Monday, December 17, 2012

Brioni European Vacation - London, England

Our first day in London, started at about 10:00 AM or so after taking the red-eye from Washington Dulles Airport. We took a highly appointed 777 that had the latest in movies (e.g. just released films like "Dark Night Rises", "21 Jump Street", and "Ted."). Unfortunately, I couldn't stay up to finish most of the movies, but that was okay since I would catch them on our flight back to the U.S.

After taking a nap, we decided to explore the surrounding neighborhood, Westminster.  Of course, "exploring" meant diving right into the bar scene, and our neighborhood wasn't short on the amount of pubs that were nearby. :)

We started off our night by grabbing some traditional pub food. I had the fish and chips and Justin had a meat pie, both of which were delicious.

 

As we walked to the next bar, we couldn't help ourselves to another snack. Have you ever had a scotch egg? They are basically hard boiled eggs wrapped in sausage, covered in bread crumbs, and then deep fried. Man are they good and they go great with beer too! They were so good that they were our go to snack while we saw the sights around London. The best ones we had were in a bar as seen in the picture below. On a related note, the mustard in the picture is really good! It's called Colmans, and man does it pack some heat! My favorite kinds of mustard are the spicy kinds-the hotter the better!
 

Each day we did the total tourist thing and got around town using the double-decker/"hop on hop off" tour buses. Yes, I know it sounds cheesy, but  if tourists can do it in my city (D.C.) why can't I do it in theirs? LOL...  Also, since both of us have never been to London before, this travel option was the perfect mode of transportation to see all the sights.

Like the London Eye...


And Big Ben...


And Westminster Abbey...




And of course we couldn't go to London without visiting the famous, Harrods Department Store. We bought some dog bowls for the boys, and I bought a few other souvenirs as well. Unfortunately, we didn't shop too much because the dollar/pound exchange rate really stunk! 


But of course after a long day of sightseeing, you can probably guess where we ended up. :) This particular pub, Cask, was highly rated and had an extensive beer list.  Most, if not all of the beers they had available were microbrews, coming from different parts of the globe.


 Here we are ending the evening with a tasty pint (and Justin taking advantage of the free wi-fi).


Starting off our dinner at Cask with a lovely pate...


A picture of my beer of choice for the evening, Bee Sting Pear Cider. Yummy!


Or course this little blog post couldn't capture everything we did in our few days in London, but if you've seen one picture of a London landmark, you've seen them all, right? j/k...

Justin doesn't look too thrilled to take the high-speed rail to Paris (aka: the chunnel), but it turned out to be a smooth ride.  Maybe it's the fact that this photo opportunity doesn't catch his good side :)


We had such a great time in London, but were excited for the adventures that lay ahead of us in the City of Lights! Until next time!

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