A Hop Across The Pond

I didn’t abandon you, I promise. I’ve just been sitting here eating bon bons and watching BBC. Pffffff ya ok.

I guess I have a lot to get you caught up with from the past week+. Let’s just get the translations over with at the beginning, shall we?

English-to-English translations

1. Rolly poly = forward roll (as my family knows, this is also what I call MY glass in Grammy’s kitchen cabinet)

2. Jacket Potatoes = baked potatoes (because it looks like the potato is wearing a jacket…….?)

3. Take Away = Takeout (pretty straight forward)

If I remember correctly, I left you hanging last Wednesday, right before my FaceTime dates with Kho and Val, later to be joined by Jbug. So awesome to catch up with the girls, even though they made me stay up until midnight my time. The following night, I was lucky enough to have been invited to a work dinner with all the IT wizards from the Barcelona office – they were here to get the new London office up and running before we officially moved in. If you’ve ever been to Spain you will not be surprised when I tell you that we didn’t sit down for dinner until after 10:00pm. If you haven’t been to Spain then just believe me when I say they are crazy and never sleep. But…. They are also super awesome. Want to know why? (I’m going to tell you even if you just muttered no). They were adamant that if we all sang happy birthday to a random person at our table that we would get free shots from the bar. I played along but gave them a look like, “You know we’re not in Spain, right?”. Welp, I was dead wrong. Not even 2 minutes after we finished the last note of our song did a platter of shots arrive at our table. ¡Arriba, abajo, al centro, pa' dentro!

Friday I was greeted by a visitor, Mr. Glenn Harris, great co-worker and even better pal. Arriving a bit groggy and jetlagged, he still managed to get me out to ‘sight-see’ Temple Church during my lunch break. It was a short visit but well worth the trip. I was reluctant to pay £4 to go into a church but I did it anyway… it was gorgeous inside. Many of the walls were dedicated to memorializing WWI, featuring detailed timelines, statues, paintings, and quotes. The ceilings were lavish, intimidating, and tall while the stain glass windows brightened up the room with a cheerful stream of radiance. We took our time reading the excerpts and admiring the architecture before I headed back to do some more work. That night I joined a couple of my coworkers again for dinner before meeting Glenn out at Brewdog Camden. For those of you that don’t know Glenn, he’s a beer addict. No, not an alcoholic – just really really REALLY likes beer. Craft beer to be exact. That’s pretty much what this weekend was going to be about but I welcomed it because I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. At BrewDog we tried a few local beers that were delicious and chatted with a guy named Guy. He introduced himself, “Hi I’m Guy, just your regular old guy”. My friends, Guy was most certainly NOT just your regular old guy. In fact, he has been to 49 out of the 50 American states, lived in the UK, Ireland, Australia, China, India, Japan, the Caribbean, and several other countries. He works for short periods of time to save money and backpacks all around the world on his own. He admitted that he didn’t really have much money but I would argue that he is one of the most wealthy individuals I have ever met – I haven’t met anyone that has a wealth of experience that could match Guy’s.

Saturday was an early wake up call for… you guessed it… beer. Glenn insisted that we start the morning off with a mini brew-crawl, hopping around to 3 different breweries before noon. First stop was Kernel brewery which was of course in a very industrial area. The cool part was, there were actually a lot of artisanal shops within that little industrial pocket, including an amazing Italian shop decorated with cheeses, meats, olives, and spices of every kind. Grammy Selvitella – you would have had a field day in there! So, after we had a couple at Kernel, we tried some of the free olive samples at the Italian shop and made our way over to the craft honey garage. Have any of you actually eaten honeycomb before? I had no idea that was regarded as a snack but they had them packaged up like lunchables. She let us try a few different flavors and, although the honey was delicious, I was not a fan of the wax that built up in my mouth after the honey was gone. Apparently you’re supposed to eat it but I was rude and spit it into a napkin. The soft-spoken honey girl assured me that I am not the first one to have done that… Second stop was Beer By Numbers Brewery. Oddly enough, the brew master serving us was from Maine and had previously worked in a brewery that Glenn frequents back home. Instant best friends. Small world. Third stop was… I actually forget the name, but they had an excellent porter. After I impatiently waited for Glenn to finish up his conversation with the third instant-best-friend-brewmaster I finally got us onto a train back to central London. We had to make it in time for our Buckingham Palace Tour!

