Pancake Day & london trip cont.'

Pancake Day was Fat Tuesday, here in London. Everyone is supposed to stuff themselves full of pancakes. People here eat them, not really with maple syrup, but with sugar and lemon juice! Quite different!! There was also a chocolate spread and a thick copper/clear maple syrup. Definitely not our Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup! The Grants had one of Michael’s co-workers/friend over for the dinner. They had a nice white wine that was a bubbly kind of wine. A little like champagne, but not lol, if that makes sense. Michael was the designated pancake maker. He would butter the pan and then put a little bit of the batter in the pan. Then swirl the batter around and then flip the pancake. They seemed a lot like French crepes, their batter was lighter and very good too, but much different from our pancakes at home. I had about 4 and it was a good dinner.
Also forgot to mention that Mallory, Erin, and I went to this Woody Guthery concert. I know that this will sound bad, or maybe not, but I had no clue who he was, what he did, or what generation he was from. Let me just say it was an hour and a half of my life that I will NEVER get back! This guy who sings his songs while telling his tale in between was ok of a singer, guitar, banjo, fiddle player. All I kept doing was comparing him to Uncle Mike Bob and how much better Uncle Mike is and I would rather have listened to him instead! :o) The guy’s story wasn’t that interesting but I guess he wrote a lot of children’s songs and that’s good I suppose. I really think that this guy is definitely more of my grandparents and parents time era lol, sorry.
Now, continuing with the London trip. After the Cabinet War rooms we walked down to the Queen’s park and toward Buckingham Palace. The park was really nice and it had all kinds of ducks, geese, and swans in the pond along side the walk path. There were people feeding squirrels, which are small, gray animals. But they were so used to the people being there that they literally ate of the people’s hands to get the food!! It was so funny! Then some geese saw us and started towards us honking in our direction! All I could think of was Stephanie Plum and how she was attacked by the geese in the park because of her cracker jacks that she didn’t want to give them haha! We stayed away from the geese lol!
Erin, Patrick, Liz, Megan, Shannon K. and Kathy and I all went to the palace and took pictures in front of the gates and sat on the steps by the fountain outside the front of the palace. The sun was setting and the palace looked very nice and so grand! Once we were getting cold, we all headed back towards Trafalgar’s Square to meet up with Mallory, Ashley, and Carol so we could go to dinner before our shows started.
We found this nice Italian restaurant and I got a delicious mushroom and cheese pizza! Yum! :o)
Their show started at 7:30 pm and my show started at 8:30 pm. So we split up and decided to call one another once our shows were done and meet up to go to our hostel.
I am so glad that I went to see Spamalot!! I found the theater fine because we had passed by it the weekend before while we were in London. Plus all the theater’s are around one another. I got the theater and looked at the merchandise and decided what to buy. I got a long-sleeved shirt that says, (front side) “What Happens in Spamalot” , (back side), “Stays in Spamalot!”
I also got my brother Ben a shirt because he had asked me to get him one if I went to the show. I won’t tell him what it looks like though, just that I know he would have picked it out if he had been there :D They also had little coconuts on a string, a puppet white rabbit with “sharp pointy teeth” :o) all kinds of pins, pencils, shirts, hats, etc. I wish that I had a lot more money because there were some things that would have been awesome to take back home! Oh well lol, a shirt was fine enough.
When we were able to get our seats, I couldn’t believe how close I was to the stage! I was in the 8th row and it was definitely worth the money that I spent! I sat next to a couple from Canada who moved to London because they were both in International Business. I asked if they worked for Caterpillar, but they didn’t :o( The lady opposite me was a pharmacist studying in Liverpool for 3 months and we talked about how everyone was getting sick and I showed her these All in One pills I was taking. She told me that it was ok medicine to take, but I could probably find something stronger. (Which I did when I got back home, I asked a pharmacist and told her about my symptoms and what I could take to get rid of my cold, and she gave me some pills for both day and night.)
When the show started I was sooo excited!! I loved it! The show had a lot of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scenes from it. There was I’m Not Dead Yet (song), Knights of the Round Table, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Brave Sir Robin, The Swamp Castle scene :o) my favorite, The Song That Goes Like This, and lastly Find Your Grail. :D I was laughing through the whole thing! I wish my family could have come with me though, I knew that they all would have loved it too! They brought a guy up from the audience and gave him a plaque, a letter, and embarrassed him a little. It was funny. There was also confetti that came down from the ceiling, at the finale song :o) It was great!
