It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)

Yes, Oasis, it is indeed gettin’ better.

After using New Year’s Day to rest and recover, I woke up on Monday morning feeling still a little off but definitely ready to get back after it. Between the panic attack after the midnight celebrations and the trip over here earlier, I think I was just spent in all the ways, and taking that day to just do nothing was a huge boost.

I’m thankful now for the rail strikes that led me to change my plans, giving me double the time in London than I had originally planned for. If I had been limited to the original six days, I think I would have felt a pressure to push through it to maximize my time, but knowing that I have 12 instead, I felt like I could afford a day to myself in the hotel.

I was originally supposed to go to Brighton yesterday and then head over to Southampton this weekend to watch Seth Swalve play, but it all worked out because the rail strikes spooked me from wanting to travel and Seth’s game got postponed and his team is playing at home closer to here on Sunday. I did want to visit Brighton and will try to fit it an at some point, but I also had no interest in being in Southampton otherwise and would have been quite peeved being there for two nights for no reason.

Pardon me, I’m rambling. Those of you who know me well are probably surprised it took this many entries before I started doing that.

So, Monday. After realizing the error of my ways for booking after lunch tickets for the British Museum last week, I booked a 10:15 entry at the National Gallery for Monday. I can’t stress to you enough to listen to the experts and go out early. I occasionally had an entire room of amazing art all to myself. It was fantastic.

Seeing the works of art by names like Raphael, Monet, and van Gogh was honestly indescribable. I’ve never really considered myself an art fan, not even close really, but if you can’t appreciate the talent and works that have remained awe-inspiring through the generations, you ain’t living.

I’ve really just never spent much time admiring such pieces, but afforded the opportunity, the level of impressiveness only increased in my eyes. Take the Monet that’s pictured there. A still shot captured by brush that says more to me than any photograph could. A story told better than any moving pictures ever would.

Just incredible.

Just incredible. That’s something I keep saying over and over in my head. Any which way my eyes drift, they catch something else that is just so striking. Take leaving the National Gallery for example. You walk out to Trafalgar Square, and with the sunshine and blue sky, it was so picturesque, this view of a place I never really was quite sure I’d ever visit.

With the holidays now in the rearview, the crowds have thinned out somewhat. Obviously London is never going to be not busy, but there is a noticeable difference from the morning crowd at breakfast at the hotel where there was a wait last week to the amount of people you might bump into roaming the high-traffic areas at night. And I’m so here for it.

So I have really enjoyed just walking around the past couple of nights with nothing in particular to do. Monday night I went back to Piccadilly Circus and roamed around there, and last night I spent time nearby in the Leicester Square area before finally venturing over to the Tower of London, which I will definitely go check out during the daytime eventually.

And now a confession about something from the past couple of nights.

A repellence to the travel gods and goddesses.

I ate at PF Chang’s last evening.

I am so sorry.

I saw it on the map while looking for where dinner might be, and I just couldn’t look away. And so that’s where I ended up. I’ve admitted this transgression to a couple folks already, and they both asked me if the menu was the same. Yes, yes it was. Identical. Nary a difference. And it tasted so good.

I am SO sorry.

But I’ll end this with a yang to that yin and tell you that British sausage rolls are the most amazing thing ever.

Monday night I just slipped into the Blue Boar Pub near the hotel, and when I saw a sausage roll on the menu, I knew I needed to look no further. A couple years ago when Everton was playing in Orlando, my friends and myself visiting a pub there where I first experience this food delicacy. There it was a sausage rolled up in an open-ended pastry, and I liked them so much that upon my arrival home, I purchased a spice grinder to be able to make my own which included making my own sausage.

See, it’s not like a breakfast sausage or like a bratwurst or anything like that. It’s pork with its own special blend of spices, formed by hand into a log-type shape. In Orlando, they were bite-sized. At the Blue Boar, it was encased in the flakiest pouch of pastry, somewhat larger than say a Hot Pocket.

It. Was. Incredible.

I could have eaten 10 of them.

I know, I know. I need to be more adventurous and try something more interesting than that or fish and chips. Hey, I’m here until around the 20th. Give it time, huh?

But PF Chang’s?

I am so, so sorry. (But not really.)