Merry Christmas

Though it was a drizzly day here in London, we had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with our house mates and had a delicious feast. Here are some pictures from today:



The food and fun were both great =) We've got quite a lot of other things to share as we've been out and about nearly every weekend this month, trying to pack in the experiences before we head back to CA at the end of this week! So hopefully we'll have stories and pictures of the castles of Wales, Roman Baths, Windsor, and Edinburgh before to long ...

happy belated thanksgiving

Before any more rural/exotic British adventures are posted, a quick, late, look back at our old country thanksgiving.

A couple weeks ago, on the Sunday following actual US thanksgiving, to be precise, we had our own thanksgiving here. As thanksgivings go, it was warm and fuzzy and buttery. Really - thanksgiving, as it turns out, is a very buttery holiday. Which is probably why it tastes so good. I know this because we cooked all day for it, and it took a lot of butter. But getting to eat leftovers for the week following is definitely worth the effort, and you only do it once a year... Which makes it okay, right? Anyway, it was only our second complete thanksgiving cooking session ever, but I think we did a good job, all by ourselves, except for the salad. First, the menu. We had:

Russell's Avant-Garde Beetroot & Pomegranate Salad

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Mushroom & Onion Gratin

Green Beans with Caramelized Shallots

Stuffing

Cornbread

Gravy

and of course, Turkey

For dessert: homemade apple pie, with vanilla ice cream

Yes, we ate dessert. Somehow.

Second, the cast. We were 9 for dinner: ourselves and our 4 housemates, one housemate-significant-other, Stephen, one Greek/Swede ex-model, Alex, and my friend Caroline Mair. Third, the process and the pictures. There was a lot of strange new world cooking in our English kitchen, let me tell you. Joey started it off the day before, when he made cranberry sauce from scratch. He also peeled and cored bushels of apples for the pie. (Joey loves him some thanksgiving dinner, and he's evidently not afraid to work for it.) On the morning in question, we rolled out of bed and directly into the kitchen, where birds were dressed, seasoned and basted, vegetables were sliced, diced, marinated, sauteed, roasted and otherwise adulterated, root provisions were attacked, cheeses grated, breads crumbed, and so on. This went on all day. But let's start at the beginning looking at pictures, shall we?

These are the beetroots that were picked fresh from the garden that morning



This is Russell, the beetroot grower, proudly displaying his babies, right before putting them to boil so he could put them in the salad and we could eat them.


Here is Joey, creating stuffing


The work in progress


Darkness fell, and still the faithful laboured on...


No detail was spared


And finally, (almost) everybody assembled, prepared to eat.
In this picture, clockwise from Joey: Russell, Stephen, Andrew, myself, Caroline, Graham, Alex.


The table, at the beginning of the meal


The triumphant entrance of the bird


Followed by its immediate decline


The delicious vegetables


And the hungry chefs. We're only smiling here because we're polite.


And finally, the very photogenic pie, which we were all excited to eat.


(Case in point)


There was after-dinner entertainment in the form of books


And of course photography



Orlando the cat, who we had very rudely failed to invite to the feast, saw an opening and went for it immediately.


It was a good evening. See the looks of contentment?


And then the next day, we got to do it again. :) The end.

tintern abbey

As part of our look at old South Wales this Saturday, we stopped at Tintern Abbey. I was determined to see the place because it was the inspiration for one of my favourite bits of verse, which is in Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey". We discovered a couple things there, the first and more mundane of which is that it is a great thing to take the self-directed audio tour offered at tourist sites. The one for the abbey was invaluable, with tastefully used gregorian chants and all, and the visit was probably infinitely better because we had them. You'll see them in the pictures. It might look like we're being strangely anti-social and listening to headphones individually while on a trip together, but, well, it was worth it.

The other thing we discovered is that attractions off the regular radar are fabulous and inspiring, especially when they come recommended by major literary figures, so to speak. The excerpt I love from Wordsworth's poem goes like this:

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Maybe it was the kind of solemnity that comes from ruins of graceful and austere places, the drama of bird's nests and puddles between stone arches and walls, the contrast to the bulk and military air of the castle we'd visited that morning, or maybe just the threat of rain. Either way
we may not be quite as eloquent as old Will, but we were definitely a reflective pair that afternoon. And we loved the place. Here's a panorama view from the inside. Be sure to click on it (and the later pictures) to get the full effect.


