Sunday in England

Sunday was a nice, quiet day.  Emily and I spent the morning looking at things we'd be doing in London the next day, catching up on emails, blogs and Facbeook.  Early afternoon we piled into the car with Stella and headed over to the beach.

There was a big wide concrete boardwalk type thing up above the beach area.  The water is the English Channel.  Along the boardwalk were these beach huts.  Hundreds of them.  People own them and they keep their beach stuff inside.  They bring their cold things in a cooler, but keep everything else in there.  They were originally built in the early 1900s for women to have a place to change into their bathing suit.  Since it was unacceptable for women to be seen in their 'bathing costume' they would change in there and run out into the water. 

Each town has different rules on the huts, just like an HOA would.  Some are more colorful and elaborate than others, and a lot of that is determined by the rules of the town. 

They are passed down through the family and very hard to come by.  When they do sell, they go for 10s of thousands of pounds.  Some have been rumored to sell for L100,000!! 

See them all!! 

Stella had a great day running and chasing with all of the other dogs who were out on the beach that day. 

Once we walked all the way to the end, out on the dock, played a couple of games at the arcade and walked back, it was time to head back to their house to drop off the pup.  That evening we went up to the town of Manningtree, which is where E and D first lived when they moved over to England 3 years ago.  Manningtree was known as the smallest town in England before it joined with some neighboring parishes.  

Apparently the beautiful swans are always here...they look so calm and nice...

Oh how I was mistaken...

He wasn't very happy with me taking pictures of him...so we moved on...

This is the pub that they used to visit often when they lived here...they just lived up the street.  It used to be owned by a friend of theirs.  It even had a doggy happy hour menu...

We had Indian for dinner at The Mogul.  It was the first time I'd ever had Indian, so D helped order for me.  It was so different, and very good.  It was specifically Bangladeshi Indian.   I wrote down the names of everything we had and am I'm piecing it together using their menu online. I had the chicken balti, which is cooked in a balti, a British style of curry cooked in a thin, pressed steel wok-like pan.  It was cooked with butter, tomatoes, green chilies and fresh herbs.  D got the chicken dopiaza - the sauce of this dish has roasted onions, green peppers and coriander with fresh herbs and a medium thick sauce.  He gave me some of his, which I actually liked better than the balti.  You eat the meats with rice - I got the mushroom rice.  It was all delicious.  We shared the sag bhaji, which is basically fried spinach.  We also had 2 different nans, which is like a pita bread.  The garlic was good, but I liked the the peshwari nan better - it almost had the flavors of kettle corn.  It was sweet and very good.  I'd like to find a good Indian restaurant here in DC because I would really like to try other dishes. 

Another evening full of wonderful, rich food and we were ready for bed.  A little FaceTime with husband back at home and we all hit the sack.  Em and I were off to London in the morning!