Traditional english pubs

We have three civilians that work in our office.  Tracy, our British Liaison Officer is a Brit.  She hangs out at a truly English Pub.

It's so traditional, they only serve food twice a month.  

And sometimes they rope her into cooking. 

A few weeks ago, I took the court reporter (civilian) on an adventure to visit this pub.

It was truly an adventure.  We got a little lost and ended up on a road that went over a "weak bridge".  Which means there was a sign that said "Warning: weak bridge".

Not really sure what that means but we held our breath when we drove over it.

We made it.  The fish was delicious. We didn't collapse the bridge.

Italy-Balogna

Ben and I took a little trip to Balogna Italy for Memorial Day weekend.

This was the first place we ate.  It's a little Trattoria which is a small cafe that sells simple food.  

Notice the creepy clown picture on the wall and the display of sharks teeth.

That was something that had the word fungi which I'm pretty sure is probably mushroom. It was delicious.

So, I don't know what weird Frankenstein uniform this is, but I'm pretty sure we never wore that in the Air Force.

After lunch we walked the streets of Balogna.  

Where of course we spotted at least two McDonalds that were PACKED.

It was actually pretty warm.  You can see the tourists basking in the shade of Neptune's Statue.

I probably knew what this building was, but I don't remember now. It looks impressive with all those flags and statue things.

Balogna is known for it's "two towers"

This one leans.

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But it's NOT the leaning tower of Pisa.  Ben was disjointed.  Apparently Balogna is the birthplace of his fraternity and the grand secret guide book to the Kappa Sigma's was misleading when it came to describing the towers.

More tourists and old buildings.

Here's another shot of the two towers.

And more old archways.

Oh good, another food shot.

The seafood appetizer was better than the seafood pasta.  I was imagining fish. It was mostly shellfish and calamari.

We wandered down a side street and found this street market.

We were going to go see an art exhibit but the line was about three hours long so we decided to skip it and sit and drink Italian coffee at a little cafe.

This is me drinking Italian coffee.  It pretty much just tastes like someone ground up the tire of a vespa and then soaked it in water.  So I guess that's what it's supposed to taste like?

"Geez Carrie, why are you taking so many pictures of that wall?"

Because...

Everything was packed so close together.  Everbody seems to live in these apartments over the shops.

And then we had dinner and this amazing Panacotta.

By the time we headed back to the museum, we go to see this beauty.

Actually, we got to see the real painting because "The Girl with Pearl Earring" is traveling around the world.  But the posters all over the city were really impressive too.  

I found the Rembrandt's more compelling but I think he was a genius with the use of light.  

So, good trip.  But we didn't get to ride a Vespa.  I'll make sure to book that in advance next time.

Dinner in cambridge

Had dinner with some friends in Cambridge this weekend.  At a Mexican/South American restaurant. Couldn't bear the view.

Painting at Debden House

Last weekend Ben and I went away to a weekend painting class.

Ben enjoys painting so I found this weekend class on groupon for water color painting.  We stayed on the grounds and they provided all the meals (which were surprisingly good).

 

I'm not really much of a painter/artist.  But we were each enlisted to do a portrait of the person across from us. This is Yvonne.

And that's my picture of Yvonne.

We also did quite a bit of sketching and painting ivy leaves.

This is Theresa and Alen. Alen was actually pretty good already.

This is Luccia. She's originally from Bolivia. She was also very good.  You'll notice from these pictures that Ben and I were the youngest by at least a decade and maybe two.

I walked to the local village center with Theresa and Luccia on Saturday afternoon.

The scenery was beautiful.

It's springtime so the flowers were out in full bloom.

This was the entrance to a big fancy house right next to Epping forest. There's a sign that says that there are guard dogs and CCTV. Which just makes me want to climb the hedge even more to see what's on the other side. I never got that show "Cribs" until I came to England.

There are all these -what I'm sure are- castles behind hedges and big fences and I'm just really nosy. I'd like to see what's behind that fence. 

Back at the painting class, we learned a few new techniques with masking fluid.  

Mine are the middle two. 

The Saturday class also involved our attempts at painting bluebells. These are Alen and Yvonne's work.  Nice, right?

This is mine.

I got bored.

And I messed up the colors.

So I tried painting leaves from a Japanese Maple instead.

But that wasn't all that interesting either and I was getting frustrated by my lack of skill.

So I switched to something with straight lines.

I think I was annoying the teacher because she wanted us to paint lilacs:

But you can only paint so many flowers before you start to go a little crazy.

Sunday I mostly just sketched out on the beautiful lawn. They had an amazing park and the weather was perfect.

This Japanese Maple made me think of my Mom.

And here's the front of Debden house just in case you were wondering.