A sweet look at some early 19th century Cinderella paper dolls. ;-)http://ping.fm/zfGN3

I'M BACK! London Part 1

I'm not going to waste any more time and get straight to the whole story of London last week. I'm probably going to do 6 installments, for each day we were there. Pictures will be provided later or can be accessed on my Facebook page. 8)

Without further ado!

***********************

Day 1:
The details of the day we left are unexciting for the most part, so I’ll cover the more interesting details. My mother was coming to pick us up at our place to drive us to the airport at around 2:30pm and I had done most of my packing days before. Once I got ready in my empire-waist blue jersey dress with black tights and boots, all prepared for what I assumed would be rainy, cold London weather, I had only to pack the last remaining items and help David with his packing. After this, we ran up to our local Mexican restaurant to make sure we had a solid meal before traveling and went back home just in time for Mom to come get us. We packed up in the car, she dropped us off, we kissed her goodbye and off we went. Thankfully, the international gate at the Charlotte Airport is in a new wing, all bright and shiny, weehoo! We grabbed some strawberry yogurt and waited for our flight to come in.

Long story short at this point, just to speed things up: Flight got delayed, was supposed to leave at 6:25pm, it had a fuel leak, we were told 7:30pm after new plane from Philly is flown in, then that turned into 10:30pm. We left at around 11:00pm I’d say, had a miserable dinner, I tried to sleep but couldn’t, took a Calms Forte, etc. I did sleep sporadically but kept waking up feeling out of sorts, David slept soundly, eventually the sun rose and I rejoiced. /pant

Our pilot announced our imminent arrival and I opened up the window shade to gaze out at the approaching coast line, probably Portsmouth, from the looks of it. I took plenty of video and the familiar sight of hedgerows and the green checkered landscape of hills and farms is what gladdened me the most. Just what I had prayed for. :-) The major differences between the North Carolina and English landscape from the air was a lack of dense forest in England, where NC has thick dark green blotches of trees scattered here and there. We began to descend lower, giving me a clear sight of the golf courses, homes and what appeared to be either a large church/small castle/manor house of some kind. Anyway , I took video of it all. That’s all that mattered!As we taxied towards our gate, I couldn’t help but smile. I was finally here. I turned and smiled at David and tried to keep myself from squealing with joy at finally hitting the ground. It was good feeling, like coming home; I know I’ll feel the same way every time I go back. Seeing British police lorries made me realize I was here, because the weather, the sunlight and the foliage was otherwise quite familiar; I would have thought I was on the East Coast of the states if I hadn’t of known otherwise. So I suppose what I’m saying is that everything just…clicked. But the first thing I noticed about being in England was the air: cool, crisp, clear. I could breathe without any problems. When I say “breathe” I mean deep, clear, hollow breaths unsullied by pollen and particles that would otherwise cause not a few problems for my nose and lungs. The sun was shining, but it was a soft light, with popcorn clouds dotting the sky – just perfection. We made our way towards customs and checking in and I caught signs using British terms that again solidified my dreamy feeling of being in London, like “lift” or elevator, etc. Small things, but worth noticing. The customs agent, who stamped us in was wonderfully kind. Again, something you wouldn’t experience coming into the states, I don’t believe. We picked up our luggage and found our way to the train station. I was tempted to buy a Cornish pasty from the West Cornwall Pasty Company, but waited until a few days later. While we were a bit lost at first, we quickly found our way to the platform for Victoria. However, as we didn’t have to scan our tickets through, I was a bit miffed at first, thinking that we had wasted a great deal of American/British currency, but once we arrived at Victoria, I saw that that wasn’t the case.

We had to quickly board and there weren’t any seats available, so we half-sat on our suitcases near the door and watched as a few sharply dressed stewards and stewardesses from Virgin Atlantic hopped on with their own luggage. One gal had her hair done up in a distinctly 40’s-60’s style, with several beehives. I was envious. With her large sunglasses, Hermes-looking scarf, slim pencil skirt and high heels, I thought “Well, this can be a nice fall back if teaching English doesn’t pan out!” ;-) She and her similarly-dressed friend “Becks” jumped aboard, along with another young guy who was straight out of GQ. It was fun listening to them prattle on. As we came to a stop along the way, the Gwen Stefani look-alike hugged her friend, said “Becks! Always a pleasure…” and they all parted ways. It was a nice vignette to watch as we made our final stop.

