European Wanderlusting: The Cat/Bunny Says: "Indulge!!"

So today was a day that needs to be told in reverse. Addressing the most important part and working backwards. Sometimes an experience occurs in your life and you look back at all the steps that led you to that point and you see how each little piece fit perfectly together to culminate in a life-changing moment. This is a slightly melodramatic way of putting this event. But, I do feel that we had a great chance meeting that will affect the way we decide to sculpt our life paths.

Earlier this week Erica and I were taken to dinner by our two friends, Rich and Ines. To a little Italian place in Golder's Green. The man who owned the restaurant took a liking to us and told us to stop by again before we left for the U.S. on Thursday. We then ventured out a few nights later and happened by the restaurant again as the man was standing outside. He greeted us warmly again and told us we must come by again. He is a delightful old Italian man and we decided we would have to oblige and stop in again. Besides maybe he'd give us free booze?? He did seem to love us for whatever reason. So tonight we decided we were over the frozen pizza we had in our fridge and wanted to go out to dinner. We figured we might as well go to the Italian place since it was delicious and he was so insistent that we return. Half-way to the restaurant we nearly detoured and got Fish N' Chips instead. A more traditional English meal. But for some reason decided to dash across the street...barely missing the cars as usual...and eat at the Italian place.

We didn't have any cash on us and were just going to make sure they took card. Which they did so we decided to stay. We got there and the hostess told us we could sit wherever we wanted. It's more of a little cafe than a restaurant so there weren't many options, but we looked around and settled on a little table outside in the corner. We instantly regretted that decision. There was a table of loud, drunk Italians next to us and we kept exchanging looks throughout the meal when they would burst into particularly loud and unbearable laughter. Midway through our meal though the woman leans over and says "Where are you girls from? I can't quite place it." We're use to people commenting on our accents by now so we just say "California" and wait for her to make her assumptions about us. She just says "Oh that makes perfect sense. I use to live in NY and your accents are nothing like theirs!" We laughed and then she went back to her company and we went back to our conversation. Something about the cats...most likely.

We finished our food and then I ventured to the bathroom and when I returned Erica was chatting with the Italian woman. I sat down and started listening to her share about her travels and thoughts on life. She's a genius! She is a travelling musician and writer and seems like she knows everything about everything! She's a Libra....our first assumption was a Sag...but after talking to her we saw her Libra side come out. She spoke to us all about what a terrible job our governments were doing in fulfilling their job. To protect and provide for their people. She recommended a movie to us "Wag the Dog". It's about a government who starts a war elsewhere to distract it's people from all the shit their doing back at home. Sound familiar?

Anyway...then she proceeded to tell us about living in Cambodia and travelling all over southeast Asia and Europe. She had advice for us since we are planning on travelling absolutely everywhere! She then asked about ourselves and once she found out we were interested in Anthro and Environmental Sciences and holistic medicine she told us all about different places in Europe and Asia that teach those kinds of things. She literally could be our mentor/guru/advisor. She is everything we want to be! Absolutely fascinating. After we talked for quite some time she gave us her e-mail and number and asked for ours and told us to contact her and she'd give us a ton of helpful information, as well as a place to stay if we ever needed it. She has places all over the world. Holy shit! Fate? Thanks! We literally had just been talking earlier about how we needed to make connections that would enable us to travel and learn as much as possible. There was so much more to the conversation, but it was too intricate to really recreate it for the blog. Basically we just feel incredibly lucky that we met someone who has so much (knowledge, experience, material things) and is willing to share that with complete strangers just because she liked what we had to say. Amazing!

I'll let Erica fill you in on the rest of our day....the other part wasn't too eventful because we didn't wake up until 1 again. Had to sleep off the wine! And here we are again at 2:30am still not sleeping. Looks like tomorrow is gonna be another late starting day. Dammit. I think I'm gonna pass out...Erica looks a little more peppy than I do...hopefully she'll be more entertaining!

Thanks, girl! Well told, I couldn't have said it better if I tried. Thus I shan't. Instead I shall give a brief summary of our day before that life-changing encounter with our new idol, interspersed with photos of the adventures... Plus one from a couple of days ago that doesn't really go along with this blog, but that I'm including anyway because I think it's cute.

We started off the day by taking a lovely little walk to the Hamstead Heath. We brought sandwiches with us and had a little picnic on a giant hill overlooking London. On the walk through the greenery of the heath I discovered my new favorite tree. Isn't she glorious?!

This little guy is pretty amazing too

After all the tree adoring and sandwich eating we decided to take a short tube ride into Central London. We made the Tate Modern our first stop. We had been wanting to go for the last few days but things kept coming up like us sleeping in and only having an hour or two to get there, or that time it was Sunday and we woke up really late and it was already closed. The Tate Modern, one of four Tate Museums in Britain, is known specifically for it's international modern art. We were there for about two hours and visited three of the five floors before they closed. Which is a lot considering how massive the building it. There were many pieces of work that moved us, some that inspired us, and a couple that kind of scared us. Art <3>