Portobello Road

Friday night we had a date night.  We ate Domino's Pizza, watched Finding Neverland, ate peanut M&M's and chocolate buttons, and made a life bucket list.  It was fun to have a regular old date night.  Saturday we were back up and at 'em though.  We went to the Portobello Market in Notting Hill London.  This was by far my favorite market we've been to.  It went on for blocks with everything from antique china, to fresh produce, to souvenirs of every shape and size.  We were only planning on spending a little bit of time there before heading to the museum, but we ended up spending hours walking around the market instead.  

Coriander is actually cilantro...I was so happy when I found out they had cilantro here. 

There were street performers all over the place.

Tartiflette Savoyarde - fancy, delicious potatoes

Portobello Crepes with strawberries and Nutella...mmmm

Crepes

The Market

Notting Hill was also filled with beautiful houses and apartments

After the Portobello Market, we rented Barclays Bikes again and rode around the Kensington Gardens.  We were able to walk around the Kensington Palace gardens and grounds, which were so pretty.  We biked past the Albert Memorial then over to Buckingham Palace.  By then, it was getting dark and they had lit up the palace.  We decided to head to Parliament, and see it all lit up at night. It was a perfect, little day with my hubby.

Kensington Palace and Gardens

The Kensington Palace Gardens

All this greenery is actually tree branches wired to the archway.

This bird just stood there posed like this, foot popped and all.

Wellington Arch, the Albert Memorial, and the gates of Buckingham Palace

The London Eye lit up at nigh

Parliament at night

 

I'm Trying to Make London My Home

Well, I've gotten a little behind on the blog.  Life has been pretty busy for us lately with school for me and work for Spencer.  Somehow the days are just sliding by.  It takes us about an hour by Tube to reach Central London, so we spend most evenings at home being regular people and planning our weekend trips. I found out last week that I got full financial aid for this school year which was a nice bonus!  Spencer and I have callings in our ward, I teach youth Sunday School for the 17 year-olds and Spencer is an Elders Quorum teacher.  It's the first time we've had callings since we got married, so I was actually kinda excited.  Everyone has been so nice to us, and we've felt so welcome there.  We're also speaking in church in 2 weeks, so we're definitely being utilized as well.  Our ward is fun, with lots of cultures from all over the world.  We went to a baptism last week, and at the end they had authentic Nigerian food which was a new experience!

Leonardo DiCaprio, the more popular royals, and the Beatles

Last Saturday (the 7th) we decided to go to Madame Tussaud's which is something I've always wanted to do, but never have.  We spent several hours posing with wax figures (which is actually such a strange thing), walking through their Chamber of Horrors, riding the Disneyland-esque Spirit of London Ride, and watching the 4D Marvel Superhero movie.  It was a fun change to go somewhere that functioned to entertain, rather than sightseeing all day.

Spencer felt too corny just smiling - Jim Carey, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and IronMan

Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes

Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn

And another cute/corny picture of Spencer with ET

As picturesque as everything seems on Instagram and this blog, sometimes living here is hard.  London is gorgeous and amazing, but we're still 5,000 miles away from pretty much everything I've ever known.  We haven't made many friends outside of church, so I go some days without talking to a single person until Spencer gets home.  I miss my friends and our families.  Some days are harder than others.  Last Tuesday was one of those days, I cried and told Spencer I didn't want to live here anymore.  Then, I got a message from Jessica Parker (our wedding photographer).  She was in London on a Europe trip with some friends, and invited me to come with them.  Wednesday, I met them in London at the Spitalfields Market and we walked around to various tourist attractions.  Thursday, we caught a train to Bath (a picturesque place about 1 1/2 hours north of London).  It was so fun just to be with people and talk to them.  We spent most of the day walking around, taking pictures, and sightseeing.  I finally tried fish and chips (which I thought were mediocre), and we had afternoon tea.  It was so nice to get away and by the time they left, I felt a lot better about everything.

Bath Abbey - It was free admission AND you can take pictures inside!  Double bonus! I loved the fan ceiling!

The Royal Crescent - Beautiful architecture, but I was too cheap to pay for the guided tour

Peppermint tea (so yes, it's okay) and scones.  British scones with clotted cream are definitely my favorite British food I've had so far. 

Why thank you, Mr. Darcey

The entire city was filled with gorgeous hanging baskets

Pictures don't do this park justice.  Let's just say it's so beautiful, you have to pay to even walk in through it!

If I understood correctly, this is the bridge from Les Mis.  Either way, it's very picturesque, don't you think?

Piccadilly

I decided for this post I'll just describe out weekend in pictures, rather than lots of words.  You may pick up on two themes here: Harry Potter and American food.  I've been here just long enough to start missing some of my favorites.  The top of my list includes good salad dressings (cilantro ranch!), chips and homemade garden salsa, and chocolate chip cookies (I tried making chocolate chip cookies but the sugar here is really grainy which gave them a weird taste, and chocolate chips are hard to come by).

