This weekend we had another fun, London weekend.  It started Saturday with a trip to the movie theater just near our house, called the Odeon.  It's a lounge movie theater, where you sit in big, leather recliners and order food from a full menu.  They serve it to you right at your seat.  We loved it!  The movie we saw was the new Superman, Man of Steel.

Outside the Odeon Lounge waiting to go into the theater.

 Sitting in the theater in big, comphy leather recliners.  Almost like sitting in your own living room, except with a big screen and a waiter who brings you yummy food :)  We ate hummus and pita, and lamb wrapped in a pita with a raita sauce. not your usual movie fair, but we loved it!  I'll take pita and hummus over movie popcorn any day :)

We had a friend over for dinner a few weeks ago and she told us about this store called Liberty. She recommended it as a great place to get some good, English afternoon tea. We decided to give it a try and we were not disappointed!  

 I had a nice berry tea that was quite good - just one cube of sugar per cup and enjoy!  DJ had raspberry lemonade.

Let's be honest, this is really what we came to afternoon tea for.  The scones and goodies and tea sandwiches!  Delicious :)

You may be tempted to think we don't get enough food here in London.  Afterall, we only had food at the movie theater and afternoon tea.  Not to worry, we also went to dinner at an Indochinese fusion restaurant.  Love my ladle/spoon they gave me to eat with!

 London is known for very good Indian food and one of the best restaurants is right by our house.  Indian food compliments of Masala Zone - chicken curries, rice and naan.  A lovely Friday night date.

Sunday afternoon at the park near the Italian gardens.  We love being by the park!

This weekend was a simple but good weekend. 

Friday we went to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant (nothing notable, in fact the food really was not all that good).  

Saturday our ward chartered a bus to the temple for ward temple day.  One of Michelle's MBA friends, Melinda Wells, is here in London with her company doing an international rotation, similar to what Michelle is doing with Amex.  Another MBA friend from the year just behind us, Kayce Harris, was visiting this week as well.  They had wanted to go to the temple Saturday, also, so we invited them to join us on the bus.  The temple is beautiful inside, and out.  We had a really nice session, ate lunch in the cafeteria, and walked the beautiful grounds.  The rumor was that there are strawberry patches on the temple grounds.  We were hopeful we'd be able to indulge for an afternoon treat, but no luck - we couldn't find them.

Sunday we had a friend from our old singles ward over for dinner.  We ate roast and reminisced about how subtly different things are here in London.  It was nice to be with a fellow American who just understood!

 From the left, Michelle, Melinda, and Kayce

From the left, DJ and Michelle ;)

 Walking paths at the temple in search of strawberries...

London Museum

This Saturday we traveled the ancient world in one afternoon.  We visited the British Museum!

The front face of the museum

This is the Rosetta Stone.  The Rosetta stone was discovered by Frenchman Pierre-Francois Bouchard in the Nile Delta in 1799.  The Rosetta stone contains the words of Egyptian king Ptolemy, written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and translated into Egyptian demotic script and ancient Greek.  This stone is what allowed scholars to crack the code to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time, opening up knowledge into the lives of the ancient Egyptian people. 

This is a sample of the figures that adorned the Parthenon, the Greek temple for the goddess Athena. Over the centuries, since the fall of the Greek Empire, the temple has been occupied by many groups.  In the 5th century it was made into a Christian church.  In the 1400s, after the Ottoman conquest, it was converted into a mosque.  The Turks then converted the use of the building from a place of worship to a place of storage, storing grains and food, and eventually gunpowder.  In the late 1600s, the Venetians attacked Athens, igniting the ammunition stored inside, and causing the Parthenon to explode, sending the marble sculptures that decorated the building into piles of rubble around the ruined building.  There they lay until 1806, when Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, brought the surviving statues back to England to be preserved and displayed in the British Museum.

Depiction of the Greek gods, the statues that would have adorned the front of the temple above the 40 foot columns at the entry and just below the peaking roof of the building.  The woman in the center is Karen, our London Walking Tours guide.

More Greek gods, again adorning the temple front.  In the center was the depiction of Athena's birth, coming out of Zeus's head as a full grown woman.  The actual depiction of the birth has been lost, only the gods on either side of the scene remain.

These statues come from Assyria, or what is now modern day northern Iraq.  These statues would have framed the entry way into the King's palace, designed to intimidate the visitors. The head is the head of the king, attached to the body of a large beast with wings.

These wall carvings are also from Assyria.  They show the king fighting Lions, apparently a popular sport in the Assyrian kingdom.  The carvings (not shown in the pictures above) show the priests of the kings wounding the lions by stabbing them before they're even allowed to enter into the arena where the king is waiting in his chariot with his spears and arrows.  Hardly a fair battle for the lions, it seems.