Wowzers that place is incredible. In all seriousness though, it was one of the most well done audio tours I’ve ever done. They had the symphony music going on in the background, fine Brits describing each room in full detail, and sample speeches from the royals. Each room sparkled brighter than the last. The walls were all draped in silk, lit by the crystal reflections of many chandeliers. There were trapped doors, original paintings, interactive timelines, and all of the royal children’s’ toys. I couldn’t have been more impressed by the execution and feel so lucky to have been inside the palace walls in the 2 months out of the year that it is open to the public. (P.s. No pictures allowed inside so you’ll just have to use your imaginations).

That night we hit up another special beer release event – Zwanzee Day. I guess it’s also big in the states, well, really all around the world but I’d never heard of it. We were there for quite a while and met a wonderful older couple from Greenwich (Grenn-itch) who told us all about their travels. They had been married for 30 years and have a couple kids but they were trying really hard to “be cool”, they said. I reassured them that since they were sitting with us at the beer event, they were certainly still “cool”. I am hoping to make it over to Greenwich at some point in the next few weeks because they made it sound like one of the most beautiful areas outside of London. I’ll keep you posted if I get there. After Zwanzee-many-hours-day, we headed into Picadilly Circus for dinner. Since it was already 10:30pm we had to really search for a restaurant that was still open. Lucky for us, we found an absolutely amazeballs ramen joint, rated 90% on urbanspoon (had to be good, right?). Glenn got some sake and I may or may not have had an entire craft of wine to myself. I was so done with beer… don’t judge. After we soaked up as much sodium as our organs could handle, we headed out to find somewhere that wasn’t a club. We failed a bit in this area.. not too many pubs still open at midnight. So, we went to the casino. We pretended to gamble and I thought it was a good idea to get one more glass of pinot noir. Holy gasoline – I have no idea what was wrong with that bottle but it was not OK. I guess casinos don’t specialize in wine.

Sunday was not as early of a morning as we had hoped… I’m sure you can imagine why. Eventually when we got up we made our way into Seven Dials Soho for some brunch at Kopapa. It was just by chance that I found a cheapish but nice restaurant still open for brunch when we would be able to get into town. Great find… spectacular farm-fresh eggs, salmon, hash, and organic fruit smoothies. Oh, and coffee – LOTS of coffee. We left brunch and started walking toward our next destination, the Churchill War Room, but stopped at Trafalgar Square on the way. Curiosity came upon us and we decided to head into the National Gallery for a look. We didn’t spend too much time there but were in awe that there were so many originals. Monet, my favorite, was absolutely everywhere, as well as some originals by VanGogh. I was shocked they let you take pictures so I snapped as many as I could. Once we left we headed down the street to the Churchill War Room which was the secret underground headquarters for the British government throughout WWII. Another audio tour very well done but I wish they had told you at the beginning that you really need at least 5 hours to see the whole thing. After a while we tapped out and left – the light of day was calling. We emerged from the underground and I took Glenn by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and over to the Tower of London. As we strolled the cobblestone from the tower to the bridge, we walked past Drew Barrymore. WAIT WHAT!? Ya, you read right, Drew freaking Barrymore. She totally saw that we noticed her and briskly went on her way, hand in hand with her hubby and the nanny holding their son. I got a quick snapshot though, obv. #paparazzi That night we got dinner in Covent Garden and headed back to the flat so Glen could figure out the next leg of his trip through Europe.

Monday and Tuesday, work work work… yawnnnn. But Tuesday night was the first time I had taken the train outside of London. A few of us had to go down to Portsmouth for a two-day meeting. We stayed at the (not-so) Premier Inn and I was greeted by a giant bug the first morning while I was getting ready. You know how I am with bugs. That was a project. Another fun fact to add is that we went to a quaint, delicious, Italian restaurant the first night by the marina called Zizzi. One of my French co-workers cautioned us to not eat here because “zizzi” actually means something not so quaint and delicious in her native language. Think “male genitalia”. Ya. We ate there anyway and I thought it was bomb.

So, I’m back here in the flat now and looking forward to a weekend jam packed with fun plans. I am hoping to give you another update next week before I leave for Ireland. We’re in the single digit count down now – 9 more days!! McKenna and McSelvitella are getting our Guinness on.