Acton

Hello everyone,

I've seen a lot of the city of London, but I wanted to get a feel for suburban English city life, so I took everyone on a day trip to Acton on the outskirts of London. We took the Tube to the West Acton station--it was a long ride into Zone 3 of the Underground.

Outside the Tube stop, there were many little Chinese restaurants. We strolled through a residential street and it looked just like Privet Drive from Harry Potter. I half expected to see a Professor McGonagall cat on the half walls around the yards. Didn't see any cats, but we did notice that the hedges are made of Christmas holly! It was refreshing to be out of London and in a peaceful place with fresh air and sunshine.

Our first stop was 3 Creswick Rd: Peacehaven. My mom went on this same study abroad trip when she was in college, and that's where the students stayed--not in London. So I got to stand on the front steps of the building she lived in when she was my age, halfway around the world from home. I got chills in a good way; it was one of those moments where you just feel really connected to everything.

Peacehaven

Past Peacehaven, which is now an international guest house, we saw a nice little park called Springfield Gardens and then a bunch of Middle Eastern fruit stands and grocery stores on Acton High Street. We went into a tiny shopping mall--this place was really miniscule: it had six stores! We went to our first 99 pence store (like a dollar store) and bought biscuits (cookies), gummy coconut mushrooms, and a Swiss cake log. It was a foot long and three inches across. Obscene!

Fruli in the background of a gummy mushroom

Gummy meercats: there are weird
gummy shapes over here

Springfield Gardens park

After the mall, we made our way down the street to the farmers' market on the Mount where I picked up some scarves as a souvenir. The best deal for patterned scarves you will get is 3 for £10. I talked to the woman selling scarves, and she was upset about the snow that was coming the next day and the cold snap they were in, which is our mild late-March weather in Wisconsin. I tried to be sympathetic.

Market on the Mount

St George & the Dragon signboard

By that time we were tired of walking, so we spent a few hours in a pub called St George & the Dragon, which has been there since 1759. We had a good time just talking, playing spoons, and eating that enormous Swiss cake. I got a pint of Fruli, a Belgian strawberry beer made of white beer and strawberry juice. It is absolutely delicious; try it if you get the chance. I just looked it up on the company website; it looks like it's available in the States--imported by PUSA in Littleton, CO. So get to it, folks!

My mom told me that the Indian food in Acton is really good, but I think the demographics have changed to more Middle Eastern and Chinese, and we had difficulty finding the Indian restaurant that I'd found online. We ended up walking a few miles too far and had to backtrack. Then when we finally found the building, it was closed for lunch on Fridays, contrary to the Google review page. Lesson learned: don't trust the internet for everything.

We were pretty hungry and tired, so we headed to the nearest Tube stop, Acton Town, and got lunch at--get this--an American diner! It's jarring to see your own culture as kitsch. The place was called Jump In Jack's, and we got the most stereotypical American lunch possible, burgers and milkshakes, and it was the most perfect ending to our day out. The food was delicious, and they even made veggie burgers for my friend and me.

Vegetarian food is widely available here; I haven't had a problem at any restaurant I've been to in any town, city, or country on this side of the world, so America better shape up before I get home! Vegetarian food is made differently here: the burgers and breakfast sausages I've had aren't the soy protein/fake meat that they do back home. Here it's actually a fried, breaded patty made of fresh vegetables (peas, carrots, green beans, corn) held together in mashed potatoes. It's quite good, and I like that it's made of whole vegetables. One other thing you should know about the chips (fries) here is that they're thicker, not greasy, and served with mayonnaise. We bring ketchup packets with us so we can mix it into the mayo and make Fancy Sauce. I'm addicted.

All in all, I had a great time in Acton seeing where my mom lived when she was my age, and we all had a grand day out.

~Red

Cambridge

Hey folks, how goes? It has been a busy week for me, as you'll see.

So what have I been up to lately, you want to know? Last weekend we visited Cambridge, a city 50 mi north of London. From what I saw when I was there, it seemed like a tiny, antique village, but I think we actually were only in the historic district because Cambridge is actually a little bigger than my hometown. In any case, most of the buildings we saw dated back to the 1400s. How cool!

Kings College courtyard

In Cambridge, we saw the outside of Queens' College from a bridge over the River Cam. We then went inside Kings College. The cathedral is a tall, one-room, rectangular Gothic church made of stone with a high arched ceiling and colorful stained glass in most of the walls. It was founded in 1441 by Henry VI.

Kings College cathedral

From there, the group moved on to see Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII , where Isaac Newton went to school and lived for 30 years. There's even a cutting of his apple tree there (apple trees only live about 250 years--did you know?).

Newton's bay window and apple tree cutting

We had a fantastic tour guide named Mary. She started off by telling us that Cambridge is almost always sunny--naturally, the day we went was absolutely frigid, rainy, and gusty, but as the Great Butter Queen, Paula Deen, once said on the Food Network, "There's nothing like rain to make a party more cozy!" And so it went once we got into a pub for lunch.

At first we tried to go to The Eagle, which has been in operation since the 1400s and was where Watson and Crick ran in at lunch to announce their discovery of the structure of DNA. The place was absolutely perfect, exactly what you'd expect of such a historic pub, but it was jam packed and we couldn't find a table.

My first fish and chips

The Regal--view from third floor

So we moved on to my other pub pick, The Regal. It is the largest pub in the United Kingdom with 3 floors and 2 bars. It was there that I made an exception in my 7 years of vegetarianism by ordering fish and chips with mushy peas. Yum! The fish was mild and not terribly fishy-tasting like the few aquatic creatures I ate in my childhood when I dared move beyond eternally classy fish sticks. I especially liked the mushy peas, actually. One of my friends in the group got a hot pear and raspberry dessert that she let me try, and that was really good. I also got another pint of Strongbow, which is quickly becoming my favorite drink over here--I like it more than Carlsberg or Guinness, but Kopparberg pear cider is fantastic too. It's from Sweden, I believe.

After lunch we wandered around town, picked up some souvenirs, and made it to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Unfortunately, no photography allowed. There were some paintings, even Monet, and a floor full of cool Egyptian stuff and Mesopotamian jewelry.

Evening at Kings College for the Evensong  choir

By then it was dusk and we headed back to Kings College for a church service and to hear the famous Evensong choir consisting of boys aged about 7 to 15. They were fantastic, and it was a beautiful service in the candlelit Gothic church.

Cambridge has been one of my favorite things so far about England; I really enjoyed getting out of the big city and getting to walk cobblestone streets with old-fashioned lampposts and little bridges across the river. I highly recommend it if you are able to get there.