The day dawns somewhat cloudy yet promising: the misty back yard holds the fog and haze in its all enveloping green. The gardeners have come and primped and manicured the lawns and foliage for the guests. All we can hope is that the sun will arrive and give us a Thanksgiving day to be thankful for.

I begin my prep at 9:00 am. Dinner is now for 12 guests and re-affirms what Thanksgiving is for: friends, family, and those who need some extra attention. We have decided on a fairly traditional dinner: Roasted root vegetables, mashed potatoes with garlic and leeks, broccoli with fresh bread crumbs of orange and garlic, stuffing and gravy. A tart tartin will be our dessert.

Everything seems to be moving along very well until I literally try to force the stuffed and trussed turkey into Robin’s oven at 12 pm. The ‘Pope’s Nose” is forced against the side of the oven and the metal roasting pan that the humongous bird sits in, twists and buckles under the weight and size. The tail and breast begin to brown immediately. There is a distinct burning smell arising from the over. “Oh no” I think…I have never cooked a bird this big before and I still had to pluck some of the remaining pin feathers from the legs and the breast. I have allowed ample time (I think) to cook the bird—4.5 hours and I am cautiously optimistic that this will all work out.

Our friend Neil is joining us from London for dinner and he is the first to arrive after 3:30 pm. Gradually, Micheala, Fred, their sons and Dylan’s friend Adam arrive and we share some Champagne and lovely antipasto including some cheeses, salamis and olives that John M. has picked out, all gathered on John B and Robin’s now late afternoon, sun-drenched back terrace in the Surrey country side. The locals welcome the bit of warmth and sunshine so unusual for this time of year.

Dinner is a success, many oohs and ahhs over the BIRD and the ease and grace of the dinner and the BIRD’s hosts. We drop Neal at the station for his train back to the city; Micheala and Fred head home and we finish the clean up and head to bed—6 am start tomorrow as the Geller/Baker family head to school and work and we catch our flight to Paris….

I awake an hour before landing and John has already had breakfast and is ensconced in Deepa Mehta’s movie ‘Water’. I have not slept very well and this will be an omen for much of the first week of our trip. John too, has had a toss and turn evening of restless, furtive sleep.

Heathrow is busy this morning as usual; both eastern and western bound flights touching down at roughly the same time on these over-used tarmacs. We breeze through our de-plane and our bags are second and third off the carousel. We hustle past the sleep deprived and hung-over passengers, smiling broadly and somewhat maliciously, to meet Robin and the 40 minute drive to Pedlars, her home in East Surrey. The dull thump of our jet lagged heads a reminder of our Trans-Atlantic crossing and our baggage-claiming smiles.

We catch up on our collectively crazy lives, have some toast and coffee with Dylan, Robin’s eldest son, and await the return of Stephen and John B from Stephen’s early morning ice hockey game.

I stop fighting the lag in my body and head around 11:00 and climb the stairs at Pedlars for a lovely nap until after 1 pm, at which time I am woken by Stephen’s muscular and capricious attempts at his drum practice from the third floor. John M and Robin have headed out for a walk and both Stephen and John B have assumed that the house is empty of guests and family.

A Thanksgiving shopping list is assembled for our final preparations for tomorrow’s dinner for 11 ex-pats and Englanders all and the three of us head into Banstead to snoop the stores and pick up the turkey that Robin has pre-ordered for our feast. Upon advice, she has ordered a 21 lb turkey and the friendly, robust butcher brings out a 29 lb monster BIRD – “this was all I could get!!” He dangles the bird by its enormous legs in front of us, its huge breast blocking his jolly and forgiveness-seeking face. We agree to the size (what choice do we have?), he trusses the bird for us and wraps it in a huge green garbage bag for us to parade down Banstead High Street, back to the car. We finish our shopping and circle back to Pedlars and begin prep for our feast tomorrow evening.

4:00 pm arrives and I cannot keep my head up. The dull, throbbing, jeg-lagging hangover continues in my head teamed with queasiness and a general sense of malaise. Both John M and I head for nap number 2 while Stephen and his dad leave for their second ice hockey game of the day.

Robin, Dylan, John M and I head into Kingswood, 5 minutes away and all of 15 buildings, for an early dinner of Indian food (quite good, actually!). I return to bed at 8:30 – huge day tomorrow.

Today is our last full day in London. We sleep in, then linger over the Sunday Times and coffee. Much to our surprise, we find an article by Barbara Amiel, our own Lady Black. We ask Neil if the Blacks have been “rehabilitated” back into society since the very public trouncing of Lord Black about the unauthorized bonuses his company paid him. Neil tells us that the Blacks slunk out of London unannounced, and haven’t been heard from since.