And for your edification, in case you have always been longing to know more about Tintern Abbey, are otherwise interested in the ruins of British history, or just like looking at pictures, here are a few images. We start with the abbey, as seen from the (relatively recent) road that runs in front of it:


That road takes us to the gift shop and welcome area:


This was where we got our handy and fab audio guides. Joey put his on and immediately looked more pensive and devout.


I was more than a little excited about it all, especially when we got inside the church building itself.


What used to be an abbey as fancy as any others we'll blog about, now has grassy floor and windows and roofs open to the sky.


Here's Joey, contemplating his own verses, on the grass.


The west window, with me for scale.


The South window, same scale.


And the outside view, of course complete with wind and rain.


There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the ruins at Tintern Abbey.

let's hear it for the boys

As the old adage says, anything worth doing is worth doing late. Okay, so maybe that isn't an old adage, maybe I just made it up, but it's still witty and it's still true. For my purposes today. The background to this post is that I got in trouble when our housemates (finally) had the link to the blog emailed them (worth doing late), because they looked at the thing and were dismayed to find themselves not on it. Apparently, the lake district is not as newsworthy as life with four older gay men. Now, more sharp tongued persons than myself might retort that the blog was started to tell of our adventures tramping about the urban/rural british landscape and not the inside details of our domestic lives, but the gentlemen think otherwise and anyway I'm not that kind of guest. So this post is meant to belatedly introduce the boys.

Our housemates are Marc, Graham, Russell and Andrew. Marc is the guy whose email convinced us that we might like to live in this house. We have lots of in-depth chats about books, and cling film (that's glad wrap, Trinidadians), which he avoids at all cost and I apparently can't use often enough. Graham works for the Guardian newspaper and loves 'walking', also known as 'hiking', and Andrew spends half the year leading tourist coach tours all over England (he's a font of useful tourist knowledge). One night I drank them both under the table, completely by accident. They were extremely witty and funny all evening, and I only found out I'd drunk them under the table when neither of them remembered their wit or humour the following day. You might say that the fact that I'm the only one who remembers it is questionable, but this is my blog and I'll write the story the way I want to. Russell works for a bank, but for his non-day job he curates exhibits of antique photographs. His non-day job takes him to places like Poland, Pakistan and Dubai. We also live with Orlando, who is a marmalade-coloured cat. She is absolutely adorable, except for when she yowls, which sounds like a bad feline imitation of a colicky baby. Orlando was not upset about not having been mentioned on the blog. But then again, she doesn't ever cook dinner, so I guess you can't have everything. The men cook dinner - we generally take turns at it - so we've had good exposure to proper english meals, from lamb with mint sauce to Bird's custard on pies. We've also benefited from insider's tips to London, travel advice as mentioned, and a guided trip to Brixton market. As far as living in a strange country goes, it's a pretty nice arrangement.

So now that I've finally introduced our housemates - let's call them the fabulous four - I'll try to keep them in the story line so I don't get in trouble anymore and the experience of life at Clapham Road is fully recorded (as opposed to life in the much less specific 'London'). There might even be a picture or two of them in the coming posts, which are belated accounts of things we did in the last few weeks, of course. Just don't expect anything too soon; you know how it goes.

Heathrow

As some of you know, Danielle and I flew back to Oklahoma for a weekend to be with family and remember my Grandma a couple weeks ago. While sad, it was also wonderful to learn more about her younger years, see old pictures, and be together as a big family which was one thing she always enjoyed. This post is about the eye-opening experience we had leaving London's Heathrow airport to get there.

Personally, I don't like air travel at all ... the only good thing it has going for it is the destination, the experience of traveling is usually tolerable at best. In all my years of travel, I have never seen anything like Heathrow. We got up 5:20am (or basically midnight Oklahoma time) to begin our journey, and caught one of the first trains of the day, arriving at the airport at 6:30 for our 9:20 flight. As an appetizer, this is what the check in line looked like for American Airlines after we'd be standing in line for 20 minutes:

Notice that we're standing between metal rails, this is not some freak occurrence, the line is that long regularly. They eventually called our flight at 7:40 (we were half way through the line at this point) and we got pulled into the express line for tardy people. We thought we'd be alright with an hour and a half to go, but the fun was only just beginning.

