Our Adventurous Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day in London.  We arrived in the morning and attended a church service at St. Paul's Cathedral for Americans living in the UK.  There was about 500 people there and the US Ambassador to the UK spoke as well.  It was a nice service and the church was beautiful.

After the service we went to a lunch at great restaurant called Fifteen owned by Jamie Oliver, he is pretty big over here (he had the show Jamie's Oliver's Food Revolution in the US), and then we did some some sightseeing at the Tower of London, walked along the Thames, and saw the London Bridge (behind Craig in the picture below). 

We had a great day together and can't wait to spend some more time sightseeing in London.  We really missed being with family and friends though.  When we got home we ordered some Chinese take out and sat around talking about how much we wished we were back home!

We've been feeling kind of like duds since we arrived here.  Most days we're in bed by 11pm.  We get up early every morning and drink tea.  We plan our meals out in advance and look up recipes accordingly.  We spend most of our days working on the flat.  So when the opportunity came up for an inexpensive three day trip to Amsterdam, we thought, here is our chance to prove we are still young and fun!  We left on Friday morning at 3:30am and took a ferry from England to Holland.  It took a LONG time to get there, about 6.5 hours on the ship plus driving to and from the ports.  We got to Amsterdam that evening and had a great dinner at a traditional Dutch restaurant, in fact, when we were done, Craig proclaimed it was the BEST meal he ever ate--and Craig has eaten a lot of meals!  We walked around the city and found the famous Red Light District.  Somehow it didn't seem as scandalous as I had always pictured it. The next day we did some more sightseeing and saw the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the outdoor Christmas market, complete with ice skating and glogg.  We did a lot of walking and explored the different neighborhoods and canal areas.  I can't say that we partied enough to lose our "dud" status though, it was a pretty tame but enjoyable few days. 

This was a group of swans in a canal at the start of the Red Light District--you can see some of the reddish pink lights in the distance.

My favorite meal of the trip, a traditional stampot.  Just look at that sausage!  It was de-lish!!!

 On the way to take the ferry back to England we stopped in Delft, where Delft pottery has been made for several hundred years.  It was a beautiful little town.

So it was a great trip and has reignited our desire to make the most out of our European experience.  We'll still probably be in bed by 11pm most nights, but on occasion, you may find us in some famous city, drinking hot wine until the wee hours of the morning.

English vs. English

I haven't posted in a while, after moving into our place we really underestimated the amount of work we would need to put into the place in order to make it livable.  We're finding out just how different things are over here.  For example, when we moved in to our "flat" it was pretty filthy, although the rental company didn't seem to think so. There was still junk left in closets from the previous tenants (including condoms--luckily unused!).  We wouldn't have even moved in that day but the shipment of all our belongings was arriving that day and we had to put them someplace.  So since moving in we have been cleaning, painting, and unpacking.  It is starting to look really cute though and its nice to be able to make it our own place.  We ended up getting all new light fixtures,painting the entire place--we have three more rooms to go, installing mirrors and towel racks in the bathrooms that didn't have any, amongst other things.  We also had to purchase our kitchen appliances, known here as white goods, a lot of rentals do not come with them.  Also, another difference here is the washer and dryer go in the kitchen!  Our appliances are very tiny, we had to buy new cookie sheets because ours wouldn't fit into the oven.  I made cookies earlier this week and could only bake 8 at a time...  I am going to be 1/4ing my recipes from now on!  We have a small fridge/freezer that's about 4 feet tall, when we go to the grocery store we have to remind ourselves we can't buy everything we want and to buy the smallest portion of items so everything fits.  It's killing Craig to not be able to buy everything in the jumbo sizes!  We should have the place all done and looking great in the next few weeks and then I will post some more pictures. 

I also wanted to share some of the new English we have picked up while we've been here.
The word BRILLIANT.  In the US we use it mostly to describe a great idea, or to say how smart someone is.  They use it all the time here but we haven't quite figured out the exact translation, its similar to "that's nice", or "good".  For example, if we were to tell someone we were going on holiday for the weekend (a vacation), they would say "Oh brilliant!".  But the other day Craig called the cable company to set up our service, the conversation went something like this:
Cable guy: Hello, what is your name?
Craig: Craig Vaughn
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant. What's your address?
Craig: 33A the Broadway in St. Ives
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant. And what are you calling about?
Craig:  We need to set up our cable and internet service
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant
I was listening in the background giggling thinking, Craig is pretty brilliant to know his name, address, AND why he is calling!
 
