England: London Calling
Friday, May 13th
After Windsor Castle, we had very little time for lunch, but I was introduced to two staples of the English deli scene: 1) Mayo, in the form of a chicken salad sandwich. Those Brits love their mayo... and they seem to dump it on everything; 2) Higher cost for dining in than for taking something to go. This is something I didn't know about until Samata pointed it out. There is such a premium on space that they charge you extra if you want to sit down in their restaurant. Isn't that wild? So we (Samata, Mike, and I) took our food and headed outside to eat.
After lunch, we headed to London and checked into the Holiday Inn-Regent's Park. My first taste of London was anti-climactic as I really can't remember it. I may have slept or, at the very least, completely zoned out. Leave me alone, I was really tired from the flight (and two hours of sleep on the plane). When Mike and I finally got to the hotel, I was happy to see that they weren't going to try to stick four of us in one room (four is too many people in a hotel room when you don't know the people well enough) AND I was happy to see that Mike and I would have a twin bed each. No offense to Mike, but I preferred my own bed if possible.
After a quick shower and some lying down time, we were off with a large group of people to find dinner. With too many names to name, our globule of a group headed without direction towards what we hoped would be restaurants. Mike and some other peeps found a little bar (more a bar than a pub), but I headed with a fairly large group to a small Italian Bistro just down the street. The place was quite empty for a Friday night to the point where my large party were the only guests in the restaurant at the time. Needless to say, we got excellent service. The food was very very good... and I wish I could remember the name of the place but, to tell you the truth, I don't think I ever saw the name. The whole table (pretty much) got rigatoni and felt quite full when all was said and done.
After dinner, we ended up in a little pub called the George and Dragon. Here is my conversation with the bartender (see if you can guess which one is me): "I'll have a Guinness", "Do you want it code or normo?", "Um... I'll have it normal.", "I think you'll like it code." Code means cold, by the way. So I felt very American and looked down upon by this dude... who wouldn't give me a room temperature Guinness, which is supposedly how they drink them in England. But I quickly went from wussy American to annoying American after the owner gave Bishop Guinness hats to pass around to his friends. I say hats, but they're really sombreros (BTW, if anyone has a picture of me in the Guinness sombrero, I will gladly post it here). And so this fairly large group of Americans became the large group of annoying Americans easily recognizable in their Guinness hats... and, at the time I was having too much fun to notice, but in retrospect I feel a bit like a starred Jew... as no one in one of the hats talked to anyone else in the bar besides each other. It's okay though because I had a really good time and the owner was nice to us, even if I'm making it seem like he wasn't. Ooo! And this was also the night I was introduced to Strongbow... that most fabulous British hard cider. Mmm... so delicious. Mmm... I said soda.
After spending a little too much time at the pub, I headed with Miss Katie to a Tesco (probably akin to a convenience store) where I purchased some British Chocolate. I had a mild obsession with British chocolate while I was over there, I'm not going to lie. I'm not actually sure why, either... I just loved the idea of foreign chocolate. I got myself come Cadbury chocolate and a Kit Kat (which I heard was completely different, but actually only tasted a bit sweeter) and headed back to the hotel for a long-overdue sleep.
Saturday, May 14th
In the morning I was treated to something I wanted for a few days: a full English breakfast. There is a heavy sarcasm to that last statement. Our fantastic tour guide used the phrase "full English breakfast" to describe our hotel breakfast at least a dozen times before we even got to eat a breakfast. I wanted to force-feed her an full English breakfast... in her mouth! Wait... that wasn't a very good one. I apologize. But, now to the FULL PHUKING ENGLISH BREAKFAST... which consists of eggs, bangers, toast, fruit, and other stuff. (when I wrote this sentence I realized I needed something to explain it... so get your minds out of the gutter right now) The English sausage is more plump and fuller than American sausage... it's like a solid tube of gross meat... and it's really rather gross. Speaking of gross, English eggs. Gross! The overeasy eggs are swimming in oil or grease or other grossness... the scrambled eggs are also swimming in something else gross and taste like those faux eggs one can purchase if one is clinically insane. Eventually along the trip my breakfasts consisted of beans (chew thoroughly to break down the legume and avoid any gassy, unappealing by-products!), cereal, one sausage (couldn't stop eating the meaty grossness!), some kind of sweet pastry thing, and any kind of muffin I could steal. Mmm... sugar muffins. That was an allusion to breasts... and now onto the tour of London!