Whirlwind Weekend

Where did the weekend go? I am back in the UK this am and can't believe that I was home for 5 days and don't know where they actually went. I take that back. I had a wonderful weekend with family, friends, house improvements, shopping for cars, US food shopping, enjoying American food, watching a little American Football and adding a few more things to the rent area of my parents house.

This is a picture of what the "Rent Master" has stored of our wedding gifts and a few things from Europe that we have picked up the last 3 years. Every time something is added, "rent" goes up in price since we are occupying more of the room. It the item looks heavy then it is "charged" by the pound and not the area it occupies.

Friday my dad met me at the Mini dealer near their house and we went shopping for Scott's car that we will be ordering today since they didn't have any mini's that he actually liked (more or less the color wasn't right). Good news is that the car after we order it today should be in at the end of Oct. beginning of Nov. We only need it for December so that is fine. The evening was spent in NYC with my brother and some of his friends and started out at the Brass Monkey on Little West 12th Street which sponsors the Hockey Team that Chris plays on.

Chris and I

A few of us at the Ace bar.

After the bars we headed off to Mercadito for some tapas style Mexican food which was great! We had fish tacos, steak tacos, pork tacos, pineapple margaritas, guacamole made numerous ways and a Red Snapper which was fantastic!!! After dinner and a quick stop at the Ace bar where the guys got showed up by two girls in a game of pool we were off to Chris's apartment.

In the morning Chris made some pancakes for breakfast and then I was on my way back to NJ. My best friend Katie picked me up at the station and we stopped by my parents house to get my mom and headed for Restore which is a Habitat for Humanities store where people donate things they don't need (for a house) that is either used but in good condition or brand new. Needless to say my mom bought a Miele dishwasher for $85.- and Scott and I are the proud owners of a kitchen cabinets, black granite counter tops for our house once renovations start! The cabinets are beautiful and I can't wait to use them. The original cost was $27,000 for the custom cabinets and I got them for a lot lot lot less than that!

Saturday night a few friends came to my parents house, my brother in-law Ryan and my cousin Kayla for dinner! We had a nice dinner and in the morning we all went to IHOP for some YUMMY Pumpkin Pancakes!

Today I landed in London with a full suitcase of this stuff!

Time to Hammer Away

We have been working on the possibility of putting an addition on our house since February this year and as the time ticks closer for us to move home this addition seems virtually impossible until last night. Since our house was built in 1954, before zoning came into existence in our town, we do not meet the towns current zoning laws even today. Try to put an addition on and you really won't meet local code right...right. Last night I met with our architect in front of the Town's Building committee to present our case as to why we need variances and the rationale why we should be granted these 4 variances. A little background on this. We had to put forth our drawings to the town for review, receive a denial letter for our plans since we would require variances which needs to get approved by the board, paid $410.00 for the application fee, receive and mail letters to all neighbors within 200' and let them know we are going in front of the board and what work we are planning on doing to the house and finally appear in front of the board last night.

Fastforward now to last night. I walk into the room dressed in my work clothes (business smart) and all of the men are in suits, great. The meeting starts and we find out that we are the only agenda on the meeting that night which is wonderful and none of our neighbors are there which is even better (meaning no one has a complaint about the work we want to do). The board starts their regular business which is to approve the prior minutes to the meeting last month and then on to us. We are called up to a table with microphones and are sworn in for the record. We start to describe everything we plan on doing and why then the questions start to come from the board. Where to the leaders lead to in the new plan? What is the new distance from foundation to foundation to the neighbor to the west? What will the new stairs on the front be made from? Are you changing the siding on the whole house or reusing the existing and adding new? It was a bit intimidating at first but eased into the whole thing once the Chairman addressed one of the other board members as Mr. Fischback when his name was Mr. Backfisch. Everyone started to laugh a little bit and that really lightened the mood. We got unanimous approval from the board for our addition and all variances which was GREAT!!!! Now the hard part starts, we need to figure out of all of the "Dream Home" what we can actually afford to do with the contractors bids that should come in next week. That will be very disheartening but hopefully we can get the ideal home that we want for the next 5 years or so.

Hopefully next week I can post some new plans as to what we will finally be doing to our house and we know that we will not be moving directly into it in December since it won't be done but it will be well worth the wait!

First Day of Autumn

Yesterday marked the first day of Autumn, which is my favorite season of the year! When I think of Autumn so many fond memories, fun past times, wonderful smells, crisp sunny weather and food come to mind. The things that do not come to the front of my mind are the countless hours raking leaves on my parents 2+ acres of land with LOADS of trees, numerous hours stomping down the leaves in trailers to bring them to the recycling center and all the time my brother for whatever reason always missed out on those days. I still haven't figured out how that happened but someday he will pay!

Living in London has made me miss many things about the fall which is the changing of the leaves in the Northeast which is beautiful to see at its peak, apple picking, pumpkin slingshots, cider donuts, apple cider and caramel apples. The trees in London seems to stay green until the winter and then just fall off and die which is definitely not the same as seeing leaves turn from green to yellows/oranges/reds/purples.