There are lots of other words that are either new to us or have different meanings from how we use it in the US.  Like, the word cheers. People use it ALL the time, I thought it was an over-exaggeration, but it's not.  Mostly men say this to other men, its like "take care" or can be used like "thank you". Craig is trying to start saying it since people say it to him, but it just doesn't sound as natural somehow...  Trolley means cart, so at the grocery store its the shopping trolley, or the luggage trolley at a hotel.  Sometimes if a person doesn't know what we are talking about we just have to describe it for them.  The other day we went to the hardware store to get some weather stripping for some of our windows, we asked the salesclerk where it was located, she just looked at us with a blank face so Craig started describing it, and the lady's face lit up and she said "Oh! You mean draft evader!" Yes, draft evader, that does sound much more proper.  And then there are times when someone is speaking to us and for the life of me, I have no idea what they said, it sounds like a foreign language!  This is usually when someone has a really thick accent, like they may come from a different part of England.  The other night we were at the pub down the street from us, and this older guy started talking to us and he asked me a question, I just stared at him because I didn't understand anything he said, he probably thought I was deaf...  But Craig jumped in and started talking luckily!  Probably the funniest thing so far has been British people doing American accents, and they are pretty good at it too!  They are usually making fun of us, like look how you have ruined OUR language, but we just laugh along with them because it is pretty comical.

We want to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving!  We are going to London for the day and are really looking forward to it.  The US Embassy puts on a service at St. Paul's Cathedral every Thanksgiving for Americans living in the UK, so we're going to attend that and then do some sightseeing.  Here is a link to the cathedral, it looks beautiful, it was built between 1675 and 1710!  Stay tuned for pictures!  http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Cathedral-History

Top of a Flower Shop

After almost three weeks of searching, we found our place!  It's in St. Ives, a town located about 15 minutes north of Cambridge.  We had hoped to find a place right in Cambridge, but everything was tiny for what we could afford.  But St. Ives is a really cute town and the location we're in is phenomenal.  It's a large apartment right in the town center above a flower shop.  The front of it overlooks the street and it backs up to a river, we actually have a mooring if we wanted to get a boat (I can't see us actually getting a boat, but we can go fishing!).  Here is a picture of the river.  Our place is about 100 feet upstream, located here.
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The apartment itself has a lot of character, the leasing agent said the building could be anywhere from 100 to 200 years old, that's a pretty wide range, but nevertheless, it's old!  We need to do some work to it--painting, cleaning, etc., but we really like it overall, and it's big enough to fit all of our junk, err.... belongings. :)  It's three bedrooms (yes, we will have a guest room!), and two and a half baths.  When you walk in from the front door there's a big curvy staircase that goes up to all the rooms.

And here is the view from our deck-- yes, those are sheep!!

So we're moving in next Friday.  We're excited to get out of the hotel and in a permanent place!

Some Cambridge Fun

After a week of looking at houses and apartments (or flats as they call them), trying to set up a bank account, and get cell phones, we finally had a day to relax last Sunday.  It helped that most things here are closed on Sundays so we had no option but to have a day of enjoyment.  The University of Cambridge includes 31 separate colleges throughout the city.  They are all very beautiful, the olderst was founded in 1284!  You can imagine all of the 18-22 year olds running around because of this....  Here are two pictures of King's College which is one of the most stunning.  After a long walk around the city we needed a break, so we went to have tea of course, at a sidewalk cafe.  A classic afternoon tea includes small sandwiches, scones with butter and jam, and a pot of tea with milk.  Side note:  Coffee and tea is served with milk, we ask for cream though which everyone thinks is odd, their cream is real cream so its extremely thick, similar to melted ice cream, if its mixed with milk it makes half and half though. 

On the housing front, we've looked at around a dozen places, some have been very nice and others not so nice!  The houses tend to be a lot smaller than in the US, so we're worried about fitting all of our furniture, even though we got rid of a lot of things before we moved.  All of our belongings and car are being shipped here on a steamship and are scheduled to arrive in early November so we need to settle on a place in the new few weeks.  We have a couple more places to look at this weekend and then hopefully we can make a decision. 

Getting the Feel For It

Well we have been in Cambridge for about three days now, and have accomplished very little in getting our new lives set up here.  In order to rent a place, we need a UK bank account, and in order to get a UK bank account, we need a permanent address.  In order to get cell phones here, we need both!  So we've been banging our heads against the wall trying to figure it all out.  Tomorrow we're heading to the base where Craig will be working and hope to get some help from some other Americans who have been through this before.  So far everyone has been very nice to us here and we've had fabulous food (don't believe what you hear about it!).  The oddest things we've tried are squirrel (it was good!), and black pudding which is a typical breakfast dish made with pig's blood.  I will be dedicating a future post just to pudding, as people are obsessed with it here.  Here are a few pictures we've taken around Cambridge, they really don't do it justice though.  It's very beautiful, a mix of old and new architecture, mostly old though, the newer buildings look a little out of place.