I'm so behind on blogging, it's hard to figure out where to start. I've got tales from Thailand, Cambodia, South Africa and around the UK, meaning I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Rather than tackle these bigger things, I'm getting back into the blogging groove by starting locally.

Last year in September for our 5th wedding anniversary, we had plans to make plans. We wanted to be those people travelling in Europe and book a last minute trip the week of our anniversary.  We had the days off, we just needed a destination!

I had discovered BA's Hello Weekend that offers destinations in several cities for that weekend, including accomodation around £150 - £300. A perfect deal!  We waited and waited until the month of. Two weeks in advance we checked our options but decided to hold out until the week before.

When the time arrived, we had the chance for: Paris (which we had visited three months before so ruled out), Gothenburg (which I thought was in Germany but actually in Sweden), somewhere random in Poland and Manchester, UK.

Underwhelmed anyone?!

I was so disappointed by the lack of choices that we decided to forgo our destination anniversary and simply have a staycation to hit up some of London's sites we hadn't yet reached.

The top of my list was Hampton Court Palace - not only is it included in our Historic Royal Palaces membership, but also is much closer to our new flat, just down the Thames. As I've read up on British history over the last year, I've also been interested in the palace due to it's close ties to Henry VIII.




So on the Saturday of our staycation, we were off to Hampton Court. In books, you read about it taking a day to reach this summer residence from London, but now one hour between the tube and the bus found us there.


While Hampton Court was around in different fashions as a manor before Henry VIII, he turned it into it's current magnificence and construction was finished around 1540.  The palace is huge, with all types of wings and some beautiful gardens, including a maze.


We started out our tour through the Great Hall and wound our way through Henry VIII's quarters, to learn about him, the famous tales of his wives, as well as the feud with Cardinal Woseley.

Just like our trip, we didn't really plan out much for our visit. We spent 3 hours wandering around the rooms without much of an itinerary. I was taken in by all the details of the palace in the ceilings, tapestries and ornaments throughout all the rooms. At the end of our visit, we found the gardens, but realised we had to get back home so had to satisfy ourselves with a abbreviated walk through.




As we left, I knew I'd find myself back there. There was too much to see, too much of the history that I love about London and the UK.  And lo and behold, I was right.  A few months later (and just a few weeks ago) we visited the palace for a different kind of tour - one of the ghost variety.


Hampton Court's Ghost Tours run in the winter evenings, allowing a small group of visitors to wander through the "haunted" hallways of the palace. For those who believe in ghosts, I'm sure there are some interesting ones to find there. For others, it's still an eery feeling walking through the halls without light and giving you an idea of what you might have been likely to find 500 years ago.

With the summers approaching and the palace's gardens to explore (plus our annual membership expiring!), I know we have at least one more Hampton Palace visit we have to make.

Every time I get off the tube at Notting Hill Gate, I pass Recipease. When we were living in Notting Hill, that happened ALOT.

At first, I didn't pay much attention, then I looked at it some and chalked it up to be a kitchen goods store.

For my birthday this year though, I learned the truth of Recipease. It is partly a kitchen goods store, but even more so, it's Jamie Oliver's store that hosts cooking lessons! Paul surprised me with a voucher for a class and once I found out the real secret of it, I couldn't wait to give it a shot.

They offer lessons in all kinds of things. Steaks, street food, kids lessons, but I decided upon homemade pasta. I love pasta and Italian food, so I figured it was the perfect time to figure out how to make it at home.



The day of the class, Paul and I had a mad dash to the shop (I may have been sick and napping away through my alarm!) but we made it just in time to wash up and don our aprons. They put a maximum on the attendees to ensure there are enough work stations and that the teacher can ensure you're learning what you're doing.

We were going to be making a few different types of stuffed pasta - this one focused only on the pasta, not the sauce, although they do have another class that teaches both.  We were making ravioli, tortellini and bow-tie pasta. The instructor started off by explaining it all to us and I was amazed at how easy it was! Flour and egg, voila, you have pasta dough!

Next comes the hard part - we rolled out the dough, then fed it through the pasta press several times, each time tightening up the rolls, to make sure we got it as thin and compact as we could. Once we had our strips, we set about cutting them up into the right size and there was even a fancy cutter that helped get those cute serrated edges you see on ravioli.

After we've got our perfect cut-outs, we set to filling them with ricotta, spinach and lemon. Not too full, or they fall apart in the cooking, and then we squish up the edges to seal them up.

As we drop the pasta in water (just a quick 2-3 minutes until they rise to the surface), we also start on our sauce. Simply butter, lemon and mint to give us a rich, if not too unhealthy, topping for our pasta.

