West End Play

Before I start this...I am writing this post now, over a month after going to our West End play, so my memory might be a little foggy. A lot has happened in the last few weeks... I took pictures, but forgot the cord in England.  So I had to wait until Jeff headed back to send me a few of them.  So, sorry for the delay! (More updates on life over the last month to come).

Here we go...

We planned our trip home around seeing a West End (the Broadway of London) play. Jeff and I headed down to London on Wednesday night, and the play was Thursday afternoon.  Mackey came along with us, for those of you that were wondering (not the to play...haha).  We headed into the city centre, as we were staying out by the airport a few hours before the play began, as we were seeing a matinee.

We ate at one of our favorite cafe type restaurants before heading to the show.  We ate at a nearby park, and enjoyed the beautiful day.  It was so nice to eat something healthy, people watch, and enjoy some quality time soaking up our last moments in the city centre of London. 

 Our bag filled with goodies

The show began at 2:30 in the afternoon.  We grabbed a couple drinks in the theatre and found our seats.  We saw Elephant Man, which if you do not know much about this true story, please click here.  One of the reasons we picked this show and not a happy-go-lucky sing along type show was that Bradley Cooper had the leading role as the elephant man.  And let me tell you...he was amazing!! First of all, it was so cool to be only feet away from him.  And his acting was incredible.  He had the walk, and the talk as if he really was the elephant man. My favorite part was in the beginning where they went body part by body part talking about the deformations, speech, and other issues.  I would highly recommend going to see this if you ever have the chance.  Bradley Cooper was only going to be in London performing for 3 months, so our timing was perfect.  But he came from Broadway doing this same show.

 Theatre Royal Haymarket

Right before the show started.  We were so close!

What a perfect way to end our time in London.  We headed on the Underground one last time, which was sad for the both of us.  What a great transportation system they have in London. 

Overall, it was a great way to end of English adventure together.  It was so fun to have our English to-do list and looking back I think we did pretty good!  A few more posts over the next month before closing the blog down for good.  Be on the look out for posts about Mackey's flight back soon.

On to the next adventure...

London Shenanigans

This past weekend, 4 of our friends from the states joined us and our friends from Cambridge for some sightseeing, catching up, and fun in London. Jeff and I headed down via car on Friday afternoon so we could meet up with everyone for a late dinner.  Six of us had made it to London at this point, as the others were in route until the morning.  We grabbed a light dinner, and headed out for a few pints after.  It was great catching up, as we have not seen most of our friends since June.

 The girls

 The guys with their Old Fashioneds

The next morning, we walked around the city just enjoying the beautiful weather.  We didn't have much on the agenda until our other friends arrived.  Once everyone had arrived, we headed out to a market called Old Spitalfields Market, which was one of the better markets I had been to in London.  Everyone got something different, as there were many options.  Jeff and I enjoyed a great pulled pork sandwich on a bagel.  Afterwards, the group split up as some went shopping and some went for a nap.  Guess what group I chose? You guessed it, shopping! This market had some amazing clothes, and jewelry.  I tried to refrain given we do not have a lot of extra room to bring things back to the states.  I ended up buying this fleece jacket and a graphic tank top with a bicycle on it.  Others were buying scarves, jackets, shoes, and some souvenirs for friends and family back home.  We spent a lot more time than expected in there, and met up with the rest of the group to head to do our tourist attractions for the day.

 Artwork that I found hilarious, obviously fits my odd sense of humor

 View from the top. Great market!

We made it to the London Eye, where we took the 20-30 minute ride around the big enclosed ferris wheel along the Thames River.  I'm not a huge fan of heights, but this was no big deal.  Each pod held ~15 people.  We were able to walk around, take pictures, and hang out as it went around.  It was interesting, as the wheel never stops moving.  We had to be quick getting on, as it was still rolling when you get on/off.  Now, mind you, it wasn't going overly fast...so it wasn't like we had to run to get on.  Afterwards our river boat cruise along the Thames River started.  It was beautiful, and a lot of fun to see all of the sights from the water.  It was about a 45-minute ride, and got pretty windy at a few points.  We learned some new facts about the buildings and London as we rode along.

 London Eye

 Group shot on the London Eye

 Great view of Parliament

 We're at the top!

 I'm impressed I could get everyone in this shot. On the river boat cruise, now!

