Monday, March 7th - Haberdashery and such

Today we walked all over Kingston and then went for a great 3 hour walk in Richmond Park, aaand now we are doing this....naturally making the most of being in England.

Maybe our future quesadilla/fajita rastaurant will leave pancakes off the menu....

We are finalizing our travel plans before celebrating the oh so wonderful Kelly Puckett's 23rd birthday!! Early feliz cumpleaños chica!

Quote of the day: "The best vacations are often measured not by where one wanders, but by the friendships, the relationships, and the family bonds that one forges once there. The landscapes then act as mere vehicles for delightful moments."

"This is a house not a slum"

Alright, alright...we had to show you our amazing room here...to Shirley's horror!
We may have to stay a while longer than we had intended to accomplish all of the decorating we want to do.

Sunday March 7th - Ultimate Cookie Monster

We moseyed around Kingston with Alice (Jenny’s 15 year old cousin) as our tour guide checking out shops and continuing some travel research…which we are keeping on the low down for now. She introduced us to Primark – bargain shoppers heaven! It was Forever 21 meets Wal-Mart but British so better of course. Even though we are poor travelers we are finding that we are freezing cold most of the time. In wise Shirley’s words: “life is too short to be cold” so we splurged on some £3 sweaters and Kelly decided since we are in Europe and all a rain jacket would be a good idea. We really enjoyed hanging out with Alice, who was Jenny’s little cousin…until she became not so little after a crazy growth spurt. When they walk arm in arm now anyone would pick Alice Emily as the oldest of the two. Alice is a total stunner and was extremely patient considering we picked up every item in every store that she took us in. You are a real trooper Allie Ems and we are so happy we got to spend some time with you before you peaced out to go back to school! See you soon, STOP GROWING, and keep smiling!

We made it home for a traditional English roast made by the ever fab Shirley. For those of you who don’t know what an English roast is, you are seriously missing out. It is the best meal ever of roast chicken (or another meat) new potatoes, peas, broccoli, carrots, Yorkshire puddings (the best things eevverr, and not pudding like nasty sugar goo in a cup like in America) gravy, and whatever else all piled onto your plate. The English really know how to do lazy Sunday so naturally we fit right in.

The remainder of our day consisted of chatting, playing cards, doing Louis' homework (just kidding Tim, we promise he did every speck himself) sipping Stella and wine, enjoying hummus, salad, pitas and cheese for dinner, and soaking up every piece of travel advice from the very knowledgeable Shirley. In case you can't tell, we are in heaven being here right now.

We are really grateful to be soaking up some quality family time. The Tim and Shirley Fosters are great company and some of Jenny's favorite English rellies who pay visits to the U.S. In one of their visits we had a serious wine fueled dance party with them at Plat's notorious New Years Eve party. They have ever since dubbed Kelly "wine Kelly" and they are big fans of her party-goer energy and cheer. However, they are not so impressed with "hangover Kelly" who is a woman of few words and doesn't even like bacon and eggs! While on the subject we should mention that we came to a wonderful discovery: Timothy is employed by Absolut Vodka. None of us have seen "vodka Kelly" (the most fun and most unpredictable of them all, well except "tequila Kelly" who only appears under extreme peer pressure from "tequila Jenny") in a while but we are all hopeful that this recent discovery will bring her out from wherever she has been hiding sometime soon.

Anyway...what were we talking about? The alcohol paragraph has made everything a blur...oh yea, we love it here!! Now we are off to bed. Later creeps.

The reason we missed our train

Hola from London

When Jenny says we are on the Waterloo Bridge, she was wrong...but we can't remember the name of the bridge.

Saturday March 5th - Lost in London and Agile robber training

Woke up at a reasonable hour again! Woohoo for our re-entry into the world of morning people. After a hearty bowl of cereal we examined aunty Shirley’s 20-year old map of London and decided to take the train in for the day. We are quite the savvy city gals after NYC and now we only have to ask about 3 stupid questions before successfully figuring out our route and tickets. You can all sleep with ease tonight everyone! Jenny found the elusive snack Skips at the little store in the train station and got 2 bags, one of which we ate before our train left. Kelly agrees, they are delicious! All is well in the world. During our short train ride Jenny pulled out her deck of Imperial cards from Costa Rica (if you are an avid blog reader, in which case you are in serious need of a hobby, then you will know that Imperial was our beer of choice in Costa Rica) and Kelly asked her to "do some magic." Jenny proceeded to make up the world’s best magic trick and wowed Kelly, who was rather disappointed as she had hoped to use this opportunity to
ridicule Jenny. We were in London in no time and started out in every city we go to: wandering, but purposefully of course. We passed the London Eye (stopped at an ice cream truck for Kelly’s first ever 99), then headed to the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abby.

Then we made our way through the royal gardens and scoped out Buckingham Palace (buk pal as Patti Foster would say). We discussed the ease with which an agile robber could hop the fence and leave with a backpack full of jewels. We know, we know, they don't keep the jewels here. Our fascinating discussions are not usually rooted in fact and accuracy and we are not afraid to let our vivid imaginations get the better of us. Our theories of jewel thieves were only validated when we saw a guy in shorts and a t-shirt (it is FREEZING here) sprinting around with a backpack that was obviously loaded with fake royal jewels. We decided he was appropriately skinny to be a good robber as he could easily fit through most small spaces.