So after 1 hour (mostly due to our learning than the length of the task) and we were done, kicking up our feet with a glass of wine and a plate of our delicious creations.


Despite the simplicity of it, I haven't quite yet tried this at home since I don't have a pasta roller, but perhaps I'll find one in my stocking for Christmas?!

2014 marks 100 years since the start of WWI - in the UK, there have been lots of events, books, television reminding us of the impact it had. With no living veterans left, it's up to us to pass along the histories, stories and memories of those who lived or battled through it.

Everyone knows about the winters in London (or at least those of us who've been lucky enough to live here know about the not so lucky London winters). The sense of oppression as heavy skies just seem to weigh down on you, full of ominous clouds waiting to deliver rain upon unsuspecting Londoners walking home in the dark at 5 pm.

Yes, London winters are terrible and we all love to talk about how terrible they are, as weather is our go to conversation starter.

But in my opinion, Lonodn summers aren't getting their due. It comes as a surprise rather than expectation when we find ourselves blessed with a sunny day.

We cheerfully comment on the nice weather but add some type of caveat that the rain must be on it's way. It's just too good to be true.

We enjoy the best, but hope for the worst.

And yet, even while waiting for the skies to open upon us, we all seem to find ourselves outdoors, soaking up vitamin (that's pronounced vit-a-min not vite-a-min) D and shamelessly working on our 'tans'.
After a mild winter, we've still be graced with a lovely summer, with an occasional shower popping up to remind us that we are in fact in England. I've probably jinxed the whole thing now by writing about it, but I can't really complain. It's been one fantastic summer.

How did we spend it? Unlike most other Londoners, we didn't spend it getting out of the city. Since we were moving house, we spent nearly all of our time in London, enjoying the green spaces and crossing our fingers that Mother Nature continued to smile upon us. And despite getting a bit of travel fever, I'm glad that we stayed. We saw London at it's best and it will be something nice to look back on and remember once winter rolls around and we're back to cursing the rain and hoping for sunshine!

When I first moved to London, it was overwhelming trying to find a place to live.

I saw 20+ flats in one day, put in two offers the next day and ended up in Notting Hill.

Little did I know how much I would come to love my little neighborhood.

While London is a huge metropolis, it's broken down into smaller boroughs with their own unique personalities and communities. From arty, hipster communities in Shoreditch, to the posher neighborhoods of Chelsea, everyone has an identity that I didn't know about when I moved to London. Yet somehow, I stumbled upon the gold of Notting Hill.

While most Americans know the neighborhood because of the movie by the same name, it's not necessarily a hugely popular expat community (at least the part that I live in, and especially compared to St John's Wood and Chelsea). We've got everything from Portobello Road and Carnival, to some of the best restaurants in London (including the world famed Ledbury), crammed into little roads lined with your typical yet beautiful London buildings covered in ivy, wisteria and even little monkeys in the case of Lancaster Road.

I've spent so many afternoons and evenings wandering the streets, familiarising myself with its nooks and crannies yet there is still so much to discover as the neighborhood continues to change.

Yet, after 2 years in Notting Hill, we've decided it's time for a change. It's not quite Istanbul to London, but it is our own little shaking up of our world in London.  We'll be moving to Chiswick in a few weeks. The main reason is to get Paul closer to work, but I'm also excited to see if I can love a new part of London as much as I love my current neighborhood. I'm a bit apprehensive Chiswick may not live up to my exceedingly high expectations after our first London flat, but we're going to give it a go. With a beautiful high street, parks and the Thames nearby, I'm hoping we'll fall in love with London all over again.
So, with only a few weeks left a resident of my beloved Notting Hill, I wanted to finally take some time to share with a few of my favourite parts of it.

One of the many things I love about London is all of the culture. Not only are there tens and likely hundreds museums around the city, many of them are world renowned and almost all of them are free to visit.

Amazing.

I've tried the British Museum, Victoria & Albert, Natural History Museum, National Gallery and a few weekends ago with a friend and art buff in town, we went to the Tate Modern.

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Even the outside of the museum gives away the modern art it holds. The building, up until 1981 was a power station. When the Tate took over, rather than re-make the building, they simply re-purposed it, so you can see evidences of it's past life throughout, but none more so than the facade that greats you as you walk up to the building.

While it was my first time to the museum, she was a veteran and knew the lay of the land, so we decided to first try the special exhibit for Paul Klee.

To be honest, I knew nothing about Paul Klee before this trip. I learned quite a bit though (at least a little of which I remember). He was a German artist at the beginning of the 20th century, who was a skilled musician and painter, but decided to stick with painting.

