Freaking Europe and their Monopoly money

So since England doesn't take the euro, I had to get two pre-paid debit cards, one in pounds and the other in euros (for France). Side bar: how cool that they offer this! Obviously it's been quite a while since I've been abroad...

Yesterday I decided to check the balance on my English card, and it gave me a bigger total than I had originally deposited. Thinking I had won some sort of foreigners lottery, I took the liberty of cashing out before they realized their mistake, rolled around in the money on my bed, and gave some to Heather for her trip home. Then in the middle of the night, I realized the number was probably a sum of my euros and pounds. So this morning I checked the balance on my French card...0. (insert Debbie Downer music here.)

So bizarre - but thank god I didn't dash off to Harrod's for some crazed shopping spree. Just exchanged the extra pounds for euros so I can have a shopping spree in Paris like a normal person. :)

There are worse places to be lost

Last night Heather and I were supposed to meet work people at a bar for a Pub Quiz event (I assume this is like a trivia night or something). We walked back to our hotel to drop off our laptops and headed out, using my chicken-scratch handwritten directions. (Can't figure out how to use the printers here.) Mind you, I wrote down the directions, but I failed to write down the name of the actual bar. Heather had no cash, so a cab was kind of out of the question since we had neither money nor location. So we walked. And we walked. One of the streets in my notes was London Bridge Street, and since we kept seeing signs for London Bridge, we headed that way. (No other streets on my "map" ever appeared.) Ended up ON the London Bridge, which, while cool, was NOT where we were supposed to go. Our cell phones don't work here, so we had no way of calling anyone, so we just shrugged and figured out a way back to our hotel. 2 hour walk, much? And restaurants close here at 10, so by the time we got back to the hotel at 10:30, we were famished and sweaty, yet exhilarated by our excursion.

And somehow we got up and ran 8 miles through the beautiful parks around Buckingham Palace. Life doesn't suck.

Stereotypes...

So we went out last night and met two British guys. They bought us some drinks, tried to convince us to smoke a ciggy, and even escorted us to a second pub. (Look at me, with the lingo!)
Over the course of the evening, there were many stereotypes being thrown around and squashed:

They both had fine teeth. No tragic snaggletooths here.

They didn't hold the door for us. Not exactly gentleman-like.

They had some stereotypes of us, as well: my friend Heather is from Seattle, and they could identify it with Starbucks, rain, and all things Frasier Crane. (Hilarious)

For Texas, they threw out oil rigs and George W. Bush. Excellent.

Both had been to New York, which they found underwhelming (!), found Tallahassee "disastrous" (pretty much in agreement on that one), and when I suggested they go to California for the beach, they said they would rather go to Australia. One was actually headed to Playa del Carmen today. For some reason I find that random. How's about the beach in Greece, pal? He claims it was cheaper to fly all the way to Mexico, which is a bit frightening...

Cheerio!

Some UK observations

Lots of dudes in skinny jeans. Even borderline jeggings. Wow.

Also lots of American TV (thank god) - Friends, Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond (?) and Desperate Housewives (??).

Mojitos are just as good overseas. (Had to do some quality control...)

Can't get over the awesomeness of the accent.

Something I can get over? The complete lack of air conditioning. EVERYWHERE. Thank god for fans in the office. And we had to sign a freaking WAIVER to open our windows in the hotel room. Hilarious. I promise I won't jump - I just need a little ventilation, people.

So many foreigners, so little time. Truly think no one was speaking English in our London Eye pod (haha iPod) yesterday. Except for us.

Might move here. It's too brilliant.

Paging Clark W. Griswold

I might possibly be staying in the smallest hotel room ever known to man. Which for some reason conjures up images of European Vacation and their tiny hotel rooms. Europeans must be smaller in general - those tiny cars, narrow roads, etc. But still. Makes a girl feel ginormous. I truly think if I stretched out my arms I could touch both walls. Good think I'm not particularly claustrophobic. Yet.

okay I lied

Sitting here in the airport and thanks to Wi-fi (which apparently my mom always thought was a video game, confusing it with Wii) felt the need to blog. The D terminal at DFW is the international terminal, and it just makes me happy. All of these people are going on amazeballs vacations (almost boarded the flight to Madrid and Maui, not gonna lie), honeymoons (saw one poor couple dressed in matching "Mr. Right" and "Mrs. Always Right" t-shirts), or, like me, cool trips for work. Also bought a cheese-tastic Texas flag neck pillow. If that doesn't scream TOURIST, I don't know what will. Maybe my Nikes.

Cheerio!

Look, kids - Big Ben! Parliament!

*typed on my blackberry, hence the complete lack of capitalization. apologies...


last blog post until august, since i'll be "on the continent" next week. (why does that sound so much cooler than "going to europe?") prepping by watching european vacation and skipping deodorant. (kidding!) briefly thought about doing what cartoonists do when they go on vacation and print previously published comics. but i don't think this blog's archives are all that extensive or exciting. what i can promise is a wealth of blog fodder after braving london and paris by myself. giggling just thinking about the potential disasters i could get into.