We went up the escalators to the security checkpoint, and, well, it blew my mind. The line stretched from the actual check point down the hall, past a dozen shops and restaurants, and out some doors.

We joined the procession of people searching vainly for the end of the line mouths wide open. The line went out some doors and made a sharp right, and as we rounded the corner things went from ludicrous to just comically unbelievable. The line went all the way down this hallway and out another set of doors.

We eventually found the end of it on the walkway from the parking garage to the terminal. This is a picture from the end of the security line, across a large construction site, to the Terminal where our flight was going to depart from:

And here's us at the end of line:

In that picture you can just see the neon green jacket of one of the poor people whose job it is, day in and day out to shepherd this monstrosity and explain to people that yes, this really is the security line and yes, even though it doesn't make any sense, they should stand in it. The poor man in line behind us knew what he was getting in to, he had arrived at the airport at 6 for his noon flight. It just wouldn't be complete without a little irony:

Anyway, the green jackets eventually called our flight and we joined the mad rush to the express line back out the doors, down the hall, out the other doors, passed all the shops, etc watching the poor people's faces walking the other way as various shades of disbelief passed over their faces.

The security check point as also unbelievable ... it was a huge row of 30 or 40 metal detectors all of them operating. Once we got through that, it was still over a 1/2 mile to our gate and we had to run as they said our flight was "closing." We got there, and after having our tickets and passports checked by seriously 4 different people, sat down exhausted in our seats. At which point a security guard came on looking for "Daniella" and needing to check her ticket one more time to verify that we were on the plane. Eight hours later, we had a brief and relatively painless stint at O'hare ... never thought I'd ever hear anyone say that. We were so very happy to eventually step out onto the red dirt of Oklahoma.

In conclusion, trains are much more civilized.

and the lakes, belatedly

To add fuel to the ‘north of England versus the south of England’ fire, the lake district turns up another big point for the north side. It was unbelievably beautiful. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Three frantic days of work after Devon, we got on the train to Cumbria. We’ve since decided that the extra cost of a flexible rail ticket is worth the peace of mind it offers (Yorkshire train angel, again, thank you). There, we picked up our super cheap rental car, which was surprisingly nice for the cost and was thankfully a manual transmission for the hills, bought a map, and headed to our bed and breakfast, which was clear on the other side of the region. And the drive was gorgeous. We decided to go when we did because after Neisha said the trees in Leeds had already lost their leaves, we panicked that we might miss the fall colors entirely. We probably needn’t have worried, but the timing was perfect anyway. The drive was a sequence of riotous fiery colors with interludes of lake views, little islands sitting serenely in the middles of thwaites, tarns and waters (all words for lake, reflecting viking, norman and other influences). Don't take my word for it, look at this picture:

We got to our B&B after dark, which was too bad because the google directions we'd brought were only mostly correct and our map covered every village in the lake district except the one we were staying in. Oops. And our mobile phone server was not working, so we couldn't call them for help. Double oops. Through some feat of navigation, luck and direction-asking, we got to it, and were very pleased in the end. If you're going to the lake district and want to be off the (very crowded) and beaten path, it's worth checking out Armidale Cottages. We told Sue, the lady of the house, that we'd put in a plug for her when talking about our travels, so here it is. Our room was warm and comfy, which is good because after trekking around the forests and lakes in the rain, we appreciated warmth and dry comfort. The full english breakfasts were extraordinary. Let's just say we didn't need or bother to have lunch a single day we were there. As b&bs go, it was excellent.

For the next three days we covered the spectrum of the region (I think). Day 1 was Wast Water, a kind of wild-looking lake off the edge of the regular tourist path that's apparently the place of choice for the more serious walkers (in England, 'walking' covers everything from going down the high street in high heels to conquering tall, treacherous, scree-sided mountains. Sir Edmund Hillary was a 'walker'). We made slow progress even though we'd planned a fairly easy trek, because we kept getting distracted by the foliage, the views, and the trillions of cute fluffy wet sheep. We also got a taste of the english rain/mist/precipation/dampness experience. Here are the contrasting views of Wast Water, the first taken on our way to the chosen vista, the second on our way back:



Day 2 was a more traditional lake experience, kind of, starting at an ancient stone circle, Castlerigg, that looks like a mini stonehenge (insert Spinal Tap movie joke here). We neither of us seem to have druid ancestry/leanings - I know that seems a little obvious - because we were much more interested in the view from the stone circle than the stone circle itself. After exploring that area a little, we went to the Derwent Water, which is an impossibly picturesque lake near the buzzing tourist town of Keswick, pronounced 'kezik'. Everything we encountered was so adorable that I'd bore you actually describing it, so here are a few pictures instead.

