Remember in Mary Poppins when they jump into one of Bert’s chalk drawings and spend a jolly ‘oliday with Mary? Well on Tuesday evening, Mike and I jumped into a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel and spent the night in the English countryside at the home of Mike’s boss and his family. The Mansfields’ home is converted from a barn; the inside is full of exposed wooden beams that were put in place 350 years ago. “Good bones,” you might say.

The walk up to the house is flanked with lavender. Seriously, does it get more picturesquely English?

Actually, it does. Look at these unfortunate views.

This is Grace. She used to be three but now she’s four, which is a rawther cute thing to hear in a tiny little British accent.

Grace took me to pick some raspberries from the garden. She was a bit disappointed because some of the raspberries had already “gone ovah.”

But she happily showed me some of her favorite flowers…

… and the cherries…

… and introduced me to Jessie the dog…

… and Willow the cat.

We had such a lovely evening with the Mansfields and are so grateful for their hospitality.

And in case you are wondering, my mission to sample all the Weird British Candy Bars is still underway. Here are some new ones:

Maltesers. I don’t even know how you say the name of these things. Malteezers? Maltzers? “White chocolates with crisp, light honeycombed centres.” The first one was weird… but then I ate the whole pack.

Starbar is “milk chocolate with caramel and peanut centre.” So far, Starbar is the clear winner of the Weird British Candy Bar Contest. Only, don’t eat one and then wipe melted chocolate on your white jeans. (Ahem.)

More soon from my open-top bus tour of London!

Cheers,

We have arrived in London! And I have had “Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-oo!” stuck in my head the whole time. I found this coaster in a pub… a sign, perhaps?

The past 36 hours haven’t been the most ambitious, perhaps. We are j-e-t-l-a-g-g-e-d! The first thing we did after checking into the hotel was to grab a bite to eat at a pub up the way. We ordered fish and chips and some pea soup. The fish and chips were… edible. The pea soup, however, was like pea water, and since we had already settled our tab, when the bartender wasn’t looking, we grabbed our stuff and made a run for it, leaving the entire bowl of soup sitting there.

Everywhere we’ve been so far, the British food has lived up to its less-than-stellar reputation. It’s pretty tough to ruin a French fry, but I’ll be darned if they aren’t trying their hardest over here! And when you don’t finish your meal, the server looks at your plate and, puzzled, asks if you’re finished. When you say yes, they ask if you didn’t like it. When you say it was fine but you’re stuffed (big lie), they ask if you want to take it to go. They seem almost sad about it. Ugh. Maybe next time I’ll just say, “Sorry, Oliver Twist, it was awful. I managed to chew and swallow just enough of this gruel to hold me over till I can buy one of your weird British candy bars. Cheers, mate!”

The traffic situation is super confusing for us Americans. When we ride in a taxi, I feel like we are going to DIE because I think we’re on the wrong side of the road. And when we cross the street, I don’t know know which way to look – agh! Luckily, they tell you:

Anyway, we’ve done a little exploring, and I think we’ve mastered the famous London Tube. This is a pretty impressive accomplishment for me, as I’m terrified of the subway in New York. But the Tube is easy and kinda fun!

We ventured out last night towards Chinatown and found the West End theater (er, theatre) where we are going to see Les Miserables on Thursday night.

On the way back we saw this guy waiting for the Tube:

Mike doesn’t think British animals have British accents, but I’m pretty sure they do.

This morning I woke up at about 4 am and was wide awake til about 7 or 8. I thought about hitting the hotel gym, but thought, “Maybe if I lie here just a few more minutes, I’ll fall asleep.”  Then I hit a major wall and crashed til the afternoon. Meanwhile, Mike went to work.

When I finally emerged from the hotel room, I decided to try and find Harrod’s, which must be the most famous department store in the world. I hopped on the Tube and took the Central Line to Notting Hill Station, where I took the Circle Line to South Kensington, where I caught the Piccadilly Line to Knightsbridge. Are you proud of me, Mama? 🙂

I was surprised to find that Harrod’s felt sort of winding and cramped. I had no sense of where I was going or where I had come from when I was wandering around inside. I needed a bag of Reese Pieces to make a trail so I could find my way back! That said, I’m glad I went because I have always wanted to see it. And the Egyptian escalator was kind of cool.

And since I don’t get to have any ale in the pubs while I am here, I’ve decided to indulge in the weird British candy bars as a consolation prize. (I have been known to investigate the local junk food selection when traveling. Mike is still grossed out by the time I ate a bag of Prawn Cocktail flavored potato chips in Ireland, but they weren’t bad.) Tonight we are having a Topic bar (“milk chocolate, hazelnuts, soft nougat & smooth caramel centre” – so a Snickers with hazelnuts) and a Cadbury Twisted! (basically a Cadbury Creme Egg in a candy bar). They print the nutrition information on the wrappers just like we do, except they call the calories “Energy.” Isn’t this smart? It sounds bad to eat calories but good to eat “Energy.”

That’s all I’ve got for now… I’ll be in touch later this week! Hope you’re having a good one.

xoxo,

P.S. Big thanks for all the well wishes on our little announcement! We are 17 weeks along and I have felt fine the entire time… never had any sickness or nausea or anything. I’ve been running and working out a lot – I credit Ms. Jenny Lind and her super tough Bar Method classes with the fact that I’m still wearing my regular jeans in my second trimester. So far everything has been smooth sailing!

In our seven years together, Mike and I have been to quite a few places. We visited Ireland in 2005, where the lads and lasses assured us we were “very welcome.”

We honeymooned in Fiji in 2008. BULA!

And we’ve made three trips to our southern neighbor, Mexico. We went there in 2004 (I think?) and twice in 2009. Arriba!

But you know where we haven’t been? London. And we haven’t been to Italy, not together at least. I went six years ago (How the time flies!) with Mama and Sister and had the BEST time. So on Saturday Hubba Bubba and I are taking off for a week in London, followed by a week in Rome and Florence.

Mike’s company is based in London, so he will be working for the first week while I shop at Harrod’s and await Prince William’s inevitable marriage proposal. (Sadly, I will have to turn Will down. I already married my prince.) And the second week will be the Italian vacation we have long dreamed about.

Last night we watched National Lampoon’s European Vacation in preparation for our own Griswoldian journey. Look kids, Big Ben and Parliament! So we’re officially ready for the trip.

And just so you know, we expect to have Internet access, so the plan is for the blog postings to continue from overseas! But I’ll squeeze in a couple more posts before we leave.

Ciao for now,