Helllloooooo, I'm back! After a sweet weeks long vacation I'm back in the blogging saddle. It turns out that it is remarkably easy to fall out of the habit of blogging. I think that last burst of writing was maybe slightly too ambitious. Well now it's February and I'm recommitting myself. We can just skip right over the space between when I last wrote and the few days before my family arrived, it was nothing but the typical mix of school work and terrible, terrible weather.
What is really really important about January is that my family came to visit! My mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law and sister all came together. They got into Heathrow mid-morning Thursday. I met them at the airport, although they had already arrived and sat down and I foolishly went and waited at the arrivals exit for about 10 minutes while they were waiting a few yards away. Ultimately we got ourselves sorted out, and after much hugging and general excitement we started the long journey back into London. The first step was making sure everyone had the 5 pounds on their oyster cards so we could actually get back into London. This was a difficult confusing process, but after 15 minutes or so we prevailed, and hopped on the Tube. Our first stop was Waterloo to drop of Micah and Erica's baggage at their hotel, then a short walk to the bus to my parent's hotel where we left Aliza's baggage as well. This is simple to write, but probably took upwards of 2 hours to accomplish. From my parent's hotel in Southwark we walked down to the London Bridge area and caught the Big Bus open-top bus tour bus. The next three or so hours we rode around in the bus seeing pretty much all the sights there are to see in London. I hadn't done one in this city yet so I still got to see new things like the Mayfair area. About halfway through we lost Micah and Erica to the jetlag, no one was that surprised.
Thursday was also a fast day (at least for those of us that could fast) and the bus tour ended right on time for my parents, Aliza and I to find a highly recommended kosher place to eat in Golders Green. I had never been to G/G before and when you come out of the Tube it's one of those places where there are five roads that all lead away from where you are standing, none of them have signs, and my GPS was not interested in showing exactly where I was. Eventually I just took a wild guess and luckily led us down the right path. We broke our fast at White House Express. The food was.....ok. It was one of those places where they charge 1 pound extra for "lafa" and then served the meat in a tortilla instead. You would have to pay ME to eat a shwarma in a tortilla! It should NEVER be the other way around. But the chips were delicious and the rest of the food wasn't bad and we were starving. Micah managed to find us at the restaurant and then after we finished we spent what must have been over an hour stocking up on kosher food at the nearby bakeries and grocery stores. Then, thoroughly chilled and exhausted we stumbled back to Southwark to pick up Aliza's bags. We stayed long enough to see my parents to their room, harder than we thought after my father and I were kidnapped by a tiny but determined elevator which took us only to the basement, and I got to open all my chanukah presents. Thanks again guys! I loved the hats, book, tiny reading light, SURF BOARD SHAPED USB DRIVE(!!!!!), surf wax, family calendar, cards and gelt and anything else I've left off my thank you list. The hats were especially useful since Aliza I and then walked, in what felt like the deepest cold we had ever experienced and subject to an unrelenting gusty wind, the mile back to my residence hall. I made a little next on the floor for Aliza (yoga mat, multiple blanket, a couple of pillows) and we went immediately to sleep.
Friday was a day when we all reconvened significantly more well-rested at the Tower of London in the morning. Everyone had to find their way there alone, without a guide and did marvelously. It really helps to be in a city where everyone speaks English and will practically fall over themselves to help a confused or lost looking tourist. Our day was short because Shabbat came so early. We spent the entirety of it at the Tower, starting with the Tower tour. I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, it was led by this very nice Yeoman Warder
Like all Yeoman warders he treated us to many tales of beheadings. And we caught our first glimpse of the guards in the furry hats!
These guys may not be allowed to talk or react, but they can sure do some serious side-eye. After the tour we took our time inspecting the crown jewels and then the armor exhibit inside the White Tower/Norman Tower. We still had a bit of time left in the day so we checked out the sculpture commemorating the people executed within the Tower grounds (only 7 or so people who were granted private executions) and then rounded up the family for a group photo - resisting the urge to ask the person taking it to do so with all of the cameras
Once the picture obligations had been taken care of we started in on parts of the Tower I had never been to before. We checked out the medieval castle
Walked along the castle walls in the bright sunshine
And noticed these cool sculptures for the first time!