Adorable children dancing in front of adorable musicians at the lake's edge


Adorable view of the lake from an estuary between it and a bordering forest


Adorable cows in a nearby field

You get the idea.

To make sure we were properly tired at the end of the day we then packed in another 'walk' that included a visit to the Wordsworth museum (he's a darling son of the lake district) and cottage. Here is an illegal picture of Joey sitting in Wordsworth's chair. I hadn't yet been told that photography wasn't allowed when I took it, I promise.


That evening, having spent too much time soaking in the adorableness of Derwent Water etc., (literally, we got caught in the first downpour of the day - and it was a downpour - on our way back through Keswick) we drove, after dark, along a route that has been voted the most beautiful in Britain. Oh well. From the little bit of the side of the road that was lit by the car's high beams, I'll bet they're right about that. Why did we drive it in the dark? Well, our b&b hosts had recommended a country inn along the way as a real Cumbrian experience. Not being connoisseurs of such experiences, we can't say for sure whether they were right, but the food sure was good. And now we can say we've been along that route. Just don't ask what it looked like.

The delicious Cumbrian pub food:


Day 3, also the day we returned to London, we went to the place we'd spent so much time staring at from the stone circle, and it didn't disappoint. Sure, it was a bit soggy after the rains the night before, but you can't have everything. Then we stopped at Hawkshead for a village experience, took a brief walk, more pictures of sheep (sheep are for Joey what geese are for me), and made a stop at the Beatrix Potter gift shop. Ms. Potter is another treasured product of the lake region. Then we uneventfully got the rental car back to Enterprise, and uneventfully caught the train back to London. Thank goodness. The end.

devon

oops… okay, so I’ve been careful to be fully aware of how extraordinary things are, along this adventure now, day in and day out, and I’ve done a pretty good job since the last post. Not so good at the whole putting said extraordinariness into blog form, but I guess you can’t have everything. So here’s my belated Devonshire post. (Other belated posts to follow).

Devon: so polite. Really. So very polite. I’ll distill my impression of politeness to one city. Exeter. We didn’t spend very much time there – just the Monday of our delayed weekend, but for that whole day nobody pushed in front of anybody else, everyone said ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’ where appropriate, and random strangers stopped to give helpful directions if we looked in the least perplexed by our surroundings or uttered the words ‘where’ and ‘is’ in sequence. Goodness. It was like manners heaven. Which is good, because for tourism, I’m afraid York has Exeter beat. Please don’t tell that to anyone from the south of England, because then I might get beat. They’re very serious about the south being ‘better’ than the north. Almost as serious as I am about using quotation marks in this post. But back to the subject at hand. Exeter, like York has cool old city walls, although not as complete – they’ve been perforated by the years (did we post about the city walls of York? If we didn’t I’ll have to catch you up in a subsequent post.) (Why are you chuckling? Don’t you believe that I’ll post every single impression I’ve had on this trip eventually someday?) There are also fun little streets with quirky stores and old establishments. The tourist brochures are all geared toward the shopping, though, because they’ve just spent a lot of money to revamp the pedestrianized city-center into a contemporary architecture open air shopping haven that has the usual suspects - and by suspects I clearly mean stores – and a little marooned section of ancient wall encircled by cool new tile so that it looks like an odd recreation with an identity crisis. Nice, but not so good at imparting a specific sense of place. Luckily, while I was lost in H&M – they were having a £5 sale and I’m, well, susceptible to that kind of thing – Joey found the old Roman gatehouse or whatever as well as city squares with views of the surrounding town. At least one of us is cultured. So I got to enjoy it without actually having to work to find it (nice). We also had the best cream tea ever that afternoon (for the uninitiated ‘cream tea’ is what you call afternoon tea with scones, jam and clotted cream) at Hanson’s across from the Exeter Cathedral. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Exeter, aside from this picture, which is of Joey on the old city walls with little row houses in the background.

