Vietnamese Food & Snog To End Our Saturday
Posted by ScarlettJun 7th, 2009 | No Comments
After our failed day of sightseeing, we took the Tube to Old Street, in the borough of Islington, to find a Vietnamese restaurant called Cay Tre, which Paul had read great reviews about on several food critiquing websites. Although the spring rolls were among the best I’ve ever had, the rest of our dinner wasn’t as spectacular as we had read. Calvin and I both ordered a dish called Bún bò Huế, which is vermicelli with slices of beef in a spicy broth, and it didn’t taste anything like the Bún bò Huế we’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants in Canada – the broth wasn’t spicy enough and didn’t have any lemongrass flavour, which it should, and the meat wasn’t the same kind at all. Looking around us, we didn’t see any Vietnamese people eating there, leading us to conclude that this is a somewhat “westernized” style of Vietnamese food and those reviews we had read were written by people that are used to this type and not the truly authentic stuff… 
Day 2 In London
Posted by ScarlettJun 7th, 2009 | No Comments
We started our second day in London by taking the Tube to Tower Hill station, where we met up with Calvin to go see the Tower of London and the nearby Tower Bridge. We decided to eat before going sightseeing, and ended up at a place called The Minories for our first pub meal. The prices were astonishingly cheap – they had a huge selection of entrees that were two for ₤7.45 – and we shared five entrees (Chile Con Carne, Fish & Chips, Pie of the Day, Bangers and Mash, and Cajun Chicken Salad) and two desserts for less than ₤30! The food wasn’t anything phenomenal, but it was decent for the price, especially compared to what we’ve been paying for so far!
Day 1 In London
Posted by ScarlettJun 6th, 2009 | No Comments
Since leaving Spain and heading to France, the language barrier hasn’t been that big of an issue because we’ve always found someone that speaks some English, but I’m still very excited about the fact that today we’re back in a country where English is the primary language! Not only do I not have to worry anymore about who I can ask for directions and stuff like that, I love the fact that we’re surrounded by sexy British accents! This could be a great couple of months…
Overnight Ferry To England
Posted by ScarlettJun 5th, 2009 | No Comments
Tonight we are on our first ferry ride of this trip, taking the Stena Line from Hoek van Holland to Harwich, England. Stena operates two ferries from Hoek van Holland to Harwich each day, one during the day and one overnight. We were originally going to take the daytime one, but when we realized our mistake about miscounting the number of days we had been in Schengen Agreement countries (as mentioned before, Canadian citizens are allowed in for 90 days out of every 180 without a visa), we changed our reservation to the overnight ferry. Once we got onboard and saw that the ferry is more like a mini cruise ship and we have a decent room equipped with bunk beds and a washroom and shower, I was glad we took the overnight ferry instead. At about the same price as plane tickets to London (€ 45 each including the train ticket from Harwich to London), I think the ferry is a much more relaxing way to travel and you save on one night of accommodations by taking the overnight ferry!
Half A Day In Rotterdam
Posted by ScarlettJun 5th, 2009 | No Comments
This morning we headed to Rotterdam, the second largest municipality in the Netherlands and home of the largest port in Europe. We had originally planned to overnight here and catch a ferry from the nearby town, Hoek van Holland, to England tomorrow morning, but last week we realized we miscounted the number of days we’ve been in the EU so we had to cancel our reservation and take the overnight ferry tonight or risk getting caught for overstaying our welcome and be banned from Schengen Agreement countries!
More Dim Sum :)
Posted by ScarlettJun 4th, 2009 | 1 Comment
Today for our last day in Amsterdam, we headed to the last major tourist sight we haven’t been to – Ann Frank’s house. Unfortunately, like yesterday, we started off with bad luck because after waiting in line for 45 minutes to buy tickets, we got to the front and found out their credit card machines weren’t working and we didn’t have enough cash on us for the tickets! When we couldn’t find the ATM the girl at the ticket office directed us to, we decided to skip Ann Frank’s house and headed straight to Chinatown for our final dim sum meal – and this time we knew the correct name of the restaurant my aunt was talking about after another phone call to her last night!
Diiiimmm Suuummmm!!!
Posted by ScarlettJun 3rd, 2009 | 2 Comments
Because we felt like we scheduled ourselves for too many days in Amsterdam, these last two days have been rather uneventful and we decided to stay near the B&B to catch up on some sleep and explore the area we’re living in. Today we headed out to continue our sightseeing, with a plan to catch a weekly free lunch concert at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam’s prized concert hall (every Wednesday from September to June you can hear the featured orchestra rehearse for the evening concert for free at 12:30 pm), and then head to Chinatown to try a dim sum restaurant that was recommended on the Internet.
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