Doh...

This is for my brother. I would send you some except I'm not quite sure how stale they would get. They even love Bart Simpson over here....

NW1 9PA

As I was walking to the gym tonight, I passed the same blonde girl with a bee-hive hairdo and bright blue coat that I pass every morning and sometimes at night when she is going out with her friends, brown bag in hand. On the way to work, Ellie and I often see this other lady, frizzed out 80’s hair, tired eyes, orange skin from too much tanning bed in the winter and pale seashell pink lipstick. Tonight while eating my sandwich, I saw the pierced out punk guy who normally stands on the corner with the sign for the doc martens store walking home, sign under his armpit.

I am a resident of Camden now, there is a routine of knowing which bus stops will crowd the sidewalks until they can’t be passed by on any side, which red lights take five extra seconds before changing to pedestrian friendly green. I see the same drug dealers on every corner, the same three men sitting inside the kebab shop every night, and I understand that the tube is closed on Sundays in the afternoon to deal with overcrowding. I have the same cashiers run my breakfast yogurt over the scanner everyday and I can tell you what is on every aisle of Sainsbury with my eyes closed.

Last night we walked to a show. Never have I ever been able to walk to a show before. I didn’t have to deal with the string of cars honking and cutting in front of me as they tried to leave the packed parking lot. Never have I seen a show where the band wanted to hang out afterwards in the same area that they performed. We saw Stars play last night and they lit the whole stage up with vintage house lamps and played in a theatre that was too beautiful for words. They played all of my favorite songs and everyone was friendly.

I go away on weekends, only to get back to Camden Town, London feeling like I’m home. I am beginning to really fall for London and can’t believe that I am already half way through my time here.

Oh Oxford...

Two weekends ago, Ellie and I decided to check out Oxford.


We spent the night at George's moms on Friday night in Barnet which is north London, zone 6. She cooked us a nice dinner and we did our laundry and watched TV and lazed about and on Saturday, we rushed to the train station around noon to get onboard. When we got to the station, we printed out the wrong train tickets, which should have been a precursor for the day as when we arrived in Oxford amongst the chain restaurants and spires of the college, we tried to check into the wrong hostel. The girls at the hostel were very nice Canadians and explained to us that they get it all the time as they are the central backpackers and we needed the oxford backpackers. So after locating our correct hostel, the girl at the front desk, another Canadian, informed us that we had booked a 4 bed all female dorm when we though we had booked the 10 bed mixed gender dorm. Regardless, we took the room, checked it out and then threw our stuff down.




The rest of the day was spent aimlessly walking around Oxford, checking out the shopping district. Oxford is very chain oriented and I am not sure if that is because it's a college town or what, but it was less enjoyable to see a McDonalds or gap or starbucks on every corner as well as the british chains. I prefer smaller stores that are unique to the area and have some local character.



The one thing we found that was amazing was this indoor market. It had every kind of store you can imagine. A cake store, an olive store, butchers, clothing stores, the cutest little vegetarian restaurant and the best cookies we have ever tasted in our lives. Unfortunately the market was not open on Sundays, same as most things in England. So we could only explore it for an hour or so, but on the way out bought a double chocolate chip cookie that I am still thinking about.

We also went to the Oxford Modern Art museum. They were having an art contest at the time so the gallery was a bit too cluttered but it was a wide range of art, but not nearly as powerful as the modern art in Bristol.

We walked around Oxford University for a while and it was absolutely the most beautiful university I have ever seen. Oxford is called the city of dreaming spires because of the architecture of the universities. It is hard to imagine that students actually claimed these buildings as their school. It certainly made UCF look dingey, but that is not surprising considering that Oxford is the oldest university in the English speaking world. Movies such as Harry Potter and the Golden Compass have been filmed at Oxford.








Afterwards, we got some dinner and cocktails and then we went back to the hostel to freshen up a bit before we hit the town. There were some odd people staying in this hostel, including this old man who must have been 55 and he was this small wrinkled old thing who was sprawled out on the couch sleeping and then this woman who looked like a 15 year old from the back but when she turned around It was like a horror
film as she appeared to be 60. We changed our clothes and then decided to grab some snake bites. The only problem is that apparently in places outside of London, they don't sell snake bites. I am not sure if that is law but they always say, " we are not allowed to make them." We need to check into that, as a snake bite is just beer mixed with cider with some blackcurrant juice on top, not some lethal combination that will make you explode from the inside out. We had some pints at a couple of crappy pubs and then realized we forgot the code to get back in the hostel and the reception closes at midnight so we went back thinking we would get the code and come back out.

Just some fun getting ready in the hostel:








When we got back we met our two new roommates, Marita and Isabel. Both are originally from South Germany and we got along really well with both of them. They have recently moved to England around the same time as us. Marita lives in Essex which is a suburb outside of London and Isabel lives in Cornwall. Both are here teaching German and have education degrees. We ended up all sitting on our beds, talking about education, the school system and about home. Isabel is really familiar with Florida as she toured it for four weeks. She's been to both St. Augustine and Key West, as well as Orlando, Miami, Gainesville (where she thought it was fun how much team spirit the gators had) and Tampa. They told us some places we should go in Germany as well as invited us to a beer festival that happens in their town at the end of May.

The next morning, Ellie and I took a walk along the Thames which runs through Oxford as well as London. It was peaceful and then we found this tower thing and paid the 2 pounds to climb to the top to see the spires of the city.


The tower


The view:








Afterwards, we met Marita and Isabel for a Sunday roast at a pub, their first one and then we joined them for amazing ice cream. We got some cream flavoured one mixed with chocolate and it was delicious. Their trains were leaving afterwards so we hugged our new friends and hoped that we would meet up with them in Germany sometime.



We did some shopping and then decided that we were better off catching an earlier bus so we caught our double decker bus and sprawled across the last row of seats on top until the bus conductor yelled at us over the microphone in front of everybody to get up and put our seat belts on. Who can blame us for trying to catch up on sleep?

Beloved Bristol!

Last weekend, Ellie, Lauren and I set our sights on Bristol. After being tipped off by a co-worker at the casino about a month ago that I shouldn’t neglect it on my tour of the UK, we booked our bus tickets and off we went. We left at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday meaning that we had to wake up at 5:30. It was a unique feeling to be the only two people on the tube, it almost made the tube more glamourous like the ultimate limo waiting to pick us up to jet off to holiday. The only thing it was missing was the strawberries and champagne. I am getting carried, but honestly, my face is smashed into some suit-wearing Brit’s armpit at 8:45 every morning usually so this extra breathing room was luxury.

Upon arriving at the bus station, we sat about eating croissants and blackcurrant jelly, waiting for the bus driver to apparently locate his keys that he had misplaced. Our bus was ultimately heading towards Cardiff, Wales so there were a lot of Welsh folk aboard. Bristol is very near Wales as you can in the map below. It is on England ’s west coast.



The bus ride was really lovely as London seems to be the most beautiful at sunrise as it comes up over the buildings and apartments and roads and shops. We slept a little and watched the countryside go by until we arrived in Bristol .

Our first mission was to find our hostel and then get something to eat. It tooks us about 2.5 hours to arrive there so we were starving for breakfast still. Once we found our hostel on St. Stephens Street , we dropped off our luggage and asked the French woman at the counter where we could get good vegetarian breakfast. Well, she pointed us in the direction of Wetherspoon’s which is a chain but we were so hungry that we just went for it anyway. I got a nice beer ( we live in England after all) to go along with my sub-par veggie breakfast. It certainly wasn’t Alice’s or Blue Heavn. After that we set off to explore and walk around. We walked through the Saturday market which was charming with little stalls that sell mostly tacky things but some really good smelling food stalls as well. We decided that since there was actual sun shining on our faces, we would walk to Clifton suspension bridge. It was about 45 minute walk and took us straight through the center of charming Bristol. Lots of shops and beautiful university buildings and lots of people drinking their Saturday coffee in little cafes.










These are called the Christmas steps. Normally there are shops here but they were closed for the weekend.




The Bristol National museum





When we arrived at the bridge, we walked up the hill to overlook and breathe in the clean non-city air. The bridge was gorgeous with the avon gorge below it over 200 feet in the air and the lovely colors of the mountain rock it was built on.










It’s so nice to be in nature without an agenda or having to walk five hundred miles an hour to catch the tube before it leaves the platform. After spending about an hour looking at the bridge and taking some photos, Lauren and I decided to do something truly Bristolian. I had read that there was this bit of mountain that all Bristolians have slidden down as it is smooth and slippery and takes you down a bit of the mountain. Ellie couldn’t believe that I actually wanted to do it since I was wearing a dress and tights, but somehow I convinced Lauren to do it as well. As we decided we noticed there was a boy of about 3 years old sliding down this mountain with reckless abandon. His name was Cazimo and seeing how tentatively we were climbing over the railing, he offered to help us by sliding down again and giving us pointers.





Cazimo does it again and again!

The slide wasn’t that slippery or fast but we drew quite the crowd as I’m sure many tourists thought we were crazy for sliding down a mountain or maybe I was just showing my bits and pieces to the world or probably both, but it was pretty fun and worth the rip I received in my tights.


Victory!




After we slid down we walked along the bridge and noticed how many runners and cyclists there were. The entire time we were in Bristol we noticed how much people exercise and how fit everyone seemed to be. It never looked obligatory but rather like people who truly love exercising on a Saturday afternoon in the freezing winter.

We decided to get a cider at this really cute pub and afterwards we returned to the hostel to change our ripped tights. On the way there though, I had one of the most amazing moments of my life. I saw a real Banksy. A big huge Banksy.





We ended up staying in the hostel and making some cocktails in our room and with the best intentions of heading out for Thekla, an indie dance club on a canal boat on the river. We didn’t end up going though as we were just exhausted from the bus ride and the work week.

Funny thing though is that I could hear really loud music from the hostel window and their was an announcer and I thought that maybe their was a concert of some kind going on and then I heard the killers and I was so excited because I thought the killers were playing a concert right next door to the hostel and I was going to get to hear them from my bed, I even told Ellie “wow they sound so good live” and after they finished their first song, a rap song came on, Jay-Z or something and I realized I was just listening to a really loud club after all.

The next morning we awoke well-rested and after taking showers, we headed out to get some breakfast at this little café called revival and then we wanted to walk around the river.









Bristol has really artsy parts about it. I like it because it industrial, artsy and nature-oriented all at the same time. There is very little about Bristol that seems like it is fake or trying too hard.

Near the river there are really cool fountains and sculptures like this big silver ball in the middle of the restaurants and shops.






Along the river there are really cute seafood restaurants on boats and little cinemas. We stumbled upon this art gallery called Arnolfini.

It is a modern art gallery that was simply amazing. It was exhibiting one guy's work and the installation that caught my eye the most was this one where he had the lights dimmed to make shadows on the wall and these objects were spinning on carousels making amazing shadows but the objects were normal things that didn't relate like toys, plants, water bottles etc.

After the gallery we went and had some lunch at fresh and wild which is like whole foods and also had the most amazing clean tasting beers from this brewery called zero degrees. It was the best beer I have ever had, like blue moon but more citrus.

We had a really nice weekend and if I ever get the opportunity to move to the UK again, I think that Bristol might be somewhere to consider home.