With the World Cup Final coming up everyone kept asking me whether or not I would be going to Madrid / Barcelona or Amsterdam for the Spain vs. Holland Final, but I was unable to because I made plans the weekend of the final months prior to visit my friend Kath in England - her parents were out of town so she was throwing a party at their house in the countryside outside of London. I took the Eurostar into London and transferred via the Tube to the Waterloo Station, and hopped on a southwest train there to head out to the town of Farnham. (Luckily I knew all about the Waterloo station and southwest trains because of my trip to Wimbledon a couple weeks prior...) Friday night there were about 7 of us and we were enjoying Pimm's on their huge patio. We decided to play poker with a 5 Quid (Quid = pound, comes from 'Quid Pro Quo' evidently) buy in and I ended up taking 2nd place - and guess who won? Of course the guy who wasn't drinking... We all had poker nicknames and mine was 'Mr. Quid' because I just found out what a Quid was. After poker we played a hilarious game on their PS3 called 'Buzz' - I think it is old and is just a simple game show but we had a blast with it. Saturday morning we woke up and made a traditional English breakfast: Toast, Bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes and eggs which was delicious. They had a whole plate of different condiments to put on toast and the only one I really liked was the raspberry preservative. After breakfast we went to Frensham Ponds, a natural swimming pond with a decent beach because the weather was in the mid 80s and sunny and they kept saying how the weather is never that nice. We brought a cooler and her Dad happened to only have Budweiser in the fridge so I was on a beach in England drinking a Budweiser - - something I definitely never thought I would be doing. We then went to the store to buy food for grilling out and I made sure to buy a bottle of Pimm's to take back with me! About 10 people made it out on Saturday and we had a huge feast, lots of Pimm's and a bunch of laughs. Was nice to be around a group of English speaking people again! Check out some pics from the day.
Captions: Top - Beach / Pond
Middle - Check out those Ka-bobs
Bottom - Grillmaster Kelvs, burgs, sausages, ka bobs, corn on the cob, shrimps - delish.
Sunday we slept in and went back to the Ponds and on the way we noticed a big fire and we kept driving closer to it. When we parked at the Ponds we noticed the conservation park behind the Ponds was burning so what to 5 of us decide to do? Of course, go closer to the spreading forest fire. Check out some pics, couldn't believe how close they allowed us to get. The weekend was great and the countryside is just what I expected - rolling hills and relaxing!
I was on the train back to Brussels during the World Cup Final and kept refreshing my phone to follow the game. I made it back to the station in time to watch the extra time and the game winning goal before I had to take my train back to Aalst where I parked my car. I was glad I didn't end up going to Amsterdam! When I arrived back in Aalst the country missed me so much they had fireworks to celebrate my arrival!
No comments:
Post a Comment