So yeah, I know. I’ve totally failed at following through with my lenten promise of being a better updater/blogger. I don’t know if there’s a word out there in the blogosphere to describe how bad I’ve been, but I’m sure if you looked it up in the dictionary, my name would be used as an example…
Anyway, almost a month ago now, I had my spring break trip. Deciding where to go wasn’t the easy because God knows there are plenty of places in Europe I would have loved to go see. The general time period was about 11 days that I had off, and my roommates and I have been planning since before we even arrived in Florence to be spending a few of the days in Barcelona with all of their school friends. I decided to spend the other 6 days in London, and invite my mom to come visit me and have a girls vacation. She has only been to Europe 3 times and all of those times have been to Italy so I really wanted her to experience another european city, especially with me.
Naturally, we loved London. I loved it in a way I didn’t expect at all - I left wishing I had studied abroad there and am seriously considering in my future to apply for jobs that are London-based. I could easily see myself living there for a few years…
My mom and I decided to make it a take-it-easy-and-relax vacation rather than jam-packed with touristy sightseeing like we so often do. Of course, we went to see the crowned jewels at the London Tower and went on the Eye ferris wheel thing (where we quickly learned that my mom has an irrational fear of heights…who would have thought?!), saw Westminster Abbey and Buckingham palace and all of that jazz. However instead of feverishly going from place to place at a very punctuated time schedule, we spent a lot of our time walking around and exploring the area that our hotel was at. The hotel was fabulous all except for one thing - the size of the rooms. They must think that people don’t want to be able to walk around in London hotel rooms or this hotel just really missed the mark on that…fitting 3 large suitcases was a juggling act to say the least and we soon realized that we’d have to do away with one if we were to move about our room in any sort of fashion. So, I packed all of the winter-y things I had brought to have my mom take home at the end of the trip into one suitcase and put it in the closet - problem solved. The concierge was also really really helpful and wonderful at the hotel as well - overall the stay got a B+/A- from me and my mom. The lobby was absolutely gorgeous and very popular at night.
Of course I also left London with another goal in life: that whenever I feel like shopping in my adult life, that I can go to Harrods and not think twice about purchasing anything — HA!! That place really should be illegal that’s how wonderful it is. Sigh.
In terms of the food that we ate, we had really, really good food. I guess in ways we lucked out because I’ve heard people say that London food is not very good. Perhaps it was because we were tourists and ate at only good places according to our concierge, but what do I know…
I believe we had this before we went to the London tower but I really don’t remember - it was in the lobby of our hotel and from that menu and it was basically their ham/charcuterie sampler menu which was basically a heart attack on a plate but was AMAZEEE!
We also got the mini sandwiches plate but that was uneventful - good but uneventful. Our favorite was of course the worst thing nutritionally for us - the Ham Hock (spelling?) which is basically pork fat trimmings but it was DOUBLE AMAZE!!!!!!:
And we ate the whole thing. Nice!
One day, we went to a DELICIOUS little french place (a lot of the food in the theatre district, where we were staying) was french places. And honestly if that’s what french food is like in France, then I can’t WAIT to go to France because I think I really really like french food - even though for so long I swore I hated it…whateva. We of course had french onion soup (my mom asked for extra cheese, difficult american :P), and we both got steak sandwiches which again were delicious!
Delicious.
After that my friends, the sad truth is I do not have any more pictures to show you other than the ones below - none of them are of my beloved FOOD! I used my mom’s camera (as I imagine you can tell from the quality of the pictures above) the entire time in London as opposed to my point and shoot and of course, forgot to upload the last batch of pictures on her camera to my laptop before we left London. I’ll have to catch up with those at a later date - perhaps when my family comes to visit me in a few days! YAY!!
