A Day Of Art & Shakespeare

With only a few days left in London, we headed out today to cram in a few art galleries before catching the evening production of Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, which we had purchased tickets for online last week when we stopped by the Globe and realized that pretty much all shows sell out in advance. After today, I think we can both say we’ve had enough art and theatre for the next little while… (more…)

A Wicked Day In London

Today was the best possible Saturday I could ask for – we managed to get front row tickets to Wicked, a musical about “the untold story of the wicked witch of the west,” and then we stumbled upon the Queen’s birthday celebration and saw the whole Royal Family at Buckingham Palace!  I am so thankful we happened to be at the right place at the right time… (more…)

More Sightseeing & BBQ Duck

As predicted, we ended up stuck in the area by our hotel for one more day yesterday because of the Tube strike. Today, with the Tube strike over, we headed back to city center to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and try some ramen noodles at Wagamama in Covent Garden, another restaurant on About.com’s top 10 cheap eats in London. It wasn’t a crazy exciting day of sightseeing, but it was a nice way to start our last weekend in London, which is going to be pretty busy. (more…)

Our First Live Football Match!

Since we accomplished so much of our sightseeing while Calvin was here, we took a day to rest yesterday and hung around the hotel, sleeping in and doing a bit of shopping in the area.  Unfortunately, this morning we found out on the BBC news that a two day Tube strike starts today, meaning we’re stuck in Wembley until Friday, unless we want to brave the masses of crowds who will be relying on the buses!  Thankfully we scheduled extra time in London so we’ll just wait until the strike is over to resume our sightseeing…

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Westfield London Shopping Center

Today for Calvin’s last day in London, we decided to spend some time shopping at Westfield London, which isn’t anything exciting to write about, but I wanted to include a small blurb here about the mall because it’s probably the nicest mall I’ve ever been to, in terms of interior design and appearance.  I was born and raised in Edmonton, home of West Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world until 2004, so big malls are nothing special to me, but Westfield London, the largest urban mall in Europe, did make me go “Wow!” just a little bit… (more…)

Vietnamese Food & Snog To End Our Saturday

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… (more…)

Day 2 In London

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!

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Day 1 In London

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… (more…)

Half A Day In Rotterdam

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!

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More Dim Sum :)

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!

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