Saturday, October 5, 2013

There's more to England than London

The nice thing about being on assignment where I am is that I am actually not in London. Similarly, how most people refer to anything New York-related as NYC--without much acknowledgement to the rest of the 54,556 square miles of the state (fun fact: NYC only takes up 302.64 of those square miles). Many people correlate England with London and many times people assume that since I am in the UK, I am living and working in London. While I do love London very much, there's so much more to England and even more in the UK.

We spent this weekend exploring the lovely midlands of England. This is the area right smack in the middle of the country. It is so beautiful with the rolling hills, green lands and rich history. Let's not forget the sheep! Bahh!

Saturday and Sunday were lovely days. The weather was atypical of England and just absolutely amazing. We made the most of it and spent it outdoors.

Saturday morning was a lazy morning. This would be our only day to sleep in, so we decided to do exactly that. We had English-style afternoon tea at a local tea house called Mrs. Bridges Tea Room for brunch. It was a very cute place with good food and of course tea, aside from being handed a used tea spoon to spoon sugar into my tea. I was expecting a clean one, but it was obviously one that was just wiped off with a napkin or rag. Anyway, the tea here was phenomenal. I've never had such a deliciously smooth yet flavorful black tea. At first, I thought it was going to be weak since it was a reddish color in my cup. After added a couple spoons of sugar and some cream, it was just amazing. The dirty spoon wasn't so much of a big deal anymore. :P

We had some small finger sandwiches - smoked salmon on foccaccia bread and ham with cheese on a baguette. The sweets were so delicious, including an assortment of cake and pastries.



Next, we went to Warwick Castle. My husband likes the medieval-type stuff with Game of Thrones and all that good stuff so he was set on seeing a castle. Originally, we wanted to go to Edinburgh Scotland; but decided not to after learning that it would take us over 5 hours to get there. The original castle was built in 1068 and was owned by countless notable British and French royalty. A prime piece of real estate, it was highly sought after since it was located exactly in the middle of the country; making it easy to get to any part of the country. Remember, those were the days of horses - if you're lucky.

 
Even though the castle was once burned down, it was a bit eerie to know and see exactly how old everything was -- we're talking nearly 1000 years ago here! They had a lot of the furnishings, portraits, housewares, armor and weapons on display. There was a cannon demonstration at the end of the day, where they flung a huge fireball in the air. Crazy how they did that back in the day!

Birmingham Canals
After the castle, we headed off to Birmingham. It's one of the larger cities in central England. There are 4 Michelin-rated restaurants located here, so that's a pretty big deal. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a reservation at any of them. Instead, we ate at a slightly more casual but still good (and TripAdvisor top rated) restaurant called Ju Ju's Cafe. It was situated on one of its canals and more in the residential area of Birmingham (land of huge complexes of flats!).
The food was pretty good and the staff extremely nice. Below are just a couple of the dishes we ordered. The husband ordered a salmon which I though was beautifully plated. The highlight was the dessert, which is now my favorite English dessert... the Eaton Mess! This is layers of cream with meringue bits in it and fresh strawberries. I'm drooling thinking about it!


Eaton Mess


Bull Ring, Birmingham
We then explored the area a bit and found some neat architecture like the huge shopping area called the Bull Ring (to the left). It reminded me of the Olympic bird nest in China. There was also the Victoria Square area seen below. It was the evening and there were some young hooligans putting a lit-up bra on the statue fountain. I believe it is called The River or some refer to it as the Floozie in the Jacuzzi according to Wikipedia?

 



I know I need to shorten these posts a bit! It's probably easier both for the reader and myself as the blogger. These things take up so much time, but there's just so much to share!!!

More good stuff to come. :) Thank ya for reading!
Cheers.



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