Leaving buk pal we spotted quite the big scene down the road, a very strange squirrel. He was really more like the worlds tiniest man dressed in a very convincing squirrel outfit as he scurried around walking on his hind legs peering at people in a way that was more like a circus dog than street squirrel. We decided we needed to be friends with this crazy soul and Kelly remembered...the skips! Jenny whipped her second back of skips (sorry Shea) out of her purse to feed him a few. Jenny decided she didn't much like this little squirrel as he rejected each Skip he took out of her hands, what a waste! Obviously he was more of a landshark than a prawn enthusiast. We walked back down The Mall and up a street by Trafalgar Square where we did some serious travel research. We won't post about it until we make all our decisions
about our upcoming journeys, gotta keep a little suspense in this thing.

Then we headed upwards Piccadilly Circus and wandered around there until we wound up in sex-shop filled SoHo. We decided it was about time for a good pub meal so we started scoping. We walked into a few that were clearly frequented by Buzz Killington, so we continued to find a more fun and lively spot. We came across a great looking pub and walked in only to be met with some strange looks. Jenny quickly pointed out we were the ONLY two females in attendance as Kelly simultaneously spotted the bartender in the skimpy black tank top. Trying to hold in our nervous laughter, the two of us took four giant steps backwards in the most awkward fashion possible. Fail. Hmm not sure why we hadn’t associated traditional English pubs with gay bars. Our awkward entrance was followed by an equally awkward exit as we headed out.

After walking up and down some other cute streets we went into the packed Golden Lion and indulged our fish and chip craving, excellent choice and great tunes to boot. More importantly we were able to feed Jenny, who gets very cranky when hunger strikes. Whew.

Well fed we were ready to brave the cold and do some more exploring – until we realized Jenny forgot the map (which we had been staring blankly at once in a while before taking off in a random direction) in the pub so we decided to go back for it. We did some snooping around in SoHo, a great eclectic part of London, and started moseying back to Waterloo train station, taking detours every few steps to check out interesting sights. We browsed a great little market for a long time and decided that was something we should do more often. There was a guy cooking Ostrich… we just thought this was worth mentioning. No? Eh, seemed like it. The south embankment was a gorgeous area to finish our first day in London.

We hopped back on the train in time to arrive in Kingston to greet Jenny’s cousin, Alice, when she arrived back from school. We know, school on a Saturday!? We are as outraged as Alice is by this…well maybe not quite as much, she is pretty mad…and a 15 year old girl at that.

As we got home Shirley handed us both a Stella and our blog came back to bite Jenny in the ass. Our online promise of Jenny’s future as a quesadilla restaurateur made her tonight’s chef of a Mexican meal. We both highly doubted that Jen’s quesadillas were any good outside of a time we were starving and living on peanut butter and eggs in Costa Rica. Luckily, Tim and Shirley turned out to have a great plan in mind: fajitas. With all hands on deck Jenny took the role of head chef and we put a delicious meal on the table within 20 minutes! Stay tuned all, the quesadilla stand is quickly expanding into a full blown Mexican restaurant! Feel free to apply for employment through a comment explaining your qualifications and favorite type of Mexican food (if it’s tacos then don’t bother applying). We had a little family game time, Taboo was louis' pick for the evening. We are sure you all know how to play Taboo, you have to get your team to guess the word on the card you draw without saying any of the words listed as taboo on the card. Easy enough, right? Well, there is a slight twist when you are playing British Taboo, which Kelly furiously delcared is "totally bogus" after getting the words pram, corgie, duffel coat (meaning: a buggy, the breed of dog that Queen Elizabeth II has, we still aren't sure what a duffel coat is) and a bunch of other super English words. Kel got a whoppping score of 3 points, blaming British Taboo...we aren't sure what her excuse for not being eble to explian "stepping stones" was, we are pretty sure they have those in the US. Anyway, nice work team!

We embraced our inner homebodies and decided we should spend the rest of the evening planning our travels rather than going out on the town. Maybe it’s all the day time beers that are turning us into night time dudders? First planning, then partying. Stay tuned for what may be an interesting twist in our plans….



Jenny feeding skips to a squirrel


We love buck pal...and the asian peace sign


Skinny minnies






Royal Gardens








London Eye

Buk Pal

Friday March 4th - Life is too short to be cold

Today we left Guildford to take a train toward London to go and stay with Shirley and Tim, Jenny’s super fun aunt and uncle who had been kind enough to invite us...well we may have invited ourselves now that we think of it...oh well, minor detail. We were picked up at the train station by the ever cheerful, and hilarious Uncle Tim and Jenny’s youngest and kindest little cousin Louis. Louis is 12 and a rumored phenomenal pancake maker and future bartender with electric blue eyes, white
blonde hair and the sweetest smile. Watch out ladies, he is a shoe-in for the future heartbreakers of England club. After Tim hoisted the luggage (he declared that if the Tico's could get it on top of a bus he could get it into the back of the car)...which we are realizing is still an absurd amount despite our best efforts to part with some, into the trunk we had a little jam session to a
family favorite tune: Gay Bar. Not a typo, actually a great song that we suggest you check out.
Arriving at the house we were warmly greeted by Shirley who gave us both a huge hug (and was dressed super cute as usual...we should have abandoned the luggage all together and raided her closet). We sat around their kitchen table and laughed and chatted about our travels, Louis’ cooking class at school, and all kinds of other things. Alice, their daughter, was away at boarding school but would be back Saturday. We discovered Tim was an avid reader of our blog, perhaps our biggest fan, this explains the Tico comment he had made earlier. Jeez, get a life Uncle Tim!

We had a great night with Tim, Shirley and Louis catching up and eating delicious pizzas! We let them get some sleep and relaxed in their kitchen a little, followed by an early to bed night in order to regain our routine of full day adventures. We laid our heads in our set of twin beds, and fell fast asleep as usual. Our room here is quite interesting and we will have to show you it later. In Shirley's words "this is meant to be a house not a slum." We think our room is delightful and we LOVE the decor. We may even do a little decorating ourselves while we are here :)