A trip to England, Guv'na

Andrew and I went to England this week - to London and then to Bath for the third International Conference on Self-Healing Materials. We flew to London last Friday night and spent the weekend there, meeting up with some old Illinois friends on Sunday to travel to Bath together. The excitement started right away on Friday night when we were startled out of our beds at three AM by a loud fire alarm going off in our hotel room. Grabbing our wallets and passports, we ran down the stairs along with the other Travelodge guests and had to wait outside in the rain for about twenty minutes before the firefighters announced it all clear.

Saturday afternoon was spent wandering the Tate Modern and the city around St. Paul's. The best part for me was seeing a Pollock (not mine, but wonderful nonetheless!).

Andrew's favorite part of the trip, by far, was eating at - not one - but TWO Jamie Oliver restaurants! He's officially spoiled now. We went to Jamie's London restaurant Barbecoa on Saturday night and had a truly wonderful meal. To start, we had a coal-roasted beet salad and crispy calamari. For our main courses, I had roast chicken with a smoked olive beurre blanc and garlic mashed potatoes, while Andrew ordered a sirloin steak and pit-smoked beans. We finished this first gluttonous meal with a delicious thing called "chocolate nemesis" - yum! In Bath, we ate at our second Jamie restaurant: Jamie's Italian. There, I had a delicious tomato & mozzarella salad and ricotta & mint ravioli, while Andrew ordered a root veg salad to start and wild boar sausages with minty lentils as his main course (his favorite!). We split a fantastic tiramisu for dessert. You can check out photos of all of these dishes on our flicker page, but here's Andrew's favorite photo from these visits (I think he's starting to feel very close to Jamie now...).

All in all, it was a great trip. Mostly it was just nice to be around friends again, and to be someplace where everyone speaks English!