London Calling

The time has come for our first European adventure, well outside of Amsterdam anyway. You would think we would pick somewhere new to explore. That would be logical. But that is not in fact what we did. We went to… London! Both Bill and I have been to London before, myself on three occasions. We did have a good reason to make London our first stop, however. Not only was my early childhood friend Kayla and her boyfriend in London but one of my friends from the Fluor Corporate team, Melissa, was also in London for the Fluor site visit. So off to London we went!

This was our first experience with one of Europe’s many discount airlines. This particular carrier was called Easyjet. Easyjet was not particularly organized. We got to the gate and there is essentially no process for boarding – no groups, no organization just one big line to get on the plane. I was thankful we had seat assignments. My only sense of calm in the chaos. It took them forever to let us on the plane then when we finally did get on, the flight attendant told us we needed to hurry and sit or we would miss our departure window. Well turns out the collective we was not fast enough because we did end up missing our window and the captain got on the intercom to announce we would need to wait an hour and 45 minutes for another window. The plane let out a frustrated sigh. But guess what! We could still buy refreshments! I was relieved by that until they announced refreshments did not in fact include alcohol. Buzz kill. Literally. Thankfully we only had to wait about an hour so it could have been worse. The rest of the trip was pretty easy, arrived at gatwick and took the train to the underground to a bus. I forgot how long it takes to get around London. The trip from the airport solidified in my mind that we made the right choice of what city to call home. Amsterdam has the big city feel but it takes so much less time to get around. Also, soooooo much cleaner. Anyway, we arrived in an Airbnb in the Shoreditch neighborhood. It was a very interesting Airbnb to say the least. We walked up to the entrance and it was weird because we didn’t see a door leading up to apartments, just store fronts. Well turns out one of these store fronts was in fact our accommodations for the weekend. The space was a large studio that we think was actually a working studio during the week. Some of the art was… art? There was some picture of a man on a barstool with like pieces of hair stuck on him. To each their own I suppose. Exhausted from the flight we decided to turn in to prep for a day of fun tomorrow!

We woke up bright and early to go meet Kayla and her boyfriend (Reed) for breakfast. We said we would meet at 9 which Bill and I being the accountants we are we were there at 9 on the dot (more of less). Kayla and Reed underestimated travel time and made it by 9:30ish. When she walked in I immediately noticed a very shiny ring on a very particular finger. I was very confused, however, because just the day before she had referred to Reed as her boyfriend – not fiancé – and I had not seen anything about her getting engaged in social media so I kept my mouth shut since I probably had missed the post or something and I didn’t want to look like an idiot. We went of a bike tour post breakfast and I was praying this bike tour was more successful than our first (see previous post where I immediately fell off my bike and lost the tour group). Our guides from the start already felt more friendly than our Amsterdam guide so that was a good sign. Another good sign is the area we were picking up the bikes was not in fact in the busiest section of Amsterdam where bikers are out for blood and will run you over if ya I do not get the f out of their way. The tour over all was really nice. We saw some of the main tourist spots but also some spots we never would have found on our own. Some of the highlights in the photos below were parliament, a street with basements that were bomb shelters in WWII, Westminster school (fancy private grade school – ages 8 to 18 – that basically guarantees admission to Oxford or Cambridge for a cool £13K a trimester), London’s premiere wig shop (yes lawyers and judges actually wear these to court here), and a street in London where graffiti a la Banksy is legal and encouraged. Another fun story, we had a small break in the tour in Covent Garden and after about 20 minutes on the patio of Punch and Judy, I feel a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and it’s one of my old coworkers from EY Fort Worth Amber! What a small world we live in. How is it that of all the places in all of London she happened to be in the same part of Covent Garden at the same time as us. Crazy.

