Magic Corn

 Today was another fun day out and about.  We woke up around noon, and headed to Reading, which is supposedly a great shopping town.  In order to get into town we had to take one of the trains.  Unfortunately we had a small issue in the fact that our American cards wouldn't work for the ticket machine, so we ended up missing the first train and had to wait around for another half hour before the next one arrived.  When we got on the train we still didn't have a ticket, but luckily the man checking the tickets let us buy some on the train.
When we arrived the weather was not great...there were slight showers, but nothing too terrible.  However, we found out that the weather in Washington is amazing, so we are definitely missing that!  After walking through the streets of Reading we noticed a Thai restaurant called "Thai Corner"!  Interestingly enough, this is the first Thai restaurant we had seen in England, so it reminded us a little of home, where the Thai restaurants are everywhere!

Tom Yum Magic Corn

 While we were walking through the streets we also saw a milkshake restaurant where the list of shakes were....infinite, popular candy shakes, chocolate, fruit, healthy, biscuits, cake, and even more.  We kept this place in mind because we had the hopes of going back before we headed back home.  Feeling a little peckish, we began searching for food (since we had woken up so late, all we had had was cereal, and at this time it was about 5 pm).  Since our trip last summer to Germany, Tyler and I had been CRAVING doener, and luckily, there are plenty of kebab restaurants in England to satisfy our craving.  So today we were on the search for a kebab place.  While we were searching, we came across a corn stand in the middle of a mall...strange you may thing, so did we.  But this corn came in a number of flavors (original, lemon, pizza, BBQ, curry, tom yum, cheese, sour cream and onion, tomato and much more).  We were being our typical selves, so decided on the Tom Yum.  The guy who ran the stand shoveled out some corn, then mixed it with some powder and voila, we had magic corn.  It was AMAZING!! Literally one of the best things we have ever tasted.  Why doesn't the US have anything like this?

Chicken and lamb kebabs

 After our little snack we continued searching for a place that sold kebabs.  We had spotted a kebab restaurant on our way to town from the train, but it was closed at that time.  Upon return it had opened.  This place looked legit, it had two gyrating logs of meat (lamb and chicken) and had a number of sauces. and shishas.  We wanted to save room for the shakes, so Tyler got a small lamb kebab (doener) with everything and the garlic sauce and I got chicken kebab (doener) with everything and the garlic sauce.   We both ate, and were in pure delight the whole time.  Although this restaurant only got a 3 out of 5 for the hygiene rating, we still thought that it was worth it.   It definitely bought us back to our wonderful infatuation with doeners in Germany.  Oh this place also had 2 arcade games, and one was specifically kebabesk, with a gyrating meat like object in the middle, and the goal was to see how fast you could slice the meat.  All in all we were satisfied.

awful hygiene rating

 After we were delighted and happy with doener in our tummies, we decided to go shopping.   To our horror, all of the stores were closed, or closing.  This came to a shock for us because in America you would find the shops being open later on Saturdays, but in Europe, the shops all close early Saturdays and Sundays.  Knowing that everywhere was closing we hurried to the shake place, but sadly enough it was closed:( I'm still a little upset about that...Anyway, before we got on the train, we got a cup of tea and almond croissant from a Costa Coffee.  When we got home we also had to try some cider that we bought up  the road.  This cider was tutti fruity flavored pear.  It was delicious.  Today has been another great day in England.