This Ain't Your Grandparents' CARNIVAL!

Today we woke up early and joined the masses as we lined the streets of West London for the city's Annual Carnival Festival. We learned that Carnival is London's annual celebration of Jamaican and Caribbean influenced food and culture. It was absoutely unreal. I've never been to anything like it, and we were told that it was Europe's largest outdoor festival! The only thing I can compare it to was like Marti Gras. Conveniently, it was just blocks from our hotel so we walked to Westbourne Grove again and got there just in time! The steel drums, confetti, and colorful constumes danced their way down the streets with bumping Caribbean dance beats blaring throughout the city. We just let ourselves get wrapped up in the culture and loved every minute of it!! All the store and restaurant fronts on the parade route had boarded up their windows because they apparently riot all the time during the festival. We only saw one altercation that I'll come back to later in the post.

For lunch, I got curried goat with salad and rice. Later, we tried stalks of sugar cane! I wanted to try something authentic as opposed to American food. Turns out I love curried goat! It was so good! On one block, there was a reggaeton DJ who was dancing in the streets and telling everyone who walked through the street to “shake what ya momma gave ya!” haha. It was a lot of fun and we danced and drank and I got it all on video. A carnival I will never forget.






After we had become exhausted from the Carnival, we walked back to Grand Plaza and took a quick nap. I uploaded a bunch of photos and then fell asleep on the couch. After we woke up, we went out to the other side of town to the now littered streets that we hadn't already walked earlier this morning. We stopped in a Chinese restaurant for dinner and while we were eating, a really really drunk kid burst into the place and started screaming profanities. The staff tried to shoo him out, but they realized he was just trying to get away from an even drunker angry black woman. Through the window, we saw her pick up an empty liquor bottle from the street and hurl it at him. The whole restaurant (including us) fell silent and basically freaked out. We didn't know if someone was going to whip out a gun or anything so we didn't move. The police instantly showed up and quarantined both people and took them outside. We later learned that he had yelled a racial slur at her and both of them being drunk, she literally attacked him. It was actually pretty frightening...Mel almost dove under the table. After dinner, we walked back to Kensington Gardens and got some gelato before turning around because it was getting dark and people were getting more and more rowdy in the streets. We didn't really want to go back to the hotel yet so we went into Whiteley's, a small three story mall next to our hotel. On the top floor, there was a Mexican restaurant so we went to the bar. Of course, just my luck, the bartender spills an ENTIRE plate of mixed drinks on me, my new pants, and my shoes. So now my jeans smell like coconut milk and my shoes are sticking to the floor. Other than that, we had a great day, an experience that not many people get to have because it only happens once a year in one city!

Tomorrow, we have reservations at Harrod's for a traditional English high tea at 3pm in Knightsbridge. Should be fun, we have to get dressed up. Until then, g'night Londy.

Photoshoot at the Palace and Gardens

Today we got up late AGAIN and got ready and walked to the Kensington Palace and Royal Gardens. Today wasn't as nice, it was a lot colder and really overcast. No rain yet! (knock on wood) On the way there, we stopped at a persian food stand and got lamb and chicken pita pockets. Very very good. The guy was so nice and was happy to see we were from the States. We actually have had such a warm welcome from everyone we meet! Here are a few shots from the gardens and Royal grounds!





After we walked through the Palace grounds, we made our way down the pond in the center of the park and basically chilled with all the geese, ducks, and swans. I just died laughing at Mel and Rebs posing with dreary London scenery so I put together a montage for the blog! So funny, don't laugh too hard Tina Defeo...

Ping Ponging Between Piccadilly & Harlem

Wow so much to catch you all up on! A lot has happened in the last 24 hours!

First night here: After our flooded fiasco (see leaky faucet post below), we got dressed and went out to dinner. Mel's bf Will got her this awesome London for Under $25 book so we found this amazing restaurant called Ping Pong which was in Westbourne Grove, a street/neighborhood one block away from our hotel. It reminds me a little bit of Greenwich Village, kind of quiet.

We got plate after plate of unbelievable dim sum and some delicious cocktails to boot. After dinner we went back to the hotel, turned on a movie and fell asleep about 15 minutes into it. We woke up the next day at 3pm. I guess that's jet lag for ya!

Since we got a late start to say the least, we left the hotel around 4 and took the tube to Piccadilly Circus which is basically the Times Sq of London. Coming out of the tube station to street level was really cool because we hadn't seen this side of London yet. It was the big, built-up, touristy area so it was fun to be in that kind of bustling environment. Sidenote: the weather was great too, sun and blue skies the whole time so far! Here are a few shots from the afternoon...



