Friday, March 6, 2015

London


In 20 days I will be touching down in London, annoyed that I have to wait in line at border control and just wanting to run and kiss the love of my life who will be waiting for me (as long as the train is on time!). We won't be spending any time in London other than in Heathrow, the setting of our wonderful hello and the dreaded goodbye. 

The first time around, we had a quick 4 days/3 nights in London. I was sick at the time so I lot of it is a blur for me, but we had some very lovely adventures together. 

Day one, after taking our train up to London and checking into our hotel, The Cavendish. After that we set off to explore Borough Market. We had watermelon, a sausage roll, steak pie, fresh squeezed juice and lots of free samples. I think we scoffed all the food too quickly to have any pictures though! Later that night, we explored Piccadilly Square, the M&M Store, had burritos for dinner, and I just took in all the sights I could. 

Our room at the Cavendish 


The next day we woke up bright and early to meet some very special friends. Tim and I met on Twitter and we both have been lucky enough to make friends with other Twitter folks. Sue and Kirsty are Tim's Twitter family and have taken me in as well. They happened to be in London just a few blocks from our hotel to run the BUPA London 10k so we had a quick meet up before they went off to the race. It may have only been about 20 minutes total, but I feel so lucky that I got to meet them and know they will both always be a part of my and Tim's Twitter family. 


We spent the rest of the day with Harry Potter, which I decided to continue as a later post :)

Our final full day in London was spent being tourists. We saw Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square and lots more. We tried to make a palace guard smile (and he did when Tim took a selfie) and I got attacked by the guard (kinda like this). We finished off with a date night out to Indian Express, which at the time of our trip was the top ranked Indian restaurant on Trip Advisor. 














And the final photo to leave you with...I will never forget London because it is the first time I had the chance to try Monster Munch after hearing about it episode after episode of An Idiot Abroad. Apparently I am not like the Mexican Family that seemed to really love eating it...


Thanks Karl Pilkington.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Southampton

In honor of my trip back to England later this month, here is my first trip to Southampton. We did not have as much time in Southampton as I would have liked because a) my vacations are never long enough, and b) we were too busy visiting other place (London, Paris, Bath), but the time we did have I loved. 

The first full day there we had a lovely walk around the castle walls of Southampton. It was the very first castle I've ever seen in person and it finally hit me that I was in England. I got to make my first purchase with GBPs (a water at a Boots), bought a lock for Paris at Poundland, saw the Mayflower memorial, went to Queen's Park and explored the City Centre. We even stopped in a real English pub for a cider and ginger ale. I may have sprained my ankle that day and gotten one of the worst sunburns England has ever seen, but it was a perfect first day. 




Unfortunately I don't have any other pictures of our time in Southampton but that's because they were just normal every day activities. Walking to the shop to get food to make, going to my first British Costco (and successfully getting Tim's mum hooked on it), dinner with his parents, discovering new British TV shows (Googlebox, Pointless), going to Southampton Common, and Tim forcing me to lead the way back home after a walk to see how well I was learning. I was introduced to a clothes horse, washing bowl, and the toilet being in a different room than the shower.

Even though we have a lot of things scheduled for our next trip, I am looking forward to getting back to Tim's hometown and learning more about life there. Less than 4 weeks to go and I could not be more excited!!