Victoria is gorgeous; I know that may sound strange to the average Londoner, but the huge warehouse look to it with the glass ceiling was so appealing to me. I couldn’t help but hear Grace Kelly’s character Margo from “Dial M for Murder” recounting how she lost her handbag at Victoria station. As I came to learn reading up on traveling in London, losing one’s handbag can be a common occurrence if you’re not careful, whether you marry a prince of a French principality or not. Ha. Anyhow, moving on… ;)

We found the sign for Taxis and approached the queue line. It was fun seeing a British taxi again, as we had used one to transport us to and fro for our wedding. We gave our driver the name of our hotel and struggled to move our heavy luggage into the vehicle. My foot, being locked into a high-heeled boot for several hours, began to cramp but I didn’t complain. I was finally here. My first impression was how old the buildings looked, but how nicely aged it all appeared in the sungliht. When we arrived at the hotel, the doorman in his top hat and morning coat (apparently, tourists must love men in morning coats? Hmm…) welcomed us to the hotel and took our bags out – or at least helped us as we struggled some more. I tried to handle my suitcase as best I could, but lifting it was another thing from wheeling it around. Pack light, you say? Impossible. Dave couldn’t either, he brought a duffle bag along with his suitcase and it was a tremendously big help for us! Getting the suitcases with wheels on the escalators at Gatwick was another struggle, however.
The lobby of the hotel was just what I had expected from spending hours gazing at the photos on their website: marble, dimly lit, beautiful furniture and a overwhelming scent of some kind of lily or exotic bloom of some kind. There was a piano in the corner in front of the bar with someone playing “You must remember this/A kiss is still a kiss…” and various American and Eastern European tourists were lounging around, drinking cocktails and nibbling on what looked like some kind of Indian-spiced peanut snack and large green olives. It was a very relaxing atmosphere.
The gentleman at the desk was friendly and smiling the entire time as we checked in. Our room wasn’t quite ready yet, so he cheerfully told us to come back in an hour. Lovely. I told David I needed to use the ladies and off I went. The restrooms were marble and cherrywood, quiet and peaceful. At this point in our trip, I was beginning to feel quite out of it physically, but mentally I was wide awake, alert and content. I washed my hands and looked at the makeup melting off my face and longed for our room to be set so I could shower and look presentable again. In a few hours, we were planning on taking a short jaunt down to the Royal Mews, which we had tickets for. Due to President Obama (ehhhh) coming into town later the following week, we had been forced to book our tickets for that day, Thursday the 19th, because the whole palace was going to be shut down in preparation for his arrival. Lovely. But it really didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let the little things ruin our trip!

We waited in the lobby a little longer as Dave wrestled with wi-fi. Eventually, I inquired if our room was ready and sure enough it was, only moved up to the second floor this time. The porter, a young South American chap, brought our luggage shortly after we got to the room, asked if everything was alright and we gave the affirmative. I just had a problem turning on the lights, until he pointed out the master light switch on the wall. Aha!

David plopped himself on the bed, exclaiming how good it felt to be horizontal after being twisted this way and that on the plane for several hours and quickly began to speak in staccato phrases until he went comatose, my poor Dave! I sized up the room, which was small and lovely; just the right size for the both of us and pleasant enough that hanging out there in the evenings was quite enjoyable: the Scottish shortbread cookies with our tea was a fine touch and finally getting access to BBC1 and BBC2 (BOTH AT THE SAME TIME! PINCH ME!) was nice. The Holbein prints on the walls of “Lady Surrey” and “Lady So-and-So” was another touch that brought a smile to my face. The recessed lighting in the ceilings made the room look gorgeous as well. However, it was already getting late in the day, past lunch and as tired as I was, I knew we had to get something done today. So once I reminded David not to fall asleep and in the middle of his response “I’m not going to fall asleep,” he did exactly that, I rushed about, trying to plough forth through my fatigue to get myself presentable for the Queen’s horses. I took longer than I expected, but after about 45 minutes, I was showered, my face redone, a new outfit on and all was ready. After shaking Dave awake (“I didn’t fall asleep! Really!”), who was still in possession of his five o’clock shadow but insisted he felt fine, we traveled off down the street to the Royal Mews.