Sidenote: The bus in the first picture nearly killed Mel when she walked into the street and looked the wrong way for oncoming traffic. The three of us got a few stares as she screamed bloody murder and ran back to the curb. Thank god she was ok!!
From Piccadilly, we walked over to Leicester Square, which was a small park in the center of the city (like Washington Sq) and went to this mexican restaurant called Chiquito right on the park. We got nachos and a pitcher of margaritas as our late afternoon tie-over. Around 8, we left that area and tubed it back to Bayswater to make dinner back at the hotel. Rebs and I ran some errands while Mel prepared this amazing cheese and cracker spread and pasta dish with spinach and mixed veggies that was ready when we got back. We ate while watching some Chris Rock comedy special. They love their Comedy Central over here. We also stocked the fridge in the room since we'll be here for a bit.


After we cleaned up dinner last night, we went to the front desk again with the intention of having a fun night out on the town. We asked the concierge if there is a good nightclub that he would recommend for us, seeing as we were new to the area. He said that we "had" to go to Tiger Tiger back in Piccadilly. He said we would love it and we would fit right in. We said "ok, anywhere else we should know about?" and he responded by basically saying "no, go to Tiger Tiger". We went back to the room and we googled Tiger Tiger to see how to get there and to get a sense of the place before we went out. Literally, the first review that we stumbled upon, I have copy and pasted for your viewing pleasure:

"This big brash Piccadilly meat market is perennially packed with desperate tourists who obviously got turned away at all other nightclubs and other young drunk things of all ethnicities picking each other up"

Thanks asshole.

Needless to say, we did NOT go to Tiger Tiger, but we were all dressed up and wanted to go somewhere. We decided to walk back to Westbourne Grove and do drinks at Ping Pong again, but they closed at midnight so we found this bar next door called Harlem. From the outside, it looked like a typical sports bar and nothing else seemed to be open so we walked past the bouncers and actually went downstairs (which we didn't know about) to this really eclectic clubby environment (very similar to Andalu).

We got a few drinks, claimed a small leather hideaway right under the DJ booth, and mingled with the locals until about 2am. It was so much fun because we were the only Americans in the place. I talked to this one guy and his girlfriend who looked like they were in their late 20s who were so fascinated that we were from the States. He told me his ex went to Yale and he met her when she was studying over here as well. The girlfriend looked like a hot vamped up version of VBeckam and didn't really love that last comment of his. Mel and Rebs talked to the bartenders who gave us some names of other places to hang out. We were such obvious Americans though.. Mel brought a small notepad to the bar and Rebs spilled her entire Long Island Iced Tea on the guy haha. She was good about it and tipped him for the refill. We stayed a little longer, the girls danced, I got buzzed, and we bounced.



We got back to the hotel, made grilled cheese and went to bed. Can't wait to explore a little bit more tomorrow!

I Don't Know (American) = Ah Day Nay (UK)

Apparently Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, and King of Queens are the only shows that have made it onto our hotel tv from America. Also, Scrubs is Scrubs Up over here. Weirdness.

So it's 3:30pm over here and we basically are just going out now. Got a bit of a late start because of our jet lagged sleeping patterns. We don't know what we are going to do just yet, but the possibilities are endless! Can't wait to see what today/tonight brings!

First Impressions and a Leaky Faucet

Let me tell you about the drama that is jolly London. Let’s start from the beginning…

We took off an hour late last night from Newark. We were supposed to leave around 9 and ended up taking off around 10. I have to say the flight was just glorious. To get to our seats on board, we passed a bar, a lounge, stairs to a second level, two different sections of Upper Class and at least 8 bathrooms. It was basically the biggest plane that I had ever been on. Anyway! So we are on the plane, they dim the lights, the dinner trays come out, we eat, we watch free movies, it was great. After literally one movie, I looked at the screen and it said we had like an hour left on the flight. It went by SO quickly!

(This next part was my favorite) When we began to descend, it was like out of a movie. I, never having really been out of the country, slid the window of the plane open to see us coasting over the city of London. We past Parliament, Big Ben, we saw the giant London Eye ferris wheel, then we got lower and saw the Thames River snaking through the center of all the buildings and flew over the Tower Bridge. I don’t want to sound cliché, but it literally felt like I was in Peter Pan or something!! Just soaring over all these landmarks that I’ve seen a million times in pictures, it was surreal. Finally we landed and got our bags after Mel peed at LEAST four times between unloading and baggage claim…or Reclaim as they called it here!