After the show ended, I called Mallory and found out that they had just finished their show too so we met up at the Gap in Trafalgar’s Square and took the tube to King’s Cross Station. That was the closest station was to our hostel. Liz and some of the girls wanted to see the Platform 9 and ¾ of course, so I showed them where it was. The trolley had been screwed in better than last time we were there Dad lol! My camera didn’t take very good pictures of it though, because it was too dark out, so I will just have someone tag me on Facebook to get the picture :o)
Once that was accomplished, we made our way to the hostel. The area seemed a bit dodgy, but it was ok once we found the hostel. We were in a mixed bunk bed room, and we got in pretty late. We changed and got ready for bed in the bathrooms downstairs, set our alarms on our phones and went to sleep.
Mallory, Erin and I were all set to go to the bus station, get tickets and head out to Stratford-Upon-Avon, but once we left the hostel and got to the station to get tickets, the bus was leaving!! Grr…so Mallory was upset since she had really wanted to do that, but we tried to cheer her up and find something else to do in London instead. We had some breakfast take away and figured out what to do. Katerina had said that there were really good shopping markets around London and there was one in Knotting Hill. I convinced them to go there and see it, and it was great. We took the tube to Knotting Hill Gate and headed over to the market. The market was on Portobello Road!! I started singing the song from Bed knobs and Broomsticks Disney movie : o)
We started on one side of the sidewalk and looped around to the other. There were tons and tons of stuff on sale. Some junk stuff, some really expensive things, furniture, jewelry, hats, coats, purses, scarves, and books. It felt like one giant garage sale! It kept going and going, with hoards of people all over the place. It got a little cramped too. I bought two pairs of earrings, one pound each. I also found a cool purse that I bought for 15 pounds. I thought that it was worth it in the long run, since my other purse is feeling a little too small.
After we were done shopping we were starving and found a pub that no one really was in. While getting to the pub, there were a lot of people all over the place dressed in costumes. Apparently it was New Zealand day and people take the subway around the circle line (yellow line), find the first pub around and then go on to the next one. Our pub was empty and out of the way, but nice too. I was craving nachos and we got nachos to split, I ordered chicken wings and a pint of Strongbow. Erin and Mallory got this different kind of beer, which they ended up not liking but didn’t want to waste their money and drank anyway lol.
Once we were full we walked further down the street to go hang out in the Kensington Gardens because it was such a warm and beautiful day. Erin thought that this park was the one they shot the movie Finding Neverland in, but I couldn’t remember. There were tons of people, children, dogs, ducks, swans, sea gulls all around. We found a dry spot and sat down to talk and enjoy the day. I napped a little and we had a lot of fun being lazy and taking goofy pictures.
Once the sun was going down around 4:00 ish, we decided to head back to the nearest tube station and go to the coach station to take a bus back to Canterbury. On the way, I spotted a lot of people with ice cream and lo an behold I saw the store where there was……..GELATO!!! I was sooooo excited!!! I didn’t think that they had any in England :0) I got 2 scoops, 1 chocolate and 1 strawberry!! Yummmy!! I of course took a picture too haha! The person who was running the store was I think Italian, so that was probably why there was gelato ice cream lol. Erin and Mallory gave in and got some too; Nutella and caramel, and nutella and cherry.
We made our way back to the coach station once we finished our ice cream and waited around for the bus to leave at 6:30. Once we got home, Mallory invited us to stay over at their dorm and we spent the night playing a drinking game called Flippy Cup and also the circle of death card game. They were fun and it was nice to hang out again with friends.
Well that was my London weekend. I had a lot of fun and coming up this weekend will probably be Anne-Caroline coming to visit me from Paris, so we’ll walk around Canterbury and catch up on what’s going on between us and have a good day. She can only come into town VERY early on Saturday and leave late Sunday. But it will be fun.
Sorry that the updates haven’t been on a daily basis, I’d rather just sum it all up into one long blog lol. Love you all! XOXO