House where we proceeded to the top floor tea house. We were not the best dresses people there, let me tell you, and apart from one overheard snide remark about wearing jeans we did ok. It was probably a little too cold to take our coffee and cake on the balcony but the view was worth it!

The view from the Oprea House. The markets are in the glass boxes in the middle. You can also see the Eye way out in the background.

From there we wandered through the market stalls, now selling handmade jewelery and such instead of fruit and veg, and perused some fancy dress shops mostly because they had good heating and we needed to stoke the internal fires a tad. We saw several human statues, including a gold man on a bicycle, a man dressed like a tree who spoke like a bird, and the head of a man in a dog carrier (his face was painted to look like a puppy and the rest of him was under the table that the carrier sat on). The best thing was seeing all the statues having their break and taking cups of tea together! I should have photographed them but memories of the Roman centurions at the Colluseum stopped me. Since the occasional top ups in the botiques weren't cutting it we decided to hit a classic British establishment, the pub, to warm our cockles and get some food in our bellies. Hot chips seemed to be the order of the day and boy were they good! Big, fat, hot and tatsy chips... not like the dry but greasy twiglike 'fries' that pass for chips in the US. I broke from the pack and ordered a small serve of whitebait and was awfully pleased with myself - they were delicious! (although much larger than their Aussie cousins)

From Covent Garden I think maybe we walked to Trafalgar Square, the heart of London, where we of course saw Nelson's Column and the lions but also the enormous Christmas tree that was a gift from Norway.

Trafalgar Square and the Norwegian Christmas tree

Pic of the impressive Admiralty Arch. I believe Buckingham Palace is away behind there, but we didn't drop in on the Queen.

I loved the buses too!

From Trafalgar we walked to Piccadilly Circus and the big TDK sign, which was quite surreal.

Our merry crew looking cold!

I assume this is the entrance to Piccadilly Station

We walked along the sweeping curve of Regent Street as the light was draining from the sky and suddenly the Christmas decorations were all around us and just gorgeous!

Stars on Regent Street

Giant floating snow-people

(ok, the giant snow-people were a tad scary...)

Liberty is a gorgeous old department store that we came upon at some point around here in our wanderings

After a little shopping (I just had to stop in a Ben Sherman - but the shirt I wanted was a horrible cut) we left this end of town and caught the tube to somewhere else that I forget but it had a short name, Bank maybe? We were heading to our finale of dinner and a show! Dinner was at a little Italian restaurant just near the theatre that Ruth and Katy had pre-organised, and it was a great choice. Seeing both antipasto (all meat) and spaghetti alla vongole on the menu was a definite plus for me!

My antipasto...mmm

After dinner (including a finaly of lemon sorbet and lemonchello!) we headed across the road to the Apollo Victoria theatre to see Wicked! And wicked it was. What a great show! I took a while to warm to it but once it got going it was just superb. Everything a good musical should be. I'd like to read the book now because the story was much more solid than I expected, but the sets and costumes were just brilliant! It's a shame you couldn't take pics after the curtain call but I guess I would have needed a much better camera to do it justice.

The sets for wicked were just amazing!

All in all we had a perfect day. Thanks to Ruthie and Katy for organising the trip and tour-guiding us and putting up with my constant stop-start photo taking!

England 08 in juicy detail - part 3

Seems I broke blogger, no idea what's wrong but I'm having trouble...maybe I really did overdo the bandwidth!

There are two last things I need to explain...One is 'hedge-hogged' and the other is the cake that Bridget and I decorated.

The cake is fairly simple... Ruthie handed us a perfectly iced Christmas cake and a box of assorted decorations and said 'go to it'. It quickly became apparent to us that the box contained a marauding horde of rogue-zombie-snow people who were stampeding their way across the cake towards a cluster of terrified children huddled around the feeble shelter of a lamp post. Or at least that's what I saw...


