Bangers + Mash = Yum yum yum

Ahhh it is so awesome to experience another countries culture! It's very weird here because everyone speaks English so I sort of kept expecting people to be the same but they really aren't. Fashion is a great example. Honestly you can't really pin British fashion because I feel like everyone is just doing their own thing. Besides boots and trench coats there really isn't any similarity between what one Briton wears and the next much less when you are comparing a Briton to an American! But I digress, I shall talk about my observations of British culture in another post!

After arriving at 7AM in the morning (2AM in East Coast time) I got picked up by my Godfather, Jochy, and driven to his home in a cute little car. Which I thought was odd until I saw all the other cute little cars on the road...they where everywhere! Below is a picture of a highway-like road, please notice what side the cars are driving on, it was quite scary driving in the passenger seat!

I arrived to Jochy's house and met my little "cousin" (we're not really related but I have no idea what other relationship term I could use) Ignacio, who was born about 8 months ago. He has the most amazing blue eyes ever, I'm quite jealous!

Ignacio

Mind The Gap!

After a one hour power nap we finally set off into the depths of the city! We rode the "Tube" which is what they call the subway around here. I loved their little "mind the gap" message since the ground was rarely level with the train. I guess I must have looked like the biggest tourist when I got out at the Piccadilly Circus station and just kind of slowly spun around, mouth agape in wonder. The US is great and all but it didn't get settled until 1607 so it's only really been around for about 400 years. The United Kingdom on the other continent has thousands of years of history. You just can't find that same type of ancient age in the US no matter how hard you try which is why London has just kept on amazing me with its history.

In the center of Piccadilly Circus 

Horses of Helios, also in Piccadilly Circus, with my mom 

Jochy, Amelia (his wife) and Ignacio gave us (well mostly me) a little walking tour in that area of London. We walked all the way to Trafalgar Square which looked really pretty but we didn't stay for long. Hopefully I can go and revisit it some other day this week because there are so many things to take pictures of!

Random artist painting really good copies of original paintings.

Nelson's (hero of the Battle of Trafalgar) Ship in a bottle. It's so cool, an amazing piece of art!

Afterwords we were really hungry so we went in search of some food. Originally we were going to get Italian or something but thankfully we decided to go for a very traditional English dish. Bangers & Mash! Which translates into Sausages and Mashed Potatoes for those of you that don't know ;) I ordered my mashed potatoes with mustard seeds, YUM! SO glad we decided to get authentic British food instead of Italian, plus that's what common sense would have mandated where she with us in our time of hunger.

Definitely trying this recipe out at home! And look, coke comes in glass bottles yay!

And what's better than that satisfied full belly feeling you get after eating a great meal? Oh yes, dessert ;P

Carrot Cake from Cibo Cafe (alliteration, nice!)

We decided to walk around a little more and I saw the Odeon Cinema, where many movie premieres are shown, Harry Potter being an excellent example of a recent premiere in which Leiscester Square, where Odeon is located, was packed. We proceeded to go into some clothing stores here or there and then heading back home for some nice wraps. And that my friends, was a wrap of my day ;)






UYL,
Andre