So Posh

Today I'm inspired to write a bit on culture here in Britain, specifically Brum fashion and the social scene.  People watching takes on an all new art form when you move to a new country.  There's so much to take in, and I've been watching for trends, habits and trying to assess what's "cool" or "posh" as I've heard Adam mimic his coworkers.  This research is not to fill a need to fit in (I'm totally secure in my American-ness), but because it fascinates me.

Though my closet is much smaller here and many of my remaining loved pieces are stored away in Fairhope, I've maintained my deep love for fashion, even if my ability to express such has been relegated to how I can accessorize a black sweater.  Somewhat to my surprise, every girl here doesn't try to emulate Duchess Kate.  Weird, right? On the contrary, fashion here is quite eclectic.  It has a natural city vibe - a lot of black,  flats v. heels (practical for commuting/walking - though I'm  not sure I can get on board with the return of the Birkenstock which is happening on both sides of the pond), and mid sized leather bags (also good for working girls).  On the casual side, there are SO many crop tops! I saw these half shirts trying to make a come back in the US, and a somewhat tolerable one on teenage girls with undeveloped figures, but here, they're everywhere! I sometimes describe fashion here to Adam as having a lingering 90's flare.  Not the nasty grunge side, but the laid back casual freedom of expression side.  It's in patterns, faded jeans, and those bloody crop tops.

Here's a chic taste of the trends

While tagging along with Adam for a London trip recently, I went to the featured exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which fittingly happened to be on renowned and iconic British designer Alexander McQueen. It was incredible, and actually affirmed some of the previously mentioned trends I've noticed in British fashion.  McQueen's collections were edgy and a dark and the exhibit beautifully pieced together his work with intense light displays and appropriately accessorized Swarovski crystals.  I've always been a bit surprised that Kate is such a McQueen fan.  I'm sure part of it is her patriotism, but I like to think that it also speaks to the modern edge she brings to the monarchy. Granted, I think he's a favorite of many fashionistas, rightfully so.

A favorite from the exhibition

Speaking of classy and elegant style, I also had a chance to see an Audrey Hepburn exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.  Seeing her iconic photos blown up and paired with behind the scenes images from her famous films was perfection.  You'd think those photos of her couldn't be any prettier, well they can - no wonder so many people wanted to make her a cover star.

Easy, breezy, beautiful

As for men's fashion, it's a bit more predictable.  Jeans and shirts are tighter and more colorful and hair taller and shinier (I'm talking gel).  As for the more formal work attire, suits are mostly required and sometimes come in pieces of three with an accompanying skinny tie. All in all, clothes for both men and women are more affordable and practical, though not necessarily more comfortable. When in doubt, look to the always chic, always stylish, always British Beckhams.

Seen here coordinating at Wimbledon 2014

As for ways to spend our free time, we stumbled upon two fun scenes in our neighborhood.  The first we've been eying since we moved in - The Jam House.  We'd heard good things and seeing the velvet rope outside only made us even more curious.  On a random Tuesday night we had dinner upstairs and made our way downstairs to hear some very talented singers…. that's right, I said Tuesday night, and just down the street from our flat - Adam's dream scenario.  That Thursday evening we stumbled upon a street festival with MY favorite pastime - food trucks! The delicious food just happened to be accompanied by music from none other than the same artist we heard earlier in the week. I've also visited the dry cleaners, nail and hair salons AND got asked for directions… twice! We're such locals.

June was a warmer month and I felt a taste of home - humidity, my old friend.  July hasn't been quite as hot, this week in particular has been cloudy and cool, so we may delay our beach trip.  It would crush me if I have to wear a sweatshirt in sand, so best not to risk my tender heart just yet.  As for other upcoming adventures, Mom recommended I take the obvious path and go to Buckingham to find Kate, so a fellow expat and I are planning an escapade thru the castle soon now that it's open for it's annual tours. Until next time chums!

Kilt It

Despite popular American assumptions, Scotland isn't all plaid, kilts, whisky and beer.  In all fairness, though, those things are plenty, particularly in the tourist frequented city of Edinburgh, which is where Adam and I spent Saturday and Sunday getting lost.  While we haven't been many places (YET), this trip definitely ranks highly on our list of coolest cities around, which we realized sometime on Sunday afternoon as we were wandering around fantasizing about which victorian home we'd purchase and where we'd shop and eat on a regular basis.  