And, finally, the mummies, where we ended our tour.  To mummify a body, the Egyptians had to remove the bowels, lungs, stomach, and brain - any organ that would cause too high of a moisture content in the embalmed body, for moisture was the cause of decay and the enemy of mummification.  They would, however, leave in the heart.  The belief was that after death, the individual would travel to the afterlife.  It was a long arduous three day's journey.  After arriving, they would be met by a judge of sorts, who would ask them to produce their heart (good thing the embalmers left it with the body!).  The heart would be placed on one side of a scale, and the feather of truth would be placed on the other side of the scale.  If the heart weighted the same as the feather, the individual had lived a good life and would be allowed to enter heaven.  If the heart was lighter than the feather, the person had lived a very good life, and, of course, the doors to heaven were wide open for him, as well.  If, however, the heart weighted more than the feather, the person had lived a very poor life and would be cast off to hell.  According to Karen, our guide, we still reference this ancient Egyptian belief today when we speak of being lighthearted or heavy hearted.

The best pizza ever Friday night!  It was a lot like Setebello's pizza in Salt Lake, if you have been there.  So delicious, you can just see DJs excitement :-p

And, finally, a little taste of home.  Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and green beans for Sunday dinner.  So delicious, love our relaxing Sundays! 

Dover

This weekend we had one of our most enjoyable trips yet.  And we tackled one of the most intimidating parts of living in the UK - we drove on the left side of the road!!!  Yes, that's right, we went on a bona fide road trip to see the White Cliffs of Dover.  

Road tripping is normally one of our favorite things to do.  We love to pack up the car, get a few treats, and drive to some great destination.  It's not quite so enjoyable when you're worried about 18 years of driving instinct taking over, causing you to turn straight into oncoming traffic, resulting in a head on collision, who knows what kind of injuries, and medical/insurance bills for the rest of your life.  This was the kind of worst-case-scenario thinking that was running through our head as we picked up the car Saturday morning.  But with DJ in the diving seat and Michelle as the navigator, we made it to our destination and back without even a little scratch on the car.  Needless to say, we were a little proud of ourselves :)

Our destination point for the day was Dover, to see the White Cliffs of Dover, of course!  We didn't know quite what to expect, but we knew it was kind of a famous place, so we thought we better check it out.  Turns out it has been one of our favorite places so far.  You park at the visitor's center where there are several trails all throughout the hills.  Unlike all of the touristy places we have gone so far, where you have an audio tour taking you along a prescribed path, Dover was pure freedom.  We had freedom to roam and explore the hillside without the usual constraints of a tourist attraction, and even without the crowds.  Yes, there were other people there, but nothing like almost every other place we had been.  The hillsides were beautiful: rolling green grassy hills, meadows colored bright yellow by the flower of the rapeseed plants, golden hills of hay, all sloping down to the white cliffs and the blue-green ocean below.  

Here goes driving on the left side of the road!  All this stress makes my head hurt! 

Standing from the visitor's center looking toward the light house in the distance, about 2 miles north of where we stood.

 It was so windy, if we were standing closer to the cliffs we may have been blown right off the edge!  At the same time, though, the air was fresh and crisp.  It felt good to be hiking in the beautiful outdoors.

 Beautiful green hills, sloping down toward the ocean. Nice place for a picnic!

 This is the rapeseed flower.  When you drive through the English countryside during this time of the year you see hillsides covered with these flowers, resulting in gorgeous rolling hills of yellow.

This is what those yellow hillsides look like.  

 Up close to the cliffs.  

 We walked along a two mile path from the visitor center to this light house.  You can buy ice cold drinks and ice cream at the little tea house here. Someone needed to check the temperature when they set the menu!

 From the light house looking back toward toward the visitor center and Dover Castle.

 You can take this winding path down some of the less steep parts of the hillside to get to the rocky beach below.  DJ said there was a railing to guide you - but I think I would need more than a railing to get me to walk that path!

After four miles of hiking through the hills we had worked up quite an appetite.  We stopped at this Italian restaurant in Dover.  Delicious!

Friday night we ate at one of Jamie Oliver's restaurants - yes, the famous celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver.  He has a chain of restaurants call Recipease where they do cooking classes for kids and adults, as well as the usual dining fare.  We went for the simple eating option, no cooking classes for us this time.  

 Jamie's version of guacamole and chips - smashed avocados on seasoned flour tortilla chips, with garnish of tomato, pepper, herb, and lime.  Pretty tasty!

Main meal?  Pizza and curry chicken.  The curry chicken was amazingly good - more like cilantro lime rice. The pizza was your typical European pizza - thin crust, parma ham, mozzarella and rocket leaf.  So good!

London

Well, we've had a busy couple of weeks, waking up early Saturday mornings, boarding a bus or train, and traveling to see the sights.  This weekend we decided to take a break and see more of the sights in our own backyard.  So this post will be a London post, the adventures we've had this weekend and the funny things about London that we've experienced so far.

