Tales from the Trip: London/Paris (Fish (head) n'Chips)

Five years ago we took the kids to London and Paris. I was not writing a blog back then so I didn't chronicle our adventures. I wish I had. There were many. I know as time moves on it gently erases the details of what I thought would be indelible memories. So in the interest of preserving some great stories that deserve to be archived because they are part of Traversi family lore, here is the first of what will likely be many "Tales from the Trip: London/Paris edition".

Picture the four Traversis wandering somewhat aimlessly about London. It's not that we don't have a destination. We do. We are heading to a pub for our first dinner in London. We are heading to a specific pub, by the way. We're not just out looking for any random dining location.

The thing is, we are afraid to use our cell phones. We got international plans before we left. But does anyone really understand international plans? Data, roaming, wi-fi, LTE... it's like a different language. And we've heard stories of people who get what they think are great international plans only to come home to a whopping bill anyway.

So we're trying to be very prudent with our phone usage. Prudent, in this case, means that we have a place we want to go but we don't want to use navigation tools to get there. Or at least we don't want to use them more than necessary.

We have general directions, but we end up lost. So we cave and turn on "maps" to figure out our next move. Maps confidently leads us into a dark alley in a sketchy part of London. We make it out and eventually to our pub, which turns out to be a rollicking establishment full of young professionals who seem to be cutting loose on a Friday night. We are a family of four. So fitting right in...

And the fun doesn't stop there! We order fish n'chips. Because England.

It turns out that the English version of this dish is ever-so-slightly different than the American one. Theirs should perhaps be called "An Entire Fish n'Chips". Because you get the WHOLE fish, deep fried. The head. The eyes. The fins. The gills. The tail. It's all there for you to enjoy. Yum.

You can only imagine what our reaction is as the dish is served. Picture four people madly looking from one to another to another and then at the waitress and then back at each other... and then hysterical laughter.

And it came with some lovely warm beer. Welcome to England!

I honestly cannot remember how much of that fish got eaten. We are all pretty adventurous eaters, but I think that particular dish may have been our Rubicon (in this scenario we are not Julius Caesar but rather the fraidy-cats who would not cross the river with him).

I don't have any grand ending for this story. I wish we had a picture of the fish but we didn't think to take one, so here is a stock photo that looks pretty much like our dinner. Enjoy!