Meeting Katharine Joy Dyck
Dan and I are the proud “adopted” Auntie and Uncle of our dear friends, Bryan and Shirley-Anne Dyck’s, baby, Katharine Joy Dyck. I cannot describe here how delighted I was to meet her for the first time on Dec. 24th when we arrived in London to spend the Christmas season together.
Here are a few moments of our way too short time together.
London: From Taxis to Telephone Booths
London is a mix of old and new, tradition and avant-garde. From romantic black taxis to red double decker buses and telephone booths. From “get your elbows out” Piccadilly Circus to “lose yourself” cobblestone alleyways, this seems to be a city that will either draw you in with a surprising fascination or send you off, thankful that your visit was briefly efficient. I must say, without expectation to do so, we quite enjoyed lingering here and taking London in like a spouse; they are their own person, don’t spend your efforts on trying to change them but enjoy the beautiful moments they abundantly offer and move on to a cozy little pub when you don’t like how they control the remote.
I wouldn’t say that London is beautiful, but there is beauty to be found in this city. It’s the kind of city that has a lot of clout. The kind of city where you can walk around a random corner and find a plaque that says “Sir Isaac Newton used to live in a house on these premises”. The kind of city that can just shrug its shoulders at you and casually say: “I don’t really have to do anything special to impress you, you’re impressed already.”
London was never a place high up on our list of destinations to get to, however, I think we both assumed that travel was bound to take us here at some point. It was friends, or rather friends that are nearly family, that drew us to London. London was the entry point into the rest of our UK travels and how wonderful to meet friends for Christmas in London as a segway between living in France and traveling for a month.
What a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we had with Paul, Louanne, Bryan, Shirley-Anne, baby Katharine, and friend Julie! In these couple days of holidays there was a lot of excellent company, church services at All-Souls where Paul and Louanne work, and finely festive food.
Sightseeing highlights included the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, walks along the Thames river, Trafalgar Square, Indian food on Brick Lane, the National Gallery, Buckingham Place (sorry, there was no great photo to share here), Big Ben, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the infamous underground and double decker buses, and the Tate Modern Museum.
We have one final night in London next week to end our time away before we fly home to Vancouver. We’ve saved an evening out at the theatre to see Les Miserables!
Also, we sure loved the Pret A Manger sandwiches!
A brief post on road tolls in France
Back in October when Carly and I took a quick tour of the French countryside (and Autoroutes), after driving from Agde to Nice, we decided to start keeping track of the number and cost of the tolls, based on our route choices, for the rest of the trip.
Keep in mind you can dodge a lot of tolls by taking back roads, if you have the time. Given that our time was limited, we almost always took the quickest road, which is generally the highest cost.
Villefranche-sur-Mer (Nice) to St. Paul de Vence
€1.40 + €1.40 + €0.60 + €0.60
Total €4.00 (Approx $CAD 5.60)
Villefranche-sur-Mer (Nice) to Beynac (Sarlat)
€1.40 + €2.80 + €13.20 + €4.00 + €5.00 + €2.20 + €20.30 + €5.10
Total €54.00 (Approx $CAD 75.00)
Beynac (Sarlat) to San Sebastian
€3.20 + €2.20 + €1.60 + €1.95
Total €8.95 (Approx $CAD 12.50)
San Sebastian to Agde
€1.95 + €1.60 + €2.20 + €15.90 + €1.70 + €14.50
Total €37.85 (Approx $CAD 53.00)
Remind me never to complain about the toll on the Golden Ears Bridge.
Deep Fried [insert noun here]
So, you know how everyone always talks about how everything in Scotland is deep fried? Well, today I want to tell you this: it’s true. Carly and I spent three days during New Years in Edinburgh, hosted by the marvellous Neil and Rachel. Neil is the brother of a long-time friend of Carly’s, whom we’d never met, but they decided to let us stay with them anyways.
Our first night, Rachel walked us down to the local “chippy” (the heavenly storehouse of All Things Battered And Deep Fried™), for our first “experience”.
Oh, you want 1/2 pizza? You meant you wanted 1/2 a pizza dipped in batter and deep-fried, right?
Order “hamburger and fries” and you get a hamburger patty that has been battered and deep fried, served alongside fries.