I also thought the Salt Tower was extremely interesting, I hadn't been in it before and this is where you can see carvings in the wall left by the numerous Tower prisoners held there. They include a number of religious carvings from when I believe mostly Catholics were being persecuted and also some intricate astrological designs by a man accused of some sort of sorcery. They did not do much to make him look innocent. When we left the Salt Tower time was running short, but we were stuck up on the walls and had to run through the zoo exhibit before we could find the exit. It was pretty depressing, since they had never seen a lot of these animals before most seemed to die from mistreatment out of ignorance. Shockingly it is difficult for ostriches to survive on irons and nails, elephants to survive on whiskey, and yes a room full of monkeys will rip your face off even if you are a noblewoman.
I had just enough time to capture a really brilliant picture of Micah before we left.
That afternoon my parents had to gather their belongings and travel to Golders Green for the weekend, Micah and Erica re-traveled the bus tour so they could be awake for it this time and Aliza and I returned home to rest up for our big Shabbat trek to Chabad. We lit Shabbat candles in my kitchen, then got ready, dressed up super super warmly because it had been so very cold the night before and then walked the four miles to Chabad. It wasn't a bad walk, there aren't really many hills in London and we walked past all sorts of famous landmarks on the way there like Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and the Christmas lights on Oxford Street. It was however, slightly frustrating to walk down the sidewalk full of after-work meandering shoppers when we had somewhere to go. I had my normal freakout about punctuality even though I KNEW and Aliza knew and she knew that I knew that there was literally a 0% chance that services would start on time and that if we got there when dinner was scheduled to start we would make it in time for services also. I still made us hurry and so we were extremely warm the entire walk and we got there.... 2 minutes before services. Aliza was an angel and refrained from saying "I told you so." She was thinking it hard enough that I picked up on it anyway though. My friends Jardena and Ali and her friend Abby all met us there for dinner and we sat together at a table with a number of french men who we had shared a table with the last time we were all there. Dinner was long and Chabad-like, it lasted three hours, there was tons of food, we ate and ate and ate, there was of course not enough challah but more than enough vodka, and a very long speech I couldn't keep track of. By the time dinner and dessert had ended it was around 11:30. But we were on Baker Street! And Baker Street, in case you weren't aware, is where Sherlock Holmes lives! He lives at 221B Baket Street. We were at 73 Baker Street. We couldn't resist.
We walked the ~4 blocks or so, watching the numbers grow as we went, we got all the way up to 219, which was a giant block of condos, then 225. Shoot. This is confusing. We kept looking and it turns out they have left 221B Baker where it was, even though it doesn't actually fit into the current numbering scheme. We looked at the door, the plaque, the next door museum/pub, and as we are checking it out a couple of British blokes walk past and comment "you know he isn't real right?" I'm a smart-ass so I respond by wailing that means that now my night has been RUINED and does this mean SANTA isn't real either?! WHAT ABOUT THE TOOTH FAIRY?! We shrug off the encounter and start to walk back, we get to the end of the block and run into a guy that I met briefly in Brussels who had been at Chabad as well that night and who had with him a couple of French guys I hadn't met before. When we explained we had been checking out Sherlock Holmes' address the first question out of this dude's mouth was "I mean, you know he's not real right?" Is there a contingent of people out there that are confused about this? It was hysterically funny to be asked the same thing, in the same condescending tone in the space of 10 minutes but maybe this is a point of confusion people in London encounter frequently?
On the long, and much darker (no Christmas lights), but slower (no insane rushing need to be on time) walk back we saw a fox. Significantly more rare than the fox sighting though, was the London cab driver that stopped for the fox as it ran down the road, these guys won't even stop for pedestrians! And then the fox (who was not doing very well) ran across Oxford Street and a double decker bus stopped for him! And double decker buses, I firmly believed, stop for no one and no thing. So London drivers are softies for foxes but not humans. That was the big event of the night other than the part where we finally made it home by around 1:30 or 2 am, crawled up to the fourth floor and went to sleep.