Post bike tour (now one bike tour without incident thank you) we attempted to go to Sky Garden. Kayla and Reed looked into going here the day prior and were told you had to have a reservation but you could get in without one before 6 pm. So we tried. That was false. We were told we could try and get in after 9 without a reservation but we had to be “smartly dressed” she said as she gave us all a once over. I will say we were casually dressed but the way she said smartly dressed she had like such disgust in her voice. Rude. As T Swift would say, why you gotta be so mean? After her attitude we decided we didn’t want to go there anyway so we headed up to Notting Hill to check out the Churchill Arms bar and Portobello market. Churchill Arms you have probably seen on some social media influencers page. It’s a cute little bar with flowers all on the outside and when you venture inside there is all the memorabilia covering the walls and ceilings.

Portobello market was crazy! I can best describe it as a market for old trinkets being marketed as “vintage” and “antique”. You can call it what you want people but it’s all trinkets and trinkets give me anxiety. I think moving and having to go through every trinket I have purchased over the last 10 years has permanently turned me off of wanting to purchase trinkets ever again. We did finally make to the food portion of the market and found a cool gin distillery we decided to park at for a snack.

After a few snacks we decided we were hungry for real dinner so I made the executive decision to take the group to Dishoom. If you like Indian food, Dishoom is fabulous and you should definitely put it on your list if you’re in London. For being so yummy it’s also not too terribly priced which is like crazy for London. On our way over there the mystery of the engagement ring was finally revealed. Turns out, Reed has proposed to Kayla THE NIGHT BEFORE but they didn’t say anything. Now I felt like an ass for trying not to be an ass and not asking about it earlier. She said they didn’t want to make the day all about them but for the record, that would not have been selfish of her at all. You only get engaged once! When we got to Dishoom we were able to have a proper cheers to their engagement and celebrate them. The food was fabulous and with full tummies we went back to Shoreditch to have some post dinner drinks. On our way, we had to switch tubes at the Kings Cross station so of course, we had to go up to Platform 9 3/4. What an interesting experience. I thought we would just be able to walk up and take a picture. Warner Brothers, however, was not going to miss out on such a prime opportunity to capitalize on tourists. They have now set up a store at Platform 9 3/4 and there is a line to have your photo taken. There is also someone to help place your scarf on you, properly make the scarf billow for the actual shot, and help you organize poses for a group shot. What should have been a 5 minute detour quickly became 45 minutes of tourist nightmare. The poses were so dumb they had people do and we completely unrelated to the location – why would you be dueling with someone on a luggage cart while trying to pass through to the train. No plot accuracy! In rebellion we took one normal picture with the scarf of our choice (#Ravenclawforlife). We walked through the store (you have to in order to leave – Disney strategy to force exit through the gift shop) and they asked if we wanted to see our photo they took to which we said nope and walked on. For your viewing pleasure, the perfectly acceptable, plot accurate, photos we took ourselves.

We finally made it to Shoreditch at which point we met up with Melissa who had been with her family during the day. We were like the Goldilocks of bars before settling on a bar with a bunch of beers on tap – one bar had too long of a line, one bar was too clubby, and finally this one was justtttt right. After good conversation over a few brews it was time for sleep. Even with the bike tour we were encroaching on 10 miles of steps and these puppies were tired.

Sunday we slept in (praise be) and went to a traditional Sunday brunch at the Princess of Shoreditch. This was presented to me as a very British activity I needed to try and it felt like the kind of meal Ann cooked for Easter. We started with some beef tartare and moved on to our mains of roast beef and roast pork. Both were good but to be honest Ann makes a better roast. Sorry Princess.

I thought our flight was at 4:30 but it turned out we did not leave until 6:30 so we went and paid a visit to Paola and Vartan. Vartan is Bill’s coworker from Fort Worth who is on rotation in London. It was nice catching up with them before we started the long trek back to Gatwick. Easyjet was just as disorganized returning home as when we flew out. This time our flight was delayed from the start but they also had a last minute gate change. Basically it was just like herding cattle for 30 minutes before we finally got on the actual plane. All in all, London was great to visit but being there, both Bill and I felt like Amsterdam had been the right choice for us. Coming back from this trip felt like coming home which was a nice feeling. We are starting to feel less like visitors and more like locals. After such a busy trip we were looking forward to a quiet weekend in Amsterdam before our next adventure – Oktoberfest! Prost!