To Our Grandma On Her Birthday!

This is just a little blog entry to wish our grandma Lucille Hunter THE best 90th birthday in history. We wish she was with us here seeing all the cool things we are.

WE MISS YOU GRANDMA! WE LOVE YOU!

The Blemish-Free Flemish

We have been in Bruges for several days now and are nowhere near getting sick of this tiny medieval town packed with beer shops, chocolatiers, patios, and mini canals. The sunny weather doesn't hurt either...it hasn't rained a drop since we left Vancouver on April 8th. We spent the first few days simply wandering and drinking, getting lost within this UNESCO heritage site. Yesterday, we rented bikes and traveled 2.5 hrs to Oostende, a port city on the North Sea known for its sand beaches and transport history. It's kind of like the Brighton of Belgium...speaking of Brighton:

We were blown away by Brighton. Well, maybe not "blown away" but it was cooler (and bigger) than we thought it would be. We were also surprised to discover how left-wing it seems. We visited on a Saturday, or Market Day, and saw a vegetarian shoe store, a guy selling shirts that said "We are all paying for the Royal Wedding - And now I am trying to sell you this lousy shirt", and hippies everywhere! The pier was a bit tacky, with its rides and video games, but the promenade is beautiful. We both thought it was pretty funny how the beach is rock and not sand...we now understand why British beach communities are struggling in light of cheap flights to the south of France and Andalusia.

Kate's description of the Chunnel: Hmm how do I describe the most frightening experience of my life... Anyone who knows me knows I dislike water, especially being UNDER water. Well to get across the Channel, our bus which was already disturbingly cramped, was then shoved into a underground freight train with us locked in it, then transported hundreds of meters under water. Most of the way I was trying to trick my brain into thinking I wasn't locked in a underwater deathtrap but halfway through I started to have a mini panic attack and had to concentrate very hard to not start punching people out of my way. Anyway, I survived! Now just have to get through the bungee jump.

New British beers tried to date: Doom Bar Ale, John Smiths, Young's Gold

New Belgian beers tried to date: Steen Brugge Blond (gruut finished, abbey beer), Nello's Blond (micro-brew, yeasty), Vieux Temps Amber (nutty, sweet, low alcohol), Bruges Zot (the only Belgian beer actually brewed IN Bruges, light and clean lager), Westmalle Trappist Dubbel (one of six authentic Trappist beers out there), Belle Vue Kriek Lambic (dry, tart, not very fruity)

 Beach and North Sea were def Highlights of Oostende

 Gangsters on Brighton Pier

 We're Only This Happy Because We're Drunk

From Brighton to Bruges

Our time in England is coming to an end, as we prep for the lambics, mussels, and medieval architecture of Belgium. Over the past few days we have been hitting the amazing (and free!) galleries here: the Tate Modern, the Tate Britain, and the National Gallery. We have similar aesthetic tastes, and our favourites so far have been Van Eyck's 'Arnolfini Wedding' and Duchamp's 'The Large Glass'. We also spent a day boating down the Thames and exploring Greenwich, home of the Eurocentric Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). If anyone needs to know the correct time, we are now the people to ask!

One of the highlights of our time in Greenwich involved admiring the fine specimen depicted here. Kate and I were in awe over this guy's extensive and carefully-appointed Eurotrash ensemble. Check it: knee-high leather boots, skin-tight black jeans, studded black leather waist belt, hair etching, and gaudy bling. We had a hard time determining whether this look was fancy-tickling or stomach-churning. Both?


Last night, we met up with Sarah Kinsella, a friend that I (Alex) used to work with in Edinburgh. After we both left Scotland, Sarah moved to Vancouver for a year, and both Kate and I met up with her on several occasions. She JUST scored a job at the British Museum, and it was her birthday yesterday, so we managed to organize a small get-together. It was fun and involved numerous bottles of wine, excessive high-fiving, and seemingly endless rounds of London Pride. We gave her a teardrop-shaped silver pendant from the one and only Lattimer Gallery (plug!) to remind her of her time on the Northwest Coast.