 Just passing by parliament

 Turning around, and heading the other direction on the boat

 My favorite building in London

Tower of London. One of Jeff's favorite attractions

Next up was drinks and dinner.  We went to this amazing restaurant called Wahaca.  You should click on the link to watch the video on the restaurant being built, as old shipping containers make up the building. We hung out the bar, swapping stories, for about an hour and a half before sitting for dinner.  Fantastic food, and it reminded me of Bakersfield only with a bit more to choose from.  Later on, we headed to a couple pubs in the West End (Theatre District) until heading back to the flat we rented for the weekend.  All eight of us were able to stay in the same flat, which made it very convenient and entertaining.  Although getting ready in the morning was a bit of a challenge...8 people, 1 bathroom.

Speaking of getting ready in the morning, the next morning quickly approached and we got a bit of a later start to our day.  We made it to the Tower of London, and everyone stayed to do this tourist attraction but Jeff and I.  We went last may with our friends, Christian and Kristin.  We decided not to do it again, as it was a bit pricey and we had other things on our agenda.  Jeff and I walked about 5 miles during the day, as it was BEAUTIFUL out.  I even got a small suntan! We walked down by the river, grabbed some sandwiches at one of our favorite spots, Pret a Manger.  It is a "fast food" chain, but it is all natural foods.  Mostly they carry sandwiches, veggies, fruits, salads, and soups.  Hints, why it put the words: fast food in quotes.  We took our lunch to Hyde Park and had a picnic in the sun.  Well, Jeff was hiding in the shade, but I was in the sun.  We had been to Hyde Park before, but not in very deep.  It is just like Central Park in terms of size. 

 Picnic in Hyde Park

The water that runs through Hyde Park. 

After our picnic was over, we headed to Kensington Palace.  The pictures online were definitely better than the palace in person.  We were going to head inside, but decided against it as it was fairly expensive and it appeared to not be worth it.  We decided to go find the Princess Diana fountain instead.  This was not an ordinary fountain, as it looking like a man-made creek.  The fountain is supposed to represent Diana's life.  People of all ages had their shoes off and were walking all the way around it.  Jeff and I both took our shoes off and put our feet in the freezing water for a few seconds.  It felt painfully great, as my feet were sore from all the walking.  

 Beautiful gardens at the palace

 Kensington Palace is where William & Kate live

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain was really hard to capture via picture.  You can see the kids walking through the FREEZING cold water.

Before meeting up with our friends, we took a short nap in Hyde park,  enjoying the warmth and sunshine.  We met up with our friends and headed to Piccadilly Circus (the Times Square of London).  We grabbed some Pimm's, which is a famous British drink.  Many enjoy it at special occasions like, Wimbledon.  I think everyone enjoyed trying the drink, and of course we order a few bowls of chips (french fries).  We headed back towards the flat, and decided to grab dinner to eat in for the night.  It was a lot of fun, sitting around chatting, and playing games.  We were planning to head back out for the night, but never made it there! Ha!

We will definitely miss our friends, but it was nice to be able to say "See you next month", as it is hard to believe we have a handful of weekends left before the big move.  I might be able to add a few more pictures over the next couple weeks, as we all trade pictures.  Thanks, Khalie for already sending me a few!!

After all of our friends went their separate ways (Cambridge, Indianapolis, and Paris), we headed out to Heathrow to welcome our next 5 visitors! Jeff's family arrived on Monday, and will be here for the next week+.  We were able to get them to their hotel, grab a quick lunch, and lead a walking tour before Jeff and I headed back to Nottingham.  We were able to show them the London Eye, Parliament (& Elizabeth Tower), Westminster Abbey, St. James' Park, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, and finish up with a pint at a local pub.  We parted ways, and kudos to them for not napping! I'm sure they were exhausted.  We look forward to seeing them later this week to show off our "home town".  Look out for another blog post on that next week!

 Lori, I stole this one off your Facebook. I'll have to get the rest from you later! :)

On to the next adventure...

Girls Weekend...Plus Jeff

I was so excited to find out that one of my best friends, Kelsey, was coming over to London for work for a few days.  She let me know, and the planning began.  Jeff and I decided to go down to London to spend it with her, do some tourist things, and just catch up since we don't live close even back in the states.

Jeff and I drove down to London on Friday evening to meet up with her.  We got a bit of a late start, so it was pretty late when we finally arrived in the city.  I ended up meeting up with Kelsey at a local bar, while Jeff hung back at the hotel.  Kelsey and I had some much needed "catch-up" time together.

