The Fam Comes to Town

Sorry for the absence, but I had a wonderful 2 week whirlwind of visitors. The good news is that I've seen lots of good stuff these past 2 weeks and now I get to share it with all of you.

My parents came first and they did even more than I'll write about here. I worked for half the days they were in London and they were great at entertaining themselves during those days with all kinds of things.

They came on a Tuesday and stayed in the Sydney House Chelsea, which they were really happy with. It's a cute boutique hotel in Chelsea which is a really nice area filled with shops and restaurants, walking distance to museums and Harrods. Plus, it was a direct, easy bus ride to my place in Fulham from there. Their first night we went to dinner at Lucio, an Italian restaurant in Chelsea, which was amazing. The website isn't much to look at but if you look up reviews online and take my word for it, it's an amazing meal.

Wednesday the 'rents came over to Fulham and we ate at my favorite Thai place, Sukho (previously blogged) and saw my flat. They were quite pleased with the safety level and really liked the neighborhood in general. And my mom was so amused by the size of my kitchen, she took pictures.

"Billy Elliot" (the musical) was Thursday night. A co-worker arranged the tickets for me and the seats we had couldn't have been more perfect. The show itself was spectacular and I highly recommend it to absolutely anyone. (*Girls might want to bring along some tissues for the end.) Even my dad, who's not really a musical kind of guy, really enjoyed it. The kids in it were all really talented and the the sets, the staging....it was all just really good.

Then on Friday we did our big day tour of Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Warwick Castle. It was a ton to do in just one day and I was worried that it was going to be too rushed the whole time, but it was a great tour and our guide was a walking encyclopedia of English history.

Oxford was the first stop. My mom did a summer at Oxford between high school and college, and she lived in Christ Church college, so it was pretty neat that Christ Church is the college we actually got to see. Also, Oxford and Christ Church in particular have been used a lot in the Harry Potter movies. Even though the constant stream of Potter trivia was lost on my dad, I giggled with delight.

Case in point, Christ Church dining hall was used as pretty obvious reference for the Hogwarts dining hall. But there are only room for 3 tables, so according to our tour guide the one in the Potter movies is scaled about 1.5 times the size. (although to me in the movies it looks about 5 times the size and with much higher ceilings) Also, my mom ate all her meals in this exact place at the same tables 30-some years ago so that's pretty cool.

Along with all the Potter trivia, there was a fair share of Lewis Carroll/Alice in Wonderland anecdotes. For those of you who don't know, Lewis Carroll (real name: Charles Ludwig Dodgson) was actually a math (or as they say here in England, maths) professor at Oxford and Alice was one of the Christ Church dean's daughters. I've always been a huge fan of "Alice and Wonderland" and have probably owned at least 10 different copies of the book. Anyway, one of the stained glass windows in the lovely Christ Church features her:

See her in the corner of the left window?
I thought it was cool. Anyway, our tour guide was great at pointing out little details like that and providing the stories to go along with them. I'm sure if I'd just walked through the church on my own, I never would have noticed it.

We didn't really have much time to wander around Oxford because next it was onto Stratford-Upon-Avon for lunch and a visit to the birthplace. We ate in a creaky floored Tudor restaurant with the rest of the group (choice of Fish & Chips, Cottage Pie or pasta for the veggie-tarians). Did you know that Shepard's Pie means that it has lamb but Cottage Pie is with beef? You probably did, I didn't until that day. Anyway, we walked around the birthplace, it was fine. Unfortunately all the lovelienss down by the River Avon was torn up for some renovations so no swans or riverboats for us.

Last stop: Warwick Castle. The great thing about Warwick (in contrast to Windsor, which I went to with Matt the following week) is that you're free to roam around wherever you like. They had a cool exhibit with wax figures from Madame Tussaud's set up to recreate a weekend party at the Castle back in the time of Lord Warwick. Here's my dad making friends with the butler:

Then we walked around the grounds (until the rain started), saw the dungeon and did the 350 stair voyage up to the tippy tops of the castle. That's where the first picture was taken. Here's mom and dad at one of the castle view points - but not the highest...there was no room for turning around for pics up there.


They were closing up the castle when we left so we did as much as we could. Unfortunately we missed the area where the peacocks roam around, but with the rain, maybe they weren't out anyway? That's what I'd like to think. Also of note about Warwick, they used it a lot for Antiques Roadshow. I've seen two episodes shot at Warwick since the tour.

Speaking of antiuqes, Saturday we went to Portobello Road for the massive market - mostly antiques but also food and junky stuff towards the bottom. Unfortunately it was also the market featured in the opening shot of "Notting Hill", which means it's crazy ridiculously packed with more tourists than locals these days. But Mom and Dad were good sports, didn't mind the crowd, and we all had fun looking at all the different kinds of antiques on offer. I really appreciate the span of history the antiques encompass - different centuries, countries, from spoons to telescopes, china to thermometers...so cool. After that people-packed morning, we dared to go to Harrod's on a Saturday. Thankfully it was the least crowded I've seen it and we were able to shop til we dropped.

The weather Sunday was pretty junky so the parents came over to my place, we had brunch and took a short walk over the bridge to Putney, stopping briefly so I could show them a couple of the other apartments I had looked at when I first got here. They were really supportive of my choice. Then, our last dinner together was totally fabulous at Bluebird, also in Chelsea. The inside is super hip with sky high ceilings, and the food was delicioso. Here's the happy fam (minus my favorite brother) enjoying the end of the visit.