Jerk-eetos

Cheetos are non-existant the beef jerky here tastes like extra dry doggie treats. Bleh. So when I found out our friend Charlie was coming to London for a visit, my first and only request was that he bring me some - "some" as in 1 or 2 bags... but when Charlie does something, he does it RIGHT. Check out the stash he snuck through customs :)
Not only does he not mess around with the quantity, he's serious about the quality too. WTH is a Cheetos Giant?! I feel like I'm living in the dark ages.

Courtesy of Charlie Brown

Tate Modern

I totally went off the topic (what's new) in my last blog entry... not that I had a topic in mind... just a bunch of random thoughts really... so I suppose the last topic was actually more on-topic than I realized!

I can't SLEEP!

Insomnia must be one of the worst afflictions known to man-kind. Yes, yes, there's also hunger, boredom, heart-ache, etc. But look at it this way - if you can sleep, you won't feel hungry, bored or hurt anymore! Clever huh? :) I'm grateful that I do not often have this problem, as sleep has always come with ease for me. However, tonight is an exception... and exception that you guys will have to suffer the consequences for as you read this blog :)

So last weekend, in an effort to do something new (we're seriously running out of things to do here), Michael and I headed to the Tate Modern, a well-known museum (yes, we were that desperate to find something new :) in South London, which has been compared to the likes of New York's MOMA. I'm not cultured enough to appreciate fine art, but I sure did appreciate the sweeping views the bar upstairs had to offer! FYI - I am the same person that went to the Louvre in Paris, walked straight up to the Mona Lisa and then spent the rest of my day in the gift shop :) at the Louvre!!! Say what you want, I've heard it all. At least I'm honest!

From the Tate, across the Thames River, you'll see St. Paul's Cathedral, which is supposedly the 2nd largest domed cathedral in the world - just after St. Peter's in Rome (key words: largest domed). Hard to believe since it doesn't really even look comparable!

After drinks, we walked across the Millennium Bridge, an impressive pedestrian-only bridge that connects Bankside with the City. I never even heard about this bridge until we saw it on Saturday... maybe there are some things left we can do in London!... but not if it keeps staying this depressingly cloudy.

And you guys thought I was exaggerating about the weather! This is standard London weather. I don't even know why I bother to check the weather every morning. It always says, "partly cloudy with chance of rain." And sure enough, there's always some clouds in the sky and eventually, it does sprinkle a bit everyday. No wonder they made the movie 28 Days here! I really have a love-hate relationship with this place. I need sleep.

Right... then Left?

For a "Adventure Blog," we sure don't have that many adventures to write about!... and we live halfway around the world from everyone we know! Well, if you count 6,000 miles "halfway around the world."  When I say it like that, it doesn't sound very far huh? Almost makes it sound like you could drive here if you wanted... ROAD TRIP!!!

Speaking of road trip, we've been talking about taking one! What's the point of living  in country full of historical and lucious landscape, if you're never gonna' see it? The dilemma is however, neither of us want to drive in the UK!  Usually when we have taken road trips on the East Coast, I'm happy to do all the driving and Michael would navigate a.k.a sleep.  But I'm not so sure I want to drive on the left-hand side of the road... would you? Doesn't sound like a big deal and would probably be fun, but honestly, after a year of living here, I can barely walk across the street without being hit by a car or a bike.  You don't think about it back at home - it's second nature to you, really.  All your life, you were taught to "look both ways" before crossing the street and without realizing it, you've always looked left, then right.  But here, you've got to look right then left! Think about it... WTH! For a long time, I was scared to jay-walk.  I couldn't even step my foot off the curb without repeating 5 times, "right then left, right then left..." And just when I was getting the hang of it, I went back to Portland for Christmas, tried to cross a street and got really discombobulated.  Was it right then left, or left then right?! You should have seen me driving - I was all out of whack.  Everytime I wanted to turn, I wasn't sure which direction I was suppose to look first and ended up turning my head about 9 times to make sure I was looking the right way. Each time I made a left turn onto a busy intersection, my neck got a work out. 

So I hope you can now understand my hesitation with driving in the UK.  I mean, when you are making a right turrn in the states, you automatically stay to the right-hand side of the road. But when you turn right here, you stay on the left.  When you make a left turn, you stay on the left. When you bust a U-turn, you stay on the right.  Then there are those crazy round-abouts that occur at every third of a mile. How do those work??? When you merge, do you merge on the left???  How about freeways? Do the slow people drive on the left and is the passing lane on the right? Probably not because get this... when you're walking down a sidewalk in the UK, you should stay on your left (in the US, you stay on your right - it's pedestrian common courtesy)!  But when you are on the escalator in the UK, you stay on your right if you want to stand still, and let the left-hand side of you pass. It makes NO sense! If that rule applies on the escalator, then why doesn't it apply on the sidewalk? And if it applies on the escalator and not on the sidewalk, does it apply on the freeway? 

Southend-on-Sea

Living abroad means missing out on taking days off work for President's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving... but England's also got some pretty cool excuses to miss work, particularly during the month of May!
Bank holidays here include:
- Good Friday: Friday Before Easter
- Easter Monday: Better than Easter Sunday :)
- May Day: 1st Monday in May
- Spring Bank Holiday: Last Monday in May
- Summer Bank Holiday: Last Monday in August
- Boxing Day: Day after Christmas

Good Friday and Easter weekend brought us to Turkey. Spring Bank Holiday will take us to the Netherlands. So instead of flying off somewhere for this past weekend's May Day, Michael and I decided to stay in England and go to the beach!... not that we didn't attempt to and find flights somewhere, but there wasn't a close destination that either of us were crazy about or were already planning to go in the near future. Plus, ticket prices were ridiculous this weekend - "Hello, Recession? Cut us a break here!"

So on Saturday morning, we went to the train station and caught a train to Southend-on-Sea, a beach town East of London, which we didn't realize until we arrived is the English version of New York's Coney Island! And for those who are not familiar with Coney Island - 1. you're not missing out on anything and 2. while it once had its hay-day, it lost popularity after World War II and through years of neglect, is a lot less appealing these days. Southend-on-Sea is very much the tawdry beach Coney Island is, but we were happy to be out of the city. I heard there would be a miniature golf course, so I made it a point to be our first activity, but imagine our disappointment when we saw this poor-mans version of mini-golf! NEVERMIND. It was time for lunch instead. The owner of our Bed & Breakfast was kind enough to recommend a few restaurants - one of them being Fisherman's Wharf, apparently quite famous for its fish n' chips! We then walked around town and along the strip to watch people play carnival games. Everyone there loved wasting their money on those claw-machines, which we all know are infamous for scamming you, but these claw machines were something else! It's expected that the claw will loosen its grip on your prize after retrieving it, and thus dropping it, but these prizes could have been super-glued to the claw, and the claw would still somehow manage to release it before rewarding the player! Kids were running around in circles, stomping their feet like crazy because each time, their parents would be so close! I saw some interesting stuffed S&M bears though that almost tempted me into playing! I mean, look at the bear on the top right!! lolLuckily, we found a much better ADVENTURE mini-golf course!

So all in all, it was a nice break, though it is funny how we always talk about how we should visit smaller towns with more character when traveling... how we're so "sick" of traveling to big cities because (we're snobby and we should shut up) they're all starting to look the same. HA! We were lovin' this "small town" so much, when we woke up the next morning, we ate our breakfast with a quickness, and jumped on the next train (8 hours earlier than the originally purchased ticket) back to London! It was fun while it lasted, but next time, for a quick city break, a train ticket to Brussels would have cost the same and it would be in a whole other country.