My favorite day of the week is here! I have become accustomed to looking forward to Thursdays (well now it's Friday since this post took a while for me to finish). Anyway, Thursday is day in which I can go visit the local market in The Netherlands and pick up some fresh fruit and veggies in the town square. We have learned the hard way that you have to grocery shop often here, as things spoil rather quickly. But I suppose I'll take the extra grocery trips over the chemical preservatives. Plus it also helps that the nearest grocery store is a one minute drive from my house, and it's never overly crowded. However it can be a bit tricky finding some recipe items. At least I have finally mastered my google translate app, so I don't have to struggle with asking where an item is in English. Instead I'm just that girl listlessly wandering the store, perusing every aisle at least twice and frequently holding my iPhone up to decode items with ambiguous packaging. Of course, not everything translates so nicely. Cilantro is called "coriander" here, for example, which is completely confusing. Yesterday, before approaching the butcher, I looked up how to say I wanted four chicken breasts. When it was my turn to order, I said, "Vier hahnchenbrust bitte." She smiled and began packaging my chicken as I silently congratulated myself. Then after she handed me the chicken she spoke a completely indecipherable sentence and my delight instantly melted into a wide-eyed blank stare. Registering my reaction, she repeated in English, "Is that all?" At least I tried.

Last weekend was probably one of my favorite weekends we have spent here thus far. We attended a three-day music festival called "Pink Pop", which is supposedly the longest running music festival in the world (The first one was held in 1970). The festival was held in a city in the The Netherlands not far from us. So we opted to take the train to the festival each day instead of camping because, let's be honest, if I have the options of a sleeping bag and my own bed, I'm going to pick my bed every time. You know you are on the verge of too old for music festivals when these thoughts run through your head: Dang it, I forgot to bring the hand sanitizer. It's so loud too. Maybe I should have brought earplugs. Hey stranger, I see you are having a good time, as you flail about aimlessly, but can you please do so away from my personal space? Also it never fails that the only 6 foot 7 guy in the immediate vicinity somehow meanders his way over and lands directly in front of me. And at this particular festival, the tallest ones in the crowd seemed to all be wearing these obnoxious Gilligan-style pink hats, as if they needed help becoming even more conspicuous. So the whole time I appear to be happily swaying to the music, I'm actually dodging a pink, bobbing head to maintain a visual of the band. But nevertheless, we had a great food, met some nice people, and enjoyed some amazing bands. For me, being a big Beatles fan, the highlight of the weekend was definitely seeing Paul McCartney, who wrapped up the festival with a fireworks show and "All You Need Is Love."

Unfortunately we never made it to Abbey Road on our trip to London, but I absolutely know we will return so I can have my second chance! We loved London. We might have been a little biased seeing as it was a nice hiatus from dealing with language barriers. But it really is a wonderfully eclectic and fascinating city. While my younger sister was in town visiting us, we decided to surprise her with a trip to London. So we told her to pack a bag for three nights and we all hopped in the car bright and early on a Thursday morning to catch the Chunnel. Several hours and four countries later we made it to Calais where we proceed through the UK border check. This whole time we had convinced my sister were going to Paris since we had made it to France. As we handed over our passports, my sister exclaimed, "What is going on!?" from the back seat. We had to later advise her that shouting is typically frowned upon when going through customs. Luckily, we made it through with no problems, drove onto the train, and in roughly 30 minutes we emerged out of the darkness and into The United Kingdom. I still find it fascinating, and a little bit unnerving, that it is possible to traverse the English Channel underground. It was also a very unique experience to drive onto a train from the right side of the road, and drive off that same train on the left side of the road. It's a good thing I wasn't driving because we probably wouldn't be alive right now. I definitely would have accidentally driven into oncoming traffic at some point, especially with the chaos that was London traffic.

