London calling, Spain hauling and Paris not so appalling (in terms of craft beer)

We had to change up our annual guys-only Grown Ass Man Extravaganza (G.A.M.E.) road trip this year since the Titans were playing the L.A. Chargers in London, England, and there's no going to Europe without the wives, of course.   Ashlee and I made a full trip to Europe out of it with stops in London, the south of Spain, a day in Morocco, Paris and back to London.  I am happy to report that I found pretty good beer in every locale! 

10/19 -  Our trip got off to a thud with a five-hour delay for our direct flight from Nashville to London, so we went and killed some time with a late dinner at Nadeen's Hermitage Haven which has great food and a pretty good beer list.  With my tasty meal I had a can of The Great One double IPA from Four Sons Brewing (CA).  The name is in honor of Wayne Gretzky, but also describes this excellent beer.  I finished up with a solid Bed of Nails brown ale from Hi-Wire Brewing over in Asheville, NC.  

10/20 -  Welcome to LONDON!!!  The idea of staying above a pub was an early thought of mine when planning this trip and The Chamberlain Hotel and Pub fit the bill perfectly!  A great hotel and a pub open much later than most in London since it is part of a hotel.  It's a Fuller, Smith and Turner Brewery establishment and all though they are a fairly large beer producer located here in London, they are still considered a microbrewery and had some great small-batch brews on tap that I really enjoyed.  My first beer in London was a draft pint of their tasty Prodigal Saison.  

Did I mention our room had a fridge stocked with complimentary drinks including BEER!?  Man, I love this place!  As I unpacked I enjoyed a pretty good Frontier lager from F, S and T.    Back downstairs, we had dinner in the Chamberlain Pub I had their Session IPA  which was very good.  I also had a sip of Ashlee's Ginger Beer from Umbrella Brewing (England) which was a guest tap.

10/21 - I believe it was the modern-day poet, Jim Morrison of The Doors, who said, "I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer!"  I  wonder if he was in London when he wrote that?  I did just that this morning to toast Game Day in London.  This was our view from our room at The Chamberlain Hotel as I cracked open a complimentary ESB (Extra Special Bitter) from F,S and T that was in our fridge.   Cheers to a good day!  

The NFL Experience at Wembley Stadium is very well done.  There is something for everyone there even hours before the game was to begin.  The one thing it was sorely lacking was good craft beer.  It was either Budweiser (hard pass) or a cider to choose from inside the NFL Experience area.  I had a Magners Original Irish Cider that wasn't bad, but I am just not the biggest cider fan around.  We had to go back outside the stadium to actually find any interesting pre-game beer.

We found that interesting pre-(and post)-game beer and an innovative way of selling it quick and fast at a market called Butlers Fine Foods and Provisions near the stadium where the line ("the queue" if you're British) to the register was lined with baskets full of cold beer!  Genius! I started with a pint can of  the decent San Miguel lager made by mass-producer Carlsberg here in the UK, but at least it wasn't Budweiser!!  

Next up with a view of Wembley Stadium in the background was a pint can of Carling pale lager which is another mass-produced product of the UK arm of Molson-Coors.  It was decent cuz it was GAME DAY!! 

The beer lines were crazy inside the Wembley Stadium, so we just hung out in our great seats and watched the thrilling game where our Titans, as sizable underdogs, roared back to within 1 point of tying the game at the end and took a gamble on a 2-point conversion for the win with no time left that fell just short.  Still a helluva game and a helluva memory!  

After the game we drowned our sorrows and filled out bellies with food and drink while the crowds thinned out to get back on the subway back at Butlers Market.  I had a pint can of the pretty good Holsten Pilsener from Holsten-Brauerie, a macro-brewer in Hamburg, Germany.

"He's got this dream about buying some land. He's gonna give up the booze, and the one night stands.  And then he'll settle down in a quiet little town and forget about everything."  - from "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty  (RIP, good sir).  

Back at The Chamberlain Pub tonight, I toasted an Atlanta United victory back in the U.S. and enjoyed my last night in London for a while and at this great hotel/pub.  I started with a pint draft of Oliver's Island golden ale (photo above) from Fuller, Smith and Turner that was tasty.  I decided to run the rest of the F,S and T beer menu with half-pints that included the solid Red Fox red ale and the good Gale's Seafarers Ale which is an English bitter,. 

10/22 - We were flying from London's Gatwick Airport today to Malaga, Spain on the southern coast, but had a plane delay.  Luckily, we found some good food and beer at a Jamie Oliver Bar.  I had a very good Best Bitter from Theakston  Brewing (England).  

10/23 - Welcome to the sunny shores of Spain!  It was off season here, so we kind of had the beach to ourselves and I was able to order a Latino Limon Tinto de Verano  a Spanish craft fruit beer that was pretty good at a beach-side restaurant/bar called Pacos in the little town of Fuengirola outside Malaga.  At a supermarket on the way back to the hotel I found a couple of other Spanish canned beers to try. The Mahou Clasica pale lager (a macro-brewer out of Madrid) was OK. and the Cruzcampo Pilsen (from the Seville arm of Heineken) was a little better.  

10/24 - We took a day trip across The Strait of Gibraltar today to Tangiers, Morocco.  Our first time, technically, to ever set food in Africa!  I wasn't expecting to find any beer since the Muslims frown on alcohol of all types for the most part, but on the ferry coming back I had a delicious Casablanca pale lager a macro-brewery in Morocco.  

My favorite (looking) Spanish beer I found was a Victoria Malaga since it celebrated the city we flew into.  Unfortunately, the beer was not very good.  I bought a couple more Spanish beers at an Aldi Supermarket we found the night before we were leaving so I packed them to haul to Paris, our next location, where I was expecting a lot of craft beer opportunities. 

Probably gonna be a while before I claim another one of these badges.  

10/25 - Welcome to Paris!  The view from our hotel room was great.  This Spanish beer, the Cardenas Pale Ale, from a actual microbrewery in Seville just wasn't very good, unfortunately.  

Beer and  Bolognaise! We must be in Paris!  We stopped at a cool little cafe today called Le Saint Jean and I had my first couple of official beers in the City of Lights.   I had a less than stellar Pelforth Blonde pale lager which is made by the French arm of Heineken.

 I also had a good Affigem Blonde ale from the Belgian macro-brewer of the same name which made for a good artsy Instagram photo.  

Here's the charming little place where I had the two preceding beers as we walked back by it on a food tour later in the evening.  Just thought it was a good pic.  

10/26 - We found a little place for lunch today near our hotel called Chez Flottes and they had a decent craft beer selection.  I had a Metalman Pale Ale from Metalman Brewing (Ireland).  I bought another bottle of beer at Flottes and took it back to the room to have later.  It was Un Singe en Hiver (A Monkey in Winter) Vienna lager from Paname Brewing here in Paris and it was excellent.  My faith in Spanish craft beer was restored as I cracked open my last one bought at Aldi back in the Parisian hotel room.  The Tostada pale ale from Cervezas Mond Brewing (Seville) was very good.  

10/27 - The Frog Hop House brewpub was very close to our hotel and had been on my radar to visit while we were here, and I almost didn't get a chance to until today as we were getting ready to take the noon  train back to London.  Luckily, they opened at 9 AM and I was the first one in the door and able to try a breakfast half-pint of their very good Hopster pale ale.

Back in London this evening, we had dinner at the Ivy Market Grill restaurant before going to see the"Kinky Boots" musical on the famous West End.  They had a solid beer list and I had my favorite beer of the trip so far:  the hoppy and delicious Curious IPA from Curious Brewing (England).  

10/28 - Ashlee and I went our separate sight-seeing ways today and my friend, Danny and I, opted to tour Winston Churchill's WW II  fascinating underground bunker/operations rooms.  This was a great compliment to seeing the excellent film, Darkest Hour, earlier this year.  One of my favorite parts of the complex was this "weather report" sign posted in the hallway.  "Fine and Warm"  basically meant German bombs weren't falling at the moment.  

The many colors of London.  

I FINALLY made it to London Brewdog pub (and there are several of them) today.  Kind of shameful as a proud one-share stockholder of the U.S. Brewdog company. Pictured above is the cool Seven Dials location and it's where I had my best beers of the entire trip (sorry Curious IPA from yesterday).  I started with their beautiful, hoppy and delicious Hazy Jane New England IPA.    Next up was an almost equally strong and tasty Broken Dream Breakfast Stout, which was on a guest tap from Sire Craft Brewing (England).  

Moving on up for Queen and country! 

I spent the late afternoon sight-seeing on my own and headed east of downtown London along the Thames River to see the famous Cutty Sark, the only surviving British clipper ship built in 1869 just before steam engines took over the oceans.

Another cool and historic structure next door to the Cutty Sark is the Greenwich Foot Tunnel running under the entire length of the Thames River.  Built in 1909 with only some WW II bombing repairs needed, this marvel of engineering is still used today and predates The Tube in innovative ways to see the  London "Underground."

I walked the Greenwich Tunnel westward toward downtown and then back and emerged just in time to see the sunset over downtown London.  The domed building in the foreground is the beautifully elaborate entrance to the foot tunnel.  

I walked in the very cool traditional pub, The Gipsy Moth, for a brew after my tunnel walk, but then goofed and ordered a Toasted Lager from Blue Point Brewing (NY) which  wasn't British and I had checked it in before on UNTAPPD.  Nice original choice, ya bloody American...at least I got this hilarious badge for checking it in a second time.  I have just started to notice the breweries themselves are getting badges on UNTAPPD.  The more the merrier I guess, especially if they are going to be this funny! 

I had to make a weird subway line switch on my way back from the Cutty Sark/Foot Tunnel area and just two stops from my hotel (and Ashlee) I got distracted by this sign next to the subway station...OK,as my friend, Craig, pointed out, not the most clever name for a bar...but you had me at "Hello."  I slipped in to have just one...and wound up staying an hour and having Ashlee and our friends come to me for dinner...hey, it was just two stops on the subway and they didn't have a suggestion of where to meet!  They were also playing live country music and the band was actually pretty good.  Craft Beer Company is evidently a chain here in London and I had stumbled into the Limehouse location.  They have an excellent selection of beer and I started with the outstanding and hilariously named Fuk Wit witbier from Deviant and Dandy Brewery (London).  I finished with a cask-conditioned Cheat Mode pale ale from Holler Brewing (England) that was equally top-notch.  I would have stayed for more, but we weren't crazy about the limited food menu and decided to move on.

We moved on for dinner, but the move was good for beer too.  We had been joking around the whole time in London that we wanted to check out the burger chain, Byron's, because it shares the cool and funny name of one our newest kittens.  Well, we got the chance just a couple subway stops back toward the east in the cool  new retail area of Canary Wharf.  Not only was Byron's beer menu great (although I did get my first patented "we are out of that" beer selection of the trip here), but the food was outstanding too!  My second choice was the very solid Easy Peeler session IPA from Fourpure Brewing here in London.  Not only was the beer good, but the can was kinda cool too with its symbols of London adorning it.  

I  proudly earned this badge after a great day of sightseeing and craft brews here in London.  You have my blessing London as a real CRAFT BEER TOWN!   Thanks to my friend, Danny,  my sampling of great UK craft beer was not over  just yet today.   He brought back a couple of tasty beers from his trip north to Scotland and the Isle of Skye a few days before meeting us back here in London and didn't want to lug them home.  I was happy to help him split the two big bomber bottles of Skye Red ale and Skye Black dark ale from Isle of Skye Brewing Company back at our hotel before heading home tomorrow.  Both were outstanding!!  Thanks, Danny, for your kindness and your generosity...and your laziness for not wanting to haul them home!

10/29 - The flight home didn't lend any opportunity for any unique craft beer consumption, but it was a great trip with wonderful things to see, taste and guzzle.  Thanks, Europe.  I hope to see you (and your beers) again real soon!