Well, we did it. We made it a year on the road! October 1st, 2011 is when this all started. Honestly, it has been pretty wonderful. The first month was tough bouncing around between New York and Wisconsin, but once we got going, once we started to head west, it all came together. We spent those next 10 months camping nearly every night. Yes, we stopped at a few houses, [...]
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Yes, we speak the same language, but not only do we not use the same words for things, we pronounce things differently. There’s like these insider secret pronunciation rules that outsiders just don’t know and locals take for granted. Here are the ones I’ve noticed. Greenwich. Not pronounced like a green witch, it’s gren, like grenade, itch. Gren-itch. But we all know that one, right? Leicester Square. I want to [...]
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Yes, we’re having a great time in London. And on one hand, I don’t really want to leave. On the other, I’m really looking forward to getting settled into Ithaca. Here’s what I’m looking forward to. Downsizing Yep, downsizing. We’ll move everything from our storage locker to Ithaca, but I bet a lot gets donated to the Ithaca thrift stores. We’re so used to living with less that I don’t [...]
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There’s something going on with British cuisine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. We haven’t had a bad meal yet (don’t believe the rumors). Not even close. But there’s this fascination with things on toast. We had grouse offal on toast at St. John Bread and Wine. We’ve had mushrooms on toast at The Fox. The other day, we were at a pub early and the staff dinner was something unidentifiable served [...]
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We blew a fuse on the electric tea kettle. Not sure how I managed that, but I did. Tripped the breaker in the house too. Finding and flipping the breaker back was easy. The fuse, that was another matter. In Chicago, we lived around the corner from a mini Home Depot. Down the street from that, there was an Ace Hardware store. On Clark, a block in the other direction, [...]
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I cut into it and it spewed, simple as that. Not a bad spew. Just a spew. Didn’t want Lisa to see though, so I mopped it up and shoved it in my mouth. Damn, it was tasty. “What was that?” she asked. “I’ll tell you later,” I told her. “Tell me now,” she insisted. “Better later.” I kept chewing, but I couldn’t convince her. So I told her: “The [...]
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London is a great city. Here’s what I’m falling in love with: Free museums. Most museums have free general admission. Special exhibits are extra. Smart. “Real” ale. I asked what “unreal” ale was and got strange looks. So much for that inquiry. Anyway, the beers here pulled from the old-school taps are phenomenal. I love their low carbonation and large size. One of my favorites is Adnams Bitter. Breakfast. I had a [...]
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We wanted a direct flight when flying to London, didn’t want to transfer. Of course, no flight is truly direct. Here’s what we went through to get from A (Lake Geneva, WI, USA) to B (London, England, UK). Drive to Harvard, IL (40 minutes) Our travel day started with a drive into Illinois. We had been staying with my mom in Wisconsin. She was nice enough to get us through [...]
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We’re just around the corner from London Fields park, one of the seemingly endless London public parks. The parks are wonderful, but the space isn’t the most amazing thing about them. It’s the dogs. Like a lot of parks, people bring their dogs to London Fields. The dogs run and play and sniff and sit. Which you’d expect, that part is just like every other park in the world. The [...]
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Damn, wine’s expensive here. Booze is expensive too. Let’s do some maths. (Things get pluraled oddly over here. “Horsepowers” is a legit term.) In California, where we found the cheapest wine on our trip, they sell Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joe’s– a bottle of Charles Shaw wine for $2. Converted into £s, that’s £1.23 (the current exchange rate is £1 = $1.60). Now, we know we’re not in California. Everywhere else in [...]
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The Syndicate Wine Shop