Wow, it’s been nearly two months since we’ve last posted. A lot has happened in that time.

I started back to work on February 11th. I feel very fortunate that I was able to take twelve weeks off with Maya. I think the time was good for both of us, and I was able to learn a few things. The first of these is that taking care of a baby, while intensely rewarding, is hard. For instance, I learned that my decision-making ability plummets with diminished sleep. I also discovered that I have a hard time processing things rationally when she’s crying. Sean will be talking to me, and the words are in no way sticking in my head because my baby is crying and my brain has short-circuited to fix it-fix it-fix it. I also re-learned that I do like having my engineering job – that taking care of Maya full-time is not the path for me.

Instead, since I work from home and Sean often works from home as well, we’ve hired a nanny. A nice lady named Anna comes to the house every weekday to watch Maya. It’s great because Anna obviously adores children, and she shows up rested and ready to play and work with Maya on things like tummy time, napping, and sitting up in her Bumbo chair. If I need to during the day, I can have a five or ten minute visit with the baby to get my fix and then get back to work. So far, it seems to be working out well.

Maya’s learned a few new tricks, naturally. She is very consistently rolling from her tummy to her back (though to her intense frustration, she hasn’t figured out how to go from her back to her tummy yet). She’s been talking her own little baby language complete with great big squeaks and gasps for a while now. Her smiles are now given freely and often. And just this week, she’s finally discovered that she has hands and is batting at and grabbing things a bit.

One of her best new tricks has been sleeping in her crib in her own room.

For the first few months, we had her sleeping in a pack-and-play at the foot of our bed. It was nice for us to be able to monitor her, and it made dealing with night-time feedings easier.

The transition started around mid- to late February when she decided she was all done being swaddled, a development that resulted in several nights of really bad sleep for all of us as her free arms and legs startled her awake over and over again. She eventually figured out how to calm herself down and would sleep a little more consistently, but every little grunt and thump she made would wake me up.

Anna had been working to get her sleeping in her crib during daytime naps. On March 1st, we put her in her crib for bedtime, and she tolerated it pretty well. She’s been sleeping in her own room ever since. More often than not, she still wakes up a few times a night, but we’re making forward progress. She hasn’t had more than a few night feedings since early February. We’ve had a couple nights here and there where she slept all night. And we have had a few nights where waiting five or ten minutes resulted in her putting herself back to sleep. She’s figuring things out, and while I think we have a ways to go, she’s doing really well.

It turns out that while I’m pretty ambivalent about buying clothes for myself, I really enjoy buying things for Maya. Sean has been the primary baby-stuff buyer so far, but I’m starting to participate more. We got her a very cute little Valentine’s day outfit, and we did have it on her on the actual holiday. These pictures were all taken on March 3rd though.

There’s also a cute knit outfit that she’s essentially grown out of now that we wanted to get pictures of. A word to prospective parents or those buying gifts for them – avoid outfits with a ton of buttons for little babies. They don’t really have the patience for having seven tiny buttons buttoned at every diaper change.

Tomorrow Maya is two months old. The past two months have been very fast-slow. Day in and day out, we feel every minute of every hour it seems. Then suddenly two months have passed.

I was on the phone with the insurance company today trying to work through various hospital claims, and I referred to Maya as my daughter. My. Daughter. While we’ve been doing the job for two months, I don’t think Sean or I are entirely used to our new identity as parents yet.

Maya is doing very well. At her two month check up, she was deemed to be “caught up” size-wise from her early arrival, and she took her vaccinations like a champ – a very unhappy, vocal champ, mind you.

A short while ago, we decided to try out blue jeans on the baby for the first time. The tiny blue jeans are cute in and of themselves. Maya in the tiny blue jeans is almost too much to bear. For the record, the top she’s wearing was part of her coming home from the hospital outfit. It took her a little while to grow into it, and now she’s nearly grown out of it!

We had a very quiet Christmas, just Maya, Sean, and me. It was a little sad not being around our families for the holidays, but the relative stillness was nice (and probably necessary).

Here are a few snapshots from that day. As you can see, Maya slept through most of it. She received some really fun gifts. Among them were Good Night Moon as read by her Grammy and Grandpa Schmidt and a Raggedy Ann doll from Lolli and Pop Woods. The giant turtle that Lolli crocheted for Maya has so far seen more action from the cats – Velvet in particular enjoys napping on it. I’m sure Maya will grow into it quickly though.

Sean has been practicing posing Maya for various Christmas-centric photos. Below are some of our favorites. Happy Holidays, everyone!

On December 18th, Maya was one month old. On December 19th, she was due to be born. Today, December 20th, we took her to see the pediatrician for her one month check up.

When Maya was born, she weighed 5 pounds, 8 ounces. She was down to 5 pounds, 1 ounce when we left the hospital (a perfectly normal and expected weight loss). Today she weighed 7 pounds, 9.5 ounces. She’s grown from 19 to 21.5 inches long. Her doctor is very happy with her progress, and of course, so are we. We now have his blessing to let her sleep through the night if she’s willing.

We’re a bit behind on posting pictures. This set of photos are ones that Aunt Darci took when she visited over Thanksgiving. Maya is six days old in these pictures.

Plans are funny things.