This weekend Scott's friend Alex was in town and brought with him a bag a candy corn which is an all time favorite of mine. For those in the UK who do not know what this candy corn is, you are missing out. Candy corn is usually tri-colored, pictured below, and is made from sugar, corn syrup and honey. There are different color variations that you can with chocolate tips on them, etc. They also have pumpkins, bats, etc in variety mixes, Autumn mix. It is a good thing I am going home this week as the bag has run empty now of candy corn, well maybe it is not a good thing I am going home.

So tonight as I prep to go home for a classic fall weekend in the Northeast I will hopefully have some cool crisp days where I can wear sweaters and walk around and be the perfect temp. I can go shopping in the grocery store and see all of the Halloween candy out, eat a cider donut or too from Hacklebarny Park, have some apple cider and look forward to doing it all again next year when Scott and I are back living in NJ but this time I am sure we will be raking the leaves at our own house.

Pipes, Kilts, Whiskey and The Old Course

Scott and I headed up to Scotland for the bank holiday weekend in August. We ventured up on the National Rail East Coast Express and let me tell you it was standing room only. I don't understand why people would book tickets for a bank holiday weekend and not get a seat reservation. We arrived in Edinburgh Friday night, made our way to our hotel, had a drink at the bar and went to bed.

Saturday we took the city by storm and went to the Edinburgh castle first. The castle sits in the heart of the city perched on an extinct volcano. Within the castle there are the Crown Jewels of the Scottish Royalty dating back to 1540. The crown dates from 1540, is made of Scottish gold and is set with pearls, diamonds and other precious and semi-precious gemstones. The Sceptre is also made of gold, and topped with a large Rock Crystal (Quartz). The most treasured possession of Scotland is also located among the honours. It is the Stone of Destiny, otherwise known as the Stone of Scone, upon which the monarchs of Scotland are traditionally crowned. It had been taken to England and incorporated into the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey but was returned to Scotland in 1996 on the understanding that it be returned to Westminster for subsequent coronations. Here are some pictures on the way up to the castle and also a view from the top of the castle! It was gorgeous!!!

After touring the castle we were going to walk down the "Royal Mile" which is a street right outside the castle with loads of shops, cafes, etc. The Fringe Festival was going on so there are lots of comedian shows, artsy shows and musical shows that you can go to as well as lots of street performers randomly on the Royal Mile. Just a few steps outside of the castle was our next calling "Scottish Whiskey Heritage Center and Tour". The smile on Scott's face when we walked in was like a kid in the candy store. We signed up for our tour and in we went to start the adventure of Scottish Whiskey. We were given at the start of the tour a dram of The Famous Grouse, a dram is equal to a shot for anyone who didn't know. Well we were taught how to tell what type of barrel the whiskey was aged in, how to smell it and how to taste the first sip. I am not at all a Whiskey drinker so this was painful for me. Scott had to finish mine since I could not. Along the tour we learned what is considered a Scottish Whiskey and what is not, took a virtual tour of a distillery and learned the history of how whiskey came about.

Some key facts about Scottish Whiskey:

1. In order for a Whiskey to be considered Scottish, it has to be matured on Scottish soil for at least 3 years.

2. The #1 importer of Scottish Whiskey is France and #2 is the USA. This is the case since there are more Scott's living in France and hence they import more.

3. Most Scottish Whiskey is aged in American Oak barrels.

4. There are 4 regions in Scotland where Whiskey is from (Highlands, Lowlands, Islands, Speyside). They each have distinct flavorings due to their climate and region.

After the tour you end up in their bar and Scott's tour included tasting 4 more drams of Whiskey (one from each region). So that would be in total 6 shots of Whiskey. YIKES! He didn't like 2 of them but still found one new one that he liked while I on the other hand found a Dessert Whiskey that I loved. I know I am eating my words now that I am not a Whiskey drinker but I may have become a partial Whiskey drinker. It is called Amber made by Macallan. TASTY! If anyone needs a gift idea for me...that is one. Find me a bottle of that goodness! We then started stumbling our way down the Royal Mile further and ventured in shops after shops until we ended up at Parliament.

Here are two street performers during the Fringe Festival.

After watching a few street performers we found this:

At this point Scott's head was rolling down Pearce Street as he knew he was famous somewhere right..and why not is the land of Scotland.

Moving on.

On Sunday we started our day by waiting at the train station to take us up to St. Andrew's to visit "The Old Course". The first announcement said it was running about 10-15 minutes late and then the next was 30-40 and then the final announcement was that it hadn't made its way to Edinburgh Waverly station yet so they didn't have any further news. At that point we said screw it. So we ventured around the city and just meandered without maps and ended up wherever. We bought a few things, saw some sights and had a nice day! That evening we had a reservation to The Witchery which was recommended by a co-worker and it was an amazing ambiance as well as great food! We headed to a pub and had a few drinks and settled in for the night.