Hedge-hogged is slightly more complex... One of my wishes while in the UK was to see a real live hedgehog, but it was quickly pointed out to me that it was mid-winter and the little buggers were hibernating. Seeing my crestfallen expression Uncle Tim promptly announced 'oh no Jac's Christmas has been ruined!' This event was followed by other people having their Christmas ruined (ie. by not getting the right coloured crown or losing uno or there not being any walnuts in the house) and the cry of "my Christmas has been ruined" soon changed to "my Christmas has been hedgehogged!" Ruth, bless her heart, salvaged my Christmas by presenting me with a little hedgehog of hers for Christmas, which I promised to take and document his travels on the blog. So here he is enjoying a Texas winter morning on our balcony.

The traveling hedgehog

Finally, here are a few random snaps of a very pretty village we drove through on the way to collect Jo's cousin Anna for boxing day lunch.



And since this is the part where we say goodbye to Heron House (for now) and move on to the next part of the trip, I thought I'd leave you with the wintry back garden on a deliciously sunny day. You can't really see from this photo but the lawn is very well aerated thanks to the trampling of footy boots! You can see the shadow of the goals though. I have some rather entertaining video of the boys playing football, cut short as the ball flew towards my head, which I might post later :D

The garden at Heron House

England 08 in juicy detail - part 2

Heron House
Sorry it is taking me a while to get these out! So where did I leave y'all, oh that's right, St Pancras Station. And what a station it is, whoo! It is HUGE, but light and airy and industrial and gorgeous all at the same time.




As I mentioned previously, while we stood at the boards waiting for a platform number to attach itself to the train we were after Jo's uncle Tim, who had ingeniously planned his own rail trip from Cornwall to coincide at this point, strolled over to us and introduced himself. Jo hadn't seen him since she was 14 but apparently it was my hair that tipped him off!

After a half hour train trip chatting to Tim we arrived at Bedford where I finally got to meet Aunty Ruth! I have heard so much about her and her family and we'd been talking online so I already felt like we knew each other, but it was even better to finally meet. Ruth was strikingly like Jeannie, but more overtly impish and cheeky!

Ruthie drove us to 'Heron House', where we would be spending the next four nights, which felt like a mini eternity given the hopping around we'd done so far. The addition of the Aussie stragglers meant they had a full house, since we were in addition to Uncle Keith, Keith's mum (our adopted Grandma for the visit), the cousins Phil, Tim, and Bridget, and of course Ruth and Uncle Tim (many Tims). That was the biggest collection of in-law-family I had met to date and it felt wonderful to be surrounded by people. And our thanks to all of the family for making us feel like we fit right in! Especially poor cousin Tim who gave us his room (known as the west wing) for us for the duration of the trip.

Heron House

I won't go through every little detail of our stay because it would become my most epic post yet. Let me just recap some highlights. That first night we had baked salmon and scalloped potatoes and quiche for the non-fishies and afterwards there was a cheeseboard! The board was laden with a local organic brie, a wonderfully sharp cheddar and a creamy, crumbly stilton that was just divine. The entire family teased me outrageously about my passion for said cheese!

The next day we went to London, but that trip deserves its own post. Christmas eve we slept until nearly lunchtime, recovering from a big day in London, our filthy colds and just traveling in general. I took a drive with Keith, Grandma and Bridge into a nearby village for supplies...well they went for supplies, I went for photos! The villages are gorgeous and while I should have been expecting them based on television exposure, it isn't quite the same as wandering one in real life. I loved the thatched roofs and the animals on top, also made out of thatch.






We also went for some good, get the blood flowing and let Jac take lots more photos kind of walks around Pavenham, including one where Jo, Bridge and I got gum-booted up (wellingtoned?) and hiked on out through the paddocks by the river (I want to call it the Greater Ooze but I know I didn't spell that right, and it definitely wasn't oozing!)

Jo and I looking like farmers!

Teasel

We also went for some lovely strolls around Pavenham with various family members. I was totally enamored with the houses and gardens and trees...I'd love to see some of them in the spring!