The next morning, Jeff and I headed to Westminster Abbey after grabbing a fantastic breakfast with beautiful views of the London Eye.  The location of our hotel was great, as it was right on the River Thames.  Westminster is one we have been trying to get to since moving here. It is always on our agenda to get to, but we always time it poorly.  Either we get into the city or that particular location late or there is an event going on that prevents us from going inside.  I think I have a ton of pictures of the outside though. Once arrived, we were astonished of the entry fee...20 pounds each. Yowza! I think that might be one of the most expensive entry fees of the tourist places we visit. We entered nonetheless, and it was beautiful.  Great history learned through the audio guides, but not sure it was worth the amount of money we paid.  No pictures to show of the inside, sorry! Rules. Rules. Rules.

 Britain's oldest door and the court yard inside Westminster.

Afterwards we met up with Kelsey and walked down by the River Thames for a while.  We popped into have a pint and get out of the cold weather for a bit.  We made it to the Tower Bridge, which is also been on our agenda for a while. It is my favorite building in London.

 

You know our rule...if you take a picture or stop to enjoy the street performers...you owe them some money.  This guy was playing "Putting on the Ritz" and fire would come out of the top of his instrument as the beat continued. 

 In front of the Tower Bridge

Jeff and I in front of the bridge

Once arriving, we took the elevator up to the top.  There were videos throughout the experience teaching us about the history and the 8 years it took to build. Our favorite part was the glass floor on the halls that connect both sides of the tower.  It was pretty crazy and almost hard to walk on knowing you could see 139 feet below you.  Cars, buses, people, and the river flowing beneath you...crazy!

 Pretty scary, right?

 Looking down!

One of the beautiful views! The Shard is the tall building...used to be the tallest in Europe.

Afterwards we grabbed a late lunch and had a relaxing evening.  We finished our night walking around the city, seeing a few of the sites at night.  Jeff and I headed back on Sunday morning after a late breakfast and parted ways with Kelsey.  It was so great being able to just hang up and not missing a beat while doing so. We are so incredibly lucky to have so many friends and family members come over to see us. Thanks again, Kelsey!

On to the next adventure...

Happy New Year from Us in the UK

Welcome to my 100th post! 

A special Thank You to my loyal readers who have read every single one of these posts. That's a lot of reading! It has been fun writing and sharing our adventures with you all.  Only a few more months until the blog comes to a closing, so soak it up...I know I am! And sorry about the backlog of posts, I have had a few "in waiting" so I could get caught up.

After driving back from Belgium on the 31st, we stopped into our hotel to nap and get ready for the night time festivities.  We drove to an Underground station we usually park, and rode into the city centre of London.  We bought tickets to watch the fireworks go off the London Eye (ferris wheel) at midnight to bring in the new year.  This was the first year the Mayor of London decided to do tickets to watch the fireworks. Even though there was crowd control...it was so packed!

We got in line around 6:40, and they began letting people in the embankment area (on the River Thames).  We posted up by at tree....and stood for the next 5 hours.  Not so fun when it was so windy and cold.  Jeff said this event had his four most hatred things: crowds, cold, being around drunk people & not drinking, and waiting. Needless to say, it wasn't the most enjoyable experience...and I definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone next year.

 Our view

 Our loyal tree

Massive amounts of people near the large speakers

Either way, we were able to experience a once in a lifetime event and we were glad we did it.  Well at least one of us...There wasn't any live entertainment, but they had music playing on these large speakers.  A DJ came on the speakers around 9 to get everyone pumped up.  The crowd was very diverse as I heard many different languages being spoken.  Not too many kids, and a variety of moods (some hating every moment and others dancing around like fools).

Obviously, the fireworks went off at midnight.  It was a pretty impressive amount of fireworks that lasted about 10 minutes.  We were able to get a few good shots and video.  The minute the fireworks were done, Queen (Not THE Queen, but the band) came on the speakers live and played as the massive amounts of people headed to the few amount of exits.  100,000 people...enough said.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to our car.  Free public transportation, so everyone was using it.  We had to walk quite a while before finding an Underground station that didn't have loads of people.  We hopped in our car, headed back to our hotel, and were asleep by 3 AM.

 Leading up to the New Year, the London Eye would change colors

 You could see the London Eye perfectly in the beginning. Once the fireworks were in full swing, there was so much smoke it became hard to see.

 

London Eye is fading away with the amount of smoke in the air

Turn your head to the side to see the video the correct way. But hey, it's fireworks...they don't need to be viewed in a certain way!