His work is modern art, but it's a bit all over the place. Some are more like Picasso & cubism, others are a bit less abstract (although we're not talking impressionism still).

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My favourite of course were the pointillist paintings. While not quite the Seurat paintings I love, it's still interesting. And with Klee, the paintings look like nothing much when you stand across the room, but the closer you get, the more the detail and meaning pop out at you.

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Once we finished with the Klee exhibit, we made the rounds of the rest of the museum. I've always been a fan of the more traditional art, so some interested me but some not so much.  We found our way back out to the Thames (with a quick pit stop at the cafe, although it's a fantastic place to stop for an afternoon tea), and off to take in more of everything London & it's museums have to offer.

Call me a nerd or the daughter of a librarian, I've always loved libraries. Even now in the age of e-books, I love to have a book in my hands as I curl up in a chair and read.

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We had actually not planned to join the Chinese New Years Celebrations in Trafalgar Square.

But, as we bid adieu to a London friend, we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of it all.


Trafalgar Square was packed, lanterns everywhere, firecrackers going off and a stage up front where people welcomed in the year of the dragon.


While we missed the parade, we still got a feel of the celebration and it was well timed.

The end of an era for our friend in London, the beginning of a new year - the year of the horse.  As this marks our second year in London, we'll have more people leaving but perhaps this is a nice reminder that every ending is a new beginning.

Here's to the year of the horse, filled with happiness, friends and lots of adventures.

Sometimes, it's good to remind yourself of how lucky you are and what a great situation you are in.

As an expat, it's easy to get into a routine just like you would in Dallas, or Houston or wherever in the world it is. Work on the weekdays, sleeping in on weekends, laundry, hanging out with friends. Sounds like fun?

But sometimes, as an expat, it's good to get a refresher for yourself on how fantastic your new home is and why you chose to live there.

With this, we've been making an effort to get out and see London! All of the well known tourist sites and some of the less known ones.

A few weekends ago, as the summer wound down to an end, we chose to see one of the most popular tourist sites - Buckingham Palace. As it was the second to last weekend of its opening, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

And while we were out, we went all out. We decided to visit Parliament too.

Bad news - no photos at any (bummer!).

Good news - both were some great places to visit.

First up, the Houses of Parliament.  This building had a whole history I didn't know about! Before becoming a government building, it was actually a royal palace.  Construction began in the 11th century under Edward the Confessor as a palace, so that he could oversee the construction of the nearby Westminster Abbey.  It was used for several centuries, as the true parliament began to unfold under the rule of the Plantagenets (Henry II - Richard III). Disasterously (and despite exclamations of the risks from others), the buildings of Parliament caught fire in 1834.

Westminster Hall - built in 1097 before the palace; one of the only buildings that survived the fire

So, unlike so many other things in London, the Houses of Parliament are relatively new!  Construction of the new palace began in 1840, after the gothic design was chosen from 97 entries from around the world. The successful designer was Charles Barry, with Augustus Pugin lending more of his input on the interior fixtures. While most of the building was done in 1860, the building of Parliament wasn't completely finished until 1870. However, when you walk through, you don't for one minute feel like you're in a building that could be deemed contemporary - it seems like you step back in time, with the vaulted ceilings, ornate tapestries, and paintings that were supposed to rival the Sistine Chapel. You can imagine the good old men, sitting around talking, smoking, alughing and dreaming up big things for England.

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As a resident of the UK, we have the chance to explore more of Parliament, if we write to our MP for tickets to sit in on session (including talks with the PM) or to climb to the top of Big Ben.

After a snack in the cafe at Parliament (where you can get a cuppa and scones!), we made our way up to Buckingham Palace.

The palace is only open 2 months of the year, while the Queen is out on holiday, or most likely visiting her home in Scotland. When she's away, they open up the State Rooms where visitors would be hosted to all of us who wouldn't have the opportunity otherwise. (Tip - book in advance!! You can also get tickets to tour the gardens, but these sell out early).

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While you have to queue to get in, once you get inside the building, it's a bit of a free-for-all as it is a self-guided tour. You can tell what's most popular as the tourists all push forward to get a peek at something the audio guide points out as important. I would probably have found the whole visit to be less than impressive if it weren't for the Coronation exhibit.

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 With 60 years on the throne, the palace had a display on to celebrate the affair. Everything from the gowns and jewels worn on the day, to paintings to completed to commemorate the event, to recreations of the dinner table for the feast.  The best part of it (besides the clothes) were all the videos of the coronation itself and the excitement on the streets of London. As the first coronation to be captured on film, it's amazing to see things that can be described, but somehow only truly captured through the video.