We had a plan to finish all the construction projects in the house by the end of November. We had a plan to acquire all the remaining baby goods over the Thanksgiving weekend. We had bought some new maternity clothes and planned to take pre-baby Sean+April photos in early December. It turns out that the baby and my body had other plans.

On Sunday November 18th, after an intense four hour labor, Maya Renée Woods was born at 7:18 in the morning. She was about a month ahead of her due date, weighed 5 pounds, 8 ounces, and was 19 inches long.

Once the initial shock of Maya showing up early wore off and the worry over potential preterm issues was put to rest, we settled into learning how to properly care for her. Like any new parents, we have a ridiculous amount to learn, but so far we’ve managed to keep her happy and well. And of course, we are completely taken with her. We couldn’t be more pleased that we get to enjoy her for an extra month.

The only real issue we’ve encountered with Maya is jaundice. She had to stay an extra day in the hospital receiving phototherapy treatment to try and clear some of the excess bilirubin from her body. At her first visit to the pediatrician, her bilirubin levels were again high, so we rented a light blanket and started her back on phototherapy. As of this past Monday morning, her values were down. Unless something changes, it seems like the jaundice is something we can put behind us.

Sean has wanted to take pictures, but we’ve both been pretty busy (and sleep deprived) trying to catch up with our early baby. For now, here are the photos that were taken at the hospital when Maya was one day old. (Aunt Darci has also taken a very cute series of photos, which we’ll post once we are able.)

Last weekend, my parents hauled all the loot from our baby shower down from Missouri to Texas. While they were here, we drove down to San Antonio and wandered around the Spanish Missions for a while. The day was beautiful and the pace was leisurely. Since it was so close to Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, I couldn’t resist wearing my skeleton shirt. I love it, but I often can’t find a good occasion to wear it.

An update on “the diabetus” … my blood sugar so far has been pretty easy to control. I have only had to make dietary changes and monitor my blood sugar. In fact, since my glucose levels have been solid, I don’t even have to monitor quite as tightly as I had initially (meaning I prick my finger twice a day instead of five times a day). We’ve been repeatedly assured that this is still considered a low risk pregnancy and that if things stay the way they are, our treatment during pregnancy, labor, and delivery will remain unchanged.

We’ve been really fortunate. Given my age, I was a little worried about how I would handle pregnancy. Really and truly, it hasn’t been that bad. There’s some heartburn and fatigue, but generally, I feel fine. At 20 weeks our ultrasound looked good, and the baby has been active, routinely nudging at me off and on throughout the day. At every appointment, my stats have been consistently good. All that to say that we’ve gotten really used to the idea that I was going to have a nice, uncomplicated pregnancy. This past week, we were introduced to our first complication.

I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. (Please read more here if you’re interested.) I didn’t even see this one coming. My diet is generally good, and while my exercising has been a bit inconsistent, it’s not been bad. My weight prior to pregnancy was normal, and my gain so far has been good. Prior to this, my blood sugars have always been decidedly normal. I went into the glucose tolerance test believing it was a formality. I had borderline numbers on the 1-hour test, so I took the 3-hour test. I didn’t fail by much, but fail I did.

The good news is that hopefully I can control it with diet and exercise, and we’ll go back to enjoying an otherwise uncomplicated pregnancy. I’m told that if I can keep my blood sugar within acceptable levels, there’s no reason for us to change how we manage the rest of the pregnancy or labor and delivery. If I can keep my blood sugar in line, the baby should be healthy and normally sized when she’s born. Also, it’s most likely that this will go away once I’m not pregnant anymore.

I have decided not to go into the bad news, because most of it shouldn’t be relevant. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep this under control and that everyone will come out healthy and happy at the end. If nothing else, this will force us to be a little more aware of how we’re composing meals and what the ramifications of our lazy takeout nights are.

My step-mother Carol pointed out recently that I hadn’t posted pictures in a while. I have a few “belly pictures” from the last month or so. Yesterday, we decided to take this show on the road. We went to a place in Austin called Graffiti Park and took a few photos. Plus, as seen above, we couldn’t resist taking a photo in front of the “Greetings from Austin” painting that graces all the tourist literature.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that knows us that food is an important part of our lives. I love to cook, and we both love to eat. It would make me happy if we could raise a kid who was willing to eat lots of different things and also understood that not all her food comes in pre-packaged, highly processed form. In an effort to educate myself on how that might be accomplished, I recently read French Kids Eat Everything, by Karen Le Billon.

It is not my intention to write a full review of this book. Instead, I’d like to make note of some of the things I found interesting.

In this book, Le Billon proposes 10 food rules that are meant to help raise happy, healthy eaters. Some of these seem like they might be good advice for the rest of us as well. The need to offer a variety of foods and cook whole foods as much as possible has already been on my mind.

One thing I found interesting though is that the French believe that teaching a kid how to eat is as important as teaching grammar or math. They consider it the parents’ job to ensure that their child knows how to eat properly. The parents, not the kids, are in charge of deciding what will be eaten and when, and contrary to what seems to be the norm these days, snacking is kept to a minimum or eliminated altogether. It’s okay to feel hungry between meals; it helps kids to learn to listen to their bodies, to understand when they need food and when they do not.

Early in their budding eating careers, kids are offered a variety of foods, to the point of having pureed “soups” thinned and served in their bottles. If something is pushed away a time or two, the parents simply keep offering the foods noting that the child just hasn’t tasted it enough to like it yet. They’re training their children’s palates. I personally don’t know if I will have the patience for that, but it’s an interesting notion regardless.

Offering treats as a reward or withholding food as punishment is simply not done. Eating is not to be considered an emotional affair. Meals have a logical progression: first the salad, then the main course, then the dessert. Instead of threatening to not serve dessert to convince a kid to eat his vegetables, it’s simply not possible to serve dessert till through with the main course.

Families eat together in France, and they converse at the table, generally taking their time to get through a meal. Food is not mere fuel. It is enjoyed and discussed, lingered over. Le Billon points out that it’s not just eating that the kids who share a meal with grown-ups are learning, it’s also the art of conversation, what the news of the day is, how to disagree without being offensive, how to be polite. They’re learning to enjoy the meal. Also, taking things slowly and savoring their food allows them time to realize they’re full before they’re completely, gluttonously stuffed.

I want to try some of these things out and see if we can raise our kid to be a good eater. Those who are already parents are probably laughing at me right now, and I’m sure I’ll learn the hard way that she may sometimes have a stronger will than I do. For now though, I’m going to stick with the notion that we are in charge of making sure she learns how to eat well. We’ll just see how it goes.

Sean and I have been together long enough to have known many firsts together. Of course, there are the standards: first date, first kiss, first time we met each other’s parents. Then there are the April-Sean specific things: first time we networked our computers, first time we adopted a cat, first time we cured our own bacon. And there are all those scary grown-up firsts: first real jobs, first car we had to secure a loan to pay for, first house. And again, we’re embarking on a new experience – our first kid.

For those who don’t already know, we’re having a girl. She’s due to arrive on December 19th. Neither of us had much interest in trying to time pregnancy in any particular way, and it seemed to work out ok. I’m very happy that I don’t have to deal with the third trimester unpleasantness at the same time we’re dealing with the summer in Texas unpleasantness. However, we’re both anticipating that she’ll be about 6 days late so that everyone who’s interacting with me while I’m all vulnerable and in labor will be super pissed that they’re working on Christmas.

I’m now convinced that there’s no such thing as an easy pregnancy. That said, I’ve been pretty lucky so far. Yeah, I was queasy and more tired that I’d have believed possible through the second half of the first trimester, but I never actually vomited, so it could be worse. My boobs ached something fierce until maybe a few weeks ago. I didn’t really have any heartburn till maybe around 19 weeks, and now it seems the heartburn and reflux are making up for lost time. The round ligament pain has been intermittently crappy, but that’s all to be expected. Really, the worst thing for me has been the limitations on my diet, and if that’s what I’m complaining about, it really isn’t all that bad.

As of today we’re somewhere between 22 and 23 weeks along, which means I’m solidly pregnant-looking at this point. Several of our out of town family and friends have requested pregnant-April photos, so here you go.

The blue jeans apparatus hasn’t worked in quite a while. This picture was taken on June 22nd, and I don’t think it held up much beyond that.

Here are two photos of me in various stages of pregnancy. Apologies for the quality on the first one; it was just a quick iphone snapshot so my silly sister Rachel could see if I looked pregnant yet.

For the second one, Sean tried a little harder. He promises to take more soon. I promise to try to be patient and let him.

I think we all know that I’m not the real show here though. Here are some of our ultrasound images. The first image is from our first appointment on May 9th where she was verified to be the right size to be at about 8 weeks gestation. The rest are from our 20 week appointment on July 31st, where we learned that all her parts are in the right places and that she’s a girl. At that appointment, they estimated that she weighed about 11 ounces, and her heart rate was about 150 bpm.

Somewhere around December, we’ll start experiencing a whole new batch of firsts. Hopefully, we’ll have the mental fortitude to document some of them here.

We started this family blog when I was pregnant with Maya in 2012. This trip to London predates that, though not by much. This text is by and large lifted from our Hungry Engineer blog, though I’ve taken the liberty of adding more photos this time around.

In late May, early June of 2011, Sean and I headed out to London for a couple weeks. We took a few side trips, but generally, we spent the majority of our two weeks hunkered down in London, taking in the sites and tooling around the town. We utilized the services of HomeAway and booked an apartment for the duration of our two week stay. The apartment was small, but functional and very conveniently located near the Elephant and Castle tube station. Amusingly, we were repeatedly told we were not staying in the nicest part of town. I will say, the crowd was young and the sounds of revelry often nudged their way in through our windows, but I never for a moment felt unsafe.

Everyone has heard time and again how awful British food once was and how it’s much better now. I cannot attest to the former, but I can say that we had no trouble finding a delicious meal during our stay in London.

Since we had rented the apartment, we had a small refrigerator that we could keep stocked to accommodate our tourist-random schedule. Periodically, throughout our two week stay, we’d wander over to the grocery store across the street and grab drinks, bread, cold cuts, and various random food items that we wouldn’t typically find on our American store shelves. The refrigerator also enabled us to pick up random perishable goods at different markets (Marks & Spencer, Neal’s Yard Dairy) to be consumed as it suited us rather than immediately.

Day 1 – Arrival in London

22 May 2011 – Those of you who travel overseas often will understand what I mean by jet lag. We left Austin at 4 in the afternoon and arrived in London around 10 the next morning. The idea is that you sleep a bit on the plane. Unfortunately, neither of us managed to catch even the tiniest hint of rest. We creaked and groaned as we deplaned and made our way through customs at Heathrow. There were a few tiny bumps and snags, but we made it to our apartment and met the very organized and quietly kind woman from whom we’d rented the apartment. Keys were doled out, pleasant words were exchanged, and we both fell blissfully – but against all advice – asleep.

After an all too brief nap, we wandered out to a Carphone Warehouse to arrange for a local pay-as-you-go cell phone so we’d have a relatively inexpensive means of communication while we were in London. The process was painless and proved handy. For about the same amount of money as it would have cost to convert one of our phones, we purchased an inexpensive cell phone and several hundred minutes.

We headed out to the Waterloo Bar + Grill and had an absolutely wonderful dinner. Despite our bloggerly leanings at the time, we elected to treat ourselves to this first meal without the nagging need to properly photograph it. The decision was a good one. It gave both of us a chance to relax a bit and treat our tired selves to excellent food without an agenda. We took a nighttime stroll down to the South Bank of the Thames and saw the iconic London Eye and of course Big Ben and Parliament. And wouldn’t you just know it – like the silly Americans we are, we were Chevy Chase-ing with implacable glee.

Day 2 – Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, Covent Garden, Millennium Bridge

23 May 2011 – The next day, now fully rested, we stocked up our tiny refrigerator and medicine cabinet with groceries. Because we have no idea how to relax, we barreled straight away to Trafalgar square. We couldn’t have asked for a prettier day. The sky was ridiculously blue, and the temperature was 30-40 Fahrenheit degrees cooler than what we had been wallowing in back home. In fact, the cooler days coupled with the gusty breezes made these two sort-of-Texans hunt down some jackets.

Trafalgar square was, of course, beautiful. We saw Nelson’s column, an Olympics countdown clock, an arty ship in a giant bottle, and more tourists than I know what to do with. (I get it, I’m part of the problem here, but I cannot help my antisocial leanings.) After a thorough tour of the square, we took a lengthy stroll through St James Park, gawking at beautifully arranged gardens and all manner of waterfowl.

After our very pleasant stroll under a sun that in Texas would’ve been punishing rather that soul-warming, we decided that we could probably handle a proper tourist attraction. We made our way over to Westminster Abbey. We walked all around, admiring its ornate exterior. Upon noticing the ridiculous lines though, we hatched a new plan. We would hit the popular tourist attractions first thing in the morning and shift to less popular affairs (museums and such) in the afternoons.

With that, we headed over to the National Gallery, and spent several blissful and oddly uncrowded hours gawking at Van Goghs and Monets and Cezannes and a lonely but lovely Vermeer. Every time I visit an art museum, I am struck by the same thought: I wish I understood well enough the artist’s societal and/or personal context and the mastery of a given skill or school of practice to properly appreciate what I’m looking at. Either way, I think Sean and I had a good time.

We puttered around Covent Garden, watching street performers doing impossible things and seeing musicians taunt/serenade would-be covert lovers. Given Sean’s cocktail research over the last several months, we thought it would be interesting to make a jaunt over to the American Bar at the Savoy. Regardless of being neatly dressed in button-down shirts and non-tattered jeans and dark leather lace-up shoes, we were denied access based on our “sports attire.” Regardless, we were told, the bar was full.

Deciding we were really more hungry than in need of cocktails, we headed over to a nearby Wagamama for lovely elderflower sodas and big bowls of comforting udon noodles. As an added bonus, they didn’t seem to give two shits about our “sports attire.”

One of my favorite London experiences was our lengthy walk that evening. We didn’t really have a clear picture of where we were going, beyond to see the Millennium Bridge at night. The whole walk was incredible though. London is oozing so much history and culture, it’s almost blase. To us though, with our two hundred-ish year old country, it’s beyond incredible.

A quiet, late-night stroll netted us the Southwark Cathedral (at least its exterior), the Rose Window of the ruins of the Winchester Palace, and some ornate old English galleon (a replica of the Golden Hinde, a ship known for circling the globe between 1577 and 1580) that (probably because we absolutely weren’t expecting it) seemed completely random.

We wandered long enough that we were hungry again and split a beef and stilton pasty from a stall in a tube stop. I can’t even describe how perfect it was.

Day 3 – Tower of London, Tower Bridge

24 May 2011 – The next day, we decided to go full-on tourist mode and headed out to the Tower of London. You hear about all these things so often from beyond the great blue ocean that they almost become worn and trite. My advice would be to drop the preconceptions and embrace the fact that the history is fascinating.

At the urging of several guide books, upon arriving at the Tower of London, we headed straight to the crown jewels. I couldn’t not have made it plainer to Sean that we were going for him and that I couldn’t possibly care less about some rich family’s overwrought jewelry. I was wrong. It was impressive. Intricate crowns, huge diamonds and sapphires, and ornate dinner things were all laid out for us to see.

After visiting the jewels, we spent several hours wandering around various towers and walkways reading information placards and forgetting half of what we read almost immediately.

Feeling a bit peckish, we decided to see what was on offer at the Tower cafe. We shared a sausage roll and some chips (read: fries), and they were startlingly tasty. Fellow Americans take note: food served at national attractions can be more than just a means to an end – it can actually be enjoyable.

After checking out the Tower Bridge, we wandered around some more, sort of unwinding from our busy day. For dinner, we dropped into the Marks and Spencer store and picked up some bread, a lovely selection of Italian cured meats, and a slab of very pretty English blue cheese, called Blacksticks Blue.

Our European experience for the evening was taking a crack at using our washing machine. We were warned that it was only half-size … half of what, I’m not certain. It was tiny. I’m sure as an American, I’m spoiled by our ability to spread out and take up space. London is, on the other hand, on a smallish island filled with a huge number of people. As it was, we were each able to fit about one change of clothes into it. It was late when we started our little load of laundry. For such a diminutive appliance, it made an incredible racket. The spin cycle was set at 1200 RPM, and I’d have sworn there was a helicopter landing in our room.

Day 4 – Westminster Abbey, Battersea Power Station, Our First British Pub, and the London Eye

25 May 2011 – Westminster Abbey was our target the next morning. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to photograph the inside, because the abbey itself was incredible. No surface was left unadorned. It was honestly difficult to take it all in. I am not a religious person, but the notion that these sorts of things were “built to God’s glory” seems more prominent here than in any of the small local churches I attended while growing up.

One of the most interesting things were the graves and monuments. Westminster Abbey has a whole host of famous corpses. Among them are Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (!), Joule and Faraday. There were more authors than I’ll ever remember – Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis, TS Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and on and on. Somehow, even Laurence Olivier got himself buried in the Abbey.

Next, we trundled over to Chelsea Physic Garden. It was small but pleasant enough. The pharmaceutical garden and the small room housing carnivorous plants were favorites. From there, we headed to the river and walked a portion of the Thames Path to see Battersea Power Station.

Then we headed to the Guinea to have our first actual pints. I had the Young’s Bitters which were pleasant enough, but Sean had the seasonal special, whatever it was called, and it was glorious. The pubs were initially a bit confusing to us. We’d walk up to a random pub and see people spilling out into the streets, beers in hand. I am notoriously crowd-averse, so we had been avoiding them. We learned two important things though. First, just because the streets are full of people, doesn’t mean the inside is overcrowded. Second, the fine weather we were experiencing is a rare and short-lived thing. No Londoner wants to be sitting inside a dark pub on a day like that, hence beer in the streets.

Though we were a little early (it was only 6!) we decided to stop in at Polpo for dinner. It’s a good thing we did. We had no reservation and within a few short minutes of having been seated, the place filled to capacity, and by the time we left, it was overflowing with interested patrons. Polpo models itself loosely after a Venetian bacaro. A bacaro is essentially a Venetian bar, usually offering drinks and local traditional snacks. From my not-terribly-worldly-wise perspective, Polpo seemed rather like a highly refined Italian version of a tapas bar. Despite somewhat mixed reviews, I was eager to try it. Plus, though we didn’t partake, they have a Campari bar. How cool is that?

We started our fun and highly toothsome dinner with toast with lardo and white truffle honey. Despite my affinity for pork and my willingness to sample nearly any culinary curiosity, I had never had it before. Lardo is essentially cured pig fat, usually served sliced very thin atop warm bread, the heat from the bread slightly melting the fat. This is exactly the effect that Polpo achieved with their serving of lardo. The drizzling of light, fragrant honey was a beautiful pairing with the rich, herby fat.

Next we were served mackerel tartare with horseradish. Uchi, an Austin sushi institution, has taught me to love mackerel. Polpo showed me that that love was intercontinental. The dish was well-seasoned and nicely executed; believe it or not, the chef had enough restraint with the horseradish that it complemented rather than overpowered the fish.

The courses kept coming. A vegetable side of roasted asparagus with anchovy butter and hard Italian cheese came out. The uber-savory anchovy butter was perfect alongside the plump stalks of slightly firm asparagus. We had cuttlefish and ink gnocchi, a tar-black dish that we haven’t had the pleasure of eating since rambling along the Ligurian coast during a trip to Italy several years ago. It was everything I hoped for. We shared a rabbit terrine served with what looked to be a mostardo. Again, the execution was perfect. Fatty, slightly loose terrine was, if memory serves, dotted with little bits of fruit.

We couldn’t decide between desserts, so we shared two, a flourless orange and almond cake with mascarpone and a ricotta and chocolate crumble. Both of these were exactly my kind of dessert: rather atypically flavored and not overly sweet.

After we finished at Polpo, we rode the London Eye as close to nighttime as we were able. At this relatively northern latitude, the summer days are very long indeed. It was full-on daylight bright at 5 in the morning and the sky was only just darkening at 9 at night, so near 9pm ride was actually fairly bright.

Day 5 – Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge

26 May 2011 – The next day, we got out of town. Our intended destination was Stonehenge, but we decided to head out to Salisbury early so we could wander around town a bit before our tour started. After an easy train ride, we walked a short path to take photos of the Salisbury Cathedral across a sheep-strewn field. A light rain began to fall and a strong wind began to blow. It was shortly thereafter that we discovered our lightweight umbrellas (purchased specifically for this trip – there were previously no umbrellas in our house) were nigh on useless.

A kindly gentleman chatted with us a few minutes about the llama that used to live there to keep foxes away. I asked him if it had worked. He shrugged, grinned, and told me he didn’t know, but that he believed anything he was told so we shouldn’t necessarily listen to him. We wandered back into town and had a relatively cost-effective and reasonably tasty lunch at the Old Mill restaurant.