It was pretty funny to think that by the time we were getting ready to go to bed, our friends and family in the states had not even experienced the New Year.  (Differences: 5 hr= Indiana; 6 hr=Illinois; 8 hr=California).  Our New Year is already off to a great start, as I hope yours is as well. Look out for our 2014 Wrap Up Post in the coming days.

 Not the clearest picture, but this was taken after all the fireworks

 London was really beautiful that night, as the buildings are not always this lit up. If you look closely, Jeff's favorite building, The Shard, had 2015 lit up vertically on the side of it.

On to the next adventure...

This & That in London

Jeff and I headed down to London on Saturday, hoping to pick up our friend, Scott, from the airport and then travel around seeing the "go to" sites and some new spots as well. Scott had some trouble at the airport, and was unable to get here on Saturday.  Jeff and I decided we would still check some places off our list in London and stay all night as planned.

After a 2-hour car ride, and multiple rides on the Underground we dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed on more train rides to get to Greenwich, a district outside of London. We were heading there to visit the Royal Observatory. The prime meridian is located on the grounds of the Royal Observatory.  We were both able to stand in two different hemispheres at one time.

 The picture on the left is where the original prime meridian stood until 1851 when a new telescope was invented, so the "line" was moved.

 Showing the time of day. You can see the UK's sun had already set, but my friends in the US were still having plenty of daylight!

 Two different sides of the world!

 

Official time!

 

Although the prime meridian was interesting to see, the skyline of London was beautiful.  A little dark and foggy, so pictures, as always, never do it justice. But it was beautiful to see! We walked around the grounds, which had many interesting things to read, see, and observe.  I'm sure Jeff would be able to explain some things he learned in there better than I, as it wasn't quite my cup of tea. But all-in-all, it was great to learn things about the prime meridian.  We learned about ways to tell where you are in the sea (if you're ever lost) based on the time in Greenwich, then you can find out your own longitude and latitude.  Hoping to never have to test that theory.  

Skyline of the Business District

After the Royal Observatory, we checked off one of my "To see" places, which was Greenwich Market.  We looked around at the homemade products, but didn't buy anything (as after this post, I've been to quite a lot of markets in the last week).  Although, I take that back---we bought an AMAZING churro on our walk out of the market.  One of my favorites!

 

The girl photo bombing my picture must want a churro, too!

We headed towards the Thames River, saw an old ship that had traveled around the world delivering supplies many years ago.  We walked around the area for a while, then hopped back on the train to get to another area of London.

Next up on the list was the Business District, which held all the major banking skyscrapers.  We enjoyed the area as it was filled with modern buildings, lots of shopping areas, and plenty of people out and about.  We walked around this area, found another Christmas Market to walk around, then made our way to an ice skating rink.  The area reminded me a lot of Rockefeller Center
around the holidays.

 Business District

Another cute Christmas Market

The next morning, we woke up to a rainy, windy, and cold England day.  We went to the British Museum,  which we have visited before.  We popped in just to see the Rosetta Stone, which we missed the first time. Literally the first thing you see when you walk into the museum. Not sure how we missed it the first time!

Since we already had visited the museum, we left and headed towards Harrod's, the biggest department store in Europe...5-acre site, over 1 million square feet. Jealous? It was amazing, although crazy busy, as people were frantically buying Christmas gifts.  You could spend multiple days here, although the average person would not be able to afford much. Funny story about that later... There 8 levels to the store, 27 restaurants, and about as much designer clothing as you could ever want.  Gucci for your toddlers to personal shopping to a Gentleman's Lounge with barber services.  Insane!

 Opening time! The line was wrapped around the building to get in.

 Because the sun sets before 4:00 over here...we were able to see Harrod's lit up as well.

Jeff surprisingly lasted a couple hours in this place, despite his lack of love for shopping. We grabbed lunch, and on the way we spotted this gentleman in all white (did I mention it was raining and puddles everywhere). Naturally, I looked at his whole outfit to see he had a pair of the shoes Jeff and I pointed out in Harrods that were...wait for it...over 1,300 pounds ($2,200).  He was just walking around in the puddles with his white two grand shoes. No big deal, right?

We grabbed one of my favorite lunches, a chicken pie (Jeff got the steak one), and walked around Hyde Park's Christmas Market. Yes, that makes #4 for me in a week.  Anyway, after much confusion on where we were meeting our friend, Scott. We FINALLY met up with each other in the late afternoon.  We took him around to the major sites in a few hours, stopped in a pub for some drinks, and then were back in Notts around 9:30. It was a long, but great weekend!

 The boys!

Onto the next adventure...