As you may have seen in the slideshow, we got to other parts of Devonshire with Nicky and her progeny, which was probably more representative of the county (county? region? shire?) On our first full day, Nicola, Joshua and Lucas took us to Hay Tor, which is gaelic for ‘one of several hills on the moor that happens to be topped by a large pile of rocks. Climb it and enjoy lovely views while you try in vain to catch your breath’. That’s a loose translation. Joshua and I made it all the way to the top while Nicola watched from the safety of the grassy area under the rocks, where there were ponies roaming. (Joey and Lucas made it most of the way to the top of the rocks, but went back early – to Lucas’ chagrin – because while we were sure he could make it all the way, we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to handle/catch him if his excitement level got any higher. He was disappointed. He got over it.) That day they also took us to the little village they used to live in, and to another moor village for lunch. We also got to see the cottage they're fixing up to rent out, and to chat about Nicky's website, vettalk. Delightful.

The hidden highlight of the trip, though, (aside from forcing Mark to have his picture taken) was the town where they live now, Budleigh Salterton. Our first introduction to Budleigh Salterton was of having its name echoed around the dining table of our house by our housemates. None of them had ever been there, but they all knew and loved the name. They declared it the most typically Devonshire name there was and said that going there was probably the most typically English thing we could do. So I guess we can pack our bags now. Kidding. Budleigh is on the coast and has a little high street than runs parallel to it, with some tea shops, a few restaurants, a fruit and veg (that’s what they call it and that’s what it sells) and an ice cream shop that sells Devonshire cream ice creams. Of course, the ice cream shop was closed when we walked by. It’s apparently a theme with me and iconic English shops. Incidentally, here they aren’t stores, they’re shops. Anyway, we didn’t have Devonshire ice cream, but we do have a picture of me pouting in front of the shop that sells it. I didn’t pout for long though, because right behind the shops is the beach. It’s a pebble beach, and we got to it at the very end of what had been a cloudy day, just as the sun was at an angle to make the clouds dramatic but shine out from behind them, and the gulls were all congregating in formation. The pictures more or less speak for themselves. Needless to say, I liked it a lot. And then, after a fabulous dinner with Nicola and Mark, we got on the train sans excitement, nailbiting or hair-greying. All in all a delightful weekend. The end.

Us on the (cold) beach at Budleigh Salterton

Us not on the beach at Budleigh Salterton

Lake District

Happy Halloween! In honor of fall, I thought I'd post the pictures from our trip to the Lake District in Cumbria, the colors of the trees were amazing! We rented a car this time as the train doesn't really run to the lakes which was a bit exciting. Danielle did all the driving since she learned on the left in Trinidad, but we were both a little too used to the wide lanes of US suburbs ... some of the country roads were tiny, and two cars could only just squeeze by between the dry stone walls on both sides! Fortunately our rental was a tiny little car and most other cars on the road were small too, don't know what would have happened if we'd encountered an Escalade out there. This was also our first English B&B experience and Armidale Cottages was truly lovely, we felt more like guests at someone's house.

I tried to mention lake and town names throughout the slideshow in case you wanted to follow along on a map and see where these places are. Enjoy!

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Devon

Just a quick link to pictures of our last train trip out to Devon, we leave for the lake district in a couple hours! Devon was lovely, we got to meet Nicola, Mark, & the boys and also poke around a bit on our own. Danielle got to pet a wild pony on the moor!

Without further ado ... (click to go through to actual slideshow)

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Funny Money

Somewhere in Central London we got slipped a counterfeit bill. We didn't even realize until we tried to use it at a restaurant and the waiter caught us as we were leaving and said "I'm sorry but one of your bills is counterfeit." British people are so polite. Apparently it's such a problem in the heart of the city that the waiters are instructed to examine every note coming in ...

Since there isn't really much you can (legally or morally) do with fake money, let's play a little game of "Can you spot the counterfeit?" The same bill will be on top in all three pictures ...

First, the back side of the bills ...
Hmm ... hard to tell much from that. Now the front side ...

And now for the total giveaway ...
Did you guess the top bill? Congratulations! You've won a 10ish pound note!