Short and sweet from London town. After burning around the states for 2 months constantly on the move we saw London as being a time to not do much and catch up with friends. I also had a long list of British goodies I was wanting to eat!

We thought an overnight flight from JFK to Heathrow would be ideal, get in in the morning jet lag free. Turns out we were wrong and after being kept up by some rude bitches all night behind us we arrived with no sleep and having to endure the long tube ride during peak hour with our bags from T5 to Leytonestone in the east. I reminisced about how much I really missed the tube as we slowly counted down the stations and tried not to fall asleep.

We didn’t really do much sight seeing, just some walking around old haunts. The week was filled with catchups, barbecues, ales, pub dinners, consuming duty free alcohol, cornish pasties, pub crawls, Welsh cheddar, Polish beer and all other things British.

I also had to tick off cream tea and while Tash had a G&T the size of a bucket I sipped on my tea and scones with clotted cream! Oh yeah.

And a trip to London wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Weatherspoons to have a well priced ale amongst the drunks. There were also some very late nights at Nick and Bi’s ace new place in Leytonstone where we didn’t seem to get rid of the jet lag instead dragging Nick down into our timezone, sorry mate.

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We left early in the morning to make the train up to Birmingham to spend the weekend with my dear friend Christalla and her partner, Zak. Jammed on the tube with our backpacks on the ‘extremely hot’ 24 degree day wasn’t the best start to the day but when we finally arrived at Marleybone Station, our morning was saved by cornish pasties. Lala met us at the train station and we wandered back to her beautiful canal side apartment through the city of Birmingham.

We had a few things on our UK checklist that remained unchecked including chowing down on some Indian food as well as having a Sunday roast. We ate at an Indian restaurant that night which was delicious (and where I mistook an insanely hot chilli for a strip of capsicum). We then meandered along the canals late into the night and took in the carnage that was Broad Street on a Friday night. The following day we walked all around the city stopping for brunch, coffee & beers before heading to The Jekyll & Hyde for the night where we had dinner and indulged in gin cocktails aplenty served in teapots, with candies, and in any other manner imaginable. Then came Sunday where we sent the boys off to acquire a game of Monopoly while we went to the shops to buy roasting supplies. It was a blissful day of baking, drinking tea and some healthy competition introducing Zak to the wonders of Monopoly. Thank you Christalla and Zak for making us feel so warm in the cold, rainy Brummy summer!

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