We Return!

Our month-long European vacation has come to an end! We had a relatively smooth trip coming back yesterday (except for a cabbie that insisted that the fastest way from JFK to Park Slope was via Laguardia. Uh, NO). We're excited to be back to our home and to see everyone, but there's still always those post-vacation blues. Now we have to actually think about work things and be real adults, which is a bit of a bummer at first.

We had such an amazing time in London, and we definitely would like to visit again sometime. Like New York, London is a city where you can never run out of things to do, which makes it an excellent vacation spot.

Here are some final stats on our vacation:

• We were in Europe for 32 days.
• We visited 3 countries.
• We saw 10 plays.
• We visited 12 museums.
• We checked out 21 additional tourist attractions.
• We ate and drank at 46 different restaurants and pubs.
• We took over 1,000 photos.

If you for some reason are interested in how Jon and I ranked the 10 plays we saw, you're in luck, because we did that! Granted, it can be hard to compare plays that are so different from each other. Miss Saigon was better theatre than Bend It Like Beckham, but you're going to prefer one over the other simply depending on what mood you're in. So there's some wiggle room in our rankings.

Hannah's list:
1. The Audience
2. The Importance of Being Earnest
3. The 39 Steps
4. Miss Saigon
5. The Play That Goes Wrong
6. The Mentalists
7. Bend It Like Beckham
8. The Mousetrap
9. Measure for Measure
10. Bad Jews (this is the only one that I actively disliked)

Jon's list:
1. The Play That Goes Wrong
2. The Audience
3. The 39 Steps
4. The Importance of Being Earnest
5. The Mentalists
6. The Mousetrap
7. Miss Saigon
8. Bend It Like Beckham
9. Measure for Measure
10. Bad Jews (while I didn't hate it, it definitely wasn't great)

Throughout our stay, I've been thinking about what a good itinerary for a vacation more typical in length would be. Assuming you were in London for about a week, I think this would be a good to-do list:

• Buckingham Palace
• The Tower of London
• The London Eye
• 2-3 plays (things you couldn't currently see on Broadway or on tour, such as Bend it Like Beckham, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Play That Goes Wrong, or The Mousetrap, and a combination of straight plays and musicals)
• Afternoon tea (we had a splendid time at the Rubens Hotel)
• ≥1 art museum (the Tate Modern, the National Gallery, or the Tate Britain depending on your favorite kinds of art)
• ≥1 large museum (e.g. the Natural History Museum or the Victoria and Albert Museum, depending on your interests. Again, don't go to the British Museum, it is wildly problematic)
• ≥1 little museum (I recommend Cartoon, Design, Dickens, and Fashion and Textile)
• ≥1 really old house of worship (I'd recommend St. Paul's over Westminster Abbey if you only have time for one. St. Paul's doesn't have a wait to get in, it's less crowded, and you have the opportunity to climb to the top for a cool city view. Westminster Abbey has more things in it though.)
• ≥2 parks (there are 8 Royal Parks, and many of them are near other popular tourist attractions.)

Restaurants that I'd recommend:

• Barrafina (both locations are excellent)
• Duck and Waffle
• Lambert's (if you happen to be near the Balham area)
• Savoir Faire
• Pimlico Fresh for breakfast
• Bombay Dine Club
• Dishoom
• Pizza Express (this is not so much a recommendation as it is a tip; they're everywhere, the food is solid, and it's a speedy meal. We ate there a couple times when we did not have time for a leisurely lunch.)
• Waxy O'Connors was my favorite centrally-located bar.

Some closing thoughts on London:

1. The people are friendly, if a bit reserved.
2. The spicy food is not spicy enough.
3. It is hard to get a cab outside of Central London.
4. It is super easy to get around on the Tube.
5. Despite the country's culinary reputation, it's not hard to find a tasty meal.
6. Their television shows are hilarious.
7. The Tube totally spoiled us with how frequently it came, although it stops running at midnight which was inconvenient.
8. There's lots of good theatre.
9. Nothing of note ever happens on the Tube. Everyone just sits in silence.
10. It's not as easy to find good craft beer in a store.
11. When you do find good craft beer, they're sold individually.
12. The weather is much nicer than New York's summer weather.
13. It really didn't rain that much.
14. Everything there is a lot older than everything back home.
15. They have different flavors of Doritos.

