English Pubs

Just something I was thinking about today...here is a list of things that can happen in English pubs that would rarely or never happen in an American bar:

1. A discussion with the bartender about spotted dick. (2 months ago)

2. An 8-year-old boy explaining the rules of rugby to you. (6 weeks ago)

3. A 3-hour long session of Settlers of Catan. (3 weeks ago)

4. A dog sits next to you and demands to be rubbed behind the ears for 10 minutes. (this afternoon)



But here's something you can see in pubs in both the US and the UK: grown men crying at football.

Remember us?

Well hey there, strangers! It's been a whole month since our last blog post, so I figured, if not now, when?

I'm sure you've all been very busy since our last post and haven't really been worried about our absence from the blogosphere, but I'll give you a quick update on what we've been doing anyway. But first, let me present to you, what might the MOST random photo of the day:

This was posted on our very own street in London. In the countryside people worry about foxes snatching their hens, but I guess in big, bad Dartmouth Park there are other foes about.


Okay, on to a brief wrap-up of what we've been doing lately. Last time I wrote Danny and I were living a liminal existence: preparing for our final months in London, but not yet sure where our destination in the US was. Well no longer, because on March 17th I matched to Cambridge Health Alliance (yay!), and just 3 short (but long-feeling!) weeks later we landed our dream apartment in Somerville, just 0.4 miles from the hospital and 0.15 miles to the best ice cream ever. And near many good friends! All of this is very exciting, but it's been keeping us away from the blog!

But perhaps more importantly, in the past 4 weeks we've been doing a lot of this:
Enjoying the surprisingly warm and sunny weather that London has delivered, and spending time drinking outside with friends. We've had 3 excellent visits from friends from the US, had some good times with friends here (first ever English garden party!) and we've been preparing for Danny's family to visit at the end of the month. And of course, we've been watching some cricket.


This weekend we took advantage of a particularly nice day to walk around Golders Green (NW 11), which is currently the main Jewish neighborhood of London. I had my doubts as to whether it would deliver, but for a few blocks it really did feel like we were transported to Brookline, or even Brooklyn. Within a 0.5 mile radius there were over a dozen bakeries, several kosher butchers, 3 Judaica shops, a Hebrew bookstore, a Polish bookstore, 3 large kosher grocery stores, and groups of young boys in kipot and girls in long skirts (and women in wigs, but we won't get into that). Many delis, not so many pubs. The air smelled like a mix of rugelach and white-fish salad, in a good way.

We went with 2 main goals in mind: buy some Matzah and other K for P food, and get bagels. And I'm happy to report that we succeeded on both counts! None of the bagels were as good as Kupels, but they were much better than the doughy ones we got at the way over-hyped Brick Lane Beigel Bake. The places we tried were Daniel's (of course!) and Carmelli's. One thing we didn't see much of was flavored cream cheese, which was disappointing to me, but overall it was a very lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Here are some photos for you to enjoy!