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triskellianIt feels like the land of the IHOP, anyway. Just after writing my last entry, I went there for lunch (Eggs Benedict - rather nice, but too much gloopy Hollandaise. And I like lots of gloop on my food ;-), and then we went back there for dinner in the evening (I think ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smiorgan was envious that I'd been without him). He had some sort of burger sandwich thing, and I had 'shrimp'1, which came with salad or soup. Soup as a side dish? That's a bit strange. But it wasn't a side dish, but a sort of semi-starter, in that it came before the rest of the food, and I hadn't finished it when the rest arrived. In fact, I didn't finish anything, so it's a good thing smiorgan's didn't come with side dishes, so he had space to finish mine. The next morning, he wanted to go back for breakfast, but I drew the line at three IHOP meals in a row, so we ate in the hotel instead. "Continental breakfast" = "help yourself to bagels, toast, doughnuts and muffins". Not a croissant in sight. But the bread for toasting included fruit bread, and there was tea available (although it was Earl Grey and Darjeeling, and the water was only warm), so in the end I had exactly the same for breakfast as I usually do at home ;-) And we went back to IHOP for breakfast this morning, of which more later.
Yesterday was the day I'd arranged to meet up withonxyblue1, the_original1 and their offspring, so after I'd dropped smiorgan off for his day's swordplay, I set off into the unknown, heading for a town called Lake Geneva and a restaurant called Popeye's. The town looks like a theme park representation of an American2 town centre downtown3, but it's very pretty, and sits right on the lake of the same name. This one definitely is a lake, unlike Lake Michigan - you can see the other side and everything - but it still had a beach, although I didn't come prepared, and it was in any case far too hot to leave the shade for that long. onxyblue1 and I had described what we were wearing on the phone that morning, and she'd predicted some days in advance what the_original1 would be wearing, so recognising each other turned out to be a simple matter of me looking up from my book to find them approaching, and it was all perfectly obvious. Popeye's served some more slightly peculiar food, but I wasn't the only one surprised to find macaroni in the potato salad, so I think that's a peculiarity of the restaurant rather than the country as a whole ;-) Edit: and the steak in my steak sandwich was rare. Actually rare, not medium as it usually is in the UK, regardless of how you ask for it. Not quite the French bleu, which is my favourite, but still pretty damned good :-)
The comedy highlight of the whole day was a series of knock knock jokes told by Things 1 and 24. My favourite went something like this:
Knock knock
Who's there?
Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness Monster who?
Yep, that's it. Although possibly it was related to the later incident when a huge scary animal roared right behind my head, but when I turned round there was no one behind me except Thing 2 ;-)
Anyway, I've started trying to convince the Thing parents to come over to the UK, soonxyblue1 can get her revenge on me by being surprised how small everything is, and how strange our food is ;-)
Sadly, I had to leave too early to fit in a boat ride around the lake, but there was time for ice cream (when is there not time for ice cream?), including some scary scary scary colours - the Things had "Superman" flavour, which was eye-watering shades of blue, pink and yellow, and which they managed to get everywhere, much to my amusement.
I left their parents trying to turn them back into normal people-coloured children, and drove back to Racine for the ceremonial feast of the WMAW, which I'll write about next.
1That's another one for your list,onxyblue1 - what you call shrimp is what we call 'prawns'.
2Why does "American" mean those from the USA, rather than any other part of the two continents? Do Canadians and Brazilians and so on feel hard done by?
3Another for the list.