Finally getting to walk down a London street was a treat for me. The only other city I had walked about in that could legally be thought of as a seriously large city was Boston. While I loved Boston, especially since we were there during July 4th celebrations a few years ago for our honeymoon, it was no London. Staying in Westminster had its benefits, namely that everything was swept up and manicured. That usually means little to me, but here you noticed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the iconic red phone booths and double-decker buses hadn’t been removed from the landscape (cityscape?). We stopped a moment at the corner to make sure we were going in the right direction, like a typical tourist. We were facing the right side of the Palace and soon found the location of the stables just right behind. The attendant, in his uniform of a morning jacket and tie, took one look at me and said “How lovely!” and pleasantly took our tickets from us with smiles and directions ahead of us. I wasn’t sure if the phrase “how lovely” was a way of saying “Why, hello there!” or simply a compliment to my appearance. Either way, I gratefully accepted it. :-)
The Royal Mews was a short trip, but worth it. The weather, as I have said, was unseasonably warm, or so I was later told my some locals and being outside the entire time was nice. We went through a security room with very warm, relaxed gals who were just standing around, talking casually, asking you to walk through the metal detector – that’s an experience you will never encounter in the states. It was about this point that I realized that my visit to the UK was going to be much friendlier than being back home. Sad to say it, but it’s true.

Seeing the many coaches, a few horses and the grand coronation gold coach was wonderful, even if it lasted for only about 50 minutes. Although we were given audio tour headphones, we hardly listened to them, opting instead for the guided tour by one of the attendants that we caught up to about 10 minutes in. After returning the audio guides, we made a stop in the gift shop (naturally). I saw nearly everything I could order out of the Old Durham English Country Living Catalog, so I didn’t bother pining away for some official palace china to send home to my Mother. So instead I opted for the smaller, more traveable (look! A new word I made up) items: a pencil, a chocolate bar for Dave. I didn’t go overboard, as I knew that there would be several gift shops to soak up my currency later on and I wanted a few knickknacks that I knew I wouldn’t find anywhere else.

By this time, we were both starving, as we had eaten nothing since we landed. Earlier, I had suggested walking up to the Albert Pub not far from our hotel, a place I had scouted out online before we arrived. Dave quickly took my suggestion and I relied on my inner compass (which I’ve since discovered is incredibly reliable indeed) to guide us up the street. The building that houses both the restaurant upstairs and the pub on ground level is absolutely gorgeous inside and out. It was exactly what we had imagined a nice sizable London pub to look like, so off we went. Walking in, my first impression was how lively it was, the red walls and the comforting scent of ale drifting through the air. Both doors on opposite ends of the room were swung open to let the breezes in, so the white noise hum of the city accented the multiple conversations going on around us, along with some modern Pop 40 music going on dimly in the background. Attempting to overcome my awkwardness of not knowing the precise steps of how to go about ordering in a pub, as we never drink socially at home, we sat down and glanced over the menu as we waited in vain (heh! silly us) for our “waiter” to arrive and take our order. I looked around and saw other older patrons (I couldn’t tell if they were regulars or visitors like us?) eating their fish and chips, so I knew that food, oh so yummy food could be got. I was getting giddy at this point. I needed sustenance. Dave said “I’ll go order our drinks” and after a short pause returned with a pint of Cider for me and a lighter ale for him. I then grew impatient and walked up to the bar and asked the guy how we should go about getting our food. He nicely explained the process of ordering at the bar, looking at me like “how can you not know this?” and I said “Ahhhh” and slank back to my chair. So we looked over the menu, immediately decided on fish and chips with garden peas and some cheesy garlic bread and I went back to order. I didn’t know we paid in advance, so I had to walk back to the table to grab my wallet, run back and give him 40 pounds.

While we waited for our food to arrive, I drank about 1.2 cup of the cider and really began to feel lightheaded, a feeling I normally wouldn’t succumb to back home. Oh dear. Thankfully, our food came just about the moment I started nodding off and we dug in. The ketchup was the most brilliant part, I have to admit! British ketchup is void of the Devil’s condiment, high-fructose corn syrup, so I invited Dave to eat as much as he wanted and so did I, as I usually don’t care for ketchup for that very reason. How deliciously organic it tasted! The HP’s Brown Sauce was something new that I tried and I think for some kind of meat it would fare well, but for the fish I withheld. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t really finish my meal, along with the salty garlic bread and neither could Dave. But we did the best we could and scurried off for more sightseeing.

