We have also been lucky to have my parents visit several times during our time in London.  But it seems we never got a chance to properly document all these trips.  So here are a few flashbacks to the adventures we have had on their visits.

My mom first came over in April 2008 and we had a girls weekend in London.  Shopping at Harrods, Liberty and street markets, enjoying high tea at Browns and the Kensington Orangery, taking in a show at the Victoria Palace and partaking in some culture at the V&A and the Royal Academy of the Arts.

  
Both my parents next visited in February/March 2009 for a ski trip in Zermatt, previously mentioned here, and some more time in London.  This time around we experienced the amazing train journey the Glacier Express in Switzerland (well until a mini-avalanche cut the journey a bit short).

This trip was when we finally made it to the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London with my parents.  We also explored some new places including the re-opened Monument and the London Eye, saw an Opera at the Royal Albert Hall, enjoyed a few pubs and visited Dina and Adrian in Brighton.  My mom and dad also kept themselves busy without us visiting other friends, museums and taking long walks on the Thames.

My parents returned to London with a side trip to Scotland in October 2009.  We weren’t able to join them in Scotland but we kept pretty busy in London taking a narrow boat ride on regent’s canal, visiting Winchester Cathedral, taking a Halloween walk in Hampstead and visiting Somerset House.  And as usual we fit in some good pubs, food and tea.

 
The last time my parents were here was at Christmas time last year when we met up in Madrid, Spain to celebrate.  It was great fun to go back to the city again and remember my semester studying there in 1998.  That trip was previously documented on the blog here and here =).  We didn’t mention the fact that we took a day trip to Avila, a beautiful walled city, and to Segovia, which was where I had my orientation for my semester in Madrid, while we were in Spain.  It was great to go back with Matt and my parents and see the city decorated for Christmas.

Most of these photos are courtesy of my dad so he is strangely missing from the recap.  I promise he was there.  Thanks for joining us on some great adventures Hysons!

Back in June, Marsha and Judy came to London on a 2 week tour of the UK and Paris.  We were excited to see them and to have an excuse to show them around London and do some more exploring ourselves.  We didn’t take nearly enough photos during their visit so maybe they can share some of theirs to add to this post.  Each time we have had visitors in London we have eagerly asked them “Would you like to visit the Tower of London?” thinking we should save visiting the Tower until we had visitors to share it with.  And each time our visitors said “Nah, that’s okay.”  So we were thrilled when Marsha and Judy said yes.  So we finally had a chance to visit the Tower during the day (see previous entry re: the nighttime Key Ceremony) and see the Crown Jewels which are suitably impressive.

We also took the chance to finally visit St. Paul’s Cathedral and visit the crypt and climb the steps to the dome to enjoy the views of the city.

We spent an afternoon wandering Borough Market enjoying the sights and smells.  Judy and I particularly enjoyed the mushroom pate.  If you haven’t tried - go now!  We snapped some photos of bacon.

We spent sometime at old favourites like the British Museum, Vietnamese restaurants in Shoreditch, enjoying prawns on toast at the Nobody Inn and sampling pub food around London.  I didn’t manage to get any photos of these spots.

While the weather was mostly grey and cool during Judy and Marsha’s visit, we did get one day where the sun tried to poke out and we took advantage by heading over to Primrose hill to enjoy the view, try out a new pub - The Princess of Wales - and wander through the rose garden in Regent’s Park.  Marsha has all the photos but we hit the garden in prime rose blooming season.  It was beautiful!

So I have officially hit “tick that off the list” mode which essentially means that I am trying to take advantage of as much as I can in London before our upcoming move back to the US.  I am trying not to be too obsessed with it but on the other hand there is still so much to see.  I would be impossible to see everything London has to offer even if you lived here your whole life but I am doing my best with the time I have.  Here is a little round-up of some of the spots I/we have been over the past few weeks.

I think one of the best ways to explore London is by foot.  One of Matt’s friends gave him a great gift when he moved to London - City Walks 50 Adventures on Foot.  Basically it contains 50 cards with different neighborhood walks around London and at this point we figure we have done all but about 3 or 4 of them.  Recently we covered a few more cards when we visited a former colleague of mine in Chiswick, walked around Chelsea, and did a pseudo-pub crawl around Clapham Common.