Order a “double cheeseburger and fries” and you get two hamburger patties that have been battered and deep-fried, with cheese stuck between them, then they batter and deep-fry the whole thing again for good measure.
You don’t want a pair of sausages, you want a pair of battered and deep-fried sausages with brown sauce and chips.
Deep fried mars bars are very much a reality as well (I haven’t had one here yet, but I did have one at an Irish Pub in Singapore about 4 years ago).
I just wanted to post this for the record, so that anyone questioning the Scots commitment to deep-fried goodness can put their hearts at ease (I’m sure there’s a pun there somewhere).
Update: We’ve had inquiries as to whether said deep-fried food is good. All I can say with certainty is that I’ve highly enjoyed all the deep-fried tidbits we’ve tasted to date. 
Belgium
At 6:30am we left what had been our home in Agde, France, for the last three months and made for the train station. We like to call this day, The Great Escape. As wonderful as my time had been in culinary school in Agde and even more importantly our time in France, we were both very ready for new surroundings and especially a new place to sleep!
Our train from Agde to Paris was quite uneventful, except for maybe my surprise when the bag at my feet moved after a still 3 hours and the nose of a dog poked out! At Gare de Lyon, in Paris, we quickly grabbed a taxi, instead of the previously planned metro, due to the late arrival of our train and made our way swiftly to Gare du Nord to make our train to Brussels. After a quick trip into Brussels we jumped on a local train which took us to Bruges in about 50 minutes. Dan enjoyed some chit chat with a local on this train ride!
Wow, was it cold, dark and snowy when we arrived in Bruges! After only one wrong turn and rolling our suitcases through the slush for several kilometers, we arrived red nosed and hungry at our beautiful hotel. I was so thankful that Dan had splurged for this hotel to begin our trip with rather than a hostel. Don’t get me wrong, we do enjoy our fair share of hostels, but I was ready for a little dry, warm and cozy luxury!
What a fantastic little place Bruges is! I can’t stress this enough. It was absolutely magical. Accurately, it has been called the Venice of the North with its canals, bridges, stone streets and old architecture. Daniel and I loved our many long and snowy walks. Most of the photography was taken on such romantic walks.
Favourite foods in Bruges included Beef Carbonnade (Flemish Stew), Waterzooi (Flemish Chicken Stew), fries, mussels, bratwurst with mustard and onions at the outdoor market, beer and waffles. Oh my goodness, how did I forget chocolate? I guess it just needed a sentence of its own. Dan and I decided on our first of 5 days in Bruges that our time in Belgium would be best experienced if we visited (and tasted) something from a different chocolate shop each day. I am proud to say we were successful in this endeavor.
One afternoon in the grocery store, a local Belgian man asked us where we were from. Upon finding out we were Canadian, he dragged us out of the store to take us on a short walk. He insisted we needed to go knock on the door just ahead because there were Canadians living there, too! He was sure they would like to meet us and us them. He might have been right, but we declined (only after he’d headed off to do the rest of his shopping).
I don’t think many people come to Belgium without doing some serious beer tasting. One of our walks just happened to take us to the door of the only brewery left in medieval Bruges. Lucky us! De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) has been brewing since 1856 and is now the last of about thirty breweries that existed within the walls of Bruges in 1900. After a tour of the brewery we enjoyed refreshing ourselves with the fruity, easy drinking Brugse Zot. It is brewed with four different kinds of malt and contains 6% alcohol. The second beer we enjoyed with our pub lunch became our favourite and a couple bottles made their way to London for our Christmas gathering. Sorry to those of you back home, they did not make it any further along our travels! The beer I write of is Straffe Hendrik (Strong Henry), a bitter Tripel at 9%.
Dan and I also spent two nights in Brussels, but we were not captivated by this city. More fries, more waffles and an interesting character in the pub and we were literally running to catch our Eurostar to London on Christmas Eve morning. Our pub “friend”, Mac or Mike or maybe it was Mickie was just released from prison for some sort of robbery with a gun or at least that’s what I could make out using my newly honed, and unfortunately mostly kitchen related, French skills. Nope, we would not like to join you and your friends for another drink.
Did you know in Belgium you can find either Brussels Waffles or Street Waffles (also known as Luikse)? If you ever find yourself in such a dilemma over which to order, always choose the Street Waffle (Luikse). It is the heavier and sticker of the two. Need I say more?