On Monday we tried to go to St. Andrews again and this time tried an earlier train (8:17am). We were successful! It was not a bank holiday up in Scotland so the normal commuters were on the train and therefore my assumption was that it was actually running that day. We made our way to St. Andrew's and decided to take the hour walking tour of the course. DH and I are both golfers and we both do enjoy watching some of the tournaments so it was definitely neat to see. We then hit up the pro shop for some goodies just in time for it to start pouring. Here are some pictures of the Old Course at St. Andrew's.

This is the 17th hole bunker. Imagine trying to get out of that. If you look really close there are two small holes in the sides of the bunker, that is where they put the cameras for the tournaments to get the good views.

Here are some pictures of Scotland at night:

We absolutely loved Scotland and wish we had more time to discover the countryside. The people were very friendly, the food was good and the country is beautiful!

Dublin...yes our trip from July

Bowing my head in shame that this post should have been written about 3 months ago now but I keep telling myself better late than never, right? RIGHT.

Over three months ago, Scott and I were greeted with some smiling American faces. Bill, Alex and Julie flew over from the States (Buffalo and Rochester, NY) to visit us for just over a week and with that came a trip to Dublin for the weekend!

The jet setters took off on Friday morning (bright and early) and landed in a sunny, green and gorgeous country (a.k.a. Ireland). We rented a car and drove about an hour down to Druid's Glen for a round of golf on one of their two Championship Golf Courses. The two ladies teed off together followed by the three guys. Considering the course record is a 70 I don't think we fared too badly. The leader of the pack was Alex with a 93, Scott 99, Bill 103, Libby 109 and Julie 115.

Here are a few pictures of the golfing:

After the round of golf we settled in at the bar in the hotel for a few rounds of Guinness, a few Jameson's and some delicious BBQ wings! We decided it would be best that night to eat at the hotel so that we did not tempt the fate of finding a town near bye for dinner and also to let all enjoy the drinking throughout the evening.

The following morning we drove into Dublin for the rest of the weekend and settled ourselves into the Westin Dublin on College Green. Shortly after checking in we headed over the river towards the home of Jameson.

Jameson, Irish Whiskey, was founded in Dublin and still remains there today. We all took the Jameson tour which was about 45 minutes and got to see some cool old adverts below. Along the tour we learned the process in which Jameson makes their Whiskey and were also informed that during that maturation process that the amount of alcohol that evaporates is called "Angels Share" (you can see in the picture below).

After the tour we had been told about a bottle of Middleton Whiskey, which is a Very Rare Whiskey, and that if you buy it in the store at the Jameson Distellery that your name would go into the book for the year bottle that you bought that is kept on the premises. Bill, an avid lover of Jameson and connoisseur, was busy shopping away for souvenirs to bring home. I had suggested to Scott and Alex that we buy Bill a bottle while we were there and give it to him as a Christmas gift. Everyone agreed so we purchased it and decided to give it to him there. Below is his reaction to the gift. We truly hope you enjoy it the day you open it up!

At the very end of the tour we got to taste the Irish Whiskey vs/ Scottish Whiskey vs. American Whiskey. We tasted the Jameson vs. _________ vs. Jack Daniels. I can tell you one thing....the Irish Whiskey blew the rest out of the water. We then had a choice to sample the Jameson on the rocks/meat/with ginger ale/with cranberry juice/with coke. These are the various ways that Jameson is enjoyed around the world! I tried the ginger ale and it was very good actually!!!

Next was Scott's 2nd home...Guiness.

Our experience sure did start here. We all enjoyed a Guinness Lunch (most ordered the Guinness Stew with Mashed Potatoes and Stewed Carrots) and of course a Guinness!

Here are the guys all pulling their Perfect Pint!!!

I am sure that everyone has seen the old adverts for Guinness at some point in their life and here is a little flash back through time of some of them.

No Guinness would be perfect without a Shamrock on the top!

Ahhh look at the Goodness!

On Saturday night we ventured out for a dinner and a few drinks out at a pub:

Sunday we wandered around the city looking at a few churches below:

We all flew back to London on Sunday night. Everyone stayed until Friday so Scott and I knew that there is no trip to London that would be considered complete without Fish and Chips. We took them to Gordon Ramsey's "The Devonshire" in Chiswick and below is a picture of the last night together.

From left to right: Julie, Alex, Bill, Scott and Libby

I do have to say that it is wonderful getting to know Scott's friends better and better each time that I get to see them, which hasn't been often but will be once we move home. The first time I met Alex and Bill was when Scott and I took a weekend trip to Buffalo in college and we ended up going to Canada (legal drinking age of 18) and the first place we went was a strip club. Now for all of you that know the three of them well know that was a regular routine up to Canada and of course to a local starving artist club. I met Julie for the first time at our wedding and therefore did not get to spend much time at all with her, the following time we met was at their wedding which again not much time spent together so this time was a week in London and it was a wonderful time together. I really enjoyed hanging out with Julie and truly look forward to spending many other occasions togethe and wonderful trips places! I used to refer to Bill and Alex as Scott's friends but no longer do as they are my friends now too! Love the three of you lots and am looking forward to seeing you all more often!

Slainte!