Pavenham

The church at Pavenham

I loved all the stone walls and conjoined houses

My absolute favorite tree

Other than walking we spent time just hanging out with the family, playing board games, watching the boys play football (and remembering not to call it soccer) and cooking/eating yummy food. Christmas eve we had a wonderful feast of gammon, which Ruthie had cooked in cider and all kinds of other yummy stuff then coated in mustard and spices and baked...oh wow was it ever good and so juicy! Then there was Christmas dinner...slow cooked turkey, three kinds of stuffing including a very old recipe for onion stuffing and a stunning sausage stuffing that I couldn't get enough of, roasted potato, sweet potato and parsnip, sprouts, pigs in blankets and Yorkshire puds!

Gammon dinner (sorry about the pic) including potato bake and delicious salad

Christmas dinner with all the good stuff!

I have to stop here apparently because it seems that I broke blogger, probably with the sheer size of this post.! More as soon as I can get it working again!!

England 08 in juicy detail - Part 1

Manchester and Leeds
Well I promised a more detailed write up of the trip so here we go. We arrived in Heathrow on the morning of the 19th and since the tailwind we had for the flight gave us a few extra hours we decided to splurge on a hearty breakfast in the airport. It was immediately apparent that we were in England, me with a huge plate of ham, eggs and chips and Jo with bangers and beans and eggs... wonderful! We quickly worked out the tube terminal transfer and made our way through to terminal 2 with almost no hitches. I say almost because the first train we hopped on never left the station, only shuddered a few times and went black. The official diagnosis was that the train was 'broken' so we hopped to the next platform and all was saved.

We took a one hour British Midlands flight to Manchester where we were met by Jo's Aunty Kate (her Dad's sister) and Uncle Chris, who kindly braved the cold, dark and wet Christmas traffic to collect us and drive us to Bolton, their home town just outside Manchester (a two hour round trip for them!) It was about 6pm and 2 degrees by the time we arrived at their house, where we promptly embraced both showers and food!

The next morning we were going to head out to a place called Styal Mill, but as it was back out in the same direction we had come, with most of the drive on the motorways, we changed plans and instead decided to go touring around Greater Manchester. It was cold but not too bad and a little drizzly, but luckily that was the only sign of rain we saw the entire trip!

It was an interesting drive from Bolton to Manchester, with Chris pointing out all the sites and explaining about the industrial history of the place while Jo and Kate chatted away in the back of the car. We stopped in Manchester and wandered a modern incarnation of a Roman road, overlooked by an enormous glass monstrosity known as Beetham Tower, currently the tallest building in Manchester and absolutely impossible to miss!

Beetham tower reflected in a canal

The Roman road...although I forget the actual name of the street!

Then we decided to mosy through MOSI, the Museum of Science and Industry, starting with a much needed coffee. The museum was wonderful! Ranging from trains to power generation to all kinds of communication, textile production and prehistoric computing. Kate and Chris were involved in getting the place started and knew a lot about it, so it was even better to wander with those possessing insider knowledge. The set of Coronation Street was just behind the museum too, but we didn't get to peek in there :)

One of the warehouses that make up the MOSI complex

Another coffee break later and we went to check out some canals and warehouse developments that were just gorgeous! Then is was off to the curry mile for lunch at a halal place called Saajan where the chicken kebabs were just so good!

Part of one of the canals

Later we went to the Salford Museum where they have the most wonderful section in the bottom level of the building that is set us as a tiny cobbled street full of Victorian era shops known as Lark Hill Place. My favorites were the toy shop, the tiny pub and the chemist and druggist! Oh and the mail box of course...



We headed home mid afternoon, partly because it was on the way to freezing but also because the cousins were coming down to have an early Christmas dinner with us! Robert from Sheffield where he is at Uni and Andrea and her partner Ronnie from Leeds. Dinner was wonderful and very traditional. Turkey with chestnut stuffing (so good), tiny sausages wrapped in bacon, sprouts, parsnip, carrots and roast spuds! All that was topped with gravy, bread sauce and apple cider jelly...oh boy!