We are out of the house by 11:30 and head to Columbia Road and all the flower and plant shops that line the road there on Sunday mornings. This seems to be a happening spot because even when we arrive at noon it is still crammed. The Blokes are loudly shouting and touting their last sale of the morning, more insistently than their competition next door. We wander a bit, poke our noses into shops, and wonder what they are planting back home for next year.


Columbia Road flower market


Some of the locals

Our walk continues over to Bethnal Green Road and into the very trendy Brick Lane area of London. Alternative and vintage clothing, cafés and second-hand goods abound. The area is also home to Bangla Town, where many of the city’s newer, trendier Indian restaurants are. We have been craving Indian food since we arrived and plan to make it our brunch today. We stroll through the stalls, past the dreadlocks, torn jeans and the tables lined with the 20 something’s and their Sunday morning papers, lingering over coffees and late breakfasts. We continue through to the Vespa store – Neil is thinking about buying one for the congested commute to work. The streets are teeming with activity as we continue the promenade towards the Indian restaurant called Brick Lane Spice, which friends have recommended.

After our brunch of good traditional food, fussed over by a courteous old man, we start the walk back to Islington and home. We head up the City Road and spend some time walking along the Grand Union Canal, which is finally beginning to be gentrified, and which leads us to within two blocks of Neil’s home. John and I finish some shopping that we had started yesterday and then we head back downtown for a beer.

We meet Neil and Robert, who has spent the weekend in Brussels but is now back, for dinner. Then Neil sees friends of his, Greg and Kevin, walk by, with Kevin’s brother and his friend, who are visiting from Scotland, so we join them for a couple of beers before heading home.

Oxford Street beckons us early this morning for a bit of shopping and sightseeing. We jump on our bus to Marble Arch, then walk back to Oxford Circus and down Regent Street. We stop at Liberty, the famous old department store, which we have heard has been “reinvigorated” since our last visit to London 4 years ago. It has – but we certainly can’t afford to buy blue jeans here, at their marked-down price of £395, let alone at their original price of over £1,000. But somebody must be shopping here.

From Liberty we head into Carnaby Street, for the nostalgia value – to find that it is now mainly shoe stores – all selling Puma and Adidas, which have the European leisure shoe market totally locked up right now.

We are meeting my Aunt Edith and Uncle Ron for lunch, and we head to their home, which is in a mews house just behind the Embassies on Portland Place, before continuing on to lunch. Greg has not met Ron and Edith before, but they welcome him warmly and within a few minutes we are chatting like old friends. Ron and Edith love to travel, and we spend a lot of our time comparing notes on places we have all been – which in fact is most of the places we have been to on our trip.

The meal, in a cute restaurant just behind Marylebone High Street and just off of Oxford Street, is disappointing – and Ron tells the manager as much – so Ron’s lunch is
comped. Despite the food, we are all enjoying ourselves, laughing and enjoying more travel stories and catching up and it is after 4 by the time everyone is ready to move on and say goodbye.


John, Edith and Ron on Oxford Street

After naps back at Neil’s place, the 3 of us head down to Soho to meet up with friends of Neil’s for dinner. They have been to a film, and so we meet about 9:30, have a beer and then head to a Mediterranean restaurant, where we have a very nice dinner and have good conversation. Nacho is Spanish, and is full of ideas about where to head when we get to Spain. Alan is heading shortly to India, and so in turn is full of questions about our experiences there.

We head back to the bus, hoping that one of the pubs may still be open, but alas, it is after 11 and they are all dark and deserted. And so, off to home.

The sun is shining – clouds briefly flit across it, but the umbrellas we carry as we walk southwest from Islington are not used today. Greg says that he has never been to Buckingham Palace, so that is definitely on the agenda.

We stop at Exmouth Market, which like so many former derelict markets has now been rehabilitated and turned into trendy restaurants and boutiques, and have a lunch in an original sandwich shop. This doesn’t mean we are restricted to BLTs and club sandwiches – Tito’s Sandwiches has adapted to the changed demographics of the neighbourhood, and despite the downmarket look of the place is selling the latest sandwich stuffings, served by heavily tattooed and pierced young men and women.