The part of the trip I was dreading the most was next and I have to say, without exaggeration, it was 10 times worse than I anticipated. I knew that it was going to be hard physically getting from Heathrow to our flat, but nothing prepared me for public transportation with no less than 7.5 suitcases between the three of us. Holy God we wanted to just cry. Ok so from the airport, we had to take the Heathrow Express (which was a really fast train from the airport to Paddington Station.) From Paddington, it was the tube so imagine the three of us trying to lug all 8 pieces of luggage through the narrow ups and downs of the London Underground. It was ridiculous. Think NYC subway with all the pointless stairs going up and down… So that was us. When I asked an officer if there was a lift (elevator) that we could take to get down to the platform, he basically laughed and said no. So this is where I wanted to kill myself because we had 3 more flights of stairs going up just to come right back down on the other side. With 8 suitcases. Thankfully, there were enough kind people watching us struggle that made it bearable. Finally, we get down to the crowded platform and of course, its like rush hour packed. Of course, because why would life be any easier, right? The train pulls up, annnd its full, but this station was a big transfer point so a lot of people got off thank god. We managed to get everything and everyone on, but it was like all of our stuff in a subway car. We were only going one stop however so when the train stopped and the doors opened, we were the only ones getting off so no one budged. Awesome. Finally I just announced like “Passengers of the Tube, please haul ass, you can see how much stuff we have.” People moved and we got off and I just collapsed on the platform. We conveniently have another three flights of stairs to go up to get to street level. This was just not what I wanted as my first impression of the city.

From the tube stop, we walked a few blocks to the rented flat that my dad got us for the week before we move in to Metrogate.

We couldn’t check in until 2pm and it was only 11:30 in the morning so we dropped our bags and went to the pub across the street to grab some lunch and a brew. This is where exhaustion and jet lag just slapped me across the face. We stayed for a bit, ate, and peaced. We got to check into our room early because I begged the girl at the front desk to let us in so we could crash. The room was really weird. It was a split-level kind of thing with one bedroom and kitchen on the walk-in level and then stairs down to a second level with a second bedroom and a bathroom as well. After finding out that our internet, TV, and air conditioning where all not working, I just decided to deal with it after a power nap. Two hours later, I was woken up my Mel yelling for me. She got up to wash her hands and turned on the faucet in the bathroom only to find out that the pipe was not fully connected and was now flooding the bathroom floor…or so we thought. I’m still half asleep at this point and run downstairs to find that the water was going through the wall to the bedroom and soaking all of Mel and Rebs’ stuff that they left on the floor. Since our damn phones didn’t work as well, I ran down to the front desk and basically demanded a new room. They cooperated and we are now sitting in our cool beautiful new room that is not suffering from water damage =) Oh London, I’m not impressed so far. Mel wants to pop in Spice World later, HA! Hopefully we can sort shit out. MORE TO COME!!!!!

Changes, Changes

I was going to wait to begin blogging until after I touched down in Europe, but so much has been going on in my life in these past few days that I wanted to get it out now. Alright so first of all, I just got back from my end of summer trip to florida -- it wasn't exactly a vacation according to me, seeing as I was at the pool once, only saw the ocean from indoors, dropped Jen off at UMiami, and was looking at real estate the entire time with my parents. That was my own fault though. I told them that I wanted to see as many communities as possible before heading overseas so that I could have some say in where they decided to buy a house. Ironically, the one day that I decided to sleep in, they went to a new community and found a house. They loved it so much that Jen and I went back later to get a second look and we liked it so they put a bid on it and got it! Long story short, we got a house WAY before we anticipated and now when I fly back to Miami from London, I'll have a home to go to instead of a stuffy condo. We only took a few photos of the house because the owners were there and it was a little awkward, but here is a view of the backyard!

Sidenote: Ina Garten is making spanakopita with lamb kebobs right now and I'm dying.

While down there, we also said goodbye to Jen as she started her freshman year in college. We met her roommate, Amanda, who later went out to dinner with us in Coral Gables so they could bond. Surprisingly, there were no tears as we left her and she seemed pretty busy in the next few days to distract her from homesickness.

Here she is with her new roommate posing in front of their dorm. I wish AU looked like that!

The only thing that was completely undesirable was the size and layout of her dorm room. I didn't know it, but I was so spoiled as AU with huge picture windows and built-in shelving and oh I don't know, maybe room for a TV. She didn't even have that. Her windows were significantly smaller due to the hurricane shutters they had on them. Other than that, it was a typical dorm room.

As of now, I'm back in North Jersey basically waiting to leave for England. I started packing today while simultaneously babysitting Bella for the next 2 days until Kelly comes home to say goodbye and then takes her back to the district. She's actually a fairly boring dog. I guess I just never realized it. She just stares at me and barks at the cardboard boxes strewn all over my house. She also woke me up at 7:30 this morning which was just AWESOME. Anyway, back to packing. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what to bring. I'm going to be in London for a big change in temperatures so I need a variety of clothing. I only have 2 suitcases to work with so it's gonna be interesting. I might just end up pulling a Foster Curry and wearing half my suitcase on the plane. We shall seeeeee!!!!

I probably won't be posting again until we get closer to D-Day, but as of now, I'm enjoying my last few days in the great country of America. And speaking of, I have a Chipotle giftcard that is burning a hole in my wallet. God I'll miss that place.