First, our top 10 "notable" things about London, compliments of DJ and Michelle:

1. London is a surprisingly clean city, especially given the number of people who come and go here everyday.  The really do an impressive job at keeping the city beautiful - from the architecture to the parks, there's always a pleasant walk waiting.
2. There are people everywhere!  Holy cow, there are crowds everywhere.  More so than New York or Paris, it feels like anywhere we go we are running in to crowds.
3. The sun rises sooo early!  Current sunrise time is 4:49 am.  By 6 am the sun is well above the horizon.  Unless you have some serious light blocking window shades, there is no hope for sleeping in.
4. The weather has not got the memo that summer has started.  We've seen all the facebook photos of our family and friends in the states wearing shorts and sandals, their kids playing in the pool or sprinklers. It's like you're in a different universe.  We're still wearing sweaters and jackets!
5. It's popular here to smoke some sort of substance that smells like cupcakes and frosting.  There are these smoking lounges here where people smoke from these long, decorative pipes - I think they might be hookah pipes?  The strange thing is, and I'm totally serious, the smoke smells like cupcakes and frosting.  I don't know what they're smoking, but it makes we want to head straight for the nearest pastry shop.
6. Speaking of smoking, everyone smokes here!
7. Whereas in the US we'd have several aisles of a grocery store dedicated to soft drinks, here, there are several aisles dedicated to wine.  Everything else in the store gets about 2 feet shelf-space max.  But not the wine, it gets its own mini-store within a store.
8. They change their street names every two blocks.  It makes it really hard to navigate, especially when you are too cheap to get a smart phone with a data plan.  (Yes, that's right, due to our overly frugal natures, we've decided to go mobile-less while we are here.  Most people think we are crazy)
9. Restaurants only tip 12.5%, if at all.  We're used to the states, where we feel cheap if we don't tip 20%.  Here, at lot of restaurants will pre-populate the tip for you at 12.5%, and some don't even give you the chance to leave a tip at all.
10.  The food here, really, is not all that bad.

In general, things are going well for us.  Michelle is learning her new role and learning a ton about the labor market here in  Europe.  It's quite different here.  There are so many regulations.  The scales are quite definitely tipped in favor of the employee.  DJ has submitted another draft of his research for publication and now is just waiting. In the mean time he is brushing up his web-development skills, working on a few web-sites, and preparing applications for his PhD.

Friday night Michelle was in the mood for Mexican food.  Her boss recommended a place in Covent Garden and so we ventured there to give it a try.  We were not disappointed.  Carnitas de puerco for DJ and Chicken enchiladas in tomatillo sauce for Michelle.  Pretty delicious!

And for dessert? Warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.  Yummy!

 One of the reasons we decided to go to the Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden was because it was right on Shelton Street!  We had to explore the area.

Mr. Shelton on Shelton Street.

This is the opera house in Covent Garden. In the musical, My Fair Lady, this is sight of the opening scene, where Eliza's flowers are knocked from her basket by Freddy, Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins first meet each other while waiting in the rain for a taxi after the opera, and where the first ideas for Prof. Higgins' grand scheme to turn Eliza into a lady by teaching her to speak properly first begins. 

Covent Gardens has lots of fun shops and places to eat.

This may be the best news of our entire trip so far.  Shake Shack is coming to London.  The best burgers we've ever had.  DJ was beside himself with joy!  Summer 2013, coming any day now!

 Saturday we walked to Borough Market via Tower Bridge.  

Tower Bridge

 I can seriously count on one had the number of times DJ and I have gone to get hamburgers together (poor DJ is so hamburger deprived!).  Something strange was in the air Saturday, because that was all that sounded good to me.  A big, fat juicy burger hot off the grill at Borough Market.  Delicious!

DJ, on the other hand, went for the sausage in a baguette, with all the toppings - lime guacamole, some type of cabbage stuff, a white sauce - he didn't even know what it all was, but it was good!

 Food vendor at Borough market.  If you go, go hungry!  The food is delicious and there is so much to choose from.

We almost stopped at this place, but we resisted.  Those big, yellow blocks are cheese.  They heat it under a   broiler until the cheese gets melty and bubbly.  It smells incredible.  We kept getting drawn to the booth like lemmings, just because the smell was so good!  Once the top layer is good and melted they scrape it into a bowl of boiled potatoes and pickles (they call them gherkins).  The cheese to potato ratio is a little ridiculous, but I can only imagine that it was quite good.  And we did leave it to our imaginations, because after a hamburger and a sausage, a bowl full of cheese was a little too much for our stomachs.  Maybe next time we'll stop there first, before the sausage!

Chez Michele, that's me!

A bike bar.  People sit at the bar and drink and pedal at the same time.  There is a driver (sober - hopefully) and a bartender who run the thing, the rest are paying patrons.