The next morning Andrea and Ronnie drove us to their place in Morely, a little town outside of Leeds, and we were able to spend the next day and a half hanging out with them. They took us to the German Christmas market where they originally met, which was brilliant! There were rides and stalls selling all manner of Christmas trinkets and candy and food. We lunched on spicy sausages and potato pancakes made with finely grated spuds battered and fried! Perfect on a chilly day. We followed that down with hot chocolate or spiced wine and a brisk walk.




We also got to see the Town Hall where they are getting married later this year, and in the morning they took us for a walk around the reservoir lake in Tingley (what a brilliant name for a village). The light was perfect that morning and the lake and village were so pretty so of course I took a billion photos.




From Leeds we took the train to Bedford to meet Jo's Aunty Ruth (her mum's sister) and family. The train was a brilliant idea and much better (and less stressful) than us hiring a car. It meant we were both able to enjoy looking out the windows at the gorgeous countryside. The only down-side was the group of three obnoxious drunk folk in our carriage, but we survived with only the briefest of interactions and mostly they were just a minor annoyance. The train was surprisingly stress free and we only had one change, where we stopped at King's Cross and walked over the road to St Pancras to catch the final train to Bedford. I did have a rather shocking moment when I stepped out onto the street and realised I was standing in London, the real London!

More about that soon...

2009 - A wonderful time

I know I'm supposed to be posting the detailed account of our trip but I promise the first of those will be up tonight. We've been pretty busy since we got home. We went straight back to work, and we've both been trying to shake both jet lag and our colds, but making progress with both!

We totally piked on New Years Eve, making it to about 10.30 before dropping the ball, so to speak. We ushered in 2009 with a solid sleep, which seems like as good a start as any to me!

Yesterday was our 8 year anniversary (I know!) and we had a lovely time hanging out at home, getting the house in order and doing not much of anything. We didn't leave the house all day and it was just what we both needed. Back to work today though, but thankfully it is Friday :D I did spend most of the day painting, so I should have some pics up on the blog soon. It was great to be painting again but I got so absorbed that I'm completely paying for it today... my neck especially! Starting to wonder if I even moved. Ahh obsession...

Anyhow, Happy New Year everyone! Cheers!

We're home!

Just a quicky to say that we're back home and the flight was fine, no hitches, but the wait in Houston was the suck. Back to work today but I doubt it will be a full day! We both slept well so that should help.

The fridge is bare so I really need to address that tonight, and we have more washing than you can poke at stick at. However we are full of wonderful memories. Hoping we can make it back to England soon. Updates to follow as soon as we find our feet.

The wind up

Well it is our last day in Pavenham and we have had just the most wonderful time. Christmas was brilliant, really chilled out and so good to be with family. We took it easy in the morning then went to church with our adopted grandma, then Jo chatted to her folks in Australia while we sat around the tree opening presents. Lunch was a group effort (although Ruthie did the bulk of the hard work) and we ate at around 2. The food was brilliant, with a locally sourced turkey (slow cooked), pigs in blankets, three kinds of stuffing including a really old recipe for bread and onion stuffing, spuds, sweet potato, sprouts and bread sauce. I made the gravy but it wasn't tops because I didn't reduce it enough, but no dramas. We had grand plans for sweets but we were all so full that most of us opted to nap instead!

Today we've had more family to visit, another of Jo's aunt and uncles and another cousin, and we've all been hanging out and eating and going for brisk walks in the cold! Tonight we're heading to Elmswell (near Bury St Edmund's), our final destination for the trip really. We probably won't have the internets again until we get back to San Antonio on Monday night, so look out for some decent updates and pics after that. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and sorry we couldn't really call or txt.
I promise I'll explain this picture later ;)