4I'm following their parents' convention here, of not using their names. The-child-you-might-expect-to-be-called-Thing-3 actually gets an initial, but since her siblings have the same initial as each other, clearly some other approach is needed for them ;-)
smiorgan was envious that I'd been without him). He had some sort of burger sandwich thing, and I had 'shrimp'1, which came with salad or soup. Soup as a side dish? That's a bit strange. But it wasn't a side dish, but a sort of semi-starter, in that it came before the rest of the food, and I hadn't finished it when the rest arrived. In fact, I didn't finish anything, so it's a good thing smiorgan's didn't come with side dishes, so he had space to finish mine. The next morning, he wanted to go back for breakfast, but I drew the line at three IHOP meals in a row, so we ate in the hotel instead. "Continental breakfast" = "help yourself to bagels, toast, doughnuts and muffins". Not a croissant in sight. But the bread for toasting included fruit bread, and there was tea available (although it was Earl Grey and Darjeeling, and the water was only warm), so in the end I had exactly the same for breakfast as I usually do at home ;-) And we went back to IHOP for breakfast this morning, of which more later.Yesterday was the day I'd arranged to meet up with
onxyblue1, the_original1 and their offspring, so after I'd dropped smiorgan off for his day's swordplay, I set off into the unknown, heading for a town called Lake Geneva and a restaurant called Popeye's. The town looks like a theme park representation of an American2 onxyblue1 and I had described what we were wearing on the phone that morning, and she'd predicted some days in advance what the_original1 would be wearing, so recognising each other turned out to be a simple matter of me looking up from my book to find them approaching, and it was all perfectly obvious. Popeye's served some more slightly peculiar food, but I wasn't the only one surprised to find macaroni in the potato salad, so I think that's a peculiarity of the restaurant rather than the country as a whole ;-) Edit: and the steak in my steak sandwich was rare. Actually rare, not medium as it usually is in the UK, regardless of how you ask for it. Not quite the French bleu, which is my favourite, but still pretty damned good :-)The comedy highlight of the whole day was a series of knock knock jokes told by Things 1 and 24. My favo
Knock knock
Who's there?
Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness Monster who?
Yep, that's it. Although possibly it was related to the later incident when a huge scary animal roared right behind my head, but when I turned round there was no one behind me except Thing 2 ;-)
Anyway, I've started trying to convince the Thing parents to come over to the UK, so
onxyblue1 can get her revenge on me by being surprised how small everything is, and how strange our food is ;-)Sadly, I had to leave too early to fit in a boat ride around the lake, but there was time for ice cream (when is there not time for ice cream?), including some scary scary scary colours - the Things had "Superman" flavo
I left their parents trying to turn them back into normal people-colo
1That's another one for your list,
onxyblue1 - what you call shrimp is what we call 'prawns'.2Why does "American" mean those from the USA, rather than any other part of the two continents? Do Canadians and Brazilians and so on feel hard done by?
3Another for the list.
4I'm following their parents' convention here, of not using their names. The-child-you-might-expect-to-be-called-Thing-3 actually gets an initial, but since her siblings have the same initial as each other, clearly some other approach is needed for them ;-)
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 09:45 pm (UTC)Depends where you eat. But most places in the UK are doing you a favour by refusing to serve rare meat, because we don't have much good meat here in the first place. <insert mad cow joke of choice here>
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 09:33 pm (UTC)If that's your concern, cooking won't help, because it doesn't reliably damage the BSE prion.
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Date: 2005-09-13 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 10:32 pm (UTC)Is Dr. Seuss at all popular in Britain? Or do we have you all wondering just why we call our children Things?
You don't need to convince us. We just need to have the airfare for five and the time off from work. I used up all of my available time off with my maternity leave, and I can't remember . . . I think by this time next year I'll have accrued another week of vacation. I'm pretty sure it's not two.
We don't have quite the liberal national time-off policies that Canada, Britain, and European countries do. In fact, employers don't have to offer any time off, except for medical reasons or military service.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 09:31 pm (UTC)I can't speak for anyone else, though.
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Date: 2005-09-12 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 06:38 am (UTC)We call ourselves British, rather than United Kingdomians or something... which strictly speaking I guess is treading on the toes of the Manx and Bretons in the same sort of way.
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-09-12 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 10:03 pm (UTC)I'm from Illinois, but I seem to use "y'all" an awful lot more when I'm speaking with foreigners, especially Brits.:-P
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Date: 2005-09-12 08:09 am (UTC)*runs screaming from the wet food*!
no subject
Yes, Thing 2 can be enthusiastic.