The next morning nothing happened, we slept through it completely, only waking up around noon. This was just enough time for us to get ready before the phone rang to signal that Micah had arrived at my residence for lunch. It turns out that he had been there for around 20 minutes, but the person manning the desk was just helping out so they didn't know how to call my room and once the real receptionist showed up they couldn't figure it out either. Eventually they succeeded and I brought Micah up to my extremely tiny room for a cold lunch. We had delicious pita and hummus and cheese and challah and a giant salad and chopped up veggies. It took a while to set up and then we cleaned the desk and used it to set up a game of Monopoly. It was British monopoly so all the streets and utilities were totally different. We were also only playing with one trivial pursuit die. After all the work of reading the rules, since none of us could remember how to set up the game, we got underway just as it was time for me to go meet Erica. Late afternoon I met her in Waterloo and we went to the Seven Dials area for Matilda's Stupendous Tea. It was at the Mercer Hotel in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden, which I had actually never been to before. The Christmas lights were still up in the area so it was super cute. We had a lovely lovely tea. Until the very end, when the cupcakes we had been eying for the entire time turned out to be FROSTED MUFFINS! Just dressed up like cupcakes! And the frosting wasn't even good! It was devastating. And they kept looking like cupcakes so even though I knew, KNEW that it wasn't any good I kept wanting to eat it.
To avoid that fate we left and went to meet the rest of the family at Selfridges. Selfridges is one of the major gigantic "big-box" department stores in London (similar to Harrods but more conveniently located). When I say "big-box" I don't mean like Walmart, I mean it takes up an entire city block. It is a really really big box. I had never been inside so we went in to explore. There's a lot of stuff in there, like most department stores it is divided up into types of products, so perfume and high-end bags etc., and then the clothing is divided into designer/brand areas, so there is an H&M in Selfridges, bringing the number of H&M stores on Oxford Street to at least 4, possibly 5. We strolled through the music area, the Muji store (organizational goods) and then to the foodhall finally where we found adorable baked goods
overpriced US brand pancakes
and kosher sandwiches! We then circled back around through the diamonds, the home goods area and the Cath Kitson store before deciding to take a walk down Oxford Street. We didn't make it to Soho as planned, instead we got sidetracked to a Starbucks and stopped to bask in its familiarity until it was time to Tube over to the Tower of London. Again? Yup! We had tickets to the Ceremony of the Keys. It is the "world's longest running military ritual" or something along those lines. We were due to be at the Tower by 9:30 but got there early enough to investigate the Roman wall remains right near the Tube entrance and then hang out by the Tower and take a number of poorly lit pictures.
The Ceremony experience itself was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me. It's the Tower of London all lit up and pretty at night. It's a small group, it's pretty quiet, you get a Yeoman Warder guide to explain the ceremony, what you can expect to see, and a little bit of the history of the Tower and also some of the rules involved in living in the Tower (which they do). It's all sorts of wonderful pomp and circumstance, there is a group of high-stepping marching guards, a lantern, big jangling keys, the group is stopped with a pointed rifle and shouts of "WHO COMES THERE?" "the keys" "WHOSE KEYS" "The Queen's Keys" and then everyone marches into the inner ward and the guards are retired for the night. It's a really neat interesting thing to do and best of all, free! You just have to write a letter asking for tickets a couple of months in advance. Couldn't recommend it more.
After standing in the cold for the Ceremony we decided that since we were all of legal drinking age in this country we should get a drink. We walked across the street and it was like story of Goldilocks and the three bears. No one wanted to make a decision which establishment we should drink in. The first place we went too was passed up because it was too much like a restaurant not enough like a pub, the second place we went to was definitely a pub but was closed for a private function, the third place we went to was located between the other two and it was, of course, an American bar. We spent the rest of the night at Bodeans BBQ on Tower Hill watching 'merican football and having a drink.