And that concludes our London Adventures!

xo
Hannah and Jon

A Very Special Jonadams Post

I promised I'd write up a post, so here it is! It's a bit of my time at Google in London, and a bunch of other thoughts.

I worked at the Google office by Victoria station for a week and a half so I wouldn't need to take any unpaid vacation. I sat near the Docs/Drive Android team - they were very welcoming and friendly! They also had an adorable giant stuffed dragon as their team mascot, which made it easy to find my desk. While I was visiting I learned a bit about Android app development, which I thought was fitting given the team I sat near. The building also has a cute indoor tiny park with a skylight, some trees, and a little boat to sit in.

I ate at most of the cafeterias across all the 3 Google offices. Yes, I do miss the fresh sushi from the NY office, but all the offices had good food. The building I worked in (BEL) had a fire a few years back when barbecuing, so their cafe is appropriately named Pudding Lane, a reference to where the Great Fire of London started - complete with flames as wallpaper. We ate there occasionally, but we often went to the Google office across the street (123) for a better selection. The third Google office that Hannah and I went to (CSG) had the most varied and best tasting food of the three, and even some good sushi being rolled to order!

The London office is much more serious about its tea, with a wider variety and loose tea leaves in the microkitchens. I discovered a new delicious cereal in the microkitchens too - Crunchy Nut! It's a nuttier sort of Frosted Flakes but with honey, and I've never noticed it in the states, but I'll have to look for it now.

I also discovered two amazing desserts during the trip:

• Honeycomb ice cream - why is this not more popular in the US? It's got little crunchy honeycombs in it!
• Milhojas, which we found at the amazing tapas place Barrafina. It was a flaky pastry filled with light fluffy cream, and I want to always be eating it.

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One thing that took some getting used to was the different keyboards. I picked one up for the l desk I borrowed, not realizing what was in store. There's a \ (backslash) key where half of the left shift key should be, so every document I was in ended up with stray slashes.

The enter key is taller but narrower, and " (double quotes) claim to be in a different place but my computer just pretends they're where they were before, which was confusing if I ever looked at the keyboard while typing. There's also an "Alt Gr" key which I had no use for because I never had to type €. (the Euro sign)

I printed our train tickets from Paris to London using a French laptop, which was even more frustrating. Their keyboard layout is called AZERTY, with A/Q and Z/W switching places. The most ridiculous part was that you need to use shift or caps lock to type in numbers or a period! I did not notice the numpad on the right until after typing the numbers.

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I like how there's only some small differences between US and UK English. It made talking to people during our stay much simpler, but was different enough to still surprise me even after a month. People say "cheers" a lot, but I just kept saying "thanks". Also, we never asked for the "bill", and kept asking for the "check" instead, and they seemed to know what we meant.

Some of my favorite Britishisms were:

“poorly” (the adjective), meaning unwell

(the iPads used for ordering items at an Argos were all out of order)

"mind that child" which appears at the back of ice cream trucks

orange juice with “extra juicy bits" instead of pulp

and “fruiterer”, which appears to be someone who sells fruit

Also on the Tube, I found some new ways of saying exit. The announcer says "Alight here for Buckingham Palace" when approaching the station near it, and signs pointing to the exits read "Way Out". Once as I left a Tube station, a sign reading "Subway to Museums" confused me until I realized that a subway was just an underground walkway here.

We did not get used to the lack of proper shower curtains in Europe, and ended up buying our own for the flat. I don't really get how people shower here without getting water all over the floor, since the barriers tend to only go halfway.

(not our flat, I borrowed this from elsewhere on the internet)

The most ridiculous part of our stay was definitely when our hot water stopped working twice, and I had to pour water into the top to fix it. There's an extra container at the top of the boiler that is apparently vital to the boiling process. It definitely seemed like something that should be done automatically.

London is a lot like NYC with respect to public performances - people playing music, acrobatic feats like jumping over volunteering tourists, scamming people with the shell game, but there were a few notable acts I hadn't seen before. My favorite were:

• Three puppets singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" slowed down to half speed

• Various metallic dudes and possibly some Yodas pretending to float in place using a seat hidden in their sleeve

• and someone playing a tuba with flames shooting out at every note.

I enjoyed the British love for orderly queueing:

And their constant commitment to politeness:

But silly signs aside, I really enjoyed our time in London, and hope we get to visit again in the future!

- Jon