Route 187

The weather has been a bit icky the past week which has dampered some of energy to get out and about.  About a week ago Cory and I were talking about how great the weather has been and how lucky we've been to not have to walk in the rain to work.  Well, low and behold it does rain in London and it rains a lot.  I learned my lesson the hard way walking home from work on Friday.  I was not wearing proper rain foot wear and had wet socks about 5 minutes into the walk.  Nothing is worse than wet socks.  Lesson learned.

We were going to stay home Friday night because of the weather, but I think we all needed to get out of the house.  We decided to take the 187 bus to the O2 Centre.  A co-worker had recommended us going, but we hadn't had the chance yet and to be honest we didn't really know were we were headed when we got on the bus.  The 187 was a beautiful find.  First, the O2 Centre is actually not that far from our house.  We had almost walked there several times, but had not realized if we walked about 2 blocks further we would run into two full size grocery stores and about 5 restaurants.  It didn't exactly qualify as a mall in my opinion, but there is a movie theatre, several stores, restaurants and the big grocery store. 

We started by enjoying dinner at Nando's which is a Brazilian restaurant that had multiple locations around London.  Please don't judge my culinary sophistication by the statement, but I love chains.  They are predictable.  There is nothing better than walking into a chain knowing that regardless of where you are at it will taste the same.  Perfect example, on our trip to Cairo, Egypt a few years ago we ate at Chili's, Hard Rock Cafe, McDonald's.  Nando's did not disappoint.  Great chicken, fries with special seasoning, grilled corn, fabulous fountain pop, great kid's ice cream dessert.  Just Brilliant!

After dinner, the real excitement started, our walk through the giant Sainsbury.  They had everything, well almost everything.   One whole long aisle devoted just to yogurt, more than three kinds of cereal, a true meat counter, shopping carts!  After the last six weeks of shopping at our tiny grocery store this was amazing.  The only issue is we are still limited by what we can carry in our hands.  We enjoyed the sensory experience, but left with two small sacks.  Online grocery shopping is our reality for the next year, but it's good to know we can get the grocery store experience if we need to.

On Saturday we stayed around our area.  We picked up lunch at a really good deli called Plan 9.   The owner is American and noticed Cory's Iowa shirt.  They have tracked where all of the American visitors are from and Iowa was one of 5 states that had not been marked yet.  Cory decided to count himself as an Iowan and marked the map.   The weather was nice until mid-afternoon so we took advantage of the outdoors since it was expected to rain and spent the afternoon at the park.