We still had some time to kill before our Stonehenge tour, so we went inside the Salisbury Cathedral. The church was smaller, but very pretty. And, we discovered after we got there, it had a very well preserved page from the Magna Carta on display. From Salisbury, we met up with our Stonehenge tour group and the best of guides, Pat Shelley (my old link didn’t work – I think he may be here now in 2026).

He drove us to Woodhenge and explained how Stonehenge isn’t actually a henge at all. He showed us the Cursus and the barrows (burial mounds). And he eventually walked us up the original avenue that would have been used in Stonehenge’s heyday to get a mounting and theatrical view of the stones as travelers crested the hill.

He filled us with more information than I could even pretend to remember. We were allowed to traipse around among the stones (so long as we in no way touched them as they’re covered with a sizable quantity of species of lichen, many of which are quite rare). During our Stonehenge experience, I was rained on, windswept, and very nearly frozen to the core, and I would still say that tour was one of the highlights of our trip.

Day 6 – Borough Market, The Monument, Tate Modern

27 May 2011 – The week was winding down and we were wearing out, so we took the next morning easy. Around midday, we decided to head over the Borough Market to browse the stalls and fill up for lunch. We had a delicious chorizo, piquillo pepper, and rocket sandwich courtesy of Brindisa. We had some delicious gnocchi and pesto sauce from a small Italian booth specializing in fresh pastas, and Sean wrapped it up by having a very dense, rich brownie. All told, we enjoyed a highly satisfying lunch.

We had sort of had our fill of cathedrals for a bit, so instead, we decided to head over to The Monument. The Monument was built as a memorial to the people and buildings destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666. We walked up its many spiraling steps (311) to get up to the viewing platform to see a wonderful panorama of the city. it’s an open air platform, and you’re essentially protected from plummeting to your death by a metal rail and some wire meshing that rather reminded me of chicken wire.

The views really were incredible and after we caught our breath, cooled off a bit, and took our fill of pictures, we headed back down to the bottom where we were each awarded a certificate for our trouble.

Even on our easy day, we couldn’t sit still, so we headed next to Tate Modern. It stays open a bit later on Friday, so even though it was already late in the day, we had plenty of time to wander the galleries at our leisure. We saw Picassos, Dalis, Pollacks, and Monet’s Water Lilies. We saw some truly fascinating photography exhibits. It was well past nine by the time we were through.

I don’t think either of us realized how much our daily rhythm was synchronized to the movement of the sun. It often didn’t occur to us to start looking for dinner till after dark. It was well past 9 when we left the museum, and many of our eating options were shut for the night. We knew of at least one place that would be open though – Fryer’s Delight. It’s supposed to be a cabbies’ favorite for fish and chips. I don’t know about all that, but we certainly enjoyed it. The chips especially were incredible – Sean was particularly enamored with the less-sweet-more-vinegary catsup they were served with. Our fish was fresh (I had cod, Sean had haddock) and the breading crispy.

Day 7 – St Paul’s Cathedral, Neal’s Yard, St John

28 May 2011 – We started our anniversary morning at St Paul’s Cathedral. I will not lie; our cathedral experiences were starting to feel a little redundant. That said, each that we visited was also radically different. For instance, St Paul’s lets the light in much more so than Westminster Abbey, and consequently, there was a bright, airy feel to the place rather than the more somber mood of the Abbey. That said, its list of famous corpses was much smaller. William Blake is laid to rest there as well as Christopher Wren. We climbed to the top of this one too and saw the view of the city from the top viewing platform of the cathedral.

We had an incredible lunch at Yalla Yalla. This place serves Beirut street food, and it was actually (if you can believe this) recommended in one of our guidebooks. The Wardour Street area is apparently known for its excellent variety of international cuisine, and while it probably would have been wiser of us to wander around and choose a place that interested us, I couldn’t help but have a plan in place. Yalla Yalla (which my Jordanian friend tells me means “let’s go, let’s go!”), was full of wonderful items to sample. I could have eaten there several times and not gotten to try everything that caught my eye. The place was incredibly tiny, and we felt a little gawky and out of place blocking traffic while we waited for a table to clear.

We enjoyed wraps filled with chicken shawarma for Sean and lamb kofta for me. We tested out a lamb and pomegranate topped flatbread called sfiha. But our favorite thing by far was a humble dish of potatoes called Batata Harra. Our friend Laura thought we were hilarious because we had eaten all this great stuff, and all we could keep gushing about was this bowl of potatoes.

Our intention had been to go to the Photographers Museum after this, however, when we got over there, we found that it was undergoing a major restoration and wouldn’t be open again till later on this year.

Instead, we headed over to Neal’s Yard so Sean could snap some photos and so I could visit Neal’s Yard Dairy. Just walking into the cheese shop, we were overwhelmed by the aroma of cheese. As we headed in, several young girls came rushing out, noses pinched between thumb and forefinger. After a few short minutes, a cheese monger took our indecisive and uneducated selves under his care and guided us through a tasting of a handful of remarkable local cheeses. We left with small wedges of three gorgeous cheeses and a sense of accomplishment.

Our afternoon of dining and nibbling had left us a bit on the full side for our main attraction that evening – St John. I had been prattling on about eating at Fergus Henderson’s restaurant from the moment we began thinking of taking a trip to London. The restaurant did not disappoint.