In Chelsea, we visited the Physic Garden founded in 1673 as a training garden for apothecaries.
 

Next we walked through the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for British soldiers /pensioners and spotted one of the remaining elephants from the London Parade of Elephants.
 
In Clapham, we visited the Common (Note what the amazing sunny, rain free summer we have been having has done to the grass!) and some pubs.

My second favorite way of walking around London is taking a guided tour with London Walks.  We have taken quite a few walks in Greenwich, Hampstead, Canterbury and East London.  After work last week I decided to join a tour around Westminster because I haven’t really spent much time in that area.  We got the general history of the Palace of Westminster (Parliament) and Westminster Abbey and also got to wander the streets in the neighborhood.  The most interesting part of the tour was seeing these signs for WWII bomb shelters on a very posh intact street just behind the Abbey.

This past weekend, I visited another London Park - Gunnersbuy Park in Acton Town to join in the London Mela Festival, an annual South Asian festival featuring music, food and fun fair rides.  Sorry no photos.
I have also been trying to fit in a few of the smaller museums around London. We thoroughly enjoyed the Wellcome Trust, a personal collection of medical oddities, and the Wallace Collection, a personal collection of master artwork in an amazing home full of furniture from the time of the French Revolution.  The Dickens Museum was worth a stop to see the place where Oliver Twist was written.  We also returned to one of my favorite London spots, the British Library, to see an amazing exhibition of maps from all over the world and all through history.  Here is a photo of the outside of the British Library where you can find the original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland, the Magna Carta and supposed notes written in Shakespeare’s own hand among other original works.

I’ve got a few more weeks and plan to continue exploring this amazing city.  If anyone has any suggestions or wants to join me let me know!

For cycling fans July means only one thing each year, the Tour de France.  This year the Tour runs from 3rd July to 25th July and takes the riders from the prologue in Rotterdam through 20 stages to the finish in Paris.

My friend from Boston was due to be in France this summer for a family holiday and she contacted me to find out if there was any chance I would want to meet up with her to do some traveling.  Knowing that she is a huge cycling fan, I wondered whether she was thinking of trying to catch a stage of the Tour.  She jumped at the idea and we planned a long weekend in the Alps to see stage 8 Station des Rousses > Morzine-Avoriaz.

I left London Friday after work and flew from Heathrow to Geneva (1 hour flight) to make it to Switzerland by 10 pm (amazing).  We planned to head up into the mountains on Saturday morning via a shuttle ride to the Morzine-Avoriaz ski areas in France and hoped to camp along the route.  The ride from Geneva to the Alps was beautiful and we saw amazing chalets, cyclists and Tour paraphenalia all along the route.  I particularly enjoyed these cyclists with their baguettes on their backs.

We got dropped off at the very top of the mountain in Avoriaz and site of the finish line for stage 8.  As we drove up the mountain where the cyclists would be riding on Sunday, some big black clouds rolled in.  We passed caravans and tents all along the road and rain started pouring down.  Fortunately, we took shelter in the visitor centre (decorated like the maillot à pois rouges the polka dot jersey for the King of the Mountains) and figured out our plan.

When there was a break in the clouds we popped across the street for some wine and olives to watch the end of stage 7, Tournus -> Station des Rousses.  Once the rain stopped we walked back down the cycle route, past the finish line and staked out a spot to pitch our tent for the weekend.  We had a lovely picnic dinner (the first of many) of cheese, bread and wine.  We were about 2 km from the finish line.

Needless to say, camping on the side of one of largest cycling events in the world is quite an experience.  All night long there were vehicles traveling up to the finish honking horns and people up to all hours celebrating.  We woke up on Sunday eagerly awaiting the arrival of the cyclists.  We walked back up to town to get some more food for the day and had a breakfast of crepes!  Miraculously, overnight the barriers, advertisements, finish line and road markers had been set-up.  That explained all the noise on the road keeping us awake.  It was amazing to see how much goes into the logistics of the Tour and how many vehicles are necessary - lots and lots of petrol being used for a cycle race.

