A short break in England

We called an Uber to take us from our hotel to the Paris North train station. It should have taken about 30 minutes but we had a very timid and very polite Uber driver who let every other car in Paris cut in. So an hour after we left we finally arrived at the Gare du Nord.

We checked in with Eurostar, waited somewhat patiently to be called for boarding, got on the train and had a fairly relaxing journey. Arriving at London St. Pancras, we walked to London King's Cross to get the train to Crawley where we'd be staying for the next 3 days. I had booked an Airbnb whose fine print said that if you were more than 20 minutes late arriving you would be charged a £50 fee. All well and good if the person, or in this case company, is good about communicating. Alas, our hosts were not, so although we weren't charged £50 we were kept waiting outside in the cold for almost 45 minutes for the host to send someone to let us into the building. The flat had some issues, a fallen curtain rod, no waste basket, no closet or hooks for clothes or coats and, the strangest one, no light bulbs in the bedside lamps.

We settle in as best we could then struck out to find a place for some dinner. Crawley is a small city close to Gatwick Airport, which is why we chose it. There are endless options for food but most of them were pretty unappealing. We finally stumbled upon a South Indian/Sri Lankan restaurant called Bojun and saw Indians eating there so assumed that the food must be good. (When I lived in NYC I was always told that if I was in Chinatown I should only eat at a restaurant where I saw Chinese people eating, so I've always used this as my metric.) Well, it turned out to be wonderful. The food was excellent and the manager, whose name was Lucky, was a charming host. I had the best thali!

We had such a nice time that we arranged to come back for lunch two days hence.

The next morning we were awakened by the construction going on next to the flat.

Happily, we had made plans for the day so we hopped on the train to Brighton, a city we visited last year. There's an area called The Lanes where all the hip shops and vintage boutiques are.

Bruce started his pub crawl and I veered off The Lanes and found Willow, the lovely little shop where I'd bought a great sweater the year before. I had a long chat with Sonia, one of the owners; we talked mostly about the upcoming election, touching on the usual points like "How can people be so stupid?!" I bought another sweater then headed back out to do some window shopping. No sooner was my foot out the door than it started raining. With an hour and a half to kill before our dinner reservations I tried to duck into every store that was open and looked appealing. I popped into a little bar I remembered called The Twisted Lemon when it started to pour down in earnest.

It's a tiny place that maybe seats 18 people.

Bruce joined me to kill some time. The good thing (?) about this bar is that the service is terrible so it usually takes 15 minutes or so for your cocktail to appear after ordering. That helped pass the time until we walked over to Terre a Terre, a fabulous award-winning vegetarian restaurant. We ordered the "Terre a Tapas" plate which features a range of dishes. My favorite was the Onigiri Oishii Kinoko, sushi rice with black sesame seed salt on mushroom and fresh ginger, with ume plum and tamari hash The Karekatsu Smoked Tofu, deep fried and basted with teriyaki was also amazing. You can check out the whole menu here. Any chef who thinks that vegan food has to be boring needs to come eat here. The service is always attentive and the mandarin and hibiscus cosmopolitan that I ordered was outstanding.

We decided to move to the Bloc hotel at Gatwick airport rather than stay a third night at the flat so the next morning were out by 11:00 and, with bags in tow, went back to Bojun. Lucky was, again, a wonderful host. I had a fish that was one of their specialties. It's marinated overnight in spices then quickly fried, then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. It was fabulous! Oh, and I had an Elephant House cream soda, a Sri Lankan favorite. After lunch, Lucky got out his guitar and played and sang, then we sang a duet together. It was great fun. He told us all about Sri Lanka and we told him he made it sound so appealing that we wanted to visit. He said, "No problem. You'll stay with my family and they'll take care of you. Then you can travel all over the island." Now that's what you call a generous host!

After lunch Lucky dragged our suitcases to the corner where our Uber driver picked us up. I think he was a race car driver in a former career because we made it in record time, tires squealing all the way. We checked into our teeny tiny hotel room at the Bloc hotel in Gatwick airport south terminal, ready to face our flight the next morning.