Sunday morning Aliza and I crawled out of our respective beds and went to meet our parents for a brunch with family friends in the Notting Hill/Portobello Road area. We met the Durrell family at their home and then walked over to brunch at a private club on Portobello Road. Brunch was delicious coffee, interesting smoothie combinations (I think mine was mostly avocado) and fruit plates. Most importantly the club had a FREE photo booth that Aliza and I took full advantage of. Once brunch was over we walked up Portobello Road, somewhere I had actually never yet been in London, and even though the main market is on Saturdays there was still plenty to see and numerous stalls caught my eye with their funky jewelry and miscellanea (Dad papparazzi'd the whole thing)
On the walk I spent some time talking with Jeff about the joys of motorcycles and since he's known my family for-everrrrr I got to hear stories of roadtrips with my uncle, catching freight trains across the country and all sorts of adventures. At the Tube station we said our goodbyes and stopped a passerby to take a group photo
From Notting Hill we took the Tube to the British Museum for the afternoon, catching up with Micah and Erica there. We saw the mummies first, then went back downstairs for the giant Easter Island head, the Rosetta stone and the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures.
We ended with the Elgin Marbles/Greek sculpture and then split up for the rest of the evening, which I'm pretty sure Aliza and I spent watching every single episode of Parks and Recreation she hadn't yet seen.
I'll let you all catch your breath after such an exciting read, and I'll be back (quite soon I hope!) as I attempt to get this thing turned around.
Love,
What is really really important about January is that my family came to visit! My mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law and sister all came together. They got into Heathrow mid-morning Thursday. I met them at the airport, although they had already arrived and sat down and I foolishly went and waited at the arrivals exit for about 10 minutes while they were waiting a few yards away. Ultimately we got ourselves sorted out, and after much hugging and general excitement we started the long journey back into London. The first step was making sure everyone had the 5 pounds on their oyster cards so we could actually get back into London. This was a difficult confusing process, but after 15 minutes or so we prevailed, and hopped on the Tube. Our first stop was Waterloo to drop of Micah and Erica's baggage at their hotel, then a short walk to the bus to my parent's hotel where we left Aliza's baggage as well. This is simple to write, but probably took upwards of 2 hours to accomplish. From my parent's hotel in Southwark we walked down to the London Bridge area and caught the Big Bus open-top bus tour bus. The next three or so hours we rode around in the bus seeing pretty much all the sights there are to see in London. I hadn't done one in this city yet so I still got to see new things like the Mayfair area. About halfway through we lost Micah and Erica to the jetlag, no one was that surprised.
Thursday was also a fast day (at least for those of us that could fast) and the bus tour ended right on time for my parents, Aliza and I to find a highly recommended kosher place to eat in Golders Green. I had never been to G/G before and when you come out of the Tube it's one of those places where there are five roads that all lead away from where you are standing, none of them have signs, and my GPS was not interested in showing exactly where I was. Eventually I just took a wild guess and luckily led us down the right path. We broke our fast at White House Express. The food was.....ok. It was one of those places where they charge 1 pound extra for "lafa" and then served the meat in a tortilla instead. You would have to pay ME to eat a shwarma in a tortilla! It should NEVER be the other way around. But the chips were delicious and the rest of the food wasn't bad and we were starving. Micah managed to find us at the restaurant and then after we finished we spent what must have been over an hour stocking up on kosher food at the nearby bakeries and grocery stores. Then, thoroughly chilled and exhausted we stumbled back to Southwark to pick up Aliza's bags. We stayed long enough to see my parents to their room, harder than we thought after my father and I were kidnapped by a tiny but determined elevator which took us only to the basement, and I got to open all my chanukah presents. Thanks again guys! I loved the hats, book, tiny reading light, SURF BOARD SHAPED USB DRIVE(!!!!!), surf wax, family calendar, cards and gelt and anything else I've left off my thank you list. The hats were especially useful since Aliza I and then walked, in what felt like the deepest cold we had ever experienced and subject to an unrelenting gusty wind, the mile back to my residence hall. I made a little next on the floor for Aliza (yoga mat, multiple blanket, a couple of pillows) and we went immediately to sleep.
Friday was a day when we all reconvened significantly more well-rested at the Tower of London in the morning. Everyone had to find their way there alone, without a guide and did marvelously. It really helps to be in a city where everyone speaks English and will practically fall over themselves to help a confused or lost looking tourist. Our day was short because Shabbat came so early. We spent the entirety of it at the Tower, starting with the Tower tour. I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, it was led by this very nice Yeoman Warder
Like all Yeoman warders he treated us to many tales of beheadings. And we caught our first glimpse of the guards in the furry hats!