Sunday was very very hot and sunny so we found a shady spot for another picnic and waited for the riders.  They were expected at the finish about 5:30 pm.  We met other cycling fans from all over the world while we waited - England, France, America, New Zealand, Holland, Germany and many more.  We also were visited by French cows with very melodious bells around their necks.
 
About an hour ahead of the cyclists, the caravan comes through.  The caravan is essentially a parade of many of the advertisers involved with the tour coming through and tossing out a bunch of free stuff to the fans on the side of the rode.  It was a very bizarre experience but I ended up with a polka dot hat so was happy.

Finally, the riders started to make there way past us on the mountain.  Although they were tackling a significant climb and were only kilometers away from the finish, I was still amazed by how quickly they went past.  Just as I was figuring out who was going by they were gone.  The first group came through including eventual stage winner Andy Schleck.  As we watched more and more cyclists go by the big news was where was Lance Armstrong?  And we still hadn’t seen the yellow jersey wearer or the polka dot jersey wearer.  It turned out Lance had had a very rough day including 2 falls.
 

I was surprised to see how spread out the groups were and who was in each group.  After the main groups went by we walked back up to the finish area to get some dinner and see if we could see any of the cyclist up close.  Amazingly, many of them started cycling back down the hill to Morzine before all the others had even finished the climb.  We made it up to the finish area and they were pretty much already starting to take it down in preparation for moving on to the next stage.  As we made our way around the back of all the set-up we literaly ran into Phil Ligget and Bob Roll.  They are television announcers for cycling and the Tour and my friend was literally star struck to have the chance to meet them.  She has some photos of us with them so maybe I will add those later.  As we made our way around all the semis and cables we saw a small group gathering and were told some of the winners were just finishing up interviews.  We saw Cadel Evans ride off in the yellow jersey and Andy Schleck meeting with the media.  Little did we know that Evans had suffered an elbow injury meaning trouble in the next stage.

After such a long day you would think we would be heading straight off to bed but now.  But no, 11 July was the World Cup Final so after a picnic dinner of takeaway pizza we headed back down the mountain as the sun set.  Near our campsite a small chalet had set-up televisions in a tent on the side of the road and we were able to watch Espana finally become campeaones - World Cup Champions!  It was great to be apart of an international crowd watching the match even if it was a rough and tumble final.

Monday was a rest day for the Tour so we had a leisurely morning packing up the campsite.  We headed back down the mountain via ski lift and cable car into the town of Morzine.  Apparently Annecy, France including Morzine/Avorinaz area are bidding for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

I spent the day wandering around town watching all the cyclists and cycling fans.  It was super hot and my pack full of tent and sleeping bags was weighing me down but I saw some Quick Step cyclists and a former top tier cyclist.  The Tour would be leaving from Morzine on Tuesday but unfortunately, I had to head back to Geneva on Monday night to get back to London and work for Tuesday.  All in all, it was an amazing weekend in a beautiful setting that I will never forget.  I have always enjoyed the Tour de France but I think I may be a convert to a true fan now.  I will be watching over the next few weeks to see how these amazing athletes finish out the route.

Addendum:  Julia shared our photos with Phil Ligget and Bob Roll so here they are.

Two weekends ago was the first of what will likely be many lasts in the upcoming months (and to be fair, there have probably been quite a few lasts already but Matt and I really noticed this one).  On Saturday night, Matt performed Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle in his last concert as a part of the Islington Chorale Society.  The group, based in Islington is a group of about 80 or so people who enjoy signing choral music together.  Matt has been a part of the group for the past year and a half and has performed in several concerts in venues around London.

This past concert was at St. Mark’s in Regents Park.  The chorus was accompanied by soloists, two pianos and a harmonium.  Below is a shot of the entire group during the performance.

Hopefully Matt will find a group to continue singing with back in Chicago =).

London Pride 2010 - including a parade and rally in Trafalgar Square.

