Time to spice things up -- we decided to have a pub crawl. We have no car so we set off walking spanning 4 towns and covering about a 5 mile distance when all was said and done. Our day went a little something like this….
STOP 1: The Grantley Arms – our coffee and water pub crawl pregame. We found ourselves in the company of a few English blokes enjoying a brunch time beer.
STOP 2: Jenny’s old house in Chinthurst Park- a nice older man let us in and bragged about how the house looks better now. It does not. We also peeped her primary school.
STOP 3: The Queen Victoria - our favorite bartender of our pub crawl, 19-year old Boris gave us our first half pint of the day, Kronenbur, a German beer and our new go-to. Boris talked about his travels in Europe and gave us some recommendations of some places he has enjoyed travelling to. We had a long conversation about Skips and were reassured by Boris (although he
was pretty spacey so his word didn’t mean much) and a local beer drinking dad that skips in fact do still exist, great news! It was at this pub we realized that we had discovered an entire subculture of 40 to 50 something men who drink midday in a country where it is totally acceptable.
STOP 4: The Seahorse - A boring bartender gave us a Spanish beer, Estrella. We realized this pub was trying way too hard and was too snooty for us. We were feeling pretty snacky by
this time and the next pub was a 20 minute walk so we had some french fries (well chips as they say here) and split a stuffed mushroom appetizer. A nice girl bartender recommended some pubs to include on our pub crawl and suggested we make put way to Legion in Guildford and then Five & Lime later that night. We had a long debate amongst ourselves about the bread basket nearby and whether or not it was free...not sure why we didn't ask which is very unlike us as we love free stuff.
STOP 5: The Boatman - This pub was right on the river and our favorite spot of the day. If Kelly was a Guildford local this is where he would want to have her parties. If you know Kelly you know she loves parties and knows how to throw the best of them. Dear Boatman, the fact that THE Kelly Puckett would like to have any kind of event at your pub is a huge compliment. She would call herself picky but the rest of us know she is just damn hard to please!
STOP 6: Bar Des Arts – next door to our intended destination, Legion, which was closed. This strange art exhibition/cougar wine bar had very few people inside and 2 strange bartenders, Jimmy and Leor, who we befriended despite the fact they mocked our country of origin, accents, pub crawl, and general personalities. These guys also recommended Five & Lime as the happening night life spot we should visit. We had a Stella for good measure and then decided it
was dinner time so we left.
STOP 7: Wagamama - a popular Asianish restaurant here known for its big bowls of noodles in soup. We were less than impressed wig the cafeteria style seating, rude staff, and subpar noodle soup. We were in a fantastic mood despite these downfalls and laughed so mug throughout our meal that we practically had noodle soup coming out of our noses. Just because we are in England does not make us too mannerly to slurp soup out of a giant bowl.
STOP 8: The White House – this fairly crowded pub was mismatched in decor with a young bar staff who were clearly more concerned with flirting with each other than serving the thirty something crowd here - we liked that about them. We decided another Kronenburg sounded delicious but not as delicious as chocolate sponge pudding, so we got both. It was here than jenny had the realization that she had zero desire to move back to Guildford later in her life.
STOP 9: George Abbot - We don't really know what to say about this spot... Super alternative Guildford youths meet work gathering of boring colleges, better people watching than the
airport, and better beer too.
STOP 10: Five & Lime - Our first impression of this so-called hot spot was not so hot. We were
relieved we hadn't paid for transportation back to Evan and Sue's to doll up for the night because we were rather disappointed with what we found as we slid into a booth and were met with unwelcome travel advice from 3 forty somethings sipping champagne. They left and the booth filled up with local guys and some American girls being loud and obnoxious (we are just as surprised as you are that we weren't the loud obnoxious American girls in this scenario). We asked the quiet guy on the end if he would snap a photo of us and found out he was a student at
the local music school here, apparently one of the best for contemporary music in the nation. Jordan was his name, and he clearly wasn't too fond of his friends either, as he ditched them and set out with us to figure out where the live music playing through the nearby speakers was coming from. We stepped outside and were so happy to see an awesome musician covering some of our favorite tunes (from Gaga's “Poker Face” to Michael Jackson's “Black or White”) plus lots of music we had never heard before. We made our way to the front of the outdoor crowd (thankfully there were lots of heaters) and a big group of rowdy guys at the picnic table nearest the singer invited us to join them. They were the self proclaimed Timmy fan club (Timmy was the singer) and we were honorary club members for the night. We had so much fun singing and dancing to song after song with this random group of new friends. The night turned out to be a huge success! Just as one member of Timmy’s fan club was getting up to get a round of jaeger bombs (yuck) we made a break for it and went inside waving quick goodbyes to the fan club.
As we were heading out to our next destination, The Slug and Lettuce, we bumped into the 2 bartenders from Bar Des Arts. They said they were heading that way too to go to a really fun bar...which turned out to be a late night kebab place. Fun, but not quite what we had in mind...our bartender buddies were pretty adamant that we should go back to their place and drink champagne and we were pretty adamant that we should NOT. We joked that we had seen the movie Taken and avoided all sketchy situations when travelling (actually not a joke at all but our rule to live by) to which the bartenders declared themselves to be "not very rapey." For our female readers out there, we are prettyyy sure that these are some major red flags - our cue to leave the kebab place full of drunkards was well overdue. We let our new friends down nicely informing them that by their choice of words they were indeed even sketchier than they seemed. Hopefully they will take our advice for more willing candidates , but the reality seems to be that not many American girls can say no to these British dudes. We however, were much more excited to go eat brownies and hit the sheets. We left our weirdo bartenders snacking on their kebab wraps (obviously we ate one too, just much more quickly than they did) to get a cab back to Sue and Evans. The 2 of us set off down the high street to the main road where a well dressed older guy was walking near us...who turned out to be the town crazy or on some serious drugs (never judge a book by its cover we suppose). After this crazy day and night of random self made fun we were happy bunnies when our cab dropped us off at our temporary home.
Today’s lesson:
If we can make an adventure out of Guildford, we can make an adventure out of anywhere!
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