We continue our walk southwest, through Holborn and along Shaftesbury Avenue into Piccadilly Circus, then along Piccadilly to Green Park and so to Buckingham Palace. This has taken about 5 hours in all, what with stopping here and there. We notice that the gates on the palace side of Green Park all say “Canada”, and wonder why. The gates around the palace are similar in design, but do not say “Canada”.


“They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace……..”

We decide that the only other thing we want to do today is head to the City and see the “Gherkin” up close, so we walk to Victoria Station and grab the tube to the City. The Gherkin is the new office tower, shaped like a zeppelin with its nose tilted up. Standing under it and looking up, it looks almost flat, like an optical illusion. When viewed from a distance, it appears to be the largest tower in London – up close, however, it is startlingly small in comparison to the behemoths of any North American city.

From the City we tube it back to Neil’s, and again cook supper, this time with things we find in the fridge. Then the 3 of us head down to Soho for a couple of Friday night beers before the pubs close at 11.

The day is spent quietly exploring Islington, a part of London neither of us really knows. Our umbrellas are up, down, and then up again as it rains off and on all day long. The temperature is a big change from southern Europe, and we are glad that we have brought jackets and long-sleeved shirts.

Our friends Jacqueline and Michael were in London a few weeks ago, and had reported how shocking the prices were. We, having spent almost a month in Scandinavia, are pleasantly surprised to find that the prices in restaurants and bars are a bit lower than they were in Norway and Sweden.

We are cooking dinner tonight, so part of what we are doing is exploring the food shops for inspiration. We decide on a salad of rocket lettuce, cucumber and fresh langoustines steamed in white wine, followed by a risotto with seared tuna steak. After all the time we have spent without kitchen, it is really wonderful to be working in a kitchen. And Neil’s kitchen, wonderfully renovated a few years ago when he modernized his +150 year old house, is quite a nice place in which to be doing it.

The numbers keep changing but we are finally 4 for a late night dinner and a bottle of wine.

N 51
W 000

Porec to Trieste Airport, Italy: 110 kilometres

The last three days have been mostly about working on our tans and for those “naturists” who care, working on losing our tan lines. We have settled into a fairly standard routine, buffet breakfast over by ten, chores/writing/sightseeing by noon or 2 and onto the rocky beaches of the resort until 4ish, at which time we head over to our usual spot at the “Beach Bar”, watch the sun start its descent and sip a couple of beers. We have an excellent vantage point from our seats of the comings and goings of the resort and as always there is the natural discussion of the many different types of people staying here and what he or she is wearing (or not), what their relationships are, first date or perhaps in some cases, blind date. These playful discussions take place at whatever resort we have stayed in. Whether in the Bali Agung Village in Seminyak, The Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur or the many and varied campgrounds in Australia, we always try and figure out who’s who at the places we are staying.

We are up by eight this morning and finish packing for our trip to London. We have repacked the big bags and will leave as much as we can behind in the car. Breakfast is dispatched quickly, and we check out and are on the road by 9:55, heading north to the borders, first the Slovenian, and then the Italian, just 14 kilometres beyond the Slovenian.

We have cheap tickets to London Stansted on Ryanair and we plan to meet our friend Neil there. He and Robert, a friend from New York, happen to be flying in from a birthday weekend in Copenhagen, and we plan to take the train into town together. He has graciously offered to put us up for our 5 days in London.

It is an effortless trip until we arrive at immigration. John breezes through, and the standard six month stay is stamped in his passport. I, however, am questioned at length about our trip, the whys and wherefores, am I working in any of these countries, how I can afford to take such a trip, how much money I have. The list of questions is endless. After a ten minute consultation with her supervisor, the immigration officer tells me that she will not allow me to stay in the UK beyond the day I have told her we are leaving, and goes out of her way to tell me that I must leave the country at that time and that I CANNOT engage in any work during my time in London. Of course I agree and tell her that I am not planning to do any work during my time here and begin to get a little testy. John comes to my rescue and I get the 5 day stamp and we are on our way.

The Stansted Express gets us into Liverpool station and from there it is a quick cab ride to Neil’s house near the Angel tube station in Islington. It is a lovely, gentrified area, the row houses dating from the 1850’s. It is the London of my imagination, and Neil’s house is the epitome of that dream. There is also a lovely private tiered garden where you can sit and enjoy the green and watch the birds swoop around the clay chimney pots at the top of the house.


Our neighbourhood

Our bags are quickly unloaded and we have a class of Champagne to belatedly celebrate Neil’s birthday and then we head out to grab some food and some Soho ambience, catching up on the gossip over a crowded, noisy bottle of red wine in one of that neighbourhood’s many bars.

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