Our last days in London, Shopping, Ethiopian Food

Posted by Chelsie on Sep 29, 2010 | 1 comment

Yesterday we took two trains back to London and spent some time in the train station in Brussels. Don’t worry everyone…even though we didn’t stay in Brussels, we made sure to pick up some chocolate from there before returning to London. We arrived at St. Pancras train station around 1:30 in the afternoon and checked our luggage into the left luggage counter so we wouldn’t have to lug it around the city. What a great service. Only a few bucks and you can leave your baggage behind. Haha. Sorry my sense of humor is a little shot because of the cold I am coming down with.

We headed onto the Tube to do some shopping. Andrew missed the Hard Rock Cafe which he collects shirts from the first time we hit up London so we had to go back there. Plus there was some other shopping stops we wanted to make as well. After a few hours of shopping we went back to the train station to sit and watch people as well as collect our luggage. In the evening, we met Mickey at his new place so we could drop our luggage off. The new place is really nice (the old one was great too), but this one has a really open floor plan and a great view. Coco the cat seems to like it too as she is currently glued to the window intensely watching the birds fly by. She’s so cute.

After having a quick drink of water, we headed over to an Ethopian restaurant that Mickey has been wanting to try. We have never tried Ethiopian food so we were pretty excited. When the food comes they bring you a large round tray of this spongy thin pancake-like bread. They also give you additional pieces. The idea is for them to dump all the food into the middle of the tray and you pull off small pieces of the bread and scoop up the food with it. It’s very family-style dining. We had a lamb and a chicken dish as well as some delicious spinach. It’s like nothing we have ever tried before, but it was great. At the end of the dinner we ordered the coffee service where they bring out a small strongly-brewed pitcher of coffee and you drink it out of very small cups while eating popcorn. It was very strong, but a great traditional experience.

After dinner we walked around the area and saw some of the London canals. We were here for almost a week and we never even knew London had any canals. They were beautiful and quiet at night. Really peaceful. Then we headed back to get some rest.

This morning we are just taking our time packing up so we can head to the airport a little later. We did in fact need another luggage because of all the souvenirs we bought. Oh well, we tried. Mickey and Cheryl were nice enough to let us borrow one of theirs that they aren’t using so we were really lucky there. We will be home in no time and I will do one final blog post when we arrive. We miss you all and can’t wait for the sunny California weather as it’s been a little cold and rainy here. For the final time from Eurpoe…Au revior, Chelsie and Andrew

P.S. We have seen all the Facebook complaining about the heat in LA, but we still can’t wait. There’s nothing like Autumn in California eh?