The trip started with a bright and early train ride up from Brum.  It was just under 4 hours, but the train is affordable (£30 p/person round trip), scenic and enjoyably lazy.  I napped and read (The Girl on the Train, naturally) and Adam just read. I can sleep anywhere, possibly even standing up, but poor Adam doesn't share my narcoleptic tendencies, so he worked his way through The Girl with all the Gifts. Fun fact, they were shooting the film version of this book, starring Glen Close, in Brum last month.

Upon arrival, we walked the 40 or so minutes to our flat for the night which was an Airbnb rental.  This was our first experience with Airbnb.  For a mere £31 we had a conveniently located little flat to sleep in and our host just happened to be American, so we had some good conversation and got great tips for our sightseeing.  I highly recommend this lodging option for any friends looking to make stops in several cities and save some quid.

View of Calton Hill from the walk to our Airbnb

It was windy and somewhat cool, but the sun finally came out as we made our way up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, stopping in at St. Giles Cathedral along the way.  We'd been told you could spend hours at the castle, and you can.  We spent around 3 hours touring and taking in this massive center of the city.  In addition to the history and cool architecture, it provides exquisite views of Edinburgh.  It probably pained Adam a bit that he could almost see St. Andrews across the river while the Open was going on, but thankfully his visit to that exact tournament and course 5 years prior lessened the sting.

View from Edinburgh Castle

Where they keep the crown jewels

Castle War Museum

War story reenactments inside Royal Dining Hall

Daily 1300hr cannon fire

After the castle, we stopped for refreshments at The Elephant House, famously known as the site where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.  I couldn't help myself, and the tea and brownie were quite nice.

We then made our way back across town to the Scott Monument, which is incredible.  It's a beautiful monument, but I laugh a little thinking back on it's location.  It's just across Princes Street, which is a shopping strip, and on the other side is a large ferris wheel and park - I highly doubt the juxtaposition was intentional, nonetheless, it's a beautiful monument, and cool that a writer has such a large one in his honor.  Kudos Scotland for recognizing that not only politicians and royals deserve statues.

Sir Walter Scott Monument

And when in Scotland, do as the Scots do and drink some Scotch.  We finished off our sightseeing at the Scotch Whisky Experience which boasts the world's largest collection of scottish distilled whisky.  It was fancy, and tasty.  I've always liked whiskey, but I now have a new appreciation for the gold liquor, a more refined palate and swirl technique when tasting.  We finished off the night with some tasty italian and called it a night.

Small portion of world's largest Scotch collection - all unopened

We crossed off much of our to do lis t on Saturday, so we slept a little later than usual on Sunday and took our time walking across the city, finding a cosy brunch spot where I got the first real bacon (not ham) since crossing the pond. We then headed to the Royal Botanical Garden.  It was a nicer day weather wise than anticipated so we just meandered around new town.  It was about that point when I heard the words "we could live here" come out of both of our mouths.  We imagined Sunday morning strolls down those streets and even signed a petition to prevent an old building from being torn down.  We felt at ease, at home.  It was just charming, truly.  We could have spent more time there, but were quite satisfied with the 30 or so hours we had.  I have a feeling we'll be back.

We plan to take it easy this coming weekend.  We still have some flat nesting to do and Brum (and I imagine all of Britain) really comes alive during the summer months.  It seems there's a street festival or market every weekend.  People tell us, and we see it, that Brits live and die by the weather.  When it's nice out, everyone's out.  One of my new favorite pop ups in the city of late are these owls.  Those who know me well know the owl isn't my favorite creature... well really I don't like birds in general, but I digress. As I was saying, there are 89 of these across Birmingham and I'm making it a personal mission to see as many as possible this month.  Thankfully I have a handy dandy map to help.

My favorite so far - she lives in our neighborhood

For those of you wondering, I'm still unemployed, so why not go owl hunting in my spare time?  Maybe Kate will come up to see the owls, though I'm not sure the town is a favorite of the royals.  We once heard someone say about Brum that the Queen closed her blinds on the train when passing through the city, so there's that (I can't find any trace of evidence confirming this story on the internet, but the media tends not to speculate on the royals much, they leave that to their press corp).  

I've been aching a bit inside seeing all of the beach photos back home, so next weekend we're going to the British beaches! Brighton to be precise.  I think there are lots of pebbles versus sand, but I don't care.  I also don't care if it's only 70 degrees.  If I don't get some sun soon, I'll turn clear.   Till next time mates!