I attended for the first time last year when one of my friends informed me that the best way to celebrate was to join in the parade.  I didn’t quite trust her on that but we went to the start and jumped in.  This year we headed down to march all over again.  Last year we marched with the Amnesty Float and this year we joined the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home float (proudly blasting the Glee soundtrack) on the whole route from Baker Street to Trafalgar Square.

It was crazy to walk straight through Oxford Circus and Picadilly Circus with the road free of cars and hundreds of people lining the streets!

Flashback to March: Grey cloudy drizzle and wearing warm coats (oh wait, not that different from this week).  But actually, one of the great things about March was Mehreen came to visit.  She spent a week in Scotland and England visiting her friend in Edinburgh and us.  I love having visitors from home because it’s so nice to share our life here and our neighborhood with old friends.

Mehreen started her trip in Edinburgh and then we all meet up in York (halfway between Edinburgh and London) for an overnight visit.  Matt and I took the train (2 hour express trip) up to York Friday night and we met up with the crew.  We had a great day in York.  First, we visted the York Mininster which is one of the biggest churches in Europe.

We climbed all the steps to the roof.  Here are Kate, Mehreen and I checking out the view from the top.

York is a beautiful town with super old rambling streets like the Shambles and Whip-ma-whop-ma gate, historical buildings, a medieval wall surrounding the city, a meandering river and of course Matt’s favorite part - the train museum.

The Shambles                                                 The River and wall
    

Little streets                                                            Old streets
    
The wall and the town                                  The National Railway Museum

We ended a full day of touring with some excellent Chinese food.  Here is a shot of the whole group:

The next morning we got up to take the express train back to London and have a few days to show Mehreen around our neck of the woods.

We did lots of neighborhood walking around Islington and Hackney and introduced Mehreen to two of our favorite markets. First stop, Columbia Road Flower Market followed by an obligatory sunday roast

     
And then Spitalfields Market where we made some purchases - a coat and travel backpack - with Mehreen’s support
   

Thanks for coming to visit Mehreen!

Last Thursday night I (Carolyn) went to the refurbished Stoke Newington Town Hall for the Ace Awards.  The Ace Awards was a 20’s themed work event (our version of the Oscars as my colleague called it).  The night was organized to recognize staff through a variety of awards including my colleagues who were nominated for Best Sustainable Project.  Congrats to H and A on their nomination:

I was really impressed with the lengths people went to get into the 20’s theme.  Tons of flapper dresses and zoot suits.  Some people could really rock the charleston!

    
It was a nice evening to highlight the contributions of staff and enjoy a night out with the team.  Here is a view of the Town Hall from the outside:

Last night I attended a very special event at London City Hall.  The NHS London hosted on online Social Innovation Competition to encourage Londoners to submit ideas that would help promote physical activity for all people in London in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games.  My super amazing colleague submitted her idea 10,000 Steps UK Challenge.  Hers was one of 92 entries and she was chosen as one of the top five finalists.  The finalists were invited to participate in a day of workshops at city hall with various business, non-profit and community leaders to help expand their ideas.  At the end of the day, each finalist did a 7 minute presentation to a panel of judges and esteemed guests (I was one of the esteemed guests).
A few of my colleagues and I headed down to city hall after work to support Danielle and hear the presentations.  She did an amazing job in what was a very intimidating environment.  The other finalists also gave great presentations and had interesting ideas.  However, Danielle’s idea clearly met the philosophy of the competition and she was declared the winner!  The judges want to see her and one of the other finalists develop a joint project.  I am not sure exactly what the next steps are but look out for posters and activity throughout the city to encourage all Londoners to participate in the 10,000 steps UK challenge!

Here we are celebrating the victory

City Hall is an amazing building and we were given access to the balcony with amazing views of the Thames and the city.  It was a great night out.  I am so impressed with Danielle for submitting her idea in the first place and succeeding, out of a large groups of submissions, to have her idea chosen to be implemented across London.  It is amazing and super inspiring!  We are very proud of her.

Here are some other shots from the night.  An Elephant on Parade (currently all over the city) in front of City Hall.

Here is a view inside one of the elephants.  That’s Max peeking through the other side.

