Frandtastic!: April 2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

London Calling

The next day, we went to Westminster Abby in the morning. It was closed to sightseeing for an unknown reason. Bummer news, but the outside was very gorgeous. *Bonus- I can see the inside of it right now on the TV :) Happy Wedding!

We decided to walk to the Natural History Museum, we took a wrong turn, and it took us forever. Once we got there, the line was way too long, so we walked back to Harrods and did a little shopping. We also stopped at M&S for some bottled water, and smart Paul grabbed some delicious cookies for 99p at the check out line. They were amazingly delicious and we bought two more packages during the trip. I'm craving them so so bad.

(Oh yeah! and I blew up my straightener with the wrong voltage, so wavy hair it is!)

Inside Harrods.

Outside Harrods, it's a real fancy building.

Tulips at St. James's park.

Then we headed to King's Cross station to meet up with Jess (she was a Post-Doc in the lab Paul works in).
And if your mind works like mine, you might immediately start looking for platforms 9 and 10.

And then you go to Hogwarts of course!

(Although Paul is embarrassed by it, this is one of my favorite moments.)

Jess took us to the Wellcome Trust Collection and the British Museum. Both cool.

Then we went to dinner on Brick Lane. A street filled with Curry restaurants. We filled our stomachs to the brim, but it was so delicious!

On the way back to the train station we saw this awesome goat statue, and the restaurant next to it was called Valerie - so guess what - these pics are for you Valerie Goates!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Welcome to London Towne

One of my favorite moments of London was jumping on the Tube the day I arrived, taking a random train, and getting off at "Westminster" because we had heard of Westminster Abby so that seemed logical.

As we walked out of the Underground, this was the first thing we saw:

I was like WOW! Hello Big Ben!
Who knew it was attached to the Parliament building? I should've looked at that Peter Pan scene more closely!

Same building - other end.

(Westminster Abby is right next to here, but we actually checked it out another day, because it was already closed).

We walked around the Parliament Building and checked out the Thames (our English friend Jess was sure to let us know... pronounced TEMS).

Then crossed the bridge to see the building in all it's glory

We did a great job looking like tourists.

Here, Paul is finding the perfect guide to London. I just thought he looked awesome surrounded by English pride.

And of course- a red telephone booth photo. :)

(Can you tell the weather was perfect as can be!? No rain! All sun! 70 degrees, or more like 21 degree if you are using correct measurements for that place.)

Our next stop was Trafalgar Square. Where we counted down to the London Olympics...

We ate dinner right near here at a place called Garfunkles. For dessert we had sticky toffee pudding with warm custard - an English classic. It was magic on a plate. So delicious. Yum yumm yyyuuuummmmm.

To burn off those extra-consumed calories, we took a walk through St. James' park. (Apparently a royal garden. Fancy.)

Everything was green and lush and beautiful.

There were all sorts of cool birds in this lake. Oh, and guess what's behind me?

Buckingham Palace in all it's royal glory! I bet today and tomorrow this place is a zoo.

Next stop: Tower of London. It's an awesome castle from the 1000's just chillin' in Central London.

And guess what. Paul totally digs castles.

And I totally dig Paul. And castles.

freckles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It even has a moat, dudes.

Across from the Castle. Sa-weeeeeeeet.

Next stop, Tower Bridge!

*my favorite picture of the trip, maybe- but there are more than 500 so let's not set that in stone.

Hurray for nice light - perfect time of day!

We took a walk along the bridge, just for good measure. (Getting dark!)

And enjoyed a pretty sunset on our first day in London (together).

I think I'm about worn out with this post. How about you?

But on a related note, isn't London really awesome?

Come back for more later? Great.

(Spoiler alert- I ♥ Harry Potter).

Cheerio!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

London Sneak Peek

We are back from the Motherland. We took so many pictures and I'm excited to show you all the great places we were able to visit.

But for now, here is a little sneak peek of our English adventures.

taken inside this castle (seriously)...

How can you help but want to see more pictures after that?! Stay tuned...

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter from London

At Darwin's house, in Downe, on a beautiful Easter morning.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

An Adventure in Pysanky.

Instead of being all lonely and boring this weekend, I took a little roadtrip by my lonesome (in hurricane-like conditions) to Pennsylvania to visit Val + Fam + The Momma Donna (lucky, right?).

Val, the craft queen, pulled out the big guns and taught us how to make pysanky. If you didn't already google that word, they are awesome Ukranian Easter Eggs.

Lemme show you how it works:

Step 1: Plan out your egg, then draw on the egg in pencil the design you came up with. (Using some traditional symbols and patterns).

Step 2: Choose what lines/designs you want to stay white, and cover them with melted beeswax, using this cool little tool. (The darker lines on the egg are the wax).

Step 2: Dunk the egg in yellow! Then choose the parts you want to stay yellow and cover them in the wax.

Step 3: Dunk it in the red! Then cover all the parts you want to stay red with wax.

Step 4: Dunk it in the black!

Step 5: "The Unveiling". Melt all the beeswax and wipe it off, to reveal your beautiful designs!

Step 6: Stare at that beauty! (Even if the picture you took at 2 am is blurry and you didn't really know at the time because you'd just been staring into a candle melting off wax!)

Then spray it with a hardening/shining agent.

Now this is the part where I show you my beautifully completed egg, all hollowed out and perfect for my mantle piece.

Unfortunately, when I was carrying my dear egg back in the house to let dry all through the night, it rolled off it's little stand and went crashing to the ground. SPLAT. Egg guts everywhere.

Being 2 a.m., and having just worked on the dear thing for several hours, my body started to shake and I told myself not to cry. And I cleaned up the yolky mess and threw my hours and hours of work down the drain (literally).

I kept the little pieces of the shell and put them on a plastic egg, to maybe get some of them back together.

Then I went to bed terribly sad, and thinking about the whole thing - and I came up with all these different moral of the stories: like, sometimes attention to detail isn't about how straight the lines are, but how careful you are with the egg in the end (and I promise that made sense at 3 a.m.).

Or, how the reason these things are so cool are because they are so fragile and it's just a miracle they survive the process, so breaking one makes the others cooler (problem was I didn't have another...).

The good news is that I took pictures so that you could all appreciate my hard work and how cool these things are, even though I currently have nothing to show for it :).

And now to save you from the depression which you might be feeling with me...

Look how amazingly gorgeous Audrey's hair is.

And if that didn't bring up your spirits enough, how about some...

Hamburg and Frystown!? (I thought I was so clever putting those together. Silly Pennsylvania...)

Happy Easter!

PS I leave for London tomorrow!

Frandtastic!