The first day we arrived in London, we checked into our hotel in Waterloo and headed straight to a nearby restaurant, called "Masters Superfish" to eat fish and chips. As we waited in line, a friendly local advised us, "You came to the best spot in town for fish and chips. All the cabbies come here, so you know it's good." I didn't understand that statement at first, but we later learned that all those cab drivers who drive the cute little black cabs in London have to train for years to become a driver, and are required to memorize every single street in London. So the fact that they know the entire city better than anyone clearly makes any place frequented by "cabbies" the best of its kind. After we ate our fish and chips with "gurkin" (which is what they call pickles here), we walked across the River Thames to explore the vibrant West End.

Piccadilly Circus--basically the Times Square of London. Complete with flashy billboards, hordes of tourists, and all the worst American chain restaurants you can think of.

Pubs were literally everywhere we turned, and by late afternoon we decided we had to try a few to rest our weary feet and sample the local ales. By now it was late afternoon, so they were overflowing with jovial young professionals imbibing in post-work beers. The majority of the pubs we saw also seemed to have very notorious, stereotypical English names such as "White Horse", "Queen Victoria", and even "Sherlock Holmes". As a Game of Thrones fan, the above pub name amused me, but Thomas informed me that this pub is probably not named after the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and that John Snow was in fact a real person. Way to be a buzz kill, Thomas. But sure enough, out of curiosity, I looked it up on Wikipedia and John Snow--not to be confused with George R.R. Martin's "Jon Snow"--was an English epidemiologist who traced the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in Soho, London. Huh. Nothing like the thought of cholera to spark one's interest in an pint of beer. Well, regardless, this coincidence certainly hasn't hurt their business.

And as night fell, we crossed back over the Thames to enjoy a view through the "London Eye".

The next day, we walked a few miles along the south bank of the Thames until we reached the Tower Bridge. We made one pit stop on our journey to explore the Tate Modern art museum, to my sister's request, and I obliged her request because the admission was free. It ended up being a very worthwhile stop though, and inside we viewed works from the likes of Picasso, Monet, and Andy Warhol. I won't post pictures of those because most of you have probably seen their work, though you might not be familiar with this lovely display. Enjoy and interpret as you will..

So after we felt we had fully experienced Tate Modern, we continued on our journey to cross the Tower Bridge and head to the Tower of London.

Tower of London to the left of us, Tower Bridge to the right.

Tower Bridge, not the London Bridge, is the one we all picture when we think of London. Fun fact: London Bridge, which is actually a very plain looking bridge, is fairly new. It was built in 2003. The original, built in 1830, now stands in Lake Havasu, Arizona. No idea how they got it there, but that's the story.

Founded in 1066 by William the Conquerer, the Tower of London originally served as a fortress against riverside attacks. We took a tour of the tower, where we learned a lot about England's royal history--the good, the bad, and the bloody. Let's just say I wouldn't want to be hanging around here at night after hearing some of the those stories. "Off with their head!" pretty much summed up the 1500's.

I'm not going to lie. This was the main reason I wanted to tour the Tower of London. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the crown jewels, but if you can imagine a 317 carat diamond (which I don't think I could if I hadn't seen it in person) then you can appreciate the magnitude that is Queen Elizabeth's crown.

Close up of Big Ben before we conclude Day 2. (And the child in me still pictures Peter, Wendy, Michael, and John flying across the clock to Neverland, by the way.)

Our last day in London began at Buckingham Palace, where we watched the Major General's review for the Queen's 90th birthday parade that occurred a couple weeks later. The longest reigning queen in Britain's history, Elizabeth became Queen at the age of 25. Wow. At 25 I was still on my parent's health insurance, and struggling to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life. I don't think you have time for identity crises when you're the Queen. I remember as a little girl, the way my grandmother explained good table manners was, "You should always eat like you are eating with The Queen." And as a twenty-something year-old who set her alarm at 3 am on a school night to watch the live footage of Prince William and Kate's wedding (before I had the luxury of DVR), I was clearly hoping to spot a royal figure somewhere. To my disappointment, it was just horses and a lot of marching, though the tone of it all was very regal.

And then we continued the day with a stroll through Hyde Park.

And various other areas of London. (Marble Arch below).

And finally we crossed the Millennium Bridge at sunset to round out our last day in London.

Well, I didn't get to our Italy trip, but London is deserving of it's own post I believe. I have to go get ready for our next trip now, so cheerio!