After we made it through the rooms spanning 2 floors, we headed out the back, through the gardens to the real London. Perhaps, someday, I'll be back to explore more of Buckingham, and if I'm lucky, outside the State Room tour.

View of Buckingham Palace as we exited

With more visitors in town, we continued our quest to find the perfect tea in London. Each visitor we have this year will be sampling tea in a new locale for us; partly for their enjoyment, but mostly for ours. I enjoy trying out different specialties and teas at each place we visit, taking in the atmosphere each place offers and most of all, relaxing without distractions with family and friends .

As I've scheduled more tea times, I have come to find that I'm not the only one on this mission. There is a Tea Guild that sets out to pick the best tea places throughout the UK. Like secret shoppers, judges go to each establishment to rate them on things like decor, knowledge of tea, efficiency, and more.

And much to my delight, I found that we had booked a tea time at what was chosen by the Tea Guild as London's Top Afternoon Tea in 2013 - The Goring Hotel.

So, on the last day of the weekend, we found ourselves at the Goring for tea time.

The room itself was quite lovely - wooden panels, inviting chairs and couches, and a little sun room, with seats outside as well, which I can imagine are widely used during beautiful summer days.

My grandmother getting ready for the tea and the beautiful place settings. Each tea saucer had the cameo of Goring under where the cut sits

Because it was my cousin's birthday, we decided to go for the Champagne Tea in celebration. In addition to the champagne, they brought out what was perhaps my favorite thing of the whole tea. We each had a plate full of sliced strawberries, drizzled in cream. They were the perfect complement to the champagne.

The strawberry mountain, topped with a fresh drizzle of cream

Finally, came the main attraction - the tea. I had the Goring's Afternoon Blend, while others sampled the Fortum & Mason Royal Blend and a Darjeeling tea. The food was the standard fare - egg salad sandwiches, chicken salad, although they did have a goat cheese and roasted pepper sandwich was new to me and very delicious. I stuffed myself so full of scones, I ALMOST skipped having any of the chocolatey goodness at the end, but I found a little bit of room for a macaroon and some type of chocolate cake.

Our eats - you get a great look at the clotted cream here. So soft, it looks like ice cream

Our food tray again. We definitely got a second tray of scones once we finished the first

So we sat, talked, followed the rules of no electronics (minus these pictures), replenished our scones and tea, and enjoyed the afternoon. While the service we experienced was not very attentive, especially compared to the service we had at The Brown Hotel, I can still see why it ranks up there among the top tea places in London. Now, only 20 more tea establishments to visit to make sure we've visited all the Award of Excellence Winners for London.

The last two months have been hectic. Crazy, crazy hectic.

They have found me in Dallas, Beijing, Shanghai, Aberdeen, Dubai, Wales (twice), Copenhagen, the Scottish Highlands, and back to the US again. See what I mean? And while I feel so blessed to have experienced them all, I am so ready to be back in London for a bit, sleep in my own bed, wash my clothes, empty out my suitcase, and blog of course.

During those two months, I did have one weekend at home, and it was a weekend where the first visitors from family found there way to our flat in London!

My cousins and grandmother

It felt odd after being the tour guide for everyone in Istanbul, to be the one working, while Paul showed around our guests. But, luckily, I was able to spend the weekend with them, both family and tourist time.

One of the things I had wanted to try with our first set of family was the London Eye, and so we decided to try it on Friday night.  Despite suggestions from friends, we went with the standard ticket (no fast track) and were glad we did. We walked straight up at 8:00 pm on Friday night, no line, no fuss. Probably not the case in the middle of peak season, but we were happy with our luck!

After posing for a green screen photo, we boarded our pod with 3 couples. Again, probably more crowded in the summer, but with a smaller group, we were able to get great views as we moved around the pod.

As you start going around, you first get the best views to the East. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral as it lit up at night, with the Shard peeking out at us as well.


You also get great river and bridge views. From the Somerset House, to Southbank, it is a beautiful, unobstructed view. That is until you start to get to the top. This is the point where I decided it may be best to sit on the bench in dead center and tried to forget how high above the city we were.

A glimpse of our pods

Finally, we crossed over the top with views to the West. These are the views everyone wants - you're right across from Parliament and Big Ben.


Apparently, day time is the most popular to go. While I guess it makes sense, as people are out and about, I always love seeing tourist spots at night. There is something about seeing them all lit up that makes them seem more magical. As we came around the top, Parliament was lit up, and shortly after, Big Ben turned green in greeting to us.


And 45 minutes after we started, we found ourselves (thankfully), back on solid ground. We stopped at All Bar One right next to the entrance for a quick celebratory nightcap, the perfect ending to our evening.