Housed in what used to be a smokehouse, St John has whitewashed walls and is spare in decor. We were seated at communal tables and served by polite but succinctly efficient waitstaff. I could not have been happier. There was no fuss, no dinner theatre … I’m not even sure there was garnish – just plate after plate of locally sourced, decidedly British, perfectly-prepared food.

We started with the bone marrow with parsley salad, of course. As something of a signature St John dish, I sort of felt like we had to have it. Bone marrow is rich and spreadable. We slathered it on hunks of toast and ate it with bites of acid-dressed parsley salad to help cut the fat.

My one apprehension was that despite the lack of pomp at the restaurant, generally speaking, the British appear to have beautiful table manners. I, on the other hand, do not. I tend to approach food consumption from a very practical viewpoint, often resulting in an utter lack of grace. This was especially uncomfortable given that we sat shoulder to shoulder with a table full of locals. I tried my best to mimic our table mates, but in the end, those bones were getting picked up and hollowed out so that I could extract every last luscious nub of marrow from them.

Next we had an offal terrine. It had a variety of bits and parts in it, and consequently was a study in texture as well as flavor.

Sean had bream and courgettes for his main course. The bream wound up being a whole fish. Sean, who is much more adept at the table manners game, managed to essentially extract the fillets from his cooked fish without ever placing hands on the meat. The fish was obviously incredibly fresh and because Mr Henderson tends not to over-do things, it was gently seasoned so that the wonderful flavor of the fish itself could be savored. Sean pointed out that if more fish tasted like this, he’d eat more fish.

I wound up choosing the day’s special, sweetbreads with bacon and peas. Everything was perfectly cooked, and tied together with a very light, slightly sweet sauce. With soft sweetbreads, salty chewy pork belly, and slightly crisp peas, it was utter luxury. It occurred to me only later that I hadn’t really eaten anything that I hadn’t eaten before. I am ever so slightly regretful of that fact. Then again, it was one of the best meals of our trip, so who am I to quibble.

By this point, I was so full, I was afraid to open my mouth to speak for fear of what might come out. Luckily, our server fixed me up with a serving of St John’s famed Eccles Cake with Lancashire Cheese to take home so I could enjoy it the next morning. Sean, a firm believer that there is always room for sweets, had a very beautiful and rich slab of chocolate for dessert.

All told our meal at St John was a wonderful way to celebrate another year of marriage and an incredible London vacation.

Day 8 – Hyde Park, Relaxing

29 May 2011 – The next day was gloriously uncomplicated. We started by visiting Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. It’s meant to be a place were people get up on their (sometimes literal) soapbox and pontificate on all manner of political and social topics. The real allure, we’d read, was the banter that often sprung up between the speakers and their hecklers. Sean and I were both pretty jazzed about it. Unfortunately, and maybe this isn’t always the case, when we were there, the speakers seemed to universally have a religious agenda. We did not stay long.

We spent our day wandering in parks and looking at fountains and moseying through the streets of London. We did take a crack at visiting Harrods and experiencing their incredible food court. The selection of goods available for procurement was indeed impressive. The crowds, however, were so madly bustling that it was difficult to really enjoy the experience.

On our to-do list while visiting London was to sample a bit of the local cocktail scene. We had a list of places that we might be interested in trying, but as it happened, only one of those places was open on Sunday. We finished out our evening at the tiny bar with no name at 69 Colebrooke Row.

Day 9 – The Vaudeville, the British Museum

30 May 2011 – A theatre experience was also on our to-do list, so the plan the next day was to line up early at The Vaudeville to see if we could score day tickets to that evening’s showing of In a Forest Dark and Deep by Neil Labute – a two-person play starring Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams. For about ten pounds each, we wound up with front row seats to see the production.

We spent our afternoon at the British Museum. I can’t even begin to explain the immensity of this place or the sheer diversity of the artifacts contained therein. I swear to you, we could have spent a week touring different parts of this place and not exhausted its offerings. As it was, we spent a few hours meandering through a list of highlights, taking regular side trips to see random items that struck our fancy.

Day 10 – Full English Breakfast, Queen’s Life Guard at the Horse Guards, Churchill War Rooms

31 May 2011 – Slow starts to our days were becoming something of a pleasant habit at this point in our trip. We dickered around our apartment then went for a full English breakfast at a place called Canteen. Huge plates of eggs and sausage and tomatoes and potatoes landed in front of us. It was all we could do to finish. We spent part of our time at breakfast trying to decide how much or how little of the whole changing of the guard thing we cared to see.

We had wandered past Buckingham Palace earlier in our trip and it was truly a madhouse, so we decided to head over to see the Queen’s Life Guard at the Horse Guards instead. Beautiful and amusingly antsy horses were topped with tidy-uniformed, shiny-hatted guards. We watched them stand at attention for while, observed the guard change, and then headed out.

Our next stop was to visit the Churchill War Rooms. As a US citizen, my perspective on war is that it’s a horrible thing that happens in other places. Our soldiers cross oceans to fight wars. Our leaders can make decisions from their quiet offices, can sleep in their own beds at night. World War II tore through Europe. Churchill did his leading from an underground set of rooms. And when he slept, it was on a narrow bed underground with the calamity of bombs and air raid sirens serving as alarm clocks. The War Rooms, filled with various pieces from the period, were a fascinating view into subterranean war-time living and working. The accompanying Churchill museum provided plenty of insight into a complex and effective war-time leader.

After we were through with World War II, we met up with our friend Laura and had cream tea. Amusingly enough, this is the only time we had tea in London. There are two ways to have a proper tea. High tea is (I’m told) a fancy affair filled with finger sandwiches and delicate petit fours and is generally considered to be an actual meal. We had a cream tea which is essentially an afternoon snack of clotted cream and scones served with tea. If you read about English teas at all, you’ll find out that they vary somewhat from region to region. The thing I learned from this experience was that clotted cream is delicious, and I would very much like to try to make some at home.

Our well-fed trio headed to a local grocery store and stocked up on golden syrup and treacle. I had been sort of disappointed that there was no black pudding to be had for breakfast, and after complaining about this to Laura, she found pre-made black puddings at the store that simply had to be pan-fried and eaten. Sold! I’d have breakfast at home the next day.

Black pudding is essentially a sausage or meat cake which uses blood as a binder. The Germans have their blutwurst, the French their boudin noir, and the Spanish make morcilla. The UK’s black pudding seems to be a very grain-heavy affair, with the blood binder taking something of a back seat and the flavor generally being rich but uncomplicated. To me, it seems the best kind of comfort food – flavorful and filling and undemanding. (Despite how frequently I described it as such, Sean was absolutely unwilling to try it.)

We eventually made our way to Purl Bar, our next cocktail destination of the trip. We were tucked into one of the bar’s many quiet corners and enjoyed several of their incredible cocktails before parting ways with Laura and heading to the apartment to get our black pudding in the refrigerator.

Later that night, while wandering around town, we followed our noses to a very lovely dinner. At San Xia Ren Jia, we enjoyed a sizzling platter of twice-cooked pork, rich and lightly sweet Spare Ribs with Glutinous Rice (good, but not nearly as good as the twice-cooked pork), and a garlicky, piquant pile of perfectly cooked green beans. Our waiter couldn’t have been nicer as he helped us make our choices and brought our food.

Day 11 – Windsor Castle, Shopping

01 June 2011 – The next day, after frying up a delicious disc of black pudding for my breakfast (sprinkled lightly with salt and served alongside some toast and an over-easy fried egg), we headed out to catch a train to Windsor. Windsor Castle, still a royal residence, is a sprawling, beautifully manicured place. I most enjoyed wandering around inside the castle grounds. The structures are stately and well-kept and the gardens are absolutely breath-taking. We did take the time to see the doll collection and the impressive state rooms.

Shopping was on the agenda for that afternoon, so once we were back in London, we headed over to the Whiskey Exchange to take a look at their liquor offerings. The array of goods was impressive, but what really caught our collective eye was the selection of bitters they had on their shelves. Silly though it may seem, we left the place with a bag full of nothing but bitters.

Next we headed over to Foyles, a huge and well-stocked book shop. My aim here was British-style cookbooks. Naturally, there were plenty to be had and after choosing several and browsing longingly through their travel section, we headed out for dinner.

We hadn’t had too many meat pies yet, so we headed out to the Newman Arms. We had pints and fluffy pastry-topped pies of stewed meat (steak and kidney for me). The vegetables served alongside were crisp and delicious – the perfect foil for the rich stew. I don’t know if this is universally true, but at least at the Newman Arms, those pies were immense. I ate to discomfort and still it looked like I hadn’t eaten even half of my meal (I did, of course, finish my pint).

Day 12 – Oxford, Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Castle

02 June 2011 – We punked out on our outing for the next day and decided to book a last minute tour to see Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and Warwick castle. This tour was everything I don’t like about organized tours. The tour group was huge, and I constantly felt rushed. That said, the tour operator was courteous and the buses were punctual, so it certainly could’ve been worse.

Oxford was beautiful, and I wish that we had decided to spend our whole day there. We did get to wander through Christ Church and see a bit of the town, but it was really only a small taste of what we could have seen.

Our meal that evening was one of the best of our trip. Laura and Latch took us to their very favorite Indian restaurant in town, Simply Indian. Among many other delicacies, I was introduced to whitebait, tender little fried fishes which would, if folks were willing to eat them, make excellent bar food.

Day 13 – Museum of London, Routemaster, Kings Cross, St Pancras

03 June 2011 – We started our morning at the Museum of London to see their Street Photography Exhibit, which Sean seemed to particularly enjoy.

Then we headed toward St Paul to see the old Routemaster double-decker bus. We had the passing thought that we might hop aboard, but seeing it from the outside seemed more fun.

Next on our list was to see Kings Cross and St Pancras station. Kings Cross was undergoing renovation and was a colossal letdown to those of us who are a bit Harry Potter obsessed. St Pancras, on the other hand, was beautiful – immense and full of light. After this, we made our obligatory purchases of unique and interesting liquor that we couldn’t get in the States.

After dropping this off, we tried Trailer Happiness, a place filled with wonderful rum-based goodness, tacky-in-all-the-right-ways decor, and incredibly welcoming staff.

Finally, we celebrated our last night in London with a long walk along the waterfront across from Big Ben and Parliament for some nighttime photos. Frantic packing ensued thereafter.