We are going to Brighton this afternoon, to get out of the city and to see Brighton Pavilion. Tomorrow, we will be spending time in the north end of the city, to tour the British Museum and to dine at Gordon Ramsay's York & Albany restaurant. Kate has downloaded the Beatles discography for this trip, so we will likely take a staged and clichéd photo at Abbey Road while we are up there.

 

Kate in Greenwich

 

No, Your Child Could Not Paint This

Sarah Kinsella's (right) B-Day Bash

 

Kinsella's Friend Trish - Bangers & Mash Offscreen

   

Happy Birthday to Chris Dawkins!

This is an overseas-shout-out to our father from another mother. Happy birthday, Dad! We miss you a lot and have enjoyed several true, hand-pulled ales for you today.

The first three days of our trip have been sunny and action-packed. We were picked-up at Heathrow by our friends Camille and James, and spent the afternoon along the Thames, checking out the classic tourist sights: Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, the Eye. We grabbed a light dinner at a traditional old man pub on the South Bank, where Kate enjoyed her first pint of luke-warm English Ale. We also saw a fox on the walk back home. This blew our sheltered, animal-loving Vancouver minds, but apparently they are the new inner city pests here. The rats better step-up their game, yo.
 

Yesterday, Kate and I rose early to do some eating and shopping at Spitalfields Market in East London. Navigating the Tube when it is riddled with numerous line closures (due to Olympics upgrades?) is "interesting". We then headed back into town at lunchtime and hit-up some SouthKen museums. We visited the Natural History Museum (where we saw a 1500-year-old Giant Sequoia stump sample...oooooo) and the V&A. Kate and I were more impressed with the relatively-new courtyard at the V&A than the decorative arts and sculptures located within the museum itself. Rodin-shmodin.

One of the truly memorable highlights of the past few days was the pub quiz we all went to last night. While the quiz was fairly standard, one element of the event required each team to select their "fittest member" for an endurance challenge. This seemed odd, and inappropriate when considering the quantity of beer being consumed by everyone, but I volunteered for my team. The challenge involved each nominated/sacrificed team member to hold a plank yoga position, with arms resting on the bare concrete outside, for as long as possible. Five of the seven participants collapsed after 2-3 minutes, and there was a battle between me and this limber English dude for core-strength supremacy. To make things even more uncomfortable, we were instructed by the Quiz Master to move into a side plank after five minutes. It was extremely close, as both of us had clearly rocked this pose in past, during various yoga/pilates classes. I am (overly) pleased to proclaim that Canada came out on top, although we did not win the quiz overall. Ya...we have better teeth AND better abdominals.

New beers tried to date: Hogs Back TEA Ale, Brakspear's Oxford Gold, and London Pride (which is brewed here in Fulham!).  

The pictures below were taken in St Albans, one of our dad's favourite towns:

Out with the Old in with the New...Hair

So, Al and I actually paid more than 20 dollars each for a haircut. I think we all know the importance of well-trimmed hair on a lengthy world adventure and this was our time to show off. We mustered up all our courage and our hard-earned money and took to the barber. This could obviously not happen before we photographed our atrocious, un-groomed, hippyesque hair-dos. In the end, I feel like we both should have asked for much shorter styles but what can I say? We're scared, little West Side kids with not a whole lot of adventure in us. OR ARE WE?!

I Can Now Die a Happy Man

I am experiencing a deep feeling of satisfaction right now. I finally dined at Tojo's, as one of the final meals I will have with my co-workers from Lattimer Gallery before the trip. I have really wanted to eat at this Vancouver institution for over three years, but have never found an excuse to shell out $25 per uramaki. Tojo did, however, invent the California roll! We went all-out and ordered the omakase tonight, or chef's menu, which included: tuna tataki with ponzu, various rolls, octopus salad, seared coho with Spring vegetables, a rustic stewed bluefin dish and Tojo's signature suntan tuna. It was outstanding. As ridiculous and frivolous as it sounds, I now feel like I can die a happy man. 

Actually...I do still want to have kids and climb Mount Kilimanjaro, so it is more appropriate for me to say that I can now die a moderately content man. We missed Kate at Tojo's, but she was attending a farewell dinner of her own.