My Travel Nightmare: British Food

When I won two round trip tickets anywhere in the world from 770 WABC in New York, my husband and I were ecstatic. We really wanted to go to Rome, but there was nothing available when we wanted to go. So, we decided to go to England instead. After all, neither one of us had ever been anywhere in Europe or the United Kingdom, and we thought that London would be a good start.

Unfortunately, after that ill-fated trip, neither ever wants to go back to that part of the world. EVER.

This trip came before I owned Candy Cain Travel, so I really wasn't well-versed with where to stay in England. The clients that I predominantly dealt with went on cruises. I was excited to see Big Ben and The Tower of London, and wanted to catch a show on the West End. England seemed like a fairytale sort of place, where royalty roames and chimney sweeps created chalk drawings on the sidewalks. I made a sweeping generalization about London the way people do about New York City. Instead of staying in London, we stayed in a town "accessible by train," called Brent Cross. As a matter of fact, we stayed at the Holiday Inn - Brent Cross. That was our first mistake... I wouldn't call the hotel "accessible by train" in the least. We would take the train to Brent Cross, then a shuttle (which we had to pay for) to the hotel, which was about five miles from the station. Taking into mind what we paid for transportation, it would have cost us the same if we stayed in a hotel in the center of London.

The restaurant in the hotel (which was obscenely over-priced and, honestly, not very good) closed early, so one night we ordered from a local delivery. I ordered a pizza and my husband ordered a hamburger. The delivery arrived, and the food was awful. The pizza was cold and pasty. The hamburger was gamey. It didn't make sense that a hamburger would taste gamey, so I looked at the menu. My husband, who was famished, continued eating the hamburger. I read the description of the hamburger and noticed a little asterisk. The fine print of the asterisk read:

Made from horse meat.

Now, I don't know if horse meat is a term in England, but I imagined it to be the meat of a horse. So did my husband. I told him, and he dropped the burger on the floor and ran to the bathroom, where he vomited. He continued vomiting for the rest of the evening. To this day, he still gags when he thinks about that hamburger. And, to this day, we always make sure there isn't any fine print when we order in a different country.