The Fourth Abroad

Though I may be in red coat territory, I did my fair share of celebrating America’s Independence Day. I kicked off my weekend of birthday festivities in Hyde Park with two fellow expats at the O2 Wireless Music Festival. I rushed straight from work to meet a friend of mine from WashU (who had called that morning with news he had extra tickets! HOORAY!) and a friend of his, coincidentally from New England himself. Among the three tents worth of performing artists we managed to catch two of my favorites: David Guetta followed by the Black Eyed Peas!! It was massively worth braving the immense, bordering insane, crowds: two amazing shows. Before leaving the park we stopped by for a complimentary crepe, made with love especially by a girlfriend of mine who had been flipping those thin flapjacks for hours on end – she is quite a pro now I must say.

And since by this point it was 11:00pm and none of us had truly had any dinner we opted to celebrate the red, white, and blue with a quite All-American spread at Byron’s Burger on Earl’s Court: a burger each, fries, onion rings, mac and cheese, all to be shared, and oreo milkshakes – of course! Quite satisfied I then fell into bed.

Sunday, in an effort to imagine myself at a pool, or lake, or ocean stateside, I took a dip my building’s Jacuzzi – clad in my most patriotic swimsuit.

And for the real deal day I sported (with quite a lot of pride) an American flag t-shirt borrowed from my mom’s closet before I jumped across the pond (see photo). I had to work, though my colleagues were quite amenable to my slightly aggressive ensemble, but also to my “America Rocks” attitude all day long. After I finished for the day I ran home to change into a slightly more stylish, but equally patriotic outfit to meet my godmother, a New York native, for dinner. We took a slightly more gourmet approach to Independence Day this year: burgers and fries at the wonderfully chic Bar Bouloud in the Mandarin Hotel on Knightsbridge. After a chocolate mint dessert that had me floating on cloud 9 I met some younger Yankees on King’s Road at Henry J Beans for celebrations and plenty of tunes honoring the stars and stripes.

Overall, while I still wish I had been stateside yesterday, I think I did a fairly decent job celebrating in the enemy’s territory. Hope you all had a HAPPY HAPPY FOURTH as well. God Bless the USA.

Keep your eyes pealed for some back blogging on my trips to Paris and Cambridge last month…