Friday night we ate at Pizza Hut, and walked around Piccadilly Circus and the West End.  No, we didn't actually go see Les Mis, but this was too awesome looking to pass up the photo op.

For my Harry Potter people.

Am I the only person who sees something wrong with feeding a squirrel out of your hand and petting it???  

We went on a Harry Potter walking tour on Saturday morning.  It was fun, but not as fun as I'd hoped.  There's only so many real things they can show you from a fictional story.  The tour mostly included things such as, "In Harry Potter 5, they fly under this bridge!".  Plus, it was based on the movies which I don't love nearly as much.

Saturday we also visited St. Paul's Cathedral (Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married here).

More St. Paul's.  It was AMAZING on the inside, but of course, no pictures allowed.

No, we didn't eat here, we just took awesome  pictures with it.  We went to Chipotle instead (it tastes nothing like Cafe Rio, just for the record).

We visited Platform 9 3/4 on September 1st, we had church at 10 AM so we missed the 11:00 party, but I can't complain.

Bad news, this is what Platforms 9 and 10 ACTUALLY look like.  There's not even a wall in between them :(

Last night we went out for "legit American burgers" with Spencer's co-workers.  They were really good, but they just don't make burgers here like we do in America.  When I get back to Utah, one of the first things I'll eat is a Bacon Bleu Cheese Burger with the little crispy onions....yum!

The White Cliffs of Dover

Well, here’s another update on us:  Online classes started for me this week, and Spencer has been busy at work.  (Now that we have the boring stuff out of the way, here’s what we did last weekend.)

Friday night I met Spencer at work for dinner at a Japanese noodle place, then we went on the Jack the Ripper walking tour.  For those who don’t know who Jack the Ripper is (I’d heard of him, but didn’t really know details), he was a serial killer that brutally murdered 5 prostitutes in London in the 1880s.  I don’t recommend you Wikipedia him, because he was a creep (and definitely don’t look at the Google Images).  On the walking tour, they walked us around to different sites of the murders, and where a piece of evidence had been found.  Unfortunately, Jack the Ripper was never caught, so we didn’t get to solve the mystery. Overall, it was creepy and fascinating.

Saturday, we had a disasterous day of travel that included missing buses, running through train stations, sitting in an airport waiting for 3 hours to catch our connecting bus (the first bus dropped us off at an airport), and ultimately led to us getting to Cambridge several hours behind schedule.  Cambridge was amazing though!  The buildings were beautiful!  There are 31 separate colleges that make up the university; we went on a guided walking tour that showed us some of the highlights with lots of fun facts. Every single building on their campus is like Old Main except a lot older, a lot fancier, and with a lot more history behind it. I can’t imagine what it would be like studying in a place like that.

Kings College is the most famous (and arguably the most beautiful) college at Cambridge. You'll also notice we finally got to enjoy some wonderful English rain.

Me with King's College again.  Spencer with the Senate building where they hold graduation and post your grades on a bulletin boards for everyone to see!

The buildings on the left are different colleges main buildings and grounds.  The clock on the top right cost over one million pounds and is only correct every 5 minutes.  The creepy bug on top symbolizes your life being eaten away. The bottom right is punting on the river, which we were cheapskates and didn't do.

Monday was a “bank holiday”, which is similar to Labor Day, so Spencer had the day off.  We went to Dover, which is on the south tip of England, bordering the English Channel.  On a good day, you can see the coast of France from Dover.  We visited Dover Castle, which was built in the 1100s by Henry II.  It was sort of surreal to go inside an actual real life castle.  Another site on the grounds of Dover castle is the Secret Wartime Tunnels. Many of the tunnels were dug during the Napoleonic Wars and go hundreds of meters down into the cliffs of Dover.  They were used most recently during World War II for planning and defense, as Dover is considered the “Key to England.”  We were able to go down into the tunnels for an interactive show about “Operation Dynamo” or the Dunkirk Evacuation/miracle in which they rescued over 300,000 Allied soldiers in 10 days.  The soldiers were trapped in France after the French surrendered to Germany at the beginning of WWII.  We also visited the Underground Hospital, which was awesome!  (Dad, if you’re reading this, you should be very jealous, and think that maybe deer hunting isn’t as cool as visiting your daughter in London.)  The castle is built on top of the “famous White Cliffs of Dover”, so we got some pretty good pictures with them as well. 

Check out that castle!

Top left: Some musicians (I can't remember what they're called), Bottom left:  Looking out from the top of the castle, Bottom right: Just a good old jousting competition (those people take it VERY seriously) 

The dining hall, the throne room, and the King's bedroom.

The grounds around the castle.

This lighthouse was build in 50 AD!!!

The Cliffs

Pictures weren't allowed inside the tunnels.  So we had to settle for pictures with the signs (plus the one I snuck on the top right.)

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying their first weeks of school! I’m legitimitately sad to not be at USU this year, especially with the game tonight! Go Aggies!