Inside City Hall was an amazing map of London.  Aerial view of North/East London, where I am mostly found

Over the past two years, April in London has been a pretty unpleasant month full of rain and/or snow.  This year seemed doomed to be a repeat of the same when April started out with an Easter weekend full of rain.  However, the sun started to peek out on Easter Monday and has been shinning ever since.  Seems the volcanic ash that has been wrecking havoc on travel plans all over Europe, made way for some nice sunny weather in England.  I thought I would do a quick summary to fill anyone still checking in on the blog about what we have been up to as spring starts to shine on London.

As already mentioned, Easter weekend was a wet one but we still managed to have a great trip to Bath with Ben and Gerry and enjoy a fun fair in Victoria park with Anne and Leanne.  Bath was a great weekend trip and we managed to pull off a last minute room to allow us to spend the night there.

We visited the Roman Baths which have been amazingly restored.

We scaled the tower of the Bath Abbey and even got to look behind the clock face and through the ceiling peepholes.

And somehow we managed to find the two hours of sunshine during our visit during which we went on a historic walking tour of the town.  I highly recommend the tours which give a great overview of the architecture and history of Bath.  We can’t complain too much about the rain though because without it you would never get to see rainbows.

Bath has some great pubs which we enjoyed exploring during the rainy times and there was a comedy fest on so we got to check out an entertaining comedy group while we were there.

We were back in London for Easter Sunday and Monday during which we enjoyed some excellent Cadbury chocolate and Victoria Park’s fun fair.  Here is Matt on the tea-cups and Carolyn on the bumper cars.

The next weekend in April was Matt’s 33rd birthday so he planned a full weekend of celebrations including sushi night with Dina and Adrian, attending Dulwich Hamlet Football Club match in South London with D+A and Leanne and Nick and enjoying a pub lunch with lots of friends in Holloway.  Here are Adrian and Matt celebrating the upcoming year.

In April, we finally found an American style breakfast place in London - the Breakfast Club in Islington. (There are branches in Soho and Hoxton too.)  We were very excited to dig into this breakfast and plan to check out more London Breakfast venues with the help of this blog - The London Review of Breakfasts.

This weekend was the London Marathon and Matt and I watched the leaders and thousands of other runners at mile 23 near the Monument.  There was great weather for the race which was inspiring as always.  A big congratulations to all the finishers.  After watching the racers for a few hours, we wandered over the Battersea Park to enjoy a picnic amongst the flowering trees.

In spite of the sun, the volcanic ash has had some negative impact on our month — my parents had a great trip to Italy planned for the last week in April. However, their flight was on Tuesday, just 12 hours before flights to Europe resumed and they’ve had to reschedule. We had plans to meet them in Cinque Terre and we’ll be sad not to see them there.

The 25th of January marks Burns Night, celebrated annually in Scotland as well as in other locations throughout the UK.  Burns Night Suppers celebrate the life of Robert Burns, Scottish poet and lyricist, and take place on or around his birthday the 25th of January.  Burns was considered the Scottish national poet and will be recognized by those less familiar with Scottish poetry by his works such as Auld Lang Syne, A Red, Red Rose and O Once I lov’d a Bonnie Lass.

I first heard about Burns Night Celebrations, such as the Hackney Cyclists Burns Night fundraiser, last year and was really eager to go to it.  Unfortunately, it had sold out before I could get tickets.  So this year, I kept a close eye on the website and saw the Hackney Cyclists celebration was to take place on the 30th of January.  Matt and I managed to get a few of the last tickets.  Since it had sold out before some other friends could get tickets, we ended up finding another celebration at the The Flask in Hampstead on the 25th.  So two Burns Night celebrations in one week.

