Taking Advantage

Random photo today:


Cake. You know you want it. And this one is almost healthy, made with lots of apples and olive oil. Though that's before you smear on the butter and cream cheese frosting, which is delicious. Luckily many other foodies have posted the recipe before me, saving me the trouble. You can find it here, just scroll about a third of the way down. My icing is a different color because I used dark sugar.

As some of you may know, Danny and I have now booked our tickets back to the states. May 18th is our departure/return date, which means we can now start counting down our days in London. This means we're trying to fit in as much as possible before we go - from local restaurants to travels across the EU. The past few days we've been doing some fun neighborhood stuff. I'm sorry if this post is a bit mundane, but hopefully it gives you a taste of what it's like to live in Dartmouth Park!

Thursday: The Star. We've mentioned this local pub many times, but on Thursday we did something especially fun, which was to bring our awesome travel backgammon set, on loan from my parents, with us to the bar. The Star has something that many good English pubs have: a real fireplace, and comfy couches around that fireplace. Why don't more American bars have fireplaces? And why aren't any of them quiet enough that you could sit and play a board game? We sat with our pints and absorbed the warmth from the dying embers, and although I quickly went up by 4 points, we ended the night even-stevens. Though I'm still up by 5 points overall.

Friday: A few months ago we happened to walk by an Italian restaurant up Highgate Hill from us (about a 10 minute walk) that featured pizza by the meter. Well then. We both had a productive week, so we decided to reward ourselves with pizza at Fabrizio's. The food was good (an appetizer plate of various fried things, and 1/2 metre of thin-crust pizza), but the most endearing thing about the place was the intimacy of it. The restaurant is small; there's just one waiter and one woman who's sole job seemed to be to grind fresh pepper and grate fresh parmesan onto your food, plus Fabrizio the chef, and everyone is Italian. Fabrizio brings out some of the food himself, and he clearly gets a kick out of chatting with the patrons. Earlier in the night he had mentioned to us that the fried rice balls we were eating were a specialty from Rome, which is where he is from. So of course later on in the evening Danny told him that he had lived in Rome for 3 months, and Fabrizio looked very pleased. 30 seconds later he came back to our table with a sly look and asked which Rome football team Danny liked. uh oh. Danny stated that he didn't have much preference, but that he had once been to a Lazio game. Right answer! Fabrizio got really excited and proceeded to congratulate Danny on having good taste in football teams and to give the waiter, who was apparently a Roma fan, and hard time. It was pretty amazing.

Saturday: This Saturday started out like every other Saturday when we are in London - a short run, a cup of tea, then a trip to the farmers market. The rest of the daylight hours were spent going to two other neighborhood pubs (The Dartmouth Arm and the Lord Palmerson) to watch sport. First was the Manchester United vs. Manchester City soccer game. As I recently learned, these matches between local rivals are referred to as "derbys", and with Man U and Man City close to the top of the league, this was going to be a big game. As the linked article states, Rooney's winning goal (Man U won 2-1) was absolutely brilliant. He may be the baldingest man in the Premiere League, but don't say he's lost his touch. After the football was England vs. Italy in the rugby 6 Nations. With a 59-13 victory for England, this game was perhaps less thrilling, but it was still fun to watch. And by the way, Chris Ashton, who scored 4 tries for England, was born in 1987. oof. On an unrelated note, know what else I like about English pubs? People bring their kids to them to watch sport. It's cute.

Not wanting to feel to cramped by NW5, we ended this day with an evening at the Tate Modern. Neither of us are huge fans of modern art, but the Tate is kind of a big deal, so we felt we should give it a chance. There were some pieces I liked, but there were also moments where I found myself thinking "Do you think someone should tell the curator that the painting they have labeled as 'Unfinished Painting' is really just a mirror?" And things like that. Added bonus of the evening was walking back across the Millennium Bridge towards an illuminated St. Paul's Cathedral. Beautiful.


Sunday was more football! We went with our friend Leanna to see the Queens Park Rangers vs. Nottingham Forest, which is a Championship game (2nd tier teams). This was an experience worthy of it's own blog post, so I think I'm going to leave it at that. And now, I'm off to have a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast...