London...Pt 2 Grocery Shopping

So the first thing we did was go to the hotel and take a long nap. I am sure we only got up to eat. There was a really nice shopping center next to us at Canary Wharf so we went there, We had some really good hamburgers with actual green chili! I was not expecting that in England. We had to have chips, of course, and they were wonderful.
   It was too late to do anything but explore the mall a little so we did that and found a grocery store and got a few drinks to take back. It is so fun to look at different supermarkets. The drinks alone were so different I could spend 20 minutes looking at them. I got a Scottish soda with a cult following called Irn Bru.   It was pretty darn good. Kind of like a fizzy sweet tart. We also tried a new drink called Coke Life. It has stevia and half or 1/3 of the sugar in regular Coke. It was good and I hope America gets it because it is a little less evil than regular Coke.   There were tons of drinks with either currents or elderflowers added to it. England seems to love these ingredients because they put them in all kinds of things. I need to try this because it seems popular.

They do seems to have a lot of healthy breads for less money than America but with the exchange rate of pounds to dollars it is hard to tell. I do love that there is very little High fructose corn syrup and GMO products here. There are a few recognizable brands here, like cereal, but I am not sure if they are made with the GMO corn and wheat like in America so I am just avoiding them. I don't need the carbs, anyway.
     One of the most fascinating differences was that the eggs were sold on the shelf instead of the refrigerator. They vaccinate the chickens here against salmonella so they are able to do that. They probably do not wash the eggs either which is better to keep the eggs fresh. The different kinds of eggs available was also a surprise. They had several different kind of chicken eggs, not just white or brown, but different breeds. 
They also had duck eggs for sale, You definitely do not see that in America grocery stores.
 They also seem to mostly sell them in 6 packs not by the dozen.
 The abundance of organ meat, different kinds of animal fats like duck, goose and tallow are also readily available. This is so awesome for a cook who wants to try new things. Let me tell you...Potatoes cooked in duck fat is AMAZING!! The next installment will contain restaurant details and tales of our site-seeing.

London Baby!!

Well we made it to London. The plane trip was not too bad for me but My poor Son Jack totally got the bad end of the stick. He was sitting next to a pretty girl and then she was moved to put some smelly, coughing Hugely fat mom and her daughter. The daughter had to ask jack to help her several times because the mom totally ignored her. Poor Jack!
   Still, we got to London at 6 Am and got a very expensive van to take us to our hotel. Then I found out that the stupid Marriott doesn't give you points if you go through a travel site like Expedia. I am pretty mad about that I plan on calling Marriott on it. The only other downside is not having free internet but otherwise the hotel was very nice.

The Canary Wharf Marriott

View from the Hotel

Another view from the hotel

More tomorrow...

My Never-ending To Do List...

OMG, I am never going to get all this stuff done. I have cleaned this house for hours and it just seems to get more dirty! My To Do list is never ending. Here is a sample:
Pack for Me, Jack, Mason
Get enough Dog, cat and turtle food to last 2 weeks,

Wash the laundry, fold, decide what to pack, donate or put away
Go to the store for anything we need (A Lot) Especially new clothes for the kids.

Clean the kitchen
Clean the fridge in the garage and turn off
Make sure neighbor knows how to take care of the animals
Get medicine refills
call the bank and credit cards to tell them we are going
Haircuts

Dentist
Doctor visits
And it goes on and on. I am trying to get the kids to help and this is the look I get:

 Still, even though I am close to losing it, I know in 35 hours when I am on the flight I will just have to say I did the best I could.
I am sharing my bed with 2 suitcases and lots of plastic bags of stuff I need to take. Also there is a cat in every suitcase. It is so nice of them to make sure we have their hair on everything so we don't miss them too much. I will have to make sure there are no actual cats inside any of these bags. I don't want to have trouble at customs!