Full days in London:

Around 10am this morning (Saturday), Ana and I started our tour of London. Plan being to see as much or little as we wanted before we got too tired.

First stop, we took the tube from Leicester station to Camden Market. I'd heard of Camden market and was told it was pretty impressive, but I had no idea what to expect. Wow.

Overlooking Camden Market:

Random guy that walked by and has made a classic photo bomb:

Walking through Camden Market:

 

We started out with an overpriced latte from Starbucks. But that's a moot point, everything is so expensive in London. Luckily, I can't convert pounds to dollars too quickly, so I didn't have to constantly think about how much I was spending. Camden Market is huge. I felt like it was a maze of shops. Everything from handmade jewelry, soaps, candles, clothes, cards, and international food courts. I mean, we had so many options for lunch...gyros, Spanish tapas, Vietnamese, Indian curry dishes..everything! I wanted to buy so much, but ended up just buying a leather coin purse and a couple hippie looking headbands. It was a rainy day, but just kinda off and on, we never really got poured on and I never even caved and bought an umbrella. 

We had lunch at Camden and hopped on the metro for London bridge. Pretty impressive too! We walked along the pier and got some neat pics with the bridge in the background.

So many selfies....

London Bridge: did it fall down or something? Where's the song come from? hmmm....

Well this pic seemed like a good idea at the time....

 We crossed the bridge and went to a little dock called St. Katherine (I think)...."little" I say. But this dock had some expensive boats and you could tell it was a place for the rich folk. Next stop was London tower.

We thought these flowers were pretty:

The cute little book bench by London Tower:

I'm sure we were looking at something really cool....or this might be completely posed:

And with evening approaching, we took the metro to our last stop: Notting Hill. Seriously an adorable little neighborhood. We went to mass at a little church and just enjoyed looking at all the quaint little houses. We found the famous bookstore from the movie "notting hill" and searched for a good hour or two for the famous blue door house. Apparently we found it, but I didn't even bother to take a pic as it was NOT what I remembered from the movie! I also wanted to visit the park from the movie. But by the time we found the door it was getting dark and the locals told us the park was in the part of town "with black people and not nice black people"...idk. I don't think they were racist but I also got the impression it wasn't a good neighborhood for two girls to wander into alone. Especially at night. So we found a nice fish and chips restaurant. Had ourselves some nice typical English fish and chips and headed back for London.

St. Francis church in notting hill:

A random door on the streets of Notting Hill. These homes were ridiculously priced!

 My hair kinda looks long here...surprised me..

 Again...so. many. selfies:

There you have it...the whole reason for the trip to Notting Hill: the famous bookshop from the movie!

 Ana was up for seeing more, but I was honestly exhausted and our only option seemed to be overpriced clubs and overpriced drinks. I compare London to New York except shops stay open longer in NYC. Everything minus the bars seemed to be closed after 10. We went back to Ana's apartment and stayed up talking till the sun started to brighten the sky. Seriously, weird, but the sun sets super late (like 10p) in London and rises super early (like 4-5am)! We slept till 10 the next morning, had ourselves a nice breakfast at cafe Nero, bought some typical British snacks at Tesco's, and I was back on the tube by 1:00, en route hasta la Coruña! 

 

 

I had so much fun in London with Ana! She was a great guide and a great friend and I can't wait to visit her again...although next time she'll be back in Murcia. (We think!)

Last day in La Coruña:

Exhausted. Seems that has been a reoccurring feeling on this trip, but I promise it's a good exhaustion. 

Up and showered by 10am today. Cafe and a piece of toast. To Gadis supermarket with the girls to buy fajita stuff for lunch. Then shopping with Jose padre and Mimi for wine to bring back home. We bought 5 bottles of wine typical from Galicia and Rioja. I'd tried a few of them and trust Jose's opinion on the others. I came home and helped Chantell finish up with lunch and had a beer or two ;) We had a great chicken fajita lunch and then headed out again to buy cafeteras. The typical Spanish (actually Italian I think) stove top coffee makers. Jose bought me 2 cafeteras, one for me and ind for my mom and Chantell got me a bag of haribo candies. She was shocked that I wasn't familiar with this brand of German candy! They are all too good to me. Jose insisted that I didn't pay and gifted me all this wine and coffee makers and gosh, they're just too good to me. 

Chantell and Loreto cooking lunch: 

Blue skies..finally! 

A few hours before I had to leave, the sun decided to come out. I had my bag all packed. FULL with wine and such (as I've told you!) so I rolled up my jeans and went for a walk on the beach. (Rather than unpacking to find my swim suits) I stayed on the beach for a little less than an hour and took in as much of the sun and waves as I could. Oh how I love the beach! It was so nice. I hate that I didn't have better weather while I was there the last few days, but just that hour of time on the beach today was ahhhhh. So nice. I returned home, had some tarta de mocha, relaxed for a few minutes with the kiddos on the couch, said my hasta luegos and went to meet my Blablacar driver. 6 hours, 4 guys and me, Spanish only, Volvo all-terrain, and exhaustion. Flight leaves Madrid at 11:50 tomorrow and I plan to sleep all day Friday (I'll return late Thursday night)  madre Mia! What a trip!! 

Could have stood here for hours....

La Coruña days continue...

Well I must say, I expected to have much better weather here in la Coruña this week. Last year I arrived on July 4th and we had sunny days on the beach until I left on the 11th. Apparently one week makes quite the difference....everyday has been jacket worthy weather and today actually ended up being a rainy day! It hasn't ruined my trip, although I still have some work to do on my tan!

This morning, the girls woke me up a little before 10. July 1st is famous here for having all the summer sales. I showered super quick and we were headed for the bus stop around 10:30. Buses weren't working too well and what should have been a 30 minute trip ended up taking us around 2 hours! We finally made it to Marineda City (they say it's the 3rd largest shopping center in Europe) around 12:30 and had to leave shortly after 1 to be home in time for lunch around 2:30. I hate to be negative, but if really was a wasted trip. We hardly got to even look in the stores before we had to go. 

We came home to quite the lunch. Inma prepared cigales (crayfish), percebes (barnacles), some other type of fish who's name escapes me, fried peppers, and potatoes. After lunch, we had a special treat of que imada. I gathered that it means "quemada" (burned) but in Gallego. Essentially, it was extra strong moonshine, sugar and oranges poured into a fancy bowl and lit on fire. We burned it for about 10-15 minutes and poured a lil bit of coffee in it for flavor. It had a super sweet, fruity taste to it that reminded me a bit of licor de hierbas. It was a good lunch and afterwards, Chantell and I finally got some kid free time. As much as we love them, I had forgotten how much the kids wear me out! 

Crayfish:

Barnacles:

Other fish:

Jose making que imada...see the flames?

 

Sugar, moonshine, oranges, splash of coffee, and 10 minutes of FIRE!

Drinking que imada out of the little ceramic cup:

We went to a bar just down the street and had a glass of wine and tried to plan my trip to Madrid tomorrow. It was really nice. Cute cafe with an ocean view, good wine and free wifi :) 

We left around 9pm to find a bar where the USA vs Belgium game would play. We found one in plaza de españa, had some fattening croquetas, patatas fritas, aceitunas (olives) and lots of beer. We closed down the bar about 12:30 when USA lost. But it was a good game! 

Home in bed now. Another fast day but oh so exhausted! Leaving at 7:00pm tomorrow for Madrid. Flight leaves Thursday at 11:50am.....tired and ready for home, but will miss this country I've begun to call my 2nd home.