Once the picture obligations had been taken care of we started in on parts of the Tower I had never been to before. We checked out the medieval castle
Walked along the castle walls in the bright sunshine
I also thought the Salt Tower was extremely interesting, I hadn't been in it before and this is where you can see carvings in the wall left by the numerous Tower prisoners held there. They include a number of religious carvings from when I believe mostly Catholics were being persecuted and also some intricate astrological designs by a man accused of some sort of sorcery. They did not do much to make him look innocent. When we left the Salt Tower time was running short, but we were stuck up on the walls and had to run through the zoo exhibit before we could find the exit. It was pretty depressing, since they had never seen a lot of these animals before most seemed to die from mistreatment out of ignorance. Shockingly it is difficult for ostriches to survive on irons and nails, elephants to survive on whiskey, and yes a room full of monkeys will rip your face off even if you are a noblewoman.
I had just enough time to capture a really brilliant picture of Micah before we left.
That afternoon my parents had to gather their belongings and travel to Golders Green for the weekend, Micah and Erica re-traveled the bus tour so they could be awake for it this time and Aliza and I returned home to rest up for our big Shabbat trek to Chabad. We lit Shabbat candles in my kitchen, then got ready, dressed up super super warmly because it had been so very cold the night before and then walked the four miles to Chabad. It wasn't a bad walk, there aren't really many hills in London and we walked past all sorts of famous landmarks on the way there like Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and the Christmas lights on Oxford Street. It was however, slightly frustrating to walk down the sidewalk full of after-work meandering shoppers when we had somewhere to go. I had my normal freakout about punctuality even though I KNEW and Aliza knew and she knew that I knew that there was literally a 0% chance that services would start on time and that if we got there when dinner was scheduled to start we would make it in time for services also. I still made us hurry and so we were extremely warm the entire walk and we got there.... 2 minutes before services. Aliza was an angel and refrained from saying "I told you so." She was thinking it hard enough that I picked up on it anyway though. My friends Jardena and Ali and her friend Abby all met us there for dinner and we sat together at a table with a number of french men who we had shared a table with the last time we were all there. Dinner was long and Chabad-like, it lasted three hours, there was tons of food, we ate and ate and ate, there was of course not enough challah but more than enough vodka, and a very long speech I couldn't keep track of. By the time dinner and dessert had ended it was around 11:30. But we were on Baker Street! And Baker Street, in case you weren't aware, is where Sherlock Holmes lives! He lives at 221B Baket Street. We were at 73 Baker Street. We couldn't resist.
We walked the ~4 blocks or so, watching the numbers grow as we went, we got all the way up to 219, which was a giant block of condos, then 225. Shoot. This is confusing. We kept looking and it turns out they have left 221B Baker where it was, even though it doesn't actually fit into the current numbering scheme. We looked at the door, the plaque, the next door museum/pub, and as we are checking it out a couple of British blokes walk past and comment "you know he isn't real right?" I'm a smart-ass so I respond by wailing that means that now my night has been RUINED and does this mean SANTA isn't real either?! WHAT ABOUT THE TOOTH FAIRY?! We shrug off the encounter and start to walk back, we get to the end of the block and run into a guy that I met briefly in Brussels who had been at Chabad as well that night and who had with him a couple of French guys I hadn't met before. When we explained we had been checking out Sherlock Holmes' address the first question out of this dude's mouth was "I mean, you know he's not real right?" Is there a contingent of people out there that are confused about this? It was hysterically funny to be asked the same thing, in the same condescending tone in the space of 10 minutes but maybe this is a point of confusion people in London encounter frequently?
On the long, and much darker (no Christmas lights), but slower (no insane rushing need to be on time) walk back we saw a fox. Significantly more rare than the fox sighting though, was the London cab driver that stopped for the fox as it ran down the road, these guys won't even stop for pedestrians! And then the fox (who was not doing very well) ran across Oxford Street and a double decker bus stopped for him! And double decker buses, I firmly believed, stop for no one and no thing. So London drivers are softies for foxes but not humans. That was the big event of the night other than the part where we finally made it home by around 1:30 or 2 am, crawled up to the fourth floor and went to sleep.