The basic structure of a Burns Night Supper is as follows:

Welcoming speech

Entrance of the Haggis  (accompanied by bagpipes)  If you don’t know what haggis is - read here

Address to the Haggis (The address is recited and the haggis slashed open with a knife)

Supper (includes haggis, neeps (turnip) and tatties (potato) - these days veggie haggis is a regular option)

Toasts with whiskey, usually including a toast to the lassies with a response toast to the laddies

Other toasts, speeches, recitation of poetry and/or singing of songs

Closing with a rendition of Auld Lang Syne

The Hackney Cyclists event included all the main components as well as some hearty Scottish dancing after the supper.  And yes, Matt Badanes did participate in the dancing (maybe that was down to the whiskey).  The whole event took place in a Hackney primary school and was a fundraiser for cycling projects.  It was a fun night full of a great sense of community.  I couldn’t help but be reminded of a good old square dance in an elementary school gym at home.

The address to the haggis

The bagpipes

The supper (veggie version)

Unfortunately, there is no photo evidence of the dancing!

Over the past few months we had a chance to learn about making traditional holiday foods with some London friends.  In December, Gerry taught us to make Costa Rican style tamales that her family made to celebrate Christmas.  It was an all day affair that started with shopping for ingredients at Borough Market and the local supermarket.  Followed by reviewing several recipes to come up with the best way to make corn and bean and pipian tamales.  Next step was to prepare the masa, banana leaves and filling and finally the whole event was topped off with the best part, eating them.  Here is some photo evidence of the effort:

Prepping the banana leaves

Preparing the masa and fillings:

Enjoying the finished product

Then few weekends ago, Susan and her cousin Cecelia taught me to make Swedish semlor, a decadent pastry dessert used to celebrate Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) before the start of Lent.  Susan made a stop at a Swedish shop to pick up the ingredients which included special flour, almond paste, double cream and cardamom.  Here is some more photo evidence of the efforts.

First the dough was mixed and buns rolled out, brushed with egg and baked to be soft with a crispy outside

Then the cream and almond paste was mixed, the tops of the buns removed and filled with cream

Then the tops were placed back on the semlor

Filling up on cream and dough

Its been an enjoyable few weeks of eating.  Thanks for the lessons ladies!

We had a day out at the races to celebrate the 30th birthday of one of my work colleagues.  We all (about 15 of us) trekked down to Sandown Park in Surrey on Guy Fawkes day.  I was told the racecourse was known for the suffragette who threw herself in front of the Kings horse in 1913 as a protest to get women the vote but it seems that actually happened at the Epsom Downs Racecourse.

It was a beautiful day and we placed some bets and enjoyed the sun, mulled wine and watching the horses parade around the circle before the race.  A few of us made successful bets.  It was so sunny we even had to squint.

Being Guy Fawkes night I met up with Matt, Ben and Gerry after the races at Alexandra Palace to watch the fireworks show.

Lovely London day……………………………..

The last weekend in August is August Bank Holiday in England (and much of Europe, I think).  It marks the end of the 6 week school summer vacation and is the last public holiday until Christmas.  We decided to take advantage of the three day weekend to hop the Eurostar under the Channel and head to Belgium.  The Eurostar terminal is at St. Pancreas station - just a 15 minute bus ride from our flat.

We took the 7 am train from London and arrived in Brussels at 10 am (even with a one hour time change).  Our plan for the weekend was to head to Brugge, the capital of West Flanders and a canal based UNESCO World Heritage site, and enjoy some Belgium chocolate, frites and beer.  We stayed at the Bauhaus Hostel just outside the main city centre and after dropping off our bags headed out to explore.

Here is the belfry in the city centre, we climbed all 366 steps to the top:

Here is a view from the top:

We explored through lots of cobblestone streets, toured a brewery and an old beguinage and enjoyed some good fish stew, steak, frites and belgium waffles.  We even rented bikes and journeyed a few kilometers out of town to Damme.

On Monday we got up early to catch the bus to DeHaan, a town on the coast of the North Sea.  We got to town about 9 am so the beach was pretty quiet.  We had it to ourselves for a little bit and then the crowds started to come out.  So we headed back to Brussels where we would spend our last night before catching the 7 am train back to London - just in time to get to work for 9 on Tuesday.

Here is a picture from the beach:

We only had one evening to explore Brussels but it seems like an exciting city with tons of amazing architecture - old and new.  Like this Art Nouveau building:

I’ll leave it to Matt to fill you in a bit more on the food and beer we enjoyed in Belgium.