Planning, planning, planning

Last night, Matt whispered the most beautiful thing into my ear: “Meg, we’re on vacation. Let’s not set an alarm.” It might have been the greatest thing he’s ever said.

I woke up, blow dried my clothes (I should have just paid the 20 pound to get it laundered, but I’m cheap and creative. However, my clothes are still damp, and it's been over 24 hours), and started making plans for the day. One plan included googling restaurants near our location, and when doing so, I found out something pretty interesting; there are a lot of Indian restaurants in London. In a horribly complex move (read:paint) I made the Indian restaurants near us blue, just to give you an idea. This is really exciting, as I love Indian food, until I remembered that Matt would balk at the menu and probably just eat 10lbs of naan. 

Once Matt got up, we got ready and headed to a pub called Prince Arthur. There we had our beers: Grolsch for me, which was kind of like a Heineken, and Guinness for Matt. They asked Matt if he wanted his beer "cold or regular," so I am guessing that it isn't customary for them to serve Guinness chilled.

 Matt wanted to go to the pub because he heard that there were roasts on Sunday. We didn't really know what that meant at the time, but apparently it means that they make a roast beef and serve it alongside vegetables, roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. This wasn't nearly as exciting as the image I had in my mind of a pig roasting on a spit, but it works. Matt really liked the Yorkshire pudding, broccoli and potatoes, but thought his roast beef was tough, and had me eat his cauliflower, which I didn't mind at all.

I ordered their Steak and Mushroom Pie with mash and onion gravy. It was okay. The mash and gravy were pretty awesome, but I hated the texture of the mushrooms and thought the whole pie was kind of bland. The mushrooms were super thick, hard and had a bizarre flavor, so I ended up picking around them, which was a shame as I love mushrooms.

After brunch, we went to the Welcome Collection, which is a mix between a museum and ever changing art exhibit. We learned about the Art of Dying, Obesity, Malaria, Genomes, The Body and Medicine throughout History. It was a pretty interesting collection of exhibits. The Body exhibit had an interactive model of the human body where you pushed a button labeled with a body part, and the corresponding body part lit up within the model. Matt, of course, quizzed me on my knowledge, and I, of course, just wanted to push buttons and watch it light up. The Body exhibit also had a booth where it took your picture, asked you a few questions, and then composed a compiled picture of everyone who fit into the categories you selected. Matt's beard threw off the entire compilation. It was interesting to note that, the average non-exercising, carnivorous, fast food eating, under 40 smoker was more attractive, and thinner, than the frequently exercising, vegetarian, non-fast food eating, under 40 nonsmoker. This has reinforced my love for my carnivorous, under-exercised life style. Also, the machine would find "similar matches" to your facial features and show you pictures of those people in the database whom you "matched". The woman before us had approximately 20 matches. Matt had two, including a black man. I didn't have a single match. Not one. Apparently, I am special.

After looking around the exhibits for a couple hours, we headed back to the hotel to plan our trip for tomorrow. While planning out our activities, Matt said the last thing any fattie or foodie wants to hear: "How about we skip lunch and just do dinner tomorrow? I'd like to fit in extra museums during that time." I swear a little piece of me died inside. At 9pm, we skyped for a bit with family, which definitely raised our spirits. I think we've spent just a little too much time together. After skyping, we headed to the train station for dinner. I know that sounds weird, but a lot of things are closed on Sundays, even more so after 10pm, but we knew there would be something open, like a Burger King, which was delicious. 

I had a Whopper, small fry and small Diet Coke, and Matt had a hamburger plain (boring), a large fry and a large Coke. At this point I was so hungry that I could have eaten a boot and thought it tasted wonderful, so you could only imagine how amazing the fatty goodness of a Whopper was. 

So now we're back in the hotel room, re-routing our trip for tomorrow as our previous plan was "financially irresponsible" to execute with a prepaid day pass. It's a good thing he fed me, that all I've got to say about that.