I promise we will soon post pics! In the meantime I thought I'd mention the food situation over here. Many of you already know that we are probably the world's pickiest family. The list of foods we won't eat is far longer than the list of foods we will eat. So coming to a new country has been an adventure.
In the near future we will have a car and access to a US military commissary where we can buy American food, in the meantime we've had to adjust. We eat out for at least one meal a day. We do go to British grocery stores, but in our temporary housing here we have a teeny, tiny refrigerator and freezer. Imagine the cabinet under your kitchen sink: one side of that (one door) would be the size of our fridge and the other side would be the size of our freezer. So it is difficult to keep a lot of perishable food. In addition, we walk everywhere so we can only purchase what we can physically carry home (we average 15 to 20 minutes each way to the grocery store).
Here in Cheltenham we do have a Pizza Hut (and Pizza Hut delivery), McDonald's, Subway, and Burger King. For the most part these restaurants taste the same as back in the US. We also found a pub that we really like and an Italian restaurant built inside a church.
The pub is interesting. It is a bar and a family restaurant all wrapped into one. You walk in the door to find a large old oak bar and lots of nooks and crannies filled with heavily upholstered booths, large leather chairs with tables, and regular tables and chairs. You pick a table/booth and look at the menu. The table has a number on it and when you're done looking at the menu you go up to the bar with that number. You order all your food at the bar and they bring it to your table when ready. It's really cool. For the most part the pub is very family friendly although I might not take the kids late Friday or Saturday night.
The Italian restaurant is called Zizzis and is not such a hit with the girls. But it is so interesting that it is worth going at least once. The entire restaurant is literally inside an old church. It is beautiful, but a little eerie. Even though I'm not a Catholic anymore, I do feel a little bit sacrilegious eating pizza cooked in a large stone oven that is currently standing where the alter once was. I keep looking up at the stained glass windows to be sure we're not going to get struck down by lightening!
Drinks - There is no real Mt. Dew on the British economy, but I can find it on base. The Sprite here is really called fizzy (anything carbonated is called fizzy) lemonade and if it is the Sprite name brand it is about the same just a little bit sweeter. Generic fizzy lemonade tastes very different I think but Nephi loves it. By the way our lemonade is called American lemonade. When ordering regular water you must say STILL water or you'll end up with fizzy, which is basically club soda. Tabitha, Hannah, and I have found a drink we absolutely love called Appletiser. It is basically Sparkling Apple juice like you find on holidays. We love it and it comes in glass bottles or even cans.
I'm now getting hungry! More to come later . . .
