Our First Weekend

Our first weekend in Reading went quite well. As it turns out, one of Russell's friends from college (Matt) is in London on business, so he came and visited us this weekend.
For the most part we walked all over Reading. Here's what we were up to:

First, we contacted Matt in London. This didn't happen until afternoon on Saturday, so it was late afternoon before he made it into town. Once he got here, we headed out on a stroll to explore a bit further into Reading proper. We ended up finding the Kennet on Avon canal and following that through neighborhoods to the Thames. This seemed like quite the hike at the time, but we've since learned better.

Once we got back into town we decided to try the Indian food place near our apartment (which we had miraculously discovered only a block away by walking THE OTHER DIRECTION on the street our apartment is on. It was truly an Earth shattering moment for us. We were so close to good food (and pubs, and a huge old church etc) but hadn't noticed yet. In any case, we went to the Indian restaurant but found it was closed for another 20 minutes, so we hopped into a local public house and had a pint while we waited. Once the restaurant opened, we headed in and were treated to an excellent spread of Indian food. High marks for this restaurant, we will definitely go back.

We ended the day doing laundry and hanging out at home. Some of the highlights included learning how to use the laundry machine, realizing just how long it took to do laundry using said machine and eating treacle sponge from a can. First the laundry. I assumed a washing machine would take 30 minutes. With this in mind, I threw some towels in to clean around 9:00pm - assuming there would be plenty of time for Matt to get his cloths washed before bed. Two loads, three hours. It was something else. We had a good time while we waited, though, including eating the can of treacle sponge cake I had bought at the grocery store the first day. I had been completely unaware that treacle was a real comestible (outside of Harry Potter books) until I saw a post about it on Slashfood (a food blog I read). According to Slashfood, Heinz makes a canned treacle sponge cake that is readily available in the UK - and so it was! As it turns out, its quite good. The treacle is a sort of grainy syrup that (at least in this context) is poured over a sponge cake.

All of the laundry was hung to dry, but we were fairly certain they wouldn't dry on their own without help, so we put them in the bathroom with the door closed and the heat turned up. This didn't work. This morning, the laundry was, perhaps, dryer than it would have been , but not so dry that you would want to wear it. This led to an experiment: can one BAKE clothing? Turns out, you can! We set the oven to a low temperature and put the towels (as showers were the first order of business) on a pan. It took the towels a long time because I was nervous about turning the heat up, but once we moved from 50C to 75C, things went much better. The towels were still a bit damp, but useable. From now on, however, I will try to just do laundry long before I need it and let it dry on the rack. A lesson learned.

We hung around the apartment for a while and then set off on our next adventure - lunch followed by a hike to the University of Reading.

We had decided on where to eat lunch the day before. A pub around the corner from our apartment had a sign outside saying it served roast on Sundays. We went there today, and it was tasty. There were vegetables, a large thin slice of roast beef smothered in gravy and Yorkshire pudding. The meal also came with desert, but we opted out. Fortified by lunch and hard cider, we set out on the next leg of our journey - the University of Reading.

This turned out to be significantly farther away (and more uphill) than our previous walk to the Thames. It was worth it, though. The campus is spread out over quite a large piece of land. There are large swaths of grass and a small lake on the campus with short trails to walk along. We stopped several times to watch birds, some of which were alltogether new to us. As it turns out, swans seem to be rather common place along waterways here, as are ducks and canadian geese. We also watched a small, black water bird with a white beak and white tuft of feathers on its forhead build a nest in some low hanging branches on the water. As we rounded the pond, we came accross the family of water fowl pictured. They appear to be some sort of geese, but I'm not sure what kind.

The buildings are spotted all over the property and there are quite a few. They range from stately old buildings, such as the one shown, to the more modern, blocky brick buildings you often see on US campuses. I'll try to take more pictures later. The one I have posted here is a bit misleading because of its age and style. There were a handful of buildings like this, but the bulk of the university is looks about like any other university - just much more spread out. Buildings seemed to be in small clusters all around a remarkable green space.

All told we walked roughly a four mile loop. After we made it home, we just crashed for a bit, did crosswords, played on the computer, and rested until Matt returned to London. Tomorrow Russell heads back to work, so I'll have to figure out a plan of action for myself.