London, or There and Back Again

Our first glimpse of England

I thought that my last blog post was behind me, but my boyfriend and I recently took a big trip and I realized that blogging my travels is the best way for me to remember all of the details. Back in 2015, I took an amazing trip to Ireland with my best friends but because it was during a tumultuous personal time in my life I didn’t blog about it, and now I hardly remember any of the small, quiet moments from that journey.

So, London.  More like LONDON! We chose London because so many of our nerddoms coalesce there and because we found ridiculously low-priced nonstop flights, perfect for people in our tax bracket. We booked on a slightly drunken whim on New Year’s Day and chose May because it was good timing for our jobs, we thought the weather might be nice, and because it’s Michael’s natal month. 

Neither of us had ever been to England before, so it was really fun to spend the long, cold winter evenings researching places to stay and things to do. We pored over websites like AirBnB and TripAdvisor for hours at a time and became nuisances to all of our friends and coworkers who’d ever been to London before as we peppered them with questions. 

On the Gatwick Express to Victoria

We had an overnight flight to Gatwick, where we muddled our way onto a train to Victoria station. We popped above ground to get a look at things, and then we muddled our way on the underground to Notting Hill Gate tube stop.  With Michael’s unerring (and almost eerie) sense of direction, we found our way to the Pink House, our home away from home for the next ten days. 

Travel weary

We came to love this juxtaposition of
older and newer architecture

We became very familiar with the ins and outs of this station

One of the prettier stations, as we discovered in time

The Pink House was still being cleaned when we found it, but the housekeeper let us dump our luggage and change our clothes before heading out to find a spot for lunch. We had passed a few pubs  on our walk from the tube so we circled back to look them over, but none of them had opened yet. So we cooled our heels, explored our neighborhood, and took some pictures until noon when Walmer Castle opened. 

We were the first to arrive, so we picked a corner table and eagerly perused the menu.  Michael decided to jump in with fish & chips while I opted for the chicken, portobello, leek, and pancetta pie. I’m not sure if it was simply our exhaustion, our delight in finding ourselves in a new country, the very fine beer, or a combination of all three, but we both enjoyed our meals immensely  

As much as we enjoyed our meals, they were also quite heavy so after our very short walk back to the Pink House, we did the bare minimum to unpack and familiarize ourselves with our home before tumbling into bed for a two hour nap. Or maybe it was three hours.  It was all quite nebulous. Upon waking, we connected to wifi to find a nearby Indian restaurant with good ratings, which is how we found ourselves at Malabar. 

Not my photo - found on their website

It was a farther walk than I was hoping, but it was completely worth the effort. We were both so tired that we could hardly see straight (as demonstrated by my total lack of photographic evidence), but also peckish despite our heavy lunch. Michael ordered the Malabar prawns masala and I went for the pasanda, which is a lamb dish with cardamom, almonds, and sultanas.  We shared some naan and then decided to try the mango fool for dessert.  Everything was delicious and the mango fool was the perfect ending to a wonderful meal and long day. 

Our darling home