Queue it up

Today folks, I'm taking you into the magical world of Wimbledon.  What makes it magical you say? Here are 5 of the few reasons I personally, and the other few million or so viewers of the finals today, are so enamored:

1. It's the world's oldest tennis tournament - even if you don't love tennis, there's something cool about the history behind the tournament that you have to respect, especially considering how hard they work to preserve and recreate it each year.

2. All players have to wear white.  As a southern girl who appreciates the significance of white attire, particularly in the appropriate months of the year, it's nice to see the players in crisp and clean gear.

3.  Wimbledon is not only known for it's tennis, but also strawberries - who doesn't love strawberries?

4.  Flowers EVERYWHERE.  Wimbledon's flowers are meticulously pruned and cared for daily and they make the entire complex a beautiful place to visit.

5.  Royals attend.  The royal family doesn't choose to attend many public outings, particularly sporting events, but they attend Wimbledon.  And not only do they attend, they cheer on their country's darlings when able.

(Here's where I made an edition to this post and edited out the long segment on how perfect Kate's hair and dress are.)

Now I know those aren't reasons that would sell your average bloke on standing in line for 10 hours (I'll explain shortly).  But it's not about the possible royal sighting for me, entirely.  #5 goes back to #1 - the history behind the tournament is just that important, and when you do finally get into the grounds, you FEEL the significance.  Now, all that said, I do love tennis.  I've been watching Wimbledon and the other major tournaments with my grandparents (whom I snagged a sweatband for) since I was old enough to remember and finally picked up playing the sport a few years ago.  So, when Adam and I realized that you could stand in line for general admission tickets, we said "When in England."  Thankfully, we also had some fellow expats who were up for the fun.

There are a few ways to get into Wimbledon:
1. The Ballot: This is sort of like the Masters Lottery - only so many people get this option each year, and they're pricy.
2. Ticketmaster - only a few hundred tickets are released online each day of the tournament.  I never even figured out how people found those.
3. The Queue (British word for line)
4. Be Royal

As hard as I try, I can't achieve #4.  I'm sure we'll start signing up for the Ballot as soon as possible for next year, but I won't get my hopes up.  I'm also not counting on Ticketmaster, so the Queue it is!  This, according to every source out there, is also a part of the tradition, and we didn't want to miss out, so we found out as much as we could, prepared a little and gave it a shot.

Our friends live in Richmond (40 min south-ish of London) which happens to be a quick 20 min drive to Wimbledon Park.  We took an Uber to the tournament at 6:30am.  That's right, 6:30am.  Many people camp out the night before in hopes of getting tickets to the prime 4 courts, but the rest of us are just happy to get in at all.  When we got there, we were #9,989-9,992nd in line.  I'm not kidding.  We weren't even the end of the line as there were a few 3,000 people behind us by 7am.  Fun fact - at any given time, 39,000 spectators are on the grounds - however, crowd control is implemented and only 4,000ish were let in upon opening that morning.  Some of the stewards were somewhat discouraging people from sticking around by saying we were in for a long wait, and that we may not get in, but we stuck it out.

We hung out in the sun for a bit, thankfully with the shade of an umbrella and a blanket under us.  We also had some snacks and the boys retrieved refreshments from a nearby shop and somehow, 10 hours passed.  I know that sounds crazy, but it really did go by quickly.  Maybe it was that we moved up in line every so often so we weren't sitting still, or that we had good company, or both, but it wasn't so bad.  Did I mention General Admission is only 25 pounds a ticket? It's not like you stand in line that long and then have to pay an arm and a leg.  25 pounds gets you in!  So around 4:30, we walked across the bridge and through those majestic security lines.

Once in, we were all like kids on Christmas morning. We were a bit famished, and thankfully the food was quite good.  With our commemorative glasses in hand, we wondered around for a bit.  It's amazing how close you can get to some of the courts and players.  Granted, most of them were Doubles or Juniors matches, but still very cool! One of the reasons we think it was so crowded is because Andy Murray was playing that evening.  Ever since he won two years ago, the Brits faith in tennis has been renewed.  So we joined the other few hundred people on the hill and watched Andy dominate.  For those of you who didn't keep up, things didn't fare well for him in the end.

I strongly encourage any friends out there looking for a fun summer trip in 2016 to visit us during Wimbledon.  We're sincerely considering finding a tent and camping, but we'll see how I feel 360 days from now.

I had a few more fun London escapades last week, which I'll share next time on the blog.  I'm planning on visiting Buckingham pretty much as soon as tours open at the end of the month, which may be the closest I ever get to seeing Kate since she chose a different day to spectate than me.

Until then, deuces!