The next morning nothing happened, we slept through it completely, only waking up around noon. This was just enough time for us to get ready before the phone rang to signal that Micah had arrived at my residence for lunch. It turns out that he had been there for around 20 minutes, but the person manning the desk was just helping out so they didn't know how to call my room and once the real receptionist showed up they couldn't figure it out either. Eventually they succeeded and I brought Micah up to my extremely tiny room for a cold lunch. We had delicious pita and hummus and cheese and challah and a giant salad and chopped up veggies. It took a while to set up and then we cleaned the desk and used it to set up a game of Monopoly. It was British monopoly so all the streets and utilities were totally different. We were also only playing with one trivial pursuit die. After all the work of reading the rules, since none of us could remember how to set up the game, we got underway just as it was time for me to go meet Erica. Late afternoon I met her in Waterloo and we went to the Seven Dials area for Matilda's Stupendous Tea. It was at the Mercer Hotel in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden, which I had actually never been to before. The Christmas lights were still up in the area so it was super cute. We had a lovely lovely tea. Until the very end, when the cupcakes we had been eying for the entire time turned out to be FROSTED MUFFINS! Just dressed up like cupcakes! And the frosting wasn't even good! It was devastating. And they kept looking like cupcakes so even though I knew, KNEW that it wasn't any good I kept wanting to eat it.
To avoid that fate we left and went to meet the rest of the family at Selfridges. Selfridges is one of the major gigantic "big-box" department stores in London (similar to Harrods but more conveniently located). When I say "big-box" I don't mean like Walmart, I mean it takes up an entire city block. It is a really really big box. I had never been inside so we went in to explore. There's a lot of stuff in there, like most department stores it is divided up into types of products, so perfume and high-end bags etc., and then the clothing is divided into designer/brand areas, so there is an H&M in Selfridges, bringing the number of H&M stores on Oxford Street to at least 4, possibly 5. We strolled through the music area, the Muji store (organizational goods) and then to the foodhall finally where we found adorable baked goods
overpriced US brand pancakes
After standing in the cold for the Ceremony we decided that since we were all of legal drinking age in this country we should get a drink. We walked across the street and it was like story of Goldilocks and the three bears. No one wanted to make a decision which establishment we should drink in. The first place we went too was passed up because it was too much like a restaurant not enough like a pub, the second place we went to was definitely a pub but was closed for a private function, the third place we went to was located between the other two and it was, of course, an American bar. We spent the rest of the night at Bodeans BBQ on Tower Hill watching 'merican football and having a drink.
Sunday morning Aliza and I crawled out of our respective beds and went to meet our parents for a brunch with family friends in the Notting Hill/Portobello Road area. We met the Durrell family at their home and then walked over to brunch at a private club on Portobello Road. Brunch was delicious coffee, interesting smoothie combinations (I think mine was mostly avocado) and fruit plates. Most importantly the club had a FREE photo booth that Aliza and I took full advantage of. Once brunch was over we walked up Portobello Road, somewhere I had actually never yet been in London, and even though the main market is on Saturdays there was still plenty to see and numerous stalls caught my eye with their funky jewelry and miscellanea (Dad papparazzi'd the whole thing)
On the walk I spent some time talking with Jeff about the joys of motorcycles and since he's known my family for-everrrrr I got to hear stories of roadtrips with my uncle, catching freight trains across the country and all sorts of adventures. At the Tube station we said our goodbyes and stopped a passerby to take a group photo
From Notting Hill we took the Tube to the British Museum for the afternoon, catching up with Micah and Erica there. We saw the mummies first, then went back downstairs for the giant Easter Island head, the Rosetta stone and the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures.
We ended with the Elgin Marbles/Greek sculpture and then split up for the rest of the evening, which I'm pretty sure Aliza and I spent watching every single episode of Parks and Recreation she hadn't yet seen.
I'll let you all catch your breath after such an exciting read, and I'll be back (quite soon I hope!) as I attempt to get this thing turned around.
Love,
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