This year on Thanksgiving I discovered a hipster bookshop in London.  This shop featured titles like “Anybody’s Fixed Gear Manual” and “Its Lonely in the Modern World,” a recently-released spinoff from the blog Unhappy Hipsters, which is very funny and I wish I’d thought of it.  Given that most people here don’t know what a hipster is, I thought this was a notable development.

When I got back to Cambridge, Ian and I went to the Cambridge Blue Pub (one of our 6 pubs in a two-block radius.  Cambridge has a 1 pub for every 1000 people, and they’re everywhere.  We went to this pub, as opposed to any other, because they advertised a Thanksgiving special.

It was a good effort.  It was nice to try a new place, though, especially since they carry “microbrews” like Sierra Nevada, which is brand new to England and regarded as pretty fancy.  Besides, just look at this place:

How cute is it?  I’ve been meaning to put together a post of photos about how cute this place is.  And as I write its both grey and sunny out, something that happens a lot here and that I find indescribably beautiful.  Because the experience was so cute I won’t comment on the quality of the food.

Anyway.  On Friday we went to London to have dinner with a giant cohort of expat Americans and their children.  Ian and I got to navigate between the kids’ table (where we sat because there were 2 seats left and everyone younger than we are had sat down) and the adults’ table.  I genuinely enjoyed the kids’ table, since I used to spend a lot of time with teenagers and don’t get to anymore, and we learned valuable lessons about which UK pizza joint to eat (although these kids consider Domino’s edible…)

We were hosted by some childhood friends of my dad.  They moved to London when there were exactly my age intending to stay a year…and they’re still there, living in a house older than the US that makes me long for the days when I’m a real grownup, so I can live in a place like that.  They put together an amazing traditional meal for twenty people and allowed Ian and me to stay the night, which was perfect because I got to eat pie for breakfast the next morning, and also because it was the first time I’d seen then in a couple years and I was pleased to get to see them a  bit more, and as we were headed out the door Barbara found a ridiculous photo of my mother from 1995, which was just that much extra to be thankful for.

In the afternoon we went to see Ruddigore at the Barbican, which was also running an exhibit on Rem Koolhaas.  If you want to read my rant on all the reasons you shouldn’t go see this exhibit, you can find it at the geography blog I share with my sister, Ink and Compass.  Also, stay tuned for photos of Tel Aviv, Hampstead Heath, and my cooking misadventures.