The sun was beginning to set after we left the pub and I wanted to catch a good glimpse of Parliament, so we walked down and took some video/pictures like everyone else was doing.

Along our way, I took a few shots of Westminster Abbey and Dave said “I’d like to run into that gift shop if we have time.”
“No,” I said, “I think they might be closed.”

“No it’s not, I see people coming out of it.”

“Then let’s do it!”

And so we did!

Dave was happily shocked to find the cross of St. Benedict as a keychain which he got for himself and I got a few other small things for family back home. I was reveling in the chocolates, magnets and trinkets I wanted to scoop up in a large bin and take with me, all neatly arranged. A woman was unpacking tin boxes of tea to put on display as I walked by and I snickered at some hapless man asking the young kid at the register if Buckingham Palace “was really in the city limits?” Oy. ;-)

Once we stopped at the sidewalk across from Big Ben, two protestors (I think?) were arguing loudly with one another on Parliament Square. Something about Mubarak? I wanted to film it than decided against it. So we walked back to our hotel, relaxed in the room, showered, made some tea, watched Al-Jazeera on the telly (yeah, I know!) then switched to BBC1. :-) The bed was inviting as it was quite firm (note to self: buy a new mattress at home) and I literally fell into happy sleep land once I head hit the pillow. We wanted to wake up in time for the next day…as Friday was what I had been waiting for the most and it turned out to be the most memorable part of our trip! Stay tuned for Part II!

McCafe day (and a few other brief things)

Hi kids!

I'm back, if only for a few moments. I'm about to head out to the Home Country in a few days and I have so much to talk about, but unfortunately I still have zero time to sit down and write for a few hours. I do, however, have a lovely marketing story for you.

In Sunday's paper, there was a coupon for a free new strawberry frozen lemonade from that arche nemesis of mine, McDonald's. Now, anytime McObesity wants to force food on me, however inexpensively (or free), I usually balk - even if that were the only option available to me. I just can't push myself to eat calorie-laden, sodium bloated nothing foods in order to stay alive.

But as always, curiosity makes me want to know what's actually in the stuff they hand out for free and so I went online in search of a listing of ingredients for the frozen strawberry lemonade over-sugared drink. While I wasn't surprised at the 260 calories it sports, I *was* surprised to see it was mostly made up of fairly natural stuff: lemon oil, lemon juice, strawberry and lemonade concentrate, not artificially flavored. There's some syrup for the berry flavor and the evil red 40 coloring, but other than that, just a combination of natural flavorings and ice.

So I went to the McDonald's website and watched their Sesame Street promotional video: a talking lemon from New Jersey that comes across as distinctly Italian and I wondered where Joe Pesci and DeNiro were. In other words, why Jersey Shore? To sell lemonade?

The talking Jersey lemon makes wisecracks about being "sour" and introduces his "wife", the strawberry who is supposedly sweet, yet says nothing and doesn't even have an animated face like the DeNiro lemon...she doesn't even talk. Still confusing. But the lemon drones about about tangy, soury, sweet, yummy, cold lemonade, the perfect combination of sour and sweet and cold on a hot day.....this repeats over and over again in a carefully crafted dialogue on each animated Sesame Street-ish image you click...and slowly you become hypnotized by the perfect combination of sour and sweet, but always a perfection combination of sweetness and tart lemon....

I COULDN'T STAND IT! My lymph glands (I believe?) began to ache for something sour and the back of my tongue longed for some kind of subtle sugar fix. So I reasoned that I had to run to the store anyway and McChubby is on the way there, so why not swing by and get one, especially if it's free? :-P Whatever I don't drink, I'll share with David and we'll just chuck what we don't consume.

Alas, I got one. Oh the yummyness - but it wasn't all that remarkable. After about four sips, my stomach began to react to the sudden gush of acidity from the lemons and cried "Hold!" so I left the rest for Dave. It now sits peacefully in my fridge. All because of the talking Jersey lemon.

I caved in to marketing ploys. The shame! Like the Royal Wedding donuts, I couldn't resist. Oh well. Whatever calories I did consume, I'll walk them off in London. ;-)

Cheerio! Talk to you all, my invisible audience, when I return. <3

PS: His reaction? "Wow...sweet!...but...ugh...sour!" My feelings exactly.