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: