Sindy in London

Another week, another wall, another hissy fit

2012-02-08T17:41:00.007Z

So what has happened since the last update? Well, a lot of this white stuff arrived...

All we could do was look out the window and wonder whether the monoplex was on around the house (no, the front section was open), whether the new plywood on the roof would survive if it was not (answer - yes thank goodness), and just be grateful that at no point did we think that it was a good idea to try and live in the house whilst all this work was getting done!

So, speaking of another wall and another hissy fit, it is amusing when having a meeting with one's builder and architect to find out that for once, I was not the bad guy! They had little hissy fits at each other about "poor communication" and "are you telling me how to run my job?!" etc etc, until I had to step in and play referee. Luckily all was smoothed over quickly, and they are again best buddies and ready to gang up on me again. (On second thoughts maybe I should have waited a while to smooth it over and give myself longer at being the good guy).

So, up to the roof we went. After shimmying up the ladder, I was left to take pretty photographs whilst builder (the shorter guy), and architect (the overgrown 3 year old with the pompom on his hat), talked vent routes and decking falls. This photo is taken from the north, looking south to the rear of the roof terrace. Behind builder and architect in this photo there will be a glass balustrade installed to stop people falling into the void. Funny how comfortable one can be walking so close to the back edge of the house merely because there is wrapped scaffolding there. If the wrapping was not there, one would be looking straight down 4 stories with no balustrade. Quite funny. In between where I was standing, and where teletubby and friend are standing, will be the "glass box" extension, ie the new room that we will be sitting in to enjoy the outdoors without actually having to go in it.

At least it is now seeming clearer to me where everything will sit. This photo below is taken from the south corner of the house looking north (I had gone over to listen in to teletubby and friend's exciting conversation - they were now on to party walls and stud partitions). Before I get an anxious call from my mother, yes, I was looking where I stood when I took the last photo, I realise I was balancing on the new joists.

The void in the foreground is where the stairs will come up. The darker red portion running up the photo from the bottom is the top of one of the steels we had installed, and will be where the glass doors will sit, which pull back to create a large open space on the roof, "bringing the outside in". The front wall in the distance (currently about 2 feet high) will be built up in matching stock bricks to the prescribed safety level to make building regs happy (and stop people falling 4 floors to the street below of course ;-) ) The east wall (to the right in this photograph) will be built up to form the wall of the new extension. The other 3 sides of the room will be made of glass.

This close up shows the ply towards the rear of the photo, abutting the brick wall, that has been installed with a "fall" to allow water to run off into the new drains at the edges of the roof. On top of this plywood a waterproof coating called Sarnafil will be installed which makes the roof watertight. Over the top of that, decking will be installed. The ply in front is at a lower level in the foreground of the photo because that section of floor is inside the new room, and there is still heating, and wooden flooring to be installed on it.

This is the west wall of our roof terrace (it is a Grade II listed wall, so we are all very much in awe of it - OOoooooohhhh, LISTED!!). You will see on the right side of the photo the concrete which edged the old pitched roof has been chipped off - on the left it is still to be removed. Once that is complete, we will be washing the wall with water jets, and then repointing and replacing some of the lime mortar and degrading bricks. But generally, it is not in bad condition at all.

So, back inside, here is the new ensuite coming along... Stud walls around the shower and everything. Not sure what the builder and the teletubby were talking about, something technical about joist notching.

And this is the view from the new master bedroom, across the new hall to the new dressing room and ensuite. Only 6 months ago this was a large, open, master suite forming the top of the house. I did love that room, but I think I might love the new ensuite, and the new roof terrace, even more...

Moving down the house, we have now agreed on a horizontal tank to go in under the stairs (so that we can mount the washing machine above it to use the space effectively). However if you look closely - there is now a hatch in the corner of the guest bedroom to provide access to the understairs area which will house the new horizontal tank that we are having installed. Sigh - I guess it will make a good rat hatch if nothing else...

So, what else was happening inside the house? Well, a lot more plumbing was getting done - they are very quick these guys, and the work is very neat. I am almost tempted to leave some of it visible as it has a nice submarine feel to it. I doubt that SS will let me however!

So what has been going on in the house since this time? Well, we should be getting the new steel for the kitchen extension (stay tuned for that on the next update) which means the nasty props will be removed shortly, the plumbers will be cracking on with even more piping and whatever else it is that they do, the damp guy (who I believe is called Delroy) and the alarm guy should be telling me what they will be charging, and the first set of sanitaryware should be arriving. The roof bricks should have the rest of the concrete removed, and be washed and repointed hopefully. I am trying to finalise what flooring we are putting down, and the taps for the bathrooms.

At this point, I feel like the father in the opening credits to Married With Children - every time someone bumps into me I hand over cash to them! But at least we are at the stage of things GOING IN, rather than things BEING REMOVED...

Building work - plumbing

2012-02-01T21:22:00.006Z

Since we have knocked out all the walls we need to, and we have first fix done on the electrics, clearly it was time to let the plumbers in.

The plumbers and their GIANT boiler.

All the things you are not aware of once the cosmetic parts of the house are put back in place are currently wildly on display in our house. Copper pipes shining brightly. Good thing there are no scavengers looking at my blogsite - they could clean up with the amount of copper gleaming brightly.

So here are some photos showing the pipes now running through the floor (mind your step!)

the biggest boiler in the world...

new pipes in the basement...

And new pipes from the basement (all the pipes run under the stairs to the first floor, and then up the stairwell walls). Here is a before and after...

Building - the rear lightwell

2012-02-01T21:01:00.007Z

Part of what we are doing to best use the space we have in our high, narrow house (apart from adding the world's most expensive roof extension and terrace), is knocking out the back wall at ground level, and extending into the rear "lightwell" as our pet architect optimistically calls it.

The plan is to knock out the rear wall, support the rear of the house on a new steel joist, and fill the gap above the "lightwell" with a glass roof to let more light into the ground floor (which is where the kitchen will be).

Previously, this is how the rear lightwell looked (yes, I picked the nicest shots, one from above). You can see why we investigate other options for outside space - particularly with the delightful outside loo, this is somewhere you would not want to spend time in!

First, the outdoor loo was taken out (the builders are now having to work with a bucket flush version on the first floor). Please admire the milk tucked into the security bars - who says it isn't easier to work in winter - saves on having a mini-fridge!

Then, the rear wall including window was taken out, propped up, and the gap covered with plywood. Here is a before and after photograph of this (thanks to my sister for the pose last year in her duvet jacket!)... (and yes, that is the window propped up on the left of the room in the after shot). I am constantly amazed by what neat builders we have.

Building update - the roof

2012-02-01T19:45:00.010Z

It is amazing what a rollercoaster of emotions you hit when managing a large building project. Not sure if it get larger than putting up the worlds largest scaffolding around a narrow, high, 200 year old terraced house in central London, with single lane access out the front, the world's worst neighbours on one side and a very tight budget. Ho hum.

So, where are we at? I will split it into a few different updates - first one - the roof!

In short, and illustrated by photographs:

the last chimney breasts are out in the basement - the front chimney breast was fine - the back (and its surrounding bricks) came out to reveal - DAMP! Yay - what a lovely surprise. So we now have a "damp guy" to add to all the other guys being added to the site... we are single handedly keeping HM Treasury and the labour market of London afloat.

Flying to the top of the house - the roof has come off completely, which meant the steel joists could be measured, made and delivered. So, early in the morning, the steels (7 of them) were delivered by Cannons, and put on the ground floor. This is when the super expensive electric hoist came into its own. Whilst super expensive it is also super necessary (and hired to us by the same company that are currently providing lifting services for the giant Shard building being built at London Bridge - only the best!!).

One by one the steels were brought out, put on to a piece of timber in the road to hold them off the ground. The chains were linked around each end, and then the guys up the top got to winch them up with the remote control (no block and tackle for us).

Our contractor (yes, he wears the RED hat), oversaw it all, and provided traffic management whenever a van attempted to make its way down the road.

Then, the men at the top would activate their remote control, get the hoist to lift the steel to roof level, when it would be spun, and then brought back into the roof level of the house. All this took about 3 minutes - pretty good!

Of course, I just sat there and took photographs.

So, up to the roof. When the steels arrived the very useful hoist was then used to winch them into place on top of the (problematic but now OK) padstones. Again, made the process much easier apparently - I wasn't allowed upstairs to witness it as I didn't have the right colour hardhat ;-)

Afterwards I got to take some photos:

It does make me laugh how the electric towel rail from the old ensuite is still hanging on - more because no-one has got around to removing it...

And I also got to watch the poor guys shimmy up the scaffolding to reattach the monoplex to try to waterproof the unprotected house a little bit - rather them than me!!

Once the roof steels were in, this was followed up by the new roof joists, and, of course, the new stud walls for the 3rd floor. These stud walls create the master bedroom, and the dressing room/ensuite. It is very weird now on that level to have to walk through the "doorways". As you can see from some of the photos - the roof is STILL open, but with some very neat joists just waiting for their marine grade ply flooring and sarnafil covering - that is next week's job...

and yes, the towel rail is STILL there...

Salisbury

2012-01-29T18:10:00.007Z

In amongst all the ridiculousness of building works and decisions decisions decisions, SS and I took a weekend out to attend a friend's 40th birthday in Salisbury. I have been there recently (on the way down to Devon we stopped off for a quick visit, but this time we had more time).

The B&B room was very nice - spacious and SS and I always enjoy being in a room with television these days - our current flat as well as having no washing machine also has no television connection, we have to resort to streaming through my laptop using an HDMI cable to the television. This always makes me grumpy as I can't use my laptop at the same time of course!

After our B&B breakfast (not very good to be honest) I drove down on Sunday morning, did a fine spot of parking with the gorgeous car (I love SS's car, and I am an excellent reverse parker - thanks Dad!), and we went for a walk around the shops and the cathedral.

There was someone fishing in the river in the centre (do you need a license for that?)

I found my dream house:

We looked at the cathedral (I refuse to pay to enter a church), visited the gifte shoppe, and went to Rymans for a new 2012 diary for SS.

And we admired the lovely houses and buildings in the old centre:

And then... I dragged SS into TK Maxx for his first visit ever. As usual, he started by dragging his feet and crossing his arms (can't remember if he was pouting), and by the time we left we had 2 new sets of crystal wine glasses (£6.99 each) a new chopping board (really cool - when you pick it up it bends to creates a funnel which helps tip the chopped items into a saucepan) and SS had a new DKNY casual top (£14). So everyone was happy! Then we headed up the road for tea in Aldershot with his parents. Lovely day in the SW...

The chimneys are out! And where has the roof gone?

2012-01-17T09:31:00.009Z

After a lovely holiday, we came back just after Christmas to find most of the chimney breasts were out - YAY! Moving to mid-January, they are all out apart from one stub piece in the basement which is coming out today. Minimal damage to our neighbours (our poor builder has to go in there almost daily to pat down the mad woman next door) which is also a relief. At least she has only called the police twice, the City of London H&S office once, the Environmental Health twice, our builder many times a day, and of course the poor workmen get shouted at every hour on the hour. I wish I was joking.

Next on the schedule is the new roof steels - these have been ordered now, and the padstones set into each of the party walls to hold up the steels which will support the new roof extension.

Of course, that makes it sounds easy - not so. As our builders were cutting the holes into the brick walls either side to set the padstones, for once our easterly party wall was not a problem (since we have just removed the chimney breasts and bricked up the flues, we KNOW that that wall is now solid). No, this time it was the westerly wall which we share with a pub - a Grade 2 listed pub. Eeeek. Unfortunately, this pub is quite an elderly building - probably older than ours - and its chimney flues are a true work of art, liberally honeycombing the walls. Everywhere a hole was cut, there was a flue! So after consulting with the structural engineer and the architect, it was decided that we could create a padstone using a cementitious compound and backboard (don't bother pretending to care - I was just happy a solution could be found). We now have 8 beautiful padstones all set, and the steels are arriving on Friday. What does that mean for the house - it means the ROOF IS COMING OFF! Sorry, that had to be shouted. It is only 4 months overdue after all ;-)

We are spending a lot of time going through costings, and I am spending a lot of time deciding how I want to decorate. I know it is not just my house, but some people are interested in these things (me) and some are not (SS). So I come up with a plan (eg for the sanitaryware in the bathroom), cost it, compare it, try to get it down a bit more etc etc, then run it past SS. Who says: "Disgusting". I then try to understand what he dislikes, force him to go to one bathroom showroom (where he stands immovable in the middle of any busy area, crosses his arms, looks at the ceiling, and thinks about the shareprice movements of XYZ over the last month whilst I badger him) and I try to understand what it is he likes. The problem I find is that he knows what he wants as an overall look, but specifics are not his strong point, and he also cannot visualise a room.

For example, we saw a photograph of a restaurant in Dublin which was beautifully decorated. We both agreed we liked the room. I then suggested we could create something in the dining room to replicate the wall colour and panelling. Out of left field, SS then says "of course the panelling would be painted white". Flipping back to the photograph, the entire wall (including the panelling) is painted a mousy brown (looks nicer than it sounds). I point this out to him. He doesn't care. In his mind, panelling on walls should be painted white, not painted the colour of the walls. Despite us both looking at the photograph, agreeing it looks good, attempting to replicate it, he cannot see that the panelling being painted white with a brown wall will look... well... "disgusting". Luckily these sorts of decorating decisions are about 2 months away still, and so I am happy to park these discussions, and just make them myself when it comes to the time. If he truly hates the result, it is only paint!

Back to more interesting things - here are the latest sets of photos. I have started from the last ones from the last posts, so have a look at the last blog to refresh yourself. It is difficult to express in photos the change in size in each room by removing the chimney breasts, but rest assured I was so pleased I was literally hugging the walls - even the builder agrees it was worth it!

Starting at the roof... first photo is taken standing on the front scaffolding looking over the roof - that is some feat of engineering I must say. You can also see the roof still largely intact at this stage just before Christmas. Second photo shows how little of the roof remains today - the centre board will be removed this week ready for the steels to arrive... we are all watching the weather.

This photo shows the exposed flues right at the top extending from the 3rd floor to where the chimney stacks used to be. This was taken as the work was first started to remove all the chimney breasts (which was done top down from the roof level, making good each floor before starting on the next floor. Second photo shows the breasts removed and the wall bricked up - such a neat job!

Here is the ground floor before and after - lovely flat walls... These two photos really show how much space is gained by removing those silly useless chimney breasts.

Here is the outside loo - imagine this space will be incorporated into the kitchen when the rear ground floor wall gets knocked out, and so this loo will morph into a range cooker! It has been very useful for the men however to have a functioning loo out of the way of all the work inside.

Down to the basement - with the last remaining chimney breast stub still to be removed - they need to get the kangoo in for this bit... The last photo is from the rear of the house looking forward at the current understairs storage, and in due course this will be our double reception room when the stud walls are knocked out. Note the First Aid kit on the wall. Our builder is very good at leaving the place clean (as you can tell from the photos) and also re H&S which is a relief. On top of awful neighbours we don't want any builders suing us!

Here is the third floor - first photo is the chimney breast all out of the bedroom and the flues neatly bricked up, lovely flat wall now all ready for rendering and plastering. Second photo is looking from the area in the first photo back to where the new hallway will be, the new stairs to the roof terrace, and at the back of the house the dressing room and ensuite. The 4 pieces of plywood you can see on the walls is the boxing for the cement setting for the padstones. 2 steels will go across the ceiling at these points to help support the new roof extension.

And here is Kofe checking the plywood boxing for any leaks from the padstone as it sets.

Down to the second floor. The first photo is the front room (my study) with chimney breast all out. The second photo shows the detail of the floor - where each chimney breast was removed the floor joists had to be replaced (as previously they ran into the chimney breasts), and new flooring put over the new joists. The third photo is the rear room on the second floor (which will be SS's study). You can clearly see the new floor joists in the ceiling of this room. This room used to be the master bathroom.

And to the first floor. Beautiful job removing one of the wider chimney breasts. This will be the guest bedroom (I do realise that it does not look very inviting at this stage). Second photo is the view of the new floor joists in the ceiling of the rear room on the first floor. Third photo shows the rear room on the first floor with the old pipework going up the corner, and the strange little window. The strange little window is being removed (sorry to all those who though it was cute, but there will be a brand new shower in that corner, so strange little windows were not welcome!).

Next update to come shortly as the roof is removed, and the new steels go in - that will really seem like progress!

Home building...

2011-11-28T10:42:00.008Z

Yes, it has been over 7 months since I posted. My excuse? Well, my ever ongoing intention to finally get my website up and running (hmmm, still WIP), and also having the ongoing stress of a large building project. SS and I finally moved out of the house in early October, to try to incentivise everyone else to move at our speed and GET ON WITH doing the building work.

We are taking the existing roof off, putting on a flat roof terrace and glass room extension on the new roof, extending out the back at ground floor, removing all chimney breasts in the 160 year old house, gutting it, and starting again room by room by moving bathrooms and kitchens.

Yes, a small building project.

I won't go through the nightmares with the neighbours, planning, party wall awards, building regs etc etc here (way too dull, and I will need to wait until the statute of limitations for defamation runs out probably), so will limit myself to some before (ie the day we moved out) shots, and "current" shots. There are also some lovely close ups of exposed hearths where we were required to undertake smoke tests to demonstrate that our seven chimney flues were indeed our chimney flues, and nothing the neighbours could claim rights to!

I can't call the photos "after" since if the house stayed looking like this even squatters would turn up their noses. Hmmm, squatters - yes, we do have an expensive alarm on the scaffold as well!!

Outside of the property - that is some HUGE scaffolding. It goes up the rear of the building as well, and joins over the top. In a couple of weeks it will all be wrapped in monaflex and enclosed completely... Can't wait for the rather dishy scaffolders to return - those are some serious shoulders on them...

Here is the view from the top floor up through one of our precious chimney flues (that will soon be bricked up completely...

Basement kitchen before and after (and can I just say proudly that I sold the kitchen on ebay, and spent 4 hours on a Sunday morning helping the new owners remove it myself. Messy, difficult, but saved money on our builders stripping it out!!)

Here is the ensuite on the top floor, before and after:

And the top floor hallway:

Bedroom on top floor, with exposed hearth, no ceiling, and undercoated windows:

Previously the main bathroom - no more super huge tank or ugly fittings!!

Second floor bedroom - more exposed hearths and ceilings coming down:

Rear bedroom on the first floor - more exposed hearths. This will be a bathroom soon!

Front bedroom on the first floor - doesn't the undercoat on the windows make SUCH a difference... It is the new site office (hence the lovely outdoor furniture set...)

I will try to keep this updated as things progress - next stop chimney breast removal, and roof removal...

Bwistol and the Grand Old Duke of York

2011-03-22T11:05:00.018Z

I have renamed SS - he is now the Grand Old Duke of York. This became apparent when I got to know Park Street in Bristol far too well.

I had booked us a weekend away in Bristol (or Bwistol as I insisted on calling it when I found out it annoyed SS). This was because Interpol were playing at Colston Hall, and after seeing them in Brixton last year we were keen to see them again.

Also, I had never been to Bristol so thought it was worth a look.

Saturday morning we got up early-ish, and got the tube round to Paddington for our 9:30am train. The journey was really easy - I spent the time reading The Forgotten Garden (this month's book club choice) and SS listened to his music. Strangely enough the train journey took us through both Taplow (where SS was born) and Swindon (where I was born). Spooky.

On arrival the weather was lovely and Bristol Temple Meads station is a very attractive building. We made our way slowly to the hotel via Queens Park Gardens, stopping for photographs along the harbourfront (photos of buildings etc of course - we don't do posey posey couple-y things - ewwww).

We got to the Radisson Blu early but the lovely woman on reception checked us in happily, and we headed up to the room (703 on the 7th floor). The room was very large, modern decoration (not my taste but perfectly comfortable) including nasty orange and pink highlights. But a lovely bathroom and nice layout to the room. Also some great touches - a kettle with a choice of teas including green tea bags, and also complementary waters and cokes in the fridge - why can't all hotels do things like that?

We relaxed for a while (SS napped whilst I read my book), and then headed out for a walk.

I had intended to go to the Georgian House museum but it was closed until easter, so we decided to walk to Clifton so SS could see how much things had changed since he was last there about 15 years ago, and also to get some late lunch somewhere. I had found the Olive Shed on the internet which was run by one of Raymond Blanc's failed couples from the Restaurant program, and the website said they were open all day, so that was our eventual goal.

So we headed out, walking past the Georgian House museum (even if we couldn't go inside), and up to Brandon Hill Nature Park. The maps of Bristol are very misleading, making distances look very close, but there are some very steep hills there which make short walks take much longer!

Cabot Tower was all scaffolded up (is scaffolded a word?). Over the other side of the hill (shall I mention again the Grand Old Duke of York?) where SS discovered a south indian restaurant but did not seem all that keen on stopping really. This was also where we started to come across the closed takeaway shops all advertising "early bird" specials of £2.50 before midnight - gives an idea of the social life of the students!! So on we went, up to Park Street, and then up Whiteladies Road to Clifton where SS's friend used to live and where he spent a few lost weekends in the 90s.

We found the road, took a photo of the old flat, and by now were getting very hungry. So we started back down Whiteladies Road, past many suitable places but SS couldn't seem to work out what he wanted to eat.

Back at the bottom of Park Street we saw the local banksy attraction and then noted a sign for a wine shop.

Well, we can't go past one of those, so we doubled back under the road and headed to Avery's. We spent a lovely time browsing and I couldn't resist a bottle of Rockford wine. Our stomachs were now starting to gnaw on our spines, so we dropped the wine off in our hotel room and headed over to the Olive Shed.

This involved breaking through loads of locals and tourists who were sitting by the harbour drinking beers sitting on the road. Very classy.

We found the Olive Shed at 3:45pm and were happily looking at the blackboard menu. About 5 minutes later a waiter finally stopped by us and brusquely asked "if we were OK". Hmmm, SS asked politely if we could have a table and a menu when Mr Brusque snapped "its only bread and olives now - the kitchen closes from 4 til 6". I looked pointedly at my watch which showed 10 to 4, but he would not budge nor be helpful. I would not have been so annoyed except that the A frame sign outside the place as well as the website state clearly that the place is open all afternoon, and we had made a special trip to get there.

Sigh. So I was grumpy. So we stood for a while, me grumpy, SS in his usual happy daydream, humming to himself. Finally we decided to go back to Wagamama's which at least we knew would feed us at just after 4pm. Problem was, you guessed it, Wagamama's was at the top of Park Street again. Sigh. So up the long hill we marched.

It was all worth it 30 minutes later when we were seated with our juices and my katsu curry and SS's noodle stir fry. Very happy campers!

Back to the hotel room for a rest before our concert date with Interpol at 9pm.

We decided to get a drink first so headed round to some nice pubs we had seen on King Street. The first pub was a slightly studenty place that smelled of disinfectant, and only had fullers ales. So next door we went which was much nicer. The pub was quite empty at 7:45pm, but was nicely paneled and had a good selection of local tipples. SS went for Alpha Dog, I had a gin and tonic and happily we settled into a corner booth. That was when the pub started to fill, and next we were given a strange folder with sticky pages inside and also a pile of papers with a pen. Oh oh - karaoke!! And what was the pub filling with? Well, the sorts of people we certainly don't see very often in central London! The average age would have been about 50, but was made up of people over 50, and a few of their younger counterparts aged 16 - 25. We were the only ones messing with the demographic by being conservatively dressed and by being between 30 and 50! Eeek.

The women were uniformly lumpy shaped, with long hair extensions dyed either white blonde or black (yes, I am talking about the 50+ women here!). The outfits varied, so I will describe a couple of women. 1. She had the long black Cher haircut, a white vest top with metal studs in it, low cut. Lower half was covered by stone washed jeans with the front of the legs cut out and replaced by black mesh (ie see-through) with frayed edges down the join with the mesh and the jeans. Hmmmm. 2. She had the white blond long extensions, piled up in an explosion on her head. Outfit was a bright pink tight top with the back cut out of it, the back was strips of pink fabric running from side to side. Her underwear was clearly visible. Bottom half was covered with a short tight leatherette skirt.

The men were wearing either tight jeans and Del Boy leather sports jackets, or black trousers with black shirts decorated down the front with lines of sequins.

The younger set were also dressed to the nines, with even more makeup than their parents, very short tight dresses on (you could easily see their dinners as my mother would say) and varying lengths of hair extensions.

this was obviously a regular Saturday night outing. The place was packed and everyone had their favourite songs that they were all geared up to sing. We heard everything from Roy Orbison to Duffy and some of them really weren't bad at all.

I was quite sad to leave - one group had joined us at our booth as there were spare chairs, and we were all having a grand old time (except SS who hates karaoke singing). But Interpol called.

Off we went to Colston Hall. It was not the best venue for music like that - we were stuck in seats and couldn't really stand up or move around as we would like. Interpol were not quite as good as they were in Brixton either - the drummer messed up one song completely which was not expected!

After the show we slowly made our way out on to the streets which were now filled with the "yoof" of Bristol, out making merry. SS was peckish so we got him a sandwich in a convenience store, and headed back to the hotel. He was keen on the Rhino Gentleman's Club but the queue outside was a little offputting ;-).

We happily settled into our comfortable room and watched BBC TV for a while, then went off to sleep.

Next morning we got up late and checked out at 11:50am. We popped next door to the cafe to get some breakfast and despite it being 11:59am and breakfast only being served until midday, they happily agreed to accommodate us. Learn from this, Olive Shed!! So we settled in and devoured our full English with green tea for £5 each. Very good food.

The weather was still lovely so we spent some time walking along King Street, the waterfront and Queen's Square taking photos of the beautfiul Georgian buildings, then headed back to the station and back to London.

Very nice weekend, with all sorts of unexpected things (the hills, the karaoke, the prettiness of the town, the direness of the dressing of the yoof etc). I would go back!

Work trips

2011-03-20T20:20:00.010Z

After my planes, trains and automobiles in December, I was loath to travel again for a while. But work waits for no-one and so I headed off to Shannon and back to Amsterdam as well a few times. I thought I would give more of an idea of the glamour of travel, so here we go.

First up - images of my hotel in Amsterdam, which is just down the road from the office near the airport. The rooms are all the same (I have so far stayed in 9 different rooms in the hotel.The

room service has a limited menu but there

are a couple of things I like.

I alternate between the nicoise salad (which can be a little salty) and the stir fried king prawns with rice. Both are fine.

I have been known to sneak downstairs to the rather plain hotel bar for a white beer with my

food and my

book when I feel the need to pretend I am not having the same old

room service menu...

Next stop was a trip to Shannon, where luckily I got to stay at a lovely castle hotel for a change. This was Dromoland Castle, and it was lovely. When you are in a room which has its own BOOK dedicated to wedding planning at the hotel, you know it is an attractive place. My room was lovely and large with a huge bathroom. And I had a choice of large beds too....

Before dinner (which we had outside of Shannon at a restaurant) I had a gin and tonic in the bar - my favourite sort of room with lovely panelling, table service and free bar snacks. YUM. I was almost sorry to leave...

Tulips in Amsterdam...

2011-03-17T19:12:00.032Z

Another few days in Amsterdam for work, and this time I got

about and about a bit more rather than

skulking in the airport hotel near the office. As usual on arrival there were cakes, cakes and more cakes! There always seems to be some excuse for people to bring in sweet, sugary, fatty food.

huge servings. Dusted with more sugar.

This time in had been J-Ws birthday over the weekend, so he brought in two huge cake boxes full of apple turnovers (although in Holland they coat the pastry exterior with crystal hunks of sugar - no dustings of icing sugar here...). There were also two huge boxes full of slabs of custard slices with virulent pink icing! The turnovers were rather nice however.

That night I went for dinner with a work friend, at Antoine's. It was a lovely restaurant with a unique owner (Antoine himself). We were the second sitting during restaurant week, with a fixed menu. By the time we got to the end of our dinner it was midnight, and the chefs had come upstairs to sit in the restaurant with us!

This was all very convivial until they noticed we had not finished the same part of our dessert - this was the mango salsa which to me was bitter and nasty. completely within her rights to do. I do envy that a little. We tried to explain what we weren't keen on, but the chef was not one of those that liked constructive criticism. Luckily Antoine found it all very amusing. I am starting to get used to the lack of tact that is much more common on the continent than in Britain. For example, when we were the last in the restaurant and the chefs were sitting at the table next to us, Antoine asked if we minded if the chefs smoked (since obviously that is not legal). I was not keen as I dislike cigarette smoke, but would always try to be polite and accommodating. But my friend was quite happy to say "no, I don't like cigarette smoke".

It was really delicious.Which of course she is completely within her rights to do. I might have to start doing this sort of thing a little more!

Anyway, back to the food at Antoines - here is the menu and the first amuse bouche which was a mushroom soup with foie gras foam.

Next up was the salmon - I was not keen on this as salmon is my least favourite fish, but it had been tea smoked and the texture was lovely.

Next up was the beef main - perfectly cooked for me, and not too heavy or big.

Next was another amuses bouches. I can't actually remember what this was, something with goats cheese, tomato and rocket on a biscuit I recall but I don't remember exactly - oops.

Then there was a

pre-dessert of passionfruit sorbet which was delicious, then the dessert arrived which was mango done in a few different ways - ice cream, salsa and little biscuits. As mentioned, the salsa was not so good, but the line of marshmallow was lovely.

finished up sharing an optional cheese platter which was also very good.

Then I walked back to the hotel through the lovely cool Amsterdam night, with the lights reflecting off the canals. I could get used to this!!

Work trip to Paris

2011-03-17T14:53:00.012Z

For the first time in years, I had some meetings in Paris - great excuse to stay in a new hotel, get around to meetings on the Metro, get back on the eurostar, and best of all, shop in Sephora. YAY! Three stops on the tube and I was at Saint Pancras station, where I easily checked in, boarded the train, settled in and enjoyed the ride. At Gare du Nord a quick trip downstairs and I bought a single metro ticket from the machine, and headed to line 4 and then changed to line 7 - short trip to Pyramides.

stayed in the Hotel Lumen on Rue Des Pyramides which was lovely - the interior decor was a little modern/fantastical for my liking but very comfortable. It is good to try different things. Checkin was lovely and friendly, with good English.

And nicest of all - a free half bottle of wine. I really am a cheap date!! The view from the windows of the room was quintessentially Parisian...

After our meetings the following day, I had the opportunity to escape for a while and head off to

the nearest Sephora. I miss Sephora in London, altho' I must say the French ones are nowhere near as good as the one in New York - when I was living in New York I used to go to the one on Times Square once a week, and I hate shopping!

The first night we went to a little bistrot up the

road - it was a little ordinary, but the nicoise salad was at least huge and piled very very high. Best of all, it was close to the hotel...

After the meetings the next day, again I had a chance to do a bit of shopping, so I headed up to Boulevard Hausmann past the Opera - what a beautiful Spring day in Paris!!!

Dinner at Woodlands

2011-03-17T14:28:00.005Z

Indian food - a small obsession of mine, and an even greater one of SS's. This is the man who must have curry at least once a week. If we are on holiday somewhere for longer than 7 days, we then have to seek out the nearest Indian for his fix, and this has led to some interesting restaurant choices indeed - let's just say that South America is not known for its Indian heritage, and I am already starting to think ahead to our highlands trip at Easter - hopefully Indian curries have made it up to the north of Scotland as we will be there for 11 days - a curry will have to be found.In any case, we were wandering around Marylebone High Street (me to get my kitchen gadget shopping fix at Divertimenti, and SS to visit his favourite wine shop, and both of us to visit Solid Floors to see if they had flooring we both liked), and of course we both spied Woodlands down the little side street. We have eaten there before and in recent times have of course gone to Ragam a couple of times, so we thought we would have another early dinner and compare the South Indian rivals.

The main difference is that Woodlands is about 4 times the size of Ragam, and also that Woodlands is strictly vegetarian whereas Ragam dabbles in the flesh.

We settled in, and SS ordered a large Kingfisher. I am trying not to drink at the moment, so I had water (a fairly easy choice when a large beer was an eyewatering £5.50).

SS started with his favourite - the rasam soup. I had the sev poori.

Both were very good, altho' luckily we each enjoyed our own choice better.

For mains we decided to share a onion rava masala dosa and vegetable bhaji with vegetable rice. All were lovely and I really enjoyed it. We were reluctant to head back out into the cool evening, but we dragged ourselves away, and headed home (where all my good intentions deserted me and we shared a bottle of wine...)

Working from home...

2011-02-24T17:16:00.003Z

It does take some getting used to. Here are my thoughts on it:

- I am better at the routine now, I am at my home desk by 8:45am every day, take a break for lunch (sometimes with SS when he can escape from his desk and come the short walk home)...

Then it is back to the desk, until I log off at about 6pm every day. Obviously if there are busy things on, then I work longer, and the blackberry is always on.

- it does give me more time for running upstairs to put on a load of washing during the day, taking 15 minutes out to make some home made soup, and just generally using all those moments when at work you pfaff around for good not evil.

- I still haven't really worked out what to wear at home - I am living in tracksuits at the moment as they are the most comfortable, but the jury is still out on that one. I feel a little sluggy in them.

- I am drinking a lot of tea during the day.

- I often have two laptops running - my work one and my home one

- I love answering the phone now. Ever since I was 23 I have hated answering the phone (a relic of working in a bank call centre during university). Now, I leap on the phone - human contact - yay!

- I can happily work whilst my cleaner works around me once a week - I thought I would feel more guilt actually watching her do the work, but I don't. Not sure she likes me being there very much tho'.

- If SS has not been home for lunch, then I tend to fling myself on him when he gets home - he will get used to that in time.

- I am getting to know the times of the postman, the rubbish men, and the weird homeless man that comes to the end of the road and shouts for 15 minutes at about 3pm on Wednesdays. I still haven't worked out what he says, but it is entertaining.

- I am also spending a lot of time signing for various postal items for SS - I feel a bit like his secretary sometimes. I might start charging per item.

- So here is my lunch today - home made courgette soup; wholemeal sandwich with boiled egg and tomato on it; and a salad with mixed lettuce, an apple chopped up, a small wedge of blue cheese crumbled up, and 3 fresh walnuts crumbled up. A drizzle of lemon juice and a dash of extra virgin olive oil on top, and that was lunch! Looking back I probably thought it was more healthy than it was, but it tasted great!

Dinner at the pub

2011-02-24T17:10:00.004Z

Caught up with my lovely friend Ms J last week, and we headed off to Coco Momo's on Marylebone High Street for something little to eat. Unusually for me, I went for a burger!

Ms J was much more sensible with her salmon fishcakes, and me dunking the chips in mayonnaise and scoffing the lot did not do a lot for my hips! Of course the wine didn't help either...

Comptoir Gascon

2011-02-12T12:01:00.006Z

Well, SS and I had walked longingly past the windows of Comptoir Gascon in Smithfield many times, usually on the way to another dinner destination that seemed, by comparison, slightly lacking. The difficulty with this lovely place is that you really do need to book most evenings - they only have about 30 covers, and it is a popular little spot.

But on this occasion, I had booked ahead to surprise SS, and so on a wintry early February Saturday night, we walked across for our dinner.

Unfortunately the timing of our arrival (for an 8pm booking - our compromise between SS's

preferred time of 9pm plus, and my preferred time of 7:30pm) was such that there were other earlier diners in the better tables, and we got the "second worst" table in the small dining room. The restaurant could certainly benefit from some heavy curtains around the front door a la Racine, to keep the draughts out as people enter and leave.

Apologies for the photographs - the lighting was the SS special - very dim but atmospheric so it was almost impossible to take anything resembling a photo. We also were enjoying a bottle of Chateau Cabezac.However, we settled in, ordered a glass of cremante each, and started to

peruse the menu. For a change we were both spoiled for choice.

Some lovely homemade tuna pate was brought over with bread crisps, which we demolished, and then after some questions "What are "piggy treats" [one of the starters]?" Answer "a selection of pork charcuterie". We ordered.

I had the spicy mackerel with fondant potato, SS had the endive and roquefort salad. Both were delicious, but mine had the edge we agreed. Room temperature mackerel fillet with a spicy tomato salsa on crisped bread sitting on a bed of silky new potatoes. Stunning.

For mains, SS had the braised ox cheeks with turnips, and we shared a side of chips and fresh greens. I had the sea bream with citrus sauce and parsnip puree. Here, SS's dish had the edge as the foamed sauce with my sea bream was very sweet indeed, a bit too much on the sweet side as opposed to the fresh side which I was expecting.

We were both stuffed but had some wine to finish, so we shared a cheese platter which was very good (even if we did have to call the waitress back to ask what the cheeses were...).

All in all, it was lovely and we would certainly come back!a

January - the "dry" month

2011-02-05T17:51:00.008Z

Well, each year SS and I decide that January should be "dry - let's give our livers a rest once a year at least. This was something that SS started years before I met him, and it sounded like a good idea to me. Well, this year will officially go down as our worst effort at a dry month to date... I could blame SO many things - weather, work, client socialising, friend's dinners, the inaugural RAW (more of that later)... but at the end of it, I think it just comes down to me having NO willpower at all. Oh well, that is no news to me. First up is the lovely photograph I took flying back from Amsterdam earlier this week - very unusual to have this sort of view and lighting over the English channel, so I couldn't resist - isn't it lovely?

Moving on, the night before I had been to a lovely dinner to say goodbye to one of my new work colleagues who resigned to go and open her own B&B - it looks lovely, so if you are ever in the Hague looking for a place to stay, Maison Indochine should be top of your list! On the top of my list however was dinner... We got to go to Sazanka Teppanyaki restaurant in the Hotel Okura, both of which were lovely.

As you can see by the number of dishes that were placed in front of me - I ate a LOT that night. I had chosen the "fish" menu rather than the meat, and was glad I did. The quantity of food was almost obscene, and if it had been on the red meat side I would still be recovering now!
My favourite was definitely the sea bass with chinese broccoli, but the skill and dexterity of the chefs was amazing. Plus, I did get through some Asahi beers that night (you know, that well know Czech beer!).

Asian food has been a bit of a theme recently. SS and I also headed up St Johns Street recently to try Pho. SS had not had pho before, so it seemed a good opportunity. It was a cold windy night when we braved the great outdoors, and the menu whilst quite short, looked very good.

I started with the spicy green papaya salad, and SS went for a traditional salad. Both got doused by us with chilli sauce, and mine had lovely elements of crunchy, sweet, sour and spicy. Yum Yum Yum.

Next, we each went for a pho. SS had the chicken, and I went for tofu and mushroom. They were lovely, and I do like the "make it yourself" approach of adding all the herbs, greens, beansprouts, and other delicious things.

We each also tried a new beer, I think that perhaps SS's choice was better than mine, but both were good. We will be back.

The only thing was that the food was quite salty - we both woke up a few times that night needing some water.

Then, we went out in early January to do a long dreaded run around the sales - mainly as SS wanted to go to Ted Baker in Covent Garden to get a dark red version of a shirt he had bought already in black. After stopping in All Saints where he bought yet another jacket

(it did look good, but he is now the Imelda Marcos of jackets!), they also had another jacket but not in his size. After checking, they did have the jacket in the Regents Street store. Hmmm. So, we thought that it would be a good idea to walk over to that store from Covent Garden during sale time (ugh - hideous people EVERYWHERE). And then, once we got to the store, of course they didn't have the jacket after all.

But, walking back we did go past one of our favourite restaurants - Ragam. Luckily it was about 7pm, and we could squeeze in (it is a tiny place).

We decided to treat ourselves (why? well, why not?), and got a dosa to share, as well as a sour

lentil soup - both stunningly good. Then I went for a hot fish curry, and SS had a lamb dish. Both were really good, and what I like particularly about Ragam is that the entire menu is bereft of such things as jalfrezis and bhunas - this is genuine south indian, and I had to ask the very helpful waiter for an explanation of many of the items. Really, really good food!

Also on the list of restaurants, we went to Bleeding Heart Bistro in early January to celebrate some good news. I have been to the restaurant before but never to the bistro. The food was fine, but again, not sure I would go back to the bistro. Never accept second best when the restaurant is so good! We each had a soup and then SS had the duck breast, and I had the risotto. I seem to remember that they were all nice, but not

spectacular. This is often the case with the

reduced menus, we might have been better off

going for a la carte. And I do HATE those nasty

paper doilies they use under soup tureens.

Trapped in Amsterdam, or my own version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2010-12-27T19:57:00.007Z

It was a rude shock getting back to work after such glorious travelling. This was further complicated by "work" through December being in either Amsterdam or Shannon rather than in London.

Of course everyone has read/experienced/cursed the weather in the South East of England during December, but I was one of those unfortunate people who got caught up in every awful delay possible.

It started in the first week of December - flying to Amsterdam from London City Airport. It was my first day at my new job, and I was introduced/indoctrinated by getting to fly with my new boss and his boss. So there we all were at the airport, waiting for the flight... that was delayed in the end for 3 hours. Good way to get to know everyone - talk about access to management! ;-)

3 days later I was due to fly back in to Gatwick on the 9:25pm Friday night flight. Of course, Gatwick had been closed for the last two days due to the heavy snow, so I knew it was touch and go to get back...I got to Schiphol airport in good time, had some noodle soup, and settled down to read my book ("The Secret History" - part of my plan to read the Top 100 Classic Books, and kindly bought for me by my mother). The plane was showing as delayed for an hour at this stage. In the end we were allowed to board the 9:25pm flight at 10:15pm. Then we sat on the plane... First we were told that there would be a 20 minute delay until pushback and de-icing. 10 minutes later we were told that Gatwick had given away our slot and so we would not be able to leave for 90 minutes! Then 10 minutes later we were told that BA had put pressure on Gatwick, and we would push back in 5 minutes. I have never been on a plane that pushed back so fast, as we hurtled off to the de-icing station. Deiced, and we finally took off at about 11:30pm Amsterdam time. Ho hum. Landed into Gatwick, and the fun just started.Firstly, all trains had stopped. Secondly, the shuttle train from North to South Terminal had been shut down, and so I had to wait 40 minutes for the replacement bus service to get to South Terminal. Once there, it took me 30 minutes to fund the bus service to Victoria which turned out to be an OLD double decker bus (circa 1980) with no heating and windows that gapped and let in freezing draughts in the -7degree temperature. And for this I had to pay £16.90 as apparently the bus was a Gatwick Express replacement bus! Ho ho hum. It was now 1am.

I sat huddled on the bus, wearing the following: opaque tights, lined trousers, two pairs of socks, ankle boots, shirt, jacket, coat, scarf, wooly hat, lined gloves - and I was freezing. It took 90 minutes to get to Victoria as traffic was at a standstill at Brixton. Luckily on the rest of the roads there was very little traffic as the snow and ice was so bad most people were not venturing out. Once at Victoria it was snowing again. I hiked along to the taxi rank, and waited 20 minutes in the queue. Finally a black cab took me home for the bargain price of £19, and I fell in the snowy door at 3:15am to a cold, dark house (SS was having a lovely time staying over in the country with his friends that night).Monday morning I flew back to Amsterdam from Heathrow. Luckily the flight back was fairly straightforward and not too delayed. Tuesday evening I flew back into London City Airport. Luckily, again, the flight was only 30 minutes delayed, so I was very lucky. Thursday morning, I headed to Heathrow again to catch Aer Fungus to Shannon. Flight was vaguely on time. Friday night, I was flying back to London from Shannon. And once again, the weather struck. Shannon airport is not the most fun in the world - bit dull, small and dreary. I sat at the gate, wondering why people were queueing when it was clear the plane was not even there. Sure enough, we had an announcement that the plane would be delayed by at least an hour. In the end, as it got darker and darker, the plane arrived. We boarded in the sleet 90 minutes after the planned take off time, and finally took off 2 hours late. At Heathrow we were put into a holding pattern for 30 minutes, and eventually landed 2 hours 15 minutes late. Ho hum.So, I was really looking forward to my flight to Amsterdam the following Monday - NOT. And sure enough, I caught the DLR out to London City airport, and to my surprise as we got closer, the weather became more and more densely foggy. I marched into the airport and it looked like a Delhi marketplace! People queueing everywhere, standing around, looking annoyed. I finally found the queue for BA checkin (as I was due to be in Amsterdam for a week I had 3 bags so had decided to check in my wheelie bag. No one could say whether the flight would go - they were all delayed due to the fog. I went up through security, and watched the flight gradually showing as delayed later and later. I knew it would be cancelled at some point, and meanwhile was just wasting my time sitting in an airport when I could be working at home. I was still reading the Secret History - how fortunate I was to be wading through that tome all December!In the end, I phoned our team assistant in Amsterdam, and had my flight moved to Wednesday morning. I knew it would be severely delayed in any case, and was tired of waiting at the airport. I then had to retrieve my checked in luggage which took a while, and fight my way out through the crowded airport back to the DLR and home. Phew.Wednesday, the flight was OK - only delayed by 40 minutes so not too bad. Once in Amsterdam the weather was sunny and clear - beautiful.

But it didn't stay like that...Friday morning, there was snow everywhere. Friday night, I was booked on the 6pm flight back to

London. All day, flights had been getting cancelled. Not only was Schiphol under a heavy blanket of snow that was still falling, but London airports were also shut and not allowing flights to land. Planes were in the wrong places, crew were in the wrong

places etc. The snow just got worse during the day. Finally, at 4:45pm, my

flight was cancelled. Sigh. I had a lot planned for the last weekend before Christmas, and this was not ideal.

To add to the difficulties our team assistant was ill, and most of the

office had gone home in Amsterdam as the weather was so bad HR had advised them all to leave early. Finally the secretary from downstairs helped me out, as I didn't have the contact details for the company's travel arrangers. There were no flights to London until Sunday so I got rebooked on to the KLM afternoon flight on Sunday. Next, my usual hotel was booked out, the only one available due to all the stranded people in Amsterdam was the Hilton Hotel in the middle of nowhere, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono had done their "bed-in" in the 70s. A taxi there was not going to be cheap, and that was IF I could even get a taxi. The roads were covered with about 15cm of fresh snow, and the queues of slow moving vehicles was getting less and less as the snow turned to ice.Luckily, there were a few people from work having drinks at the nearby hotel so I joined them in the bar whilst we waited for a taxi to arrive. The taxi took 2.5 hours, so I was quite tiddly by then. 6 of us piled into the taxi, we dropped 3 guys at the airport, then me at the hotel, and the other two continued on home into Amsterdam.

The hotel was fine, although the room service prices were prohibitive - Euro25 for a club sandwich! PLus Euro5 service charge for delivering it! Not likely! Luckily I had already made a spare sandwich at lunchtime to have at the airport that night, so at 11pm there I was alone in my hotel room, eating an egg and boursin sandwich with a cup of green tea, with no idea how I was going to get home...
The next morning I had breakfast at the hotel, and headed back to my room. In my bag I had secreted some sachets of peanut butter, packaged rye bread slices and some butter from the breakfast

buffet - terrible I know, but at Euro19 for a breakfast buffet I

thought I would get my value's worth.Whilst an unexpected weekend in Amsterdam probably sounds glamorous, it wasn't. I only had work suits and shoes - nothing suitable for wading through the snow outside the door. I had to wash out my underwear and hang it to dry in the bathroom. Luckily I had sufficient toiletries for the additional days.
I relaxed in the room reading the

Secret History and playing solitaire on my blackberry, but finally at about 2:30pm it was getting sunnier and the snow

looked lovely and sparkly. Some intrepid people were walking along the road, and I got really bored and decided to venture out.

I needed more cash for a taxi to the airport the next day in any case, and thought I should really have a good look around.

I put on all the clothes I reasonably could at once, zipped up my flimsy leather boots, and headed out to reception. I got a map, sketchy

directions, and headed out the door. The snow was deep, but the cold was very refreshing, and I was humming as I walked over to the ATM. Got some money, and walked over to the park. The pavements were icy and very slidy, so I walked mainly on the newer softer snow on the roads, avoiding cars where necessary. The park was beautiful in a cold icy barren way.Then I walked briefly around the shops before heading into a supermarket for snacks/dinner. I was not willing to pay Hilton prices just because I was stuck there. I bought a nicoise salad, rice cakes, crab salad and some pomegranate - looks quite sad laid out on the bed when I got back...

My feet were very numb by this point, so I made my way back to the hotel and had a bath (I hate baths, but my feet were so cold...). My feet were screaming in the warm water, but gradually they came back to life. Early frostbite perhaps?
That evening was fine - luckily the hotel had BBC1 so I was able to watch the final of Strictly Come Dancing whilst chomping through my salad and having some rice cakes and crab salad, all washed down with cup after cup of green tea. Very pleasant.
The next morning, I was fairly sure after watching news reports that there would be no flights to London that day. I had no internet access, and the emergency number for the qork travel agents was not answering after an hour of consistently trying to get through. So I had to pay an exorbitant Euro20 for one hours of access from the overpriced Hilton Hotel to sort out trying to get home. I gave up on flying, and booked myself on to the Eurostar the next morning. It was frustrating to see that I had just missed a Eurostar that day - if I had reorganised myself earlier, I would have made it and been on my way possibly already.
I also booked myself into the Sheraton Airport Hotel which luckily had availability - another night in the Hilton was not a great option, and also I had an early start for the eurostar on Monday morning from the airport station.
So I got a taxi to pick me up at the Hilton at midday, which then skidded and slid all the way to the airport where it dropped me off - he was a very nice guy. I decided to collect my train tickets that night rather than take my chances early Monday morning. So I went down to the station and eventually found the right queue - yep, the longest one there, that was moving at a snail's pace. Not to worry, I dug out the Secret History again, and stood with other disgruntled trapped people, slowly pushing my bag along the ground with one foot. As we got towards the front a bunch of French people decided to turn up and queue jump. It had taken me an hour to get to this part of the queue, and the man in front of me was livid at the attempted queue jumping. He pointed out how long we had all been waiting, and was greeted with typical Gallic shrugs "We are in a hurry" was the accented response. He just pushed past them, so they were now standing alongside me. I got very British and said loudly, "Excuse me, but there is a queue here, can I ask why you are standing here?" I got another shrug from them, and so I also just pushed my bag past them, and moved forward. They moved a little closer each time, and were now standing in front of the people behind me in the queue. So I listened as the people who had been behind me then also took up the banner of trying to get these pushy French people to go to the back of the queue. At this point the French daughter started shouting loudly that they had already queued but had been given the wrong tickets. It was all very garbled, but at the end of it if that was true, they should have gone to the very front of the queue and talked to the ticket people, not tried to push in about 4 people back from the front. All very aggrinnoying.
Then it got worse. I got to the front, and gave my reference number to the man at the desk. He then informed me that my Thalys tickets to connect me from Schiphol to Brussels where I would then get the Eurostar, could only be collected IN BRUSSELS!! Apparently the Eurostar website should have told me this (not that I had seen). Oh dear. So I had no choice, I had to purchase another Thalys ticket for exactly the same train at a cost of 80 euros. Ho hum. But there was nothing else I could do, and I wasn't going to think about it and queue again. As I wandered off, the queue had doubled in size - poor grumpy people.
I made my way to the supermarket in the airport, and bought some sushi and some nuts, as well as some raisin buns for breakfast the next morning. Then I wandered over to the Sheraton. There was a large sign outside telling people the hotel was fully booked. Hoping against hope that my internet booking from 4 hours ago was valid, I marched in and waited 15 minutes for reception to sort themselves out. Luckily, once I got served, they did have my room, and I was fine. The room itself was very nice, although with no kettle in the room - sigh. Instead the Sheraton has "coffee stations" on the executive floor and the ground floor. So I wandered up to the Executive floor and brought back two cups of tea for myself. Silly idea - it means you can't relax in a dressing gown and have a cup of tea, you have to be dressed up to the nines. I suppose it saves them money tho. They did have the FULL selection of English TV programmes however, not just BBC1 and BBC2, so I had a lovely evening flicking around. Then I saw the news which was detailing the riots in Gare du Nord at the eurostar terminals, as the trains were being cancelled and people reallocated to other trains etc. Oh no. Apparently local services were affected as well with long delays, and the weather on Monday in Belgium was supposed to be snow. I had been feeling OK until then, and now was all worried about Eurostar being able to go the next day. Should I go all the way to Brussels and try my luck, or wait in Amsterdam and let my team assistant try to get me on to a plane instead?? Oh dear....
I hardly slept as I couldn't decided what to do. In the end I checked out, and headed for the Thalys train at 6am. It arrived only 5 minutes late, I got on and settled in. ourney was fine, we arrived into Brussels only 20 minutes late, and I headed straight for the Eurostar terminal. I collected my tickets (including the redundant Thalys one - THANKS!!), and joined the queue. At the front of the queue, my ticket was checked and a new sticker put on it for the next train to go, effectively reallocating my seat but ensuring I had a seat on the next train to leave. In the end we boarded on time, and the train left only 15 minutes late! Amazing. I was so happy to be moving in the right direction. The view from the window was of a very frozen Belgium, I was amazed everything was working so well when in the UK similar weather means everything stops! We were fed some very ordinary breakfast - I ate the apple and the roll with some tea and left the strange deformed croissant for the birds...
Unfortunately I had a very unattractive sight for the entire journey, although she as very friendly. I put my head into the Secret History again - would I EVER finish the dratted thing - and she went to sleep, snoring softly. Ugh.
I was so happy to be home, I decided I would not fly again whilst there was a risk of snow - it is the home office for me for the foreseeable future...

And we're off ...

2010-10-13T16:46:00.002Z

After I unexpectedly was granted gardening leave, I was sitting shell shocked wondering how this had happened to me. SS on the other hand, who had already coincidentally been on his own gardening leave for 2 weeks, was champing at the bit to organise holidays. We always have a list of "places to visit" in our own heads, and so we put it all out there, and after spending a couple of fruitless days looking at round the world tickets, short haul tickets, and going back and forth, here was the agenda:
Istanbul: 8 days
Bordeaux and Cahors: 4 days
Marrakech: 5 days
Visit from Sindy's mother for a week in London
Argentina: 3 weeks
Serengeti (Tanzania): 7 days
This was now Friday, and so we booked Turkey through Expedia to start on the next Tuesday. That left one working day to get the rest organised - needless to say it is still a work in progress!

Gardening leave!

2010-10-07T21:25:00.002Z

Yes, for the first time in my life I am on gardening leave, for 2.5 glorious months. Amazingly, SS is also on gardening leave - there is no way we could have planned to synchronise this, so it is very lucky when things turn out this way.
In any case, I will be setting up a new blog:
http://sindyinthegarden.blogspot.com
which will cover our travels over this time. Destinations include Turkey, Bordeaux, Marrakech, Argentina and Tanzania, so go and have a look for updates on there! I am tired (but excited) just thinking about it!

Gidleigh Park AT LAST - oh, and Lewtrenchard...

2010-09-20T17:03:00.046Z

My birthday is in July, but this was the first weekend that SS and I could agree on to head to Devon and Gidleigh Park (with its 2 Michelin starred restaurant headed by the lovely Michael Caines). So early on Thursday morning we headed out in the SSmobile to avoid paying the congestion charge. SS was driving for once, and the trip was uneventful until we swung off the M3 and saw - the Little Chef that Heston was given to improve in Big Chef, Little Chef. Well, even tho' we had had some apple and toast before leaving the house this was too good an opportunity to pass up. We swung in, and headed inside for Second Breakfast (a Hobbit concept of course, but one I was happy to embrace)...
It looked eerily like the TV show, but smaller. SS opted for the Olympic Breakfast and I had a bacon sandwich (plus SS's eggs which he ordered "on the side" so they would not contaminate the rest of his plate). We were very happy with our breakfast - very good quality ingredients.
Danebury Hill Fort was next - SS just noticed a strange shaped hill so we pulled off the road and found it. Had a very nice walk around working off the Little Chef breakfast. SS found some blackberry bushes and set to happily. After walking around the perimeter of the old forted village, we headed back to the car (just in time, as the school outing had just arrived).
Back on the road, and we headed to Salisbury next, arriving around 11am. I hadn't been there before and so I was happy to wander around for an hour. It is a beautiful city, and apart from dodging tour groups and ducking into light shops, the most amusing thing was seeing the poor little boys from the local prep school being made to run around and around the grounds of the cathedral - so good for them! There were some lovely houses (one of which looked like it had a note from the bailiffs attached to the door...)
Back on to the road again, and we started ducking through different counties - bit of Somerset here, Devon here, Dorset there. And the farm shops starting popping up too, and I am a sucker for farm shops! I can manage to talk SS into going as well as he likes buying organic wines. Even tho' we still had the remnants of Little Chef with us, we thought a snack was called for. SS had a large sausage roll and salad, and I went for the scone. What a scone - it was the size of a grapefruit!! And delicious.

From there we headed straight to Gidleigh Park. It does have a narrow road to access it, but luckily the Jaguar is made for country lanes like that. On arrival we parked and wheeled our bag around to the front, and that is where the joy began. The staff were universally wonderful. We were checked in without signing anything, and given a quick tour of the common areas, which were all beautifully panelled large rooms with comfortable sofas, and fireplaces, overlooking the manicured gardens. The house was built in the 1930's apparently by an Australian sheep magnate, but has operated as a hotel for over 20 years. We were upgraded to a room with a view (Kitty - I have attached the fire exit plan which shows all the rooms on our floor in the main house), which was small but perfectly formed. We had some tea and fresh made biscuits brought up to us which we enjoyed on the balcony before deciding to go out for a walk through the grounds.
We did a loop up and around the woods behind the property and then went through the vegetable gardens, the conservatories full of tomatoes and peppers, and then further down past the walls with the pear trees growing over them; on through the tennis courts across through more woods, to the most beautifully manicured croquet lawn I have seen in years, with a lovely little clubhouse attached. The views of the front of the building were also lovely, before we turned up the road back to the door again. At this point, I noticed that the point where SS decided we should start our walk actually has a warning sign next to it!! Typical! So we went the correct way at this point to admire the water gardens that were first put in in the 1930s by diverting the stream that runs through the front garden through ponds and small waterfalls with walkways put through them. Absolutely stunning, and it must be beautiful at night.

We were welcomed back warmly, and went back to the room to freshen up an relax for a while (which in our case means getting into fluffy bathrobes, and lying on the bed watching either BBC News or Bloomberg television if it is available - wild huh??

We got dressed and headed down for a drink before dinner. We had some champagne and snacky things in the lounge first whilst SS went through the huge wine list, and despite vowing never again to have the tasting menu anywhere (we can never finish it), we both decided to go for the classic tasting menu. Instead of reciting what we had, here is the menu (in two parts) and the photos of the food. SS was very happy as, for a change, we were both eating the same things so I didn't have to lean right over the table to take photos of his food as well. The bread basket arrived and was pretty special as usual in places of this quality- all baked on site and a lovely selection - I managed to polish most of it off by the end of the dinner. We also started with a bottle of Clos de Chateau de la Maltroye Chassagne Montrachet and then a bottle of the Boekenhoutskloof Syrah. YUM. I have included some photos of the plates as we were eating for a change as well - just to prove we do actually eat these lovely plates full of food.
We both agreed that the marinated tuna, and the duck were absolutely stunning and the rest was equally lovely. Wonderful menu.
After dinner, we went to the smaller lounge to finish our last glasses of wine and have some fresh mint tea with our petit fours. As usual, the petit fours were wonderful quality, and also as usual, we could not finish them or even do them justice. I was so tiddly and full by now that I ended up half lying with my head in SS's lap for a couple of moments just to recover a bit. Luckily the staff were so lovely and accommodating that they saw nothing unusual in this at all.
At least we had the lounge to ourselves so no-one was looking askance.
We weaved our way up to bed and had a lovely sleep in a very comfortable bed.

In the morning we had tea delivered to the room, with a newspaper. We bundled up in our fluffy robes and slippers and went out on to the balcony of our room to enjoy the tea and biscuits whilst reading the paper and watching the mist clear over the gardens. The 4 gardeners and their two dogs come to spread topsoil on the grass lawns out the front of the hotel and waved a polite hello to us. That was the best morning I can remember in any hotel anywhere in the world. Just sublime.
Eventually we got ourselves ready and went down for breakfast in the breakfast room. There was a central buffet set up with cereals, fruit, compotes, yoghurts and so on, as well as a hot menu option.
I started with some muesli and fruit, and then had the smoked haddock and poached egg which was very good. SS had the kippers (which I am now informed are mackerel by another name - who knew?? Apart from SS of course...). Then he had some cheeses and meat, followed by fruit and yoghurt. Amazing what you can shove in your body after feeling completely full and waddling to bed only 10 hours earlier!!

After breakfast we had no choice but to check out and leave. Luckily as this was my birthday treat, I was not subjected to seeing the damage to the credit card, although SS had a decided wince on his face for the next few hours.
We drove into the nearby village and parked to have a quick look around. It had an amazing collection of small general purpose shops the like of which is just not seen anywhere else any more. In the town hall there was also a number of local producers and artists selling their wares including a dear old lady with her homemade jams for £2.50 each. Well, what could I do? I decided I had to buy 4, including some damson jam, gooseberry jam, apple relish and some hot chilli tomato chutney for SS.
We got back to the car and headed down the road into Exmoor. What a beautiful place it is. There are warning signs everywhere about sheep on the road, and they certainly do seem to prefer to just lie on the road on the verges regardless of the cars.

At one point we came to a car park where the wild horses had gathered. So we pulled over to see what they were up to. Lovely shaggy horses. They were clearly as curious about us as we were about them, even taking the opportunity to relax their large hairy bottoms against the car!! SS shooed them away, which they reluctantly did. Who knows why the car was so attractive - maybe it was the right height to relax...

We carried on over the other side to Lewtrenchard Manor. This was very promising from the outside, and some of the common areas were lovely, however anything was going to suffer after Gidleigh.
The common area outside our room was obviously an old drawing room or even ballroom which was lovely, although not used for anything. And we discovered the next night that it was also ridiculously loud when wedding guests decide to return at 3am and have races up and down it...
And Lewtrenchard had problems of its own in any case. We had a superior room which was large, but tired. Nice window seat overlooking the front of the house. But the bathroom was the worst - 80s decor, some mould and not very nice at all.
We had some afternoon tea in the front garden which was fine (scones did not stack up against the ones from the farm shop). Then we went for a walk around the grounds which were quite small. We both agreed it would benefit from some sort of outdoor games area like a croquet lawn or boules.
It does have a lovely walled vegetable garden, and we wandered around there for a while trying to identify the various vegetables and herbs, and admiring the butterflies.

We went back to the room to relax, and then headed to the bar for a drink before dinner.
The bar is lovely. Luckily, we were dining slightly later than others, and they were just leaving the bar when we arrived, otherwise there would have been nowhere to sit. It was at this stage that the main difference between Gidleigh and Lewtrenchard became apparent - for 99% of the staff at Gidleigh, English is not their first language, and in some cases not their second either. This can make a huge difference to service levels. We had our drinks then headed through to one of the dining rooms for dinner - there are about 5 different views available for dinner, one of which was booked out by the wedding party for the weekend. We were in a smaller room with about 5 tables. If it got cold we did have a nasty electric floor heater next to us which had two broken legs on it - not the best look really...
We got the menu, and ordered. We were given an amuse bouche of... yep, my old bette noir, the melon soup!! Ugh - luckily SS was able to siphon mine away for me.
What lovely food - I had a starter of beetroot soup with a goats cheese beignet. Very nice indeed. See if you can guess what the other food we ordered was from the menu....
All in all, a very nice dinner!
And washed down with a nice bottle of Bandol.

We went off to bed. Unfortunately we did not think to check whether the old Morphy Richards circa 1982 alarm clock was still on, so at 5am - BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP. Awful!
We got up a bit later than that and headed down for breakfast. I started with the muesli, which as the photo shows, was just dust from the bottom of the package, and completely inedible. The juice was not fresh, it was from concentrate, and SS ordered the "fruit compote" but was just dried fruits with a dollop of marscapone on the top. He liked the marscapone tho.
We both had the full English (sans eggs for SS) and both agreed it was the worst we have had in years. I can't explain why something that photographs fine can taste so awful - the mushrooms were the best part but the bacon was tasteless, the tomato chewy, the eggs bland, the fried bread cold and greasy etc etc. Truly awful.
After breakfast we headed out to visit some wineries. Gidleigh Park, before we left, had provided us with directions and advice on the wineries to visit in the area, so we decided to go to Camel Valley first, since it had just won a blind tasting award for their sparkling rose. We found it eventually, down more narrow lanes, and had a tasting. Unfortunately they were sold out of their sparkling red (my other secret fetish along with bread - yum). But we tasted the following wines in any case...
We ended up buying two bottles of the brut sparkling wine, and two bottles of the rose wine (which I normally dislike, but here tasted delightfully of strawberries).
On the wall in the tasting room they had the large map of English wineries, which included Polmassick which didn't seem too far away, and might be a nice drive. We noted the details, and SS called from the car before we headed out. Eventually the owner answered, and whilst she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about us visiting, she reckoned without SS's singleminded tenacity where wine is involved.
We found it eventually after some nice driving through the countryside. The place was someones house really, couldn't see any vines anywhere nearby. There was also a For Sale sign out the front.
It turned out that her husband had died a couple of years before, and she was just keeping the vineyard going until a buyer could be found. Sad really.
On to the wine - the red was fine, the white not very good, but the mix of fruit juices and wine were really good. So we bought two bottles of red wine, and one bottle of plum wine. Lovely.
On the way back to Lewtrenchard we passed a sign to a National Trust property called . Neither of us knew anything about it, but we are always keen to use our memberships. We headed down the long driveway and parked the car, then did the LONG walk down to the house. Stunning place, built 100s of years ago adn restored after a fire. The roof of the long library still shows the smoke damage to the plaster ceiling. The interior was fascinating - it was kept in a way that mimicked how it would have looked when the family lived there in the early 1900s, with nurseries, kitchens, pantries, libraries, box rooms, billiard room and drawing rooms. We had a lovely time walking around it, and then passed through the (slightly disappointing) gifte shoppe where we bought nothing. After the long walk back up to the car, we started the long drive back to Lewtrenchard...
That night instead of another full heavy dinner, we had some food in the bar. We started with a beer (SS) and a gin and tonic (me), then we had a lovely bottle of De Trafford, and both had a bowl of the beetroot soup I had had the night before in the bar. Then we each had a salad and shared a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. It was a lovely evening in front of the fire, just relaxing and enjoying the beautiful panneled room. Plus I found a copy of the Sunday Times Rich List for 2010 so we had a flick through that for laughs as well.
We finished up and headed to bed, only to be woken at 3am by the wedding guests arriving back to the hotel and having races around the table in the common area. Letrenchard is not a place to get a good night's sleep.
For once I won't detail breakfast the next morning - suffice to say the food did not improve on the previous day.

We checked out and headed back up to London. But of course, going so close to Stonehenge, and since neither of use have seen it up close before (and we get "free" entry with out National Trust cards), we stopped.
What a strange place - English Heritage have blocked off all the close entrances and put a tunnel under the road to access it closely (altho' still barricaded off of course from actually touching the stones). But the stones are clearly visible from the road, and from the wire fencing around. I would certainly not have paid to go in (and it was about £8 each!!). The audio guide was useless, and just confirmed that no one really knows what it was for or why it is there, just that they can confirm the orientation of the stones does correspond to stellar movements and solar movements. Wow. I took some photos deliberately without people in them (took a while, and some photos showing the hordes of people being herded out of their tour buses and marched around the area. We saw one tour leader shouting at a family of Japanese on their tour bus who had decided to have a picnic before going in to see the stones, and as the rest of the bus was loading up to go, they finished their lunch and wanted to go in to see the stones. The tour leader was shrieking in no uncertain terms that they could not now go out and see the stones and they had been TOLD to go straight in. Fun tour!
Back on the road, and after a quick but very pleasant stop off to see the SS seniors for a cup of tea, we headed back up to London...
I can't wait to go back to Gidleigh Park, it was somewhere everyone should go once in their life (a bit like Wolwedans in Namibia in that way...). Sublime

Margate - sand, shells and very good food

2010-09-20T08:00:00.028Z

My lovely mother watches Hotel Inspector, Hotel Rescue, Eastenders, property programs, as well as the worst movies anyone could ever live through. Usually this is a limitation, eg she will not answer the phone during Eastenders, and Independence Day ("best movie ever made"), demands total concentration. however sometimes these viewing habits have unexpected benefits. Take the case of Hotel Rescue and Ruth Watson. Ruth Watson headed to Margate and helped out a couple called Liam and Louise with their conversion of an old Georgian house from a series of hideous bedsits into a 3 room luxury B&B in Margate. My mother was so impressed with the final product she purchased two night's B&B for me and SS as a combined birthday and Christmas present. Lovely surprise!

So last weekend was the designated weekend. We packed our bags, and headed off to Cannon Street Station for the 4:45pm train to Margate. The train was not too crowded, and we settled into our seats. Only about 100 minutes, with the train winding its way through lovely parts of Kent including Rochester. Margate station itself was inauspicious, and amusing when there were 5 uniformed, body armoured traffic police checking tickets - hmmmm. They didn't look like they wanted their photographs taken.

We trundled out the door, and unfortunately the first things that Margate presents you with is this high rise full of "social housing". Obviously they did not want Tesco to come to Margate (they lost by the way - Tesco has arrived!).

Up along the streets, past the now empty and boarded up Dreamland amusements (where SS went in 1982), past lots of fish and chip shops, shoe shops, and boarded up shops, past the main bus depot, and right up the hill to Hawley Square where the B&B is tucked nicely into the corner at number 31. We knocked, and Louise (we presume - she never actually introduced herself ;-) ) let us in and showed us to our room on the first floor - the one with the highest ceilings, and floor to ceiling windows. SS was in heaven - they are absolutely his favourite things. Louise did slightly awkwardly mention that on Saturday it was Heritage Open House day in Margate, and they would be showing people around the rooms from 2pm to 3pm. We were of course lovely and gracious and agreed not to be in for the 2 hours around that time, to allow them to tidy and clean the place. Louise also assured us that all visitors would be supervised. She checked we had somewhere reserved for dinner (we did) and explained the breakfast menu (I restrained myself from pointing out the spelling mistakes - most people don't appreciate that sort of helpful criticism ;-) ), left us with keys and the Kent tourist guide to Margate, and disappeared.

We explored the room and bathroom which were beautifully done, although in an unfinished Shabby-chic style in the bedroom. The original floorboards which had been sanded and stained were lovely.

Dinner was booked for 8:30pm, so just before 8pm we headed out to get our bearings. Downtown Margate on a Friday night is a strange mix of nicely done cafes, old drinking holes, and tattooed punks hanging around street corners. All a reflection of the revitalisation through art I suppose, but it still has that feeling of "Don't go down the wrong road" in places.

We arrived at the Ambrette (formerly the Indian Princess) on time, and were shown to our table. The place was not full, but had enough guests to feel busy. The menu is more British cooking using Indian spices, which was perfect for me. We ordered, and then the extra food started arriving... first an amuse bouche of various pickles and chutneys, then the starters arrived, with SS having mackerel which was all rolled up fresh in a filo round, with pickled lemon and other chutneys. Simple, fresh, and beautifully spiced (and only £2.95!!!

My starter was the pork ribs - don't ask - I was feeling piggy. These were done in a soy sauce with cumin and tamarind and were sticky, fall off the bone good. Lovely. They were served with pickled apple and chutneys.

Next up was another amuse bouche - this one a spiced banana in filo, with a side soup. I loved this, but SS thought it was too sweet before a main course.

We both had the pork loin for our main course, and it was cooked beautifully, with a crispy poppadom twirl, Indian coleslaw, more of the pickled apple, and fragrant rice. Delicious. We also had a side of crispy okra, which was sliced into julienne strips and deep fried - very bad for you, but very more-ish. We were given ANOTHER amuses bouches of lemon granita at this point - nice palate cleanser, but a bit too sour for me.
We were very full after dinner, but decided (WHY?) to have an Irish coffee. I do not react well to coffee at any time - I love the smell and the taste of it, but it does not love me, especially after a large dinner. Add to this cream and Baileys, and I was not a happy camper. Oh well.

We wandered back up the hill to the B&B, and settled in for some telly watching before sleeping.

The next morning I made us some tea, and we could smell the wafts of breakfast as it was delivered to the other rooms upstairs. the only issue with the B&B having such lovely stripped back wooden floors is that you could hear EVERYTHING from the floor above. This would not have been such a problem if we had not had an Irish dancer about to try out for Riverdance married to a man about to run the New York marathon. Bounce bounce thump, and then he would run from one side of the room to the other. Bounce bounce thump, da dum da dum da dum. For about an hour every morning and evening. Still, as SS pointed out, that meant we could have television on late and loud whenever we wanted.

A knock on the door at 10am, and in came Louise with two plates of full breakfast followed by Liam with a giant tray with our muesli, fruit, toast and tea on it. Stunning breakfast, particularly the fruit, all beautifully presented. Good quality food, well prepared. The only downside for SS was no green tea available in the house, but he "made do" with fresh mint instead.

I ate everything in one sitting (porky piglet), SS took a break before finishing with his fruit and muesli.

After breakfast we lay like a couple of bloated sea lions on the bed for half an hour, then decided we must get down to Cecil Square for midday for the start of the "Three Squares Walk" which was part of the Heritage Open day. There we met our host (whose name I have forgotten), and the rest of the motley crew. Pick the odd one out in the crowd...

It was quite a sad walk actually, as it showed how little of the original beautiful architecture remains in Margate. But there were some interesting stories about Emma Hamilton, Nelson and also Edward. Prince of Wales meeting Caroline of Brunswick for the first time. Shame they never got on!

We worked our way through Hawley Square, which had some beautiful houses, and then across to Addington Square (or what is left of it), where all 14 of us were traipsed through a poor woman's 2up 2down cottage. Her cat was very unimpressed at the house being overrun. we also had the opportunity to observe the local residents relaxing on their breaks... I doubt that they are going to be featured in the next version of "Visit Margate" from the Kent Tourist Board.

Our intrepid guide next took us into a locked up cemetery off the end of Addington Square (still not sure why - he just spent his time whinging about how the council would not pay for any landscaping to be done there). Clearly the local kids found a way in, and got up to no good...

SS finally bonded with some of our fellow walkers however, as they discovered some blackberry bushes.

SS by now was starting to look glazed eyed into the middle distance, so I knew we had to get away. But our guide promised us that although we had not booked, he might be able to get us into the Reading Rooms to have a look around. This was all very amusing to have the prospect of being given a tour of our own bedroom, but also an opportunity to see the other rooms as well. Sure enough, Liam let us in, and we joined the others trooping around the rooms. It did make me more conscious of wearing my slippers later, the thought of all those dirty feet tromping through our bathroom!

The other rooms in the Reading Rooms were lovely, but we certainly had the nicest one - thanks again to my mother!

We finished up the tour, and SS and I broke away to go and visit the Tudor House. This was opposite the Ambrette, and had looked stunning in the darkness. During the day it was still an amazing example of Tudor architecture, and there was a short history outside describing how it had come to be restored through the efforts of the then Mayor of Margate in the 1930s. Once inside however, it was really just an empty shell, with no information at all. It was hard to visualise how it was used or for what purpose really. So a bit uninspiring.

The other slightly weird/amusing/annoying thing about the Tudor house was the constant strange signage - some of which was patently obvious - stairs? really?

And some of which was just overkill...

Next I dragged SS up the road to the Shell Grotto. Again, a very uninsipiring entrance, but in we went. We paid our £3 entrance fees, and headed downstairs. After walking down the short, carved tunnel undergound, what a pleasant surprise! Rooms and corridors all lined with shells, with one skylight in the middle.

The long and short of it is that no-one knows how old it is, who made it, or for what purpose. But the short corridors and rooms lined with shells are really quite stunning, and well worth a visit.

Clearly some of the victorians who had been through it were also concerned with leaving their mark in the form of graffiti, which at least was neat and had an historic air about it.

Back upstairs and SS and I were feeling quite parched. We ordered a pot of green tea and settled into the corner of the gifte shoppe. I did notice that the water came from one of those reheating urn type things, but after we both had a sip of the tea we agreed it was the worst tea we had ever drunk in our lives. Ever. However we were so thirsty we choked it down, used the little rest room (decorated in shades of avocado), and headed out the door again.

We next went up to Scotts antique shop, and had a marvelous time digging around. Three giant floors of antique furniture, handles, cutlery, books. records, crockery, crystal, glassware, etc etc. I could have spent hours there, but unfortunately the palce was closing, so we bought 6 silver forks and bone handled knives for £10, and headed out the door again.

A rest before dinner was needed, so back to the B&B where we settled in, made some proper tea (Earl grey for me, chamomile for SS), and watched Thelma and Louise. Very girl flick friendly.

After a quick freshen up, we walked up the hill to Cliftonville, stopping to view the beautiful sunset over the gas tower, and on to our restaurant for the evening - the Bangkok Thai.

SS wanted a pint first, so we went to a pub on the main road. Full of CCTV cameras and locals, it was a very reasonable G&T and pint at £5. We weren't tempted to stay for another, but stopped at the local off-licence to get some beers (the Bangkok Thai is not licensed).

On arrival, we had our choice of two tables, and picked the one that was more out of the way. The "restaurant" is really just the front conservatory attached to a small bungalow. Maximum covers is 24 and they only do one sitting per night. It is run by a late middle aged man with lots of anchor tattoos on his forearms (SS thought he must be either RN or merchant seaman), with his Thai wife and her mother. He is front of house, and very friendly, efficient, and you can see the lists going through his head as he checks everything. He is not a natural front of house, but nothing goes missing or astray with his very methodic approach, whilst still being very friendly.

Prawn crackers and hot home made sweet chilli sauce to start. SS and I both went for a Tom Yum soup to start (his with chicken, mine with prawns), which was the best I have ever had. Followed up with seafood stir fry for me including fat fresh scallops, squid, prawns and fish. SS had the green curry catfish. Both were stunning. SS asked for some chilli sauce and was told "we only have the homemade stuff - it's very hot, is that OK?" Is that OK? I have never seen SS beam so wide in a restaurant - it was very OK and he ate most of it. We also had a fresh pad side dish. Wonderful food.

We were very full, but were given a sample of one of their puddings to try, which I thought was a lovely touch. It was a sweet coconut pudding with fresh mango, and would have been delicious if you were hungry with a sweet tooth. It defeated us! The owner laughed when he saw what his wife had done, and said "You tell her you are stuffed full, and she brings out stodgy pudding for you to try - hilarious!"

We waddled slowly back down the hill, and then up the other side of the hill to the B&B, where we settled in for more loud telly and a late night (take that, you Irish dancing marathon runners!!!).

The next morning, breakfast was not quite as good as the fridge had gone too cold overnight which froze the berries and the mushrooms. My poached egg was very good however.

We packed up, and headed off to the train station to catch the 11:45am train back to London. The station had quite a few holiday makers on it, including an older couple with their two children - a boy of about 6 and a girl about 3. Both well behaved little children, but unfortunately it seemed the parents were more used to nannies being on hand, as there was a lot of frustration, culminating in regular exclamations of "Who'd have children!?!". And they weren't saying that in a fond way. Contrast this to the single father who clearly did not have the money they did, but got on subsequently with his 5 year old daughter, and spend a pleasant time chatting to her, telling her facts about the countryside, and discussing patiently what they would do that afternoon together. Polar opposite parenting....

It was very pleasant packed into the train watching the sunny fields of Kent go by on the way back to London.

Arrival in Lyon, and Lameloise

2010-08-26T14:48:00.016Z

When booking an August holiday in June, particularly when looking at easyJet timetables, a 7:20am flight never seems that bad.

But the reality of waking up at 4:15am, staggering about in the dark whilst humping a suitcase down 3 flights of stairs, and trying to get one's grumpy boyfriend moving is entirely different. I was removing brown toast from the toaster, spreading with marmite and bagging into freezer bags, whilst trying to get SS to drink his orange juice, and thinking all the time to myself that we needed to make the 4:58 train from Farringdon to Gatwick.

As it turned out my estimate of the walk to Farringdon was much closer than SS's - it is only 5 minutes not 15. As a result we were outside the station at 4:45, and ... the station was shut and locked. And it was starting to drizzle. We calmly discussed the situation, SS kicked the metal gates very loudly numerous times, and then suddenly at 4:50am, a rotund man in a blue uniform appeared, and advised us that he would open the station in 3 minutes. Which he did. We bought out tickets, made our way to the platform and joined our fellow early morning commuters.

Settling into the train seat, we started munching on our toast, which was still warm but a little floppy, as we took in the rest of the carriage. Of the 5 other people, only two were awake. One was staring out the morning with that early morning stare listening to Lady Gaga on his iPod very loudly. The other was directing his early morning stare at our marmite toast. Not in a nasty way, not in a nice way, just in an early morning way. Once the toast was consumed he continued to stare at the spot on the table where the toast had been.

Gatwick was busy as it always is. It took 35 minutes to queue at bag drop (we had to take a suitcase due to our potential wine purchases). Eventually we got through, and the security scanning was remarkably straightforward. On the other side we did our usual routine - two baguettes purchased and water for the journey, sunscreen from Boots for SS, loo stop, and then on to the plane. That is when the next delay occured. Apparently there were 3 people not on the flight that had checked in on line, and there was one person on the flight that should not be there. Very amusing. We were in no rush. They ended up doing an entire check of the boarding passes of everyone on the plane, and it turned out that the extra person was an easyJet cabin crew person who was flying "on personal business". ha ha.

We took off 40 minutes late, but made up 30 minutes in the air as usual. We also polished off SS's cheese and pickle baguette.

At the airport, I left SS to collect the bag whilst I went ahead to get the rental car since it was in my name. For the first time ever there was no queue at Europcar, and then when I got to the counter, the lady said "aah, you have booked a small car, you have a choice therefore of a Renault Twingo, a Seat Ibiza, a new Fiat, or a Toyota Yaris". A choice!! I was completely wrong-footed and resorted straight to asking (in a very girly way) "What colour are they?". After much consideration I went with the Twingo (don't ask me why), and happily went out and adjusted mirrors, seats etc whilst waiting for SS with the bag. He arrived, I caught the following photo,

and we headed off up to Chagny, our first stop for the day.

The Twingo is certainly the most gutless car I have driven in ages, but it was compact, easy to park, and once it got going could maintain 130km provided the road was flat :-) the countryside was pretty boring through Macon, but started to improve as we hit the bottom of Burgundy and it became a bit less flat.

We arrived at Lameloise slightly early for checkin, and were pampered from the start. Our room was available, and we were allowed to go straight up. A chambermaid took our suitcase up to our room, which was absolutely charming, if a little dated. There was also a lovely view from the window when the shutters were opened.

We were so tired we put the "do not disturb" sign up, drew the curtains, and went to sleep for 2 hours. Bliss (although goodness knows how many Gallic elbow nudges were going on downstairs).

SS worked out his SD card for his camera was the wrong sort, so we headed out at 4:45pm for a quick walk down to the shops. Chagny is a village of contrasts between a charming high street and a run down supermarket, between old houses and newbuild awful flats.

Some seemed to be the victim of arsonists...

However the supermarket had an SD card, and also we bough 6 x 1.5litre bottles of water for 19c each! That is some sort of bargain. However that is when he realised that his Caxton currency card was out of date. And I had realised that my replacement PIN had not arrived, so there we were all cashed up on currency cards but unable to use them. ho hum.

Once we got back, we watched TV for a while, then I showered, dried my hair, and we headed down for our degustation menu. The service in the restaurant was lovely (as I suppose one would expect for a 3 Michelin starred place!). We were shown the menu, and we were off!

We started with the house aperitif of champagne with raspberry liqueur. This came with amuses bouches of a hot cod beignet, foie gras, steak tartare with avocado, and a tomato and cheese stack.

The pre-entree was a melon mousse (ugh, SS had to eat mine) with almond bread and prosciutto (which was sitting on the spoon, but we ate before the photo was taken!).

At this point the sommelier came over and asked "how much wine did we think we would drink?". We did not realise at the time, but since we were on a package with room, dinner, drinks and breakfast, the sommelier was clearly working out which wines to serve us since there was a budget for the wines. SS piped up that we would get through 2 bottles, and so the sommelier suggested a light red and then a heavier red since that was our preference. Suited me!

Bread came round in a giant basket - always my downfall. particularly when served with salty butter. I can't help but gorge on french bread. I always regret it by about 10:30pm when I am so full I can't move, but at the time... mmmmmm.

We then moved into the menu proper (and another bread roll for me).

Up first was a crab and langoustine dish. It was cold, and very tasty with the tomato cold soup being poured around the base at the table. I enjoyed it probably more than SS, but we both agreed it was lovely.

Next up was the monkfish medallions with a curry sauce and carrot soup. Absolutely stunning - this turned out to be our favourite dish of the entire trip.

We were both starting to sit back in our chairs with big fat tummies popping out. I was very happy to be wearing a dress that was not tight around my middle.

Next up was the creamy potatoes with truffles and a side of lobster on "lobster salt".

We were both SO full already, and SS hates creamy potatoes almost as much as he hates eggs, so that wasn't going to happen for him either. I thought it was very good, but the wine and the bread were kicking in, making me full and giggly - not a great combination. It was also after 10pm by now.

Next up was the lamb, which we both agreed was not a great dish - it may look good, but was a bit gamey in taste, which is not my thing at all. neither of us could finish this, and I resorted to hiding some of the lamb under other things on the plate.

Phew. cheese and dessert left.

The cheese trolley was a thing of beauty - I had some roquefort, some smoked goats cheese with an ash rind, epoisse, and a creamy goats cheese. SS had similar, except he went for some blue cheese. So lovely.

Next, the dessert menu arrived. SS went for the strawberries (he was so full, and is not a dessert eater). I am not much of a dessert eater anymore, but decided crepes suzette are always a nice show, so I would have those.

We settled back to try to make some room, but then the birthday surprise arrived - they have baked SS a little cake, delivered on a trolley with a giant chocolate flower arrangement.

They wheeled it over and put everything on the table, and took a photo of the two of us and the cake on their digital camera. Then, they cut us each a slice of cake, and the excess went back on the trolley. Before the end of the meal, they brought back the printed out photo - what a lovely idea! I was absolutely charmed!

So, we choked down the cake (which was very nice, but after another bottle of wine by now, I was not tasting things very well).

Then the crepe suzette trolley arrived, and up went the flames.

Beautifully done, and I was also given a shot of Grand Marnier on the side with the scoops of vanilla and chocolate icecream. Which I also couldn't get through. SS had a go at his strawberry dessert, but was also defeated. the red wine granita was absolutely lovely, and of course - petit fours arrived.

So, time for coffee. I opted for the de menthe (or as SS put it by "deux mint tea" - he was a bit drunk). With it came even MORE lovely little petit fours, and I could not even eat one of them. All I could think was how my lovely friend Kate would be so disappointed in me! Sorry Kate...

Eventually, we finished all the alcohol on the table and waddled upstairs to our room. The time was 12:15 - we had been at the table for 4 hours!! SO full.

We both slept really well, and headed down for breakfast at 9:50am. Still not sure why we did that as there was the option to have breakfast delivered to our room. Breakfast was perfect - just what you need after an evening like that. We were sat down, and green tea delivered to us. I had chosen grapefruit juice, and SS went for orange. First a little platter was given to each of us with poached gooseberries, yoghurt and a small rice pudding on it. Then a large bread basket with baguette, croissants, muffins and fruity brioche arrived, along with jams. There was also creamy goats cheese and prosciutto (apologies for blurry food photos - SS insists I can only photograph food with my blackberry, not my proper camera...)

We managed to get through most of that, then went up to our room to rest again and pack. Out the door at 11:30am. Lameloise gave us a bag with two bottles of water in it for the road - lovely touch.

We got some money, then headed up the road to Chassagne Montrachet for our first wine stop. The day was quite overcast and a little chilly. We went to Chateau Chassagne Montrachet, and did a quick wine tasting.

Neither of us were that bowled over, But I did exceed even my own levels of ignorance when I asked the slight superior tasting guy "so what grapes are grown on the estate?". SS managed not to visibly cringe although inside I am sure he was dying a thousand deaths. Mr Superior got to smirk down his long French nose and say "In Burgundy there are only two types of grapes grown - chardonnay and pinot noir". Well, clearly I had not done my research... but we bought a bottle anyway, and headed down to see the cellars. Yep, they were cellars.

We escaped, and then had a quick walk around the village. In each village there seems to be a board setting out all the local producers and pointing you in the right direction. However whilst they may say they are open for business, this is generally not the case - you need an appointment and many are just not open for appointments either.

The village was quite pretty, but a lot of things were shut - this was when we came across our first experience of the French shutting for lunch. As you can see, SS was all alone in the middle of town...

I had forgotten about this particularly since our most recent trips to France have been in larger cities where this doesn't seem to happen as much anymore. But in Burgundy - well, forget about doing anything between about 12pm and 2pm, depending on the establishment.

We got back on the road and had a quick stop off in Meurseault. But the weather was not getting any better so we decided to continue up the road. We drove through Volnay, then stopped off in Pommard which is literally right next door (all of these villages that I have read so much about are literally between 500m and 1km apart!).

We took some photos in Pommard, which was the prettiest village to date, with a lovely High Street and pretty squares. There was also the directory of the local producers - it all starts to make more sense when you are in Burgundy how all the little owners and producers fit together - so very different to the huge estates in USA and Australia, and even South Africa to some extent.

There was also a nice "do-er-up" house which was very tempting...

...but then got back in the car and headed up to Beanue and see if we could check in to our room at Via Mokis.

Via Mokis, Beaune wine tour, and on to Saulieu

2010-08-26T14:42:00.027Z

Beaune was a lot larger than I was expecting. Luckily SS's sat nav was working, so we made our way around the ring road, and with only one wrong turn, found Via Mokis. There was one car spot left on the road, and I nabbed it (I always seem to do reverse parking better when driving on the "wrong" side of the road...).

We found our way into Via Mokis via the open restaurant door, and after much shouting, the owner finally emerged, a bit surprised to see us standing in his restaurant. But he was very affable and showed us up to our room - the Rouge or Rosso suite. And, yes, it was just like the photos on the website - very red!! Neither of us is a fan of overly modern interiors, and this was like modern interiors to the nth power. All very IKEA and plastic. Still, it was clean and the bed was comfortable, so you can't complain too much. Via Mokis is two old townhouses joined by a covered walkway, with two separate frontages on two roads (the walkway goes effectively through what would have been their back gardens). The view from our two skylights was very pretty.

I do feel looking back it was overpriced, and is just not the sort of decor we prefer. I can appreciate the taste in it, but SS just hated it.

We had a quick relax on the bed, but were keen to see more of Beaune - it had looked so pretty as we drove around it. At 3pm we took the map in the room and headed out for a stroll and to get something to snack on. We got a croque monsieur and a chicken baguette at a shop, and sat in one of the squares, people watching, which is always great fun. Both of us were surprised how much we were liking Beaune as we had not really had any expectations at all. There was a hideous little tourist train that took the Americans around town,

but we opted to walk.

Eventually we needed a rest and our feet were hurting, so we made our way back to Via Mokis. SS had spied their wine by the glass offering, so Marco kindly agreed to bring up a couple of glasses, which he did, together with two mini olive muffins (which I got to eat - SS was not impressed).

The TV only had local french channels, but I discovered my favourite show, that I was to watch all week in our rest before dinner period - Un famille en or - a terrible French version of the gameshow that goes by many names - Family Fortunes (UK), Family Feud (Australia), Familien Duell (Germany). It was fabulous, and very educational. SS was able to help me with some of the stranger french words, but since they wrote up the questions and answers on the screen it was good for my vocabulary. The actual hosting was just terrible - the man was a muppet, and there was a strange white dog involved in it for no apparent reason, but it was mindless and that was what I wanted.

We finished our wine, and at about 7:45pm decided to head out to see what we could find. We didn't want a heavy meal after our late lunch, and decided on pizza and salad at one of the restaurants in town. It was very busy, full of families, and bustly which was pleasing. I ordered an edelweiss blond beer, and a Pizza Romanee (ham, cheese, olives and mushrooms)

whilst SS plumped for a heineken,

the Pizza Montrachet (merguez, chorizo, peppers, onions and olives - ie the MAN's pizza).

We both got a side salad. The food was very nice, and we both got through our huge pizzas. Dinner was entertaining watching the tourist families trying to deal with their offspring. Some of the children were tired and grumpy and acting in a way that French children never would over dinner. tantrums, food flying etc. Quite amusing to watch. We were both quite tired however, and had an early start the next day for our wine tour. Plus it was SS's actual birthday the next day! The night time view out the skylights was also very pretty.

We woke at 7:30am, as I needed to go out and get cash and some breakfast before our guide arrived at 9am. Breakfast was an apple turnover for me, and a ham pastry for SS. Our guide, Christina, was slightly early so we hurried down, and were led to her comfortable car nearby. In we got, and off we went. We started by going to a lovely viewing point above the village of Pommard, where Christina had a presentation booklet that she went through, explaining the wines of Burgundy, the terroir, the appelations and so on. The most amusing part of this was that the sun was very strong at 10am in the morning, and SS had forgotten his sunglasses. Christina kindly lent him hers, so there he was in the middle of the vineyards, looking at a presentation with large ferragamo sunglasses with swarovski crystals set into the sides of them - very fetching!

We took some photos, then back into the car and off to our first tasting at Domaine Robert Sinugue. This clarified that you need a well-connected french speaking guide in Burgundy. The Sinugues have got a dull, unprepossessing house on the edge of the village of Vogne Romanee. We were led down the side, and into the cellar,

where Marie-France (the owner's wife) proceeded to pull out her recent bottles for a taste, including some of her personal collection.

A lovely collection, then we moved on to barrel tastings, including a Grand Echezeaux straight from the barrel. SS was in heaven. Needless to say, we purchased 6 bottles including 3 of the Grands Echezeaux. Our guide, Christina, got on very well with Marie-France, and we were lent 3 glasses and given one of their bottles of Villages wine for our lunch. So we headed back to the car and off to the cheese shop. Unfortunately this was closed, but the supermarket next door stocked some of their local cheeses. We bought a Comte, an epoisse, a local cassis cheese and a local soft cheese. together with a loaf of wholemeal bread, and we headed off to a lovely spot in the vineyards above Vogne Romanee.

We had no knife, so used Christina's scissors. Luckily she of course had a bottle opener. We settled on to a low stone wall in the sun, and shared our cheese and wine. It was delicious in the sun - it was warm enough to be relaxing, with a slight breeze to stop it getting too hot, and with the field of Romanee Conti just in the distance. Does life get any better? Eventually we hoisted ourselves off the wall, and headed off to visit the fabled field of the Romanee Conti Grands Echezeaux. There is a slightly patronising sign on the wall, and of course the large stone cross.

Back in the car, and off to our second and final tasting at Domaine Bertagna. Here, the lady in charge closed up the shop, and took us out the back to the vineyards where she explained their holdings, then back inside and down to the cellars where there were lots of barrels from the various plots that they owned.

Then back inside for a private tasting of quite a few wines.

A few people drove up and tried to get in for a tasting, but she just completely ignored them and continued to chat to us. So of course, we bought another 6 bottles. I was getting a bit tired by this stage, but Christina was a dedicated guide. First she took us to the Chateau du Clos de Vougeot - a 12th century monastery

and associated chateau built in the 15th century which used to be run by the monks of Citeaux, and is now used by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin (to which Christina has just been elected). They have big booze ups there every year all in the name of protecting the heritage of Burgundy. I think Burgundy is doing just fine, but it sounds like good fun. The room where the dinners are held was particularly lovely,

and the old wine presses used by the monks were amazingly preserved (apparently they have just always been too heavy and cumbersome to move which is why they have survived).

That would have been a fine end to the tour, but Christina took us on past Beaune to Merseault to see some more vistas, and also to point out the yellow fungus that is starting to spread in burgundy. Apparently in about 25 years the majority of the vines may need to be replanted as no-one has yet found a solution to the fungus problem. She dropped us off at Via Mokis, staggering under our 12 bottles of wine, and we lugged them up the long stairs to our room.

Christina had suggested two places for dinner as it was SS's birthday - one in Pommard and the Bistro de L'Hotel in Beaune. We went for the latter since it meant I didn't need to drive.

We got to dinner at 8pm, and sat outside in the courtyard in lovely late sun. At that point the place was full of typical French couples - affluent fat men that smoke continually, and thin wives with very short hair.

After we ordered, the amuses bouche arrived - of course it was the ubiquitous melon soup! Ugh. couldn't hand it over to SS so had to choke it down. SO horrible.

I had the shrimp cocktail followed by monkfish in shellfish sauce. SS had the artichokes in lemon olive oil, followed by the monkfish. We both had fruit salad for pudding, and a delicious bottle of Aloxe Corton.

The highlight of the evening was the late arrival of the couple that were to eat dinner next to us. She was dressed in jeans tucked into boots and a grey jumper, her long blonde hair down, looking (she hoped) like Anna Kournikova. He was about 15-20 years older, probably late 30s, and looked sort of like Andrew McCarthy. He claimed to be 28 but looked much older to us.

We gathered through their conversation that he was French, living in New York. Her accent seemed to be sort of Central American/Spanish to me, and she had just moved in with him in New York. He ordered for her, told her what to eat and what to think of the wine and so on. She said nothing at all really, just looked slightly bored. Then, once the main arrived, the conversation really took a turn to the amusing. He started a monologue about "how he had chased after her because he had felt an instant connection and know that there was something special about her, she was so intelligent not just good looking, but so young and immature... he was not sure she was mature enough for a serious relationship with him ... he knew what it was like to be chased by some really attractive women, how flattering it was, but didn't know if she was mature enough to appreciate him for him, and not for what he could offer her ... but now he knows she is mature and when she came back to him after those two weeks, he knew for sure ... and by her moving to NY to be with him ... he was amazed she was willing to move to NY, most women wanted to be in Europe not NY so he really appreciates the sacrifice she is making, but now he knows she is committed and not just overwhelmed by temptation... blah blah blah.

She said absolutely nothing through all of this process. She didn't even stop eating, just munched away looking bored. I really wished we could have stayed to see how it all turned out - would she have said anything? Would he have let her? - but we had finished and were a bit tired after our early start so we paid up and walked back to our room. Had a proper lie in the next morning, up at 10:30am. we headed out for a walk around town, bought a wine map at the Atheneum store and got some more money. I had a chicken curry baguette and SS a ham and mustard one, eaten on a bench in the centre of Beaune - lovely.

Back to Via Mokis where we checked out, and hit the road. Our first stop was CPH which had been recommended by Christina as a good bottle shop to visit. She had also recommended some appelations that we could try. We found it easily, but of course it was now 12:30pm, and CPH was shut for lunch until 1:30pm! There was no way we were not going to go there, so we killed some time by heading up to the Panorama spot above Volnay that Christina had taken us to. I found it easily (I have my mother's sense of direction, once I have been somewhere I can usually find it again), and we settled on to the bench to take in the view.

SS mentioned that he had not yet eaten any grapes, so I stole across the road, and voila - here they are on the vine...

and here they are in his hand...

They were slightly tart with thick skins and very pippy of course, but quite refreshing. SS got some sun for a while, then back into the car, and we were at CPH at 1:35pm. Kid in a toy shop was SS. I managed to restrain him to only 6 bottles, but it was difficult. We headed back towards Beaune and eventually found the D970 back road to Saulieu with the assistance of my map (satnav was being awkward), and drove through the lovely mountains to Saulieu and Relais Bernard Loiseau. SS had a nice nap along the way of course. The outside of the building was less than exciting - it was in the middle of town which was a surprise, and looked like a Travelodge.

We zoomed past it so that I had to do a u-turn, and then headed back. Valet parking as usual, and one poor guy helped us in with our bags, carrying pretty much everything which at this point included 19 bottles of wine! the back of the property was lovely - this is the view from which most of the promotional material is taken, for obvious reasons we now realise, and why I thought the property was outside a village, not smack bang in the middle of one.

The room was beautiful,

and our porter told us we could wear the bathrobes and slippers down to the pool. it was now 3:40pm on a lovely sunny day, and this was our first (and last) opportunity to get some sun. So we got changed quickly, and went straight to the pool with our books to relax before dinner. We nabbed two deckchairs in the sun, and started reading our books.

All was lovely, the pool area was filling up a bit and then... Francois and his daughter Mauvais arrived. He was late 50's, she was about 8 and very loud, splashy and obnoxious. She kept up a running commentary of her day, what she had done, what she was about to do "Papa, papa! L'eau c'est froid!" etc etc. We put up with her for about 30 minutes then gave up and went back to the room at about 6pm to rest (plus the sun was going down by now). We walked back through the lovely gardens, noting the spot where pets are put up (they are allowed, but not in the hotel...)

With SS looking particularly fetching in his robe...

We showered, changed and headed down for our apperitif. I had the house speciality which was really a cremante with peach liqueur - very nice. SS had a kir royale. With it were some cheesy bread sticks, salmon on crispy potato, cheese on a crisp and a hot croquette of some sort of fish. we were then led through to the dining room for dinner at 8pm. We were the first in the room. The table was fine, but the room was not as nice as Lameloise. There was also an odd lamp on the table which, as it turned dark outside, kept changing colour every three seconds or so like a cheap christmas decoration.

The service was also not as good as Lameloise. They all spoke French at us, with no attempt to slow down. Eventually a waiter was found who had some English, but it was not very good and sometimes slightly confusing even when he was available. Again, not as good as Lameloise (considering they are both 3* Michelin restaurants). A bottle of wine in a basket was brought over with a loud, fast chat in French, then the sommelier left. Bread arrived. First was a pre-entree of tomato jelly and blue goats cheese, with a cold tomato soup poured around it. It was fine, a little bland, and the photo does make it look a bit like a surprised face...

At this point we only had our water, and no wine. SS wanted wine - it was his birthday and it did seem strange that a bottle had been put on the table and nothing else done. So he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Presuming the bottle was white wine, he started to pour a little into the white wine glass. As I saw it coming out of the bottle, I saw it was actually red wine, left there to breathe presumably. "No, stop pouring!" I hissed as he also noticed that it was red. So there was a slosh of red wine in his white wine glass, as well as a couple of drips on the table from where he stopped pouring so abruptly. No one seemed to have noticed (we were left to our own devices for quite a while), so I hissed "Neck it, no-one will know", which he did.

Unfortunately, a minute later, over came the sommelier with a bottle of white wine. He presented it to SS, who nodded gravely, and then to me, who also nodded gravely, and poured me a glass full. He then moved over to SS's place, and all in one moment took in the red wine splots on the table, the red sheen to the white wine glass, and the determinedly far-away look on SS's face. With one small "hmmm" he picked up the glass, took it away, replaced it with another white wine glass, and poured for SS. Then he just walked away. I thought it was hilarious.

At this stage Dominique Loiseau was making the rounds of the tables, introducing herself and checking everyone was having a good time. She stopped at our table, and was charming. I mentioned it was SS's birthday and she wished him a Happy Birthday before moving on. Next up was the frogs legs with garlic puree and parsley sauce. Again, I thought this a bit bland, but you could see it was accomplished cooking.

Then came sea bass with a lovely crispy skin, on a bed of caramelised onions with a red wine jus. This was the nicest dish, the sea bass was perfect and the onion lovely.

Next was "poultry" (take your guess which one - I still don't know) with baby leeks, truffle mash and foie gras. The poultry was really strange - it almost had a soft layer of something on the top such that there was no typical fowl texture to it. My foie gras was a huge chunk, very undercooked for me, with large globby red bits inside. I couldn't eat that.

The cheese trolley arrived,

which is always a highlight. Between us we had some blue cheese, a couple of goat's cheeses, roquefort, comte and epoisse. With it was served a huge basket of hazelnuts and dried figs, and lovely sultana bread.

Feeling very full by now. First there was a pre-dessert. Looking at the picture of it, I think I ate it, but have no recollection at all of what it was... oops.

Dessert arrived - a giant chocolate thing which was chocolate icecream sandwiched between thin layers of chocolate wafer, all swimming in a tart orange sauce. I dislike chocolate and orange together intensely. Perhaps if it had been with raspberry it would have been nicer, but it was not to my taste. Again, I could think of a number of friends who would have loved it...

With it came a lovely birthday surprise for SS however, which was a chocolate "painting" with Happy Birthday written on it, mounted on a chocolate easel.

They packaged this up in a plastic display box for us, and we took it up to our room (only to leave it in the fridge by mistake the next day when we left!). We had finished our bottle but SS wanted another glass of wine, so we ordered one with our dessert.

We finished as usual with mint tea, which we opted to have outside on the terrace - lovely evening, although I preferred the Lameloise experience.

As usual, I could not eat any of the petit fours - sorry Kate!

We headed off to bed for a lovely sleep, and in the morning breakfast was delivered to the room.

They got our order wrong so I phoned down to the kitchen and sorted it out. it was nice having it in the room, but a bit odd since there was only one chair, and the other person was expected to eat sitting on the end of the bed. I was the bed person, and I can say it was not very comfortable.

We re-arranged all of our packing to try to fit the wine bottles in, then headed down to reception and checked out. Back on the road for the LONG drive to Arras...

Arras, the Somme and back to London via Lille

2010-08-26T14:41:00.028Z

So, we pootled off along the A6. I must say french drivers really are lovely outside of Paris. They keep over to the right, only change lanes to overtake then straight back over again. The toll roads are quite expensive, but SO worth it. There was one quite bad accident we saw that had just happened, and immediately they all switched their hazard lights on, moved over in an orderly queue to move slowly past the accident, then kept going. No juggling around and over-long gawking like they do in England.

As we got closer and closer to Paris the roads for busier. I was relying on satnav as I would have taken an earlier road to avoid more of Paris (even for a longer distance). but satnav did well even with SS's slightly late directions (you should have turned left back there... etc). We only stopped once for petrol which was quite easy.

We arrived into Arras at about 3:15pm, and despite satnav telling me where to go, neither of us could see the B&B so we just kept straight on. After a few wrong turns and dead end roads we found our way back again, and parked the Twingo to try to find the B&B on foot. It was right in front of us, but I had forgotten you could only check in after 5:30pm. Undeterred we locked up the car, paid our parking charge, and went for a walk to discover Arras. We both wanted a snack of some sort, but the little cafe we chose on the Grand Place was serving only boissons,

so we each had a blond beer and sat back to people watch. The Grands Place is stunning - almost Dutch or Flemish architecture, and wonderfully restored after the war damage.

At about 4:30 we decided to do some more exploring, and wandered around the Place des Heros which was having some serious roadworks

and some of the shopping streets,

before presenting ourselves back at the B&B at 5:31pm.

The lovely Isabel checked us in, gave us a brief tour of the B&B and then took us up to our room - the Chambre des Anges on the first floor at the front. It had secondary glazing so the road noise disappeared, and was beautifully decorated with trompe l'oeil wallpaper and little knick nacks. Original floorboards. We found out from Franck (the owner) that the house had been occupied by the Germans during WW2 after being substantially refurbished after the damage of the Great War.

SS was in heaven. I knew this would be his favourite place that I had booked and I was right. He was snapping away with his camera, and we both peeked into the room opposite where the guests had not yet arrived, and take some photos of the stairs.

Beautiful place, and VERY reasonable at Euro95 per night. I wish there was one of these B&Bs in every town.

We felt like some vegetables that weren't doused in cream for a change, and had spied a Chinese restaurant in our drive around Arras earlier (actually we spied it twice since we drove past it twice!). The Dragon d'Or was exactly what we wanted. The menu had little bits of hilarity and interesting translations,

and we ordered a Tsing Tao beer each, together with soup to start (spicy soup for me, crab and chicken soup for SS.

Moving on, we shared some spicy beef stir fry, broccoli, plain rice and vegetable noodles. All very nice.

As the bill came we were presented with small Chinese shotglass cups. With great aplomb, the waitress poured some rice wine into each, and VOILA, the opaque glass bottom cleared to reveal... a naked man in the bottom of my cup. So weird. SS had a naked woman in his. Absolutely not what I was expecting in a Chinese restaurant in Arras... don't look closely at the photo if you have a nervous disposition.

We paid up and headed back to the B&B. We arranged with Franck (the other owner) for an early breakfast the next morning as we had to head down to Albert to meet Rod for our battlefield tour.

Up at 6:45am, and down to breakfast for 7:30am. Breakfast was delicious - fruit, cereal, breads, cheese, hams and jams. Plus a lovely loose leaf sencha tea - he had a HUGE tea collection.

Despite Franck telling us to drive, I really didn't want to move the car. So I decided to catch the train to Albert. Jackie (the tour guides wife) had said it was easy, and I could not face driving 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back, and trying to find parking. That was a BIG mistake, but more of that later. So I dragged SS to the train station where the tickets were horrendously expensive. Train was fine, although empty:

and we alighted at Albert. The station and surround really seemed to be stuck in a time warp, particularly with the vintage motorcycle propped up outside one of the buildings.

I had to call Rod to meet us, and eventually he arrived at 9:20am. We had a quick look around in the meantime. It was surreal to see the church with the golden madonna of which I had seen so many photographs.

Into the car with Rod, and we headed off first to Lochangar mine site. It is absolutely huge, and was the scene of some fierce fighting in the war as half was held by the English, and half by the Germans.

Looking back across the fields towards Albert, you can see the golden Madonna glinting in the distance - no wonder she was such a target for artillery...

Rod then took us on to a small Allied graveyard. These are all tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is funded by all the countries that took part, and they are a credit to the people who volunteer.

Each of these now has a metal plaque with a map and some details of the fighting that took place at or near the cemetery site which is very welcome, and sympathetically done.

Then to the German cemetery at Fricourt.

Apparently after the war, there were many more graveyards with German dead dotted around the area, however the local farmers wanted their land back. The compromise was to dedicate this graveyard at Fricourt, and bring the bodies of the German soldiers from the other sites here, where they were properly interred in mass graves at one end.

A pragmatic solution, but it evidences the level of dislike and hatred the French held after the Great War, and even more so after the Second World War following their occupation. All the time, Rod was giving us information and details, and answering SS's many questions.

It was all seeming a bit unreal, so Rod pulled over at a newly ploughed field and we went for a walk looking for relics. Slim pickings there, so we moved on to a potato field that he knew well. here is was amazing - .303 clips (one with a undischarged bullet it in), shrapnel balls, bullets and pieces of crockery. Apparently there had been a machine gun redoubt at this point, and heavy fighting. This made it a bit more real for SS.

We stopped at the Australian memorial where the windmill used to be at Pozieres.

The tank memorial is also there, including the bronze tank that has marks left from bullets fired in the second world war!

We had a quick stop at Mouquet Farm where SS jumped out to look at the bronze memorial -

These are being put up slowly all over the battlefields, and are really beautiful.

We stopped for lunch at the Ulster memorial where I had an egg and onion sandwich (surprisingly nice and apparently a Northern Irish specialty). SS stuck to ham and cheese of course. There was also a very nice collection of memorabilia there which we took some time to admire.

Next stop was Beaufort Hamel which was where SS really perked up.

This is of course where there was heavy fighting by the Newfoundland regiment, and the memorial park is the preserved front line trenches - preserved in that the grass has been allowed to grow, and the trenches fill in somewhat, but the shell holes and zigzag trench lines etc are all still clearly visible. very evocative, and we spent some good time walking around with Rod explaining the stages of the battle that was fought there.

We were both getting eaten alive by small insects and biting flies - I can't imagine what it must have been like 94 years ago in the trenches in big heavy rough uniforms in the mud.

Eventually, we finished up at Beaumont Hamel and headed over to the British memorial at Thiepval. Here we met Jackie, as she was doing a handover with Rod who needed to drive down to Normandy that night before meeting his next tour group.

We watched some good movies in the little theatre, then walked out to see the memorial. Jackie knew a lot about it, and we had an fascinating half hour. We also found some interesting names on the walls...

We sat quietly for a while (mainly so SS could get a photo of the memorial with no people on it - which is always his preference), and watched a little frog make its way across the grass. A French frog of course - nice thighs.

Then back in the car, and Jackie dropped us at Albert Station at 6:05pm. The next train to Arras was due at 6:14pm but was cancelled. The next one was due at 6:26pm according to the board, so we had a quick walk around town, and then went back to the platform. And waited, and waited and waited. On the most boring platform in history. By the time it got to 7pm, I gave up on forcing SS to ask the train ticket man what was happening, and I felt so guilty that if we had driven, we would have been back in Arras by then. So I went over to ask the man when the next train was. 8:01pm. The board meant nothing. Aaargh. And we were stuck at the most boring station in the world...

Such a stupid thing to do, not driving. I reported back to SS who was remarkably unconcerned, and we sat in quite companionable silence for an hour, each checking the news on our blackberries (him reading politics on the Daily Telegraph website, me reading celebrity news on the Daily Mirror website). It was actually quite pleasant, and SS later said he really enjoyed having an hour of just doing nothing. Eventually we got on the train (which pulled in exactly on time) and went back to Arras.

Jackie had recommended a restaurant near the station, called Le Corton, so we went there (it looked OK). We agreed on a bottle of Mercurey 2001 wine, Domaine Faverey which was very nice, and had the menu du jour. We both started with indian monkfish (which I ate before thinking of taking a photo - sorry. it was nice...), then a tournedos de boeuf. The beef looked promising when it arrived.

I did think it odd that the waiter did not ask how we wanted our beef cooked, and then when I cut into it I remembered why - in France there is only one way to cook beef. Well, SS's was rare and he got through it (he generally likes medium to well done). Mine was blue. My mother would have been so proud - I got through a lot of it, but some was almost raw and I just couldn't quite eat so much of it. I am generally a medium rare to just rare, so this was a big leap into redness. I am not a convert.

We finished with poached pear for me, and strawberries in melon soup (ugh ugh) for him, neither of us could finish it.

Slow walk back to our lovely room in Corne D'Or, and settled into our comfortable bed, watched some news (aaaah - english news channels again), and went to sleep.

The next morning we packed up the bags for the final day - with 19 bottles of wine we put 7 in my suitcase, 6 in SS's rucksack with half of his clothes, and the remaining 6 in the purple carrier bag with the remainder of SS's clothes. SO heavy.

We headed down for breakfast at about 10am, and met some of our fellow guests - a couple from Australia who were over for vintage car races, a mother and son from Canada over for the war memorial, and a mother and son from America also over for culture. All lovely people. We stuffed ourselves as usual, finished up, and brought our bags down. We loaded up the car, and decided to head out to Vimy Ridge as I wanted SS to see some more preserved trenches, and also the underground tunnel. We got there just in time for the 12pm tour which unfortunately did not include the tunnel - we were told that the rain the previous night made it too dangerous. Boo! still, the outside area still retains a lot of the remnants of the battle.

So we walked around and took some photos of the sheep (with tails!) cropping the grass on the old shell holes,

there were so many sheep - I suppose it takes care of the risk of unexploded ordinance still being there. if you had a little Frenchman (or Canadian volunteer) mowing the grass a little energetically, and BOOM, that would not be so good. A couple of sheep going up - well, mutton for dinner?

and then... I overheard someone saying the 1pm tour had gone through the tunnel. Grrrr. We waited at the tunnel exit to see if SS could pop his head in when they emerged, but the brusque Canadian tour volunteer said no, told SS off for running across the grass rather than following the path (!) and that he should book on to the 2pm tour if he wanted to see the tunnel. That attitude would not have won the war!

So we went back in to the office to see if we could book on the 2pm tour and were told it was not running for the public as it was only for training. We knew this was rubbish as a large school group had turned up and booked on to the 2pm tour, so clearly they just wanted an excuse not to let general public on to it. Oh well, we will try again next time we are in the area.

Back into the car, and we decided to go back to Arras to see the Place des Heros and the reconstruction of the town hall there. They had a good exhibit with lots of photos which was very interesting. Arras was basically flattened by the artillery in the Great War, these are my attempts at before and after reconstruction photos...

We had a quick walk around Arras afterwards - there are many of the older churches and other buildings that still bear deep scars from the second World War as well.

Further along one of the roads was a retirement home for Cistercians, with a nun making her way up to the gate.

Then we headed back to the car and hit the road up to Lille. The road up was remarkably easy, and we got to Lille within an hour. However, despite satnav doing its best, we could not find the Europcar drop off point at the Gare de Europe. We went round and round the town of Lille twice, over overpasses, through tunnels, merging left and right. After three laps of Lille which took 40 minutes, eventually I parked illegally at the station, and ran inside to find the office. Here they gave me a map which explained that the drop off point was inside the multi storey car park under the station (not signposted), and that I should go down to level 3. Hmmph. SS was all set to have a fight with them about their lack of signage and help, but I didn't see the point. Also, I didn't want to get a ticket on the car to add insult to injury.

We got the car into the carpark, unpacked the bags and spent 5 minutes looking for the lift up to the station. This was with me wheeling my heavy bag, SS with his rucksack on his back, and both of us holding one of the handles of the adidas bag with the other 6 bottles of wine. SO heavy.

We found the europcar office again, which was now empty, so I shoved the key through the slot, and we headed the length of the station still holding the silly heavy bag and each dragging another one behind us to the Eurostar checkin. Which was closed. Hmph. being good English people, we formed a queue in a slightly discgruntled but resigned way...

I left SS in the queue and went to buy some baguettes for the journey. As usual, he said he was not interested in food, but when I came back with 3 baguettes he was happy to share one on the spot. Eventually they let us in to the station, we waited another 20 minutes and then went down to the platform (again hoisting our heavy bag between us and each humping another one), on to the train (after being shoved aside by pushy English people - I actually missed the French for once!), and into our seats. Phew.

Very short trip across northern France past idyllic little villages and corn fields to the tunnel,

as we munched our second baguette, and then on to St Pancras, where we again hefted the stupid heavy bags out to the taxi stand, and then home!

Miscellaneous London

2010-08-13T15:13:00.005Z

London in summer is a wealth of things to do. I have attached some photos of recent outings, including:

Theatre in the Park

In Regent's Park Open Air Theatre we went to see Comedy of Errors. The day was SO hot - about 39 degrees and no clouds all day. We sat in the baking, unrelenting sun, scorching. 3 weeks later, I still have the tan marks on my feet where they burned that day. people were leaving, and others were all heading to the shaded areas and perching on the grass. I don't know how the actors managed to continue belting out the lines, and running around the stage in their heavy outfits. We were all melting, and afterwards got through 3 jugs of Pimms in 20 minutes at the nearby pub between 4 of us!

Some intrepid souls playing in the sand on the banks on the Thames...

Elvis singing at lunch under Poultry

Strange thing at lunch today - this guys was gyrating around and singing (quite well), but he was dressed as Elvis, but singing... "Sweet Caroline". Hmmm.

Every week at work some lucky person gets to take home the flowers from reception

This week, it wasn't me, but my lovely friend J, who couldn't carry them home so donated them to me. The bunch was so huge that this is only a part of it...

Burn the Floor... and fruit

2010-07-30T10:33:00.003Z

On 28 July, me, Sindy's sister, and Princess S all headed off to the Shaftesbury Theatre to see Burn the Floor. The inspiration had come, of all places, form an email from the Global Alliance of Accountants (yes, my deep dark shame), offering discounted tickets for the night, including drinks at the bar at the interval, and a Q&A session with the cast afterwards.

We started with a sneaky one across the road in Rudy's Revenge (quite a nice place), where Sindy's sister showed her love for shots of Belvedere on ice. Then we shuffled across and took our seats in the stalls, wondering what to expect. I should say the only previous time I have tried to go to a dance based show was when my gorgeous friend Wendy was in London, and we got free ticket to see a dance translation of the life of Edith Piaf. Yes, we left at the interval it was that bad.

This was entirely different, it was "headlined" by Brian Fortuna and Ali Bastian - the love story of last year's Strictly Come Dancing - and described as an interpretation of ballroom dancing styles. Well, that certainly undersold it. It was absolutely wonderful, start to finish. The dancers got straight into the show - I can't really recall all the numbers or the songs they used (I do remember Nights in White Satin, and also Burn For You) but they were also very good. There was a woman and a man doing all the singing live (and getting involved with the dancers on occasion). The dancing was perfect - the men doing their heel leads in the ballroom section, everyone on the toes for the latin stuff. There was occasions when I had no idea what dances they were doing - things like the lindy hop, rock n' roll, paso doble, quickstep and waltzes, foxtrots etc were fine, but I struggled with the latin a bit more - telling a salsa from a samba from a cha cha. Hmmm, not really my expertise. But it didnt' matter, we were just enjoying it. All of us had quickly picked our favourite couple, and favourite male dancer. Luckily most of the men spent a good deal of their time wearing no shirts, so that helped :-)

When Brian and Ali waltzed on in the first 5 minutes, everyone cheered. They didn't stay on long, the professionals came out and did their stuff quickly. And it was strange that from then on, as the audience got more and more into the show, when Brian and Ali came out it was OK, but there was no more cheering really, and everyone was just counting the moments until they would leave the stage and the tempo would pick up again. To be fair to B&A they were competent together, and Brian did a few things on his own with the other dancers and really showed his stuff, but by the end they were certainly not the stars or the ones you were waiting for. Ali did very well, but she was noticeably not at the level of the others (which is only to be expected!). They need headline names to get the punters in (like me) and B&A achieve that admirably whilst not compromising the quality of the show.

At the interval, we set out on a couple of missions - Princess S and I to find the Royal Circle bar where the accountants free drinks were - we got SO lost going up and down staircases etc. Finally we found the room, and Sindy's sister (who had gone on a mission to find a loo), came up to meet us. Amusingly, her search for a loo with all the thundering ladies in the audience was so frustrating that she ducked across the road, ordered another shot of Belvedere, necked it and then said "Where's your bathroom?". 10/10 for ingenuity I thought! At least she had the courtesy to buy a drink.

The show came to an end, and we stayed for the Q&A, which was very interesting.

I snuck a few photos with the blackberry (terrible quality) since photos were forbidden during the show. At the end of the show, the dancers had all been introduced (eg "Katya and Vladimir from Moscow!" and "Pam and Larry from the USA"). However when we got to the Q&A, 80% of the dancers when they introduced themselves, were Australian! For example, one guy had been born in Chile, but had always lived in Australia, and was paired with another Australian girl. They had been introduced as "X and Y from Chile!!"... I guess it gives them an exotic appeal for a touring dance company?

The questions were quite fun - everything from "do you all get along?" to "what injuries have you had?" and "do you have understudies?" They were all charming, even if it was a little disconcerting to see B&A at the end of the row, with him constantly caressing her neck. Sindy's sister said afterwards she would have been slapping his hands saying "Stop groping me!". I thought it was quite sweet.

So that was a really enjoyable night.

Today at work, I have been raiding our fruit basket, and getting creative!

Planes, dinners and fires

2010-07-27T10:18:00.007Z

Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks. I went to Farnborough airshow on two trade days for lunches with clients and to see the static displays and the airshows. SO much fun, particularly seeing the new 787 Dreamliner in the "flesh". Shame I didn't see it airborne, but bad planning on my part. It is a beautiful aircraft.

Other highlights were the Blue Blades acrobatics:

The A380 bus transforming into a stunt plane (that pilot really had fun!), the F16 doing its stuff, the F22 Raptor (SO beautiful).
Then the Vulcan was dusted off from the 60s, trundling along the runway, and gracefully swooping around, looking just like one of those plastic models with glue globs that you made when you were 8:

The B52 doing a fly past:

The A400M new troop carrier

I managed to get sunburnt sitting on one balcony on Monday, sipping a sprakling water, but it was all worth it. Oh, some work was done too!

We also had a lovely weekend at Tylney Hall in Hampshire, celebrating SS's father's 80th birthday. Beautiful house, lovely food, good company, and lots of champagne - where could it have gone wrong? I perhaps should have slowed down on the champagne guzzling, but I had to keep up with everyone else, right? ;-)

Last weekend we had SS's parents up for dinner, to show them the house pre-work being done. Our place is not the easiest to find, and they did well to follow the directions and find us eventually - central London windy roads and one-way systems are always trying. We had a nice dinner, and then as we were wrapping up the evening on the ground floor, I heard a faint "beep beep beep". For some reason I knew it was not good. I bolted up the stairs, with the noise getting louder and louder as I went up each floor. Sure enough, I went into our bedroom on the top floor, and it was full of acrid smoke, with flames shooting up the nasty standard lamp cord by the side of the bed. I should say by way of background, that I hate that lamp. It looks like this:

and where the switch was on the side, it had been smoking for a while when switched on and off. i am ashamed to say that I had ignored this (as I said - I hate this ugly lamp). So obviously the short circuit had gone through, and the wiring was on fire. I thought quickly, blew out the flames, switched off the smoke alarm by the time SS had followed me up, and then we both tried to get some of the smoke to go out the windows. We also noticed the neighbours hanging out their windows at this point - the alarm had been very loud!!

Once SS's parents had gone, we broke down the lamp's remains, put it in a rubbish bag and left it outside to be collected by our helpful, twice a day, rubbish collectors. I can't help but be very pleased to see the back of it - and also very pleased that we have smoke alarms!

The Time of Our Lives...

2010-07-09T15:37:00.003Z

... summer in London is truly lovely when the weather is kind. And it looks like, this year, it will be. The weather has been happily swinging between the low 20's and the low 30's which means outdoor events are now mandatory as opposed to being dreaded...

So, when my lovely friend Princess S asked at the last minute who wanted to go and watch Dirty Dancing outdoors in New Street Square, how could I say no?

The evening started well, with us all bringing loads of nibbles, varying from the usual healthy stuff (carrot batons and hummous with wholemeal pitta) to the other girly stuff (white choc chip cookies and crisps), and of course some fizz.

Luckily Princess S got there early and secured 4 deckchairs in the front row, and so we were set. Nibbles began, and then... the movie started.

Needless to say there were more ladies than men in the audience, and clearly there was an age preference leaning towards early 30's rather than early 20's! Many people were reciting the script along with the actors and some of the immortal lines attracted cheers from the audience:

"I carried a watermelon"

"Taking time out from simon says?"

"I don't think you were ever going to tell Daddy I'm your guy"

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner"

The wind did pick up half way through the film, which meant Princess S and G shared a wrap to ward off the chill, but I was quite comfortable in my jeans - the temperature was still around 20 degrees girls!

Aaah... it was an evening of beauty, which of course had to be rounded off by a sneaky drink in the Swan pub nearby...

Birthday dinner

2010-07-05T14:44:00.008Z

The lovely SS and I went out for dinner for my birthday - toptable are again doing their 50% off a la carte at Pattersons, and we did really enjoy it last time we went there. This time, all in all, was not so good. i would still recommend it, but I would be careful whilst recommending to tell potential diners the following:

1. Book at 7:30pm or later, otherwise you will be asked to vacate the table after 2 hours (and they serve the food REALLY quickly to ensure you eat a lot, but within the 2 hours)

2. Triple check before sitting down that no one else has that particular table booked, no matter what the waiter says - check with the restaurant manager.

3. Be prepared to have to reconfirm the table twice - yes, they called my twice during the week before to ensure we were coming. All very nice, but if I confirm once, please believe me that I will turn up!

3. Have the Bandol - it really is a superb wine :-)

We arrived on time (when they had threatened the 2 hour turnaround I wanted to make sure we got every second). The first table they suggested was very much in a thoroughfare, so we asked if we could be moved. The waiter checked, and agreed. We had just settled in, when the restaurant manager asked us to move. No offer of anything compensatory, and I suppose at least it provided entertainment for the tables around us to watch us move tables twice in 5 minutes. It certainly does point out that you are not the most important people in the place.

We ended up next to the lobster tank again. I was actually not unhappy with this seat, as the lobsters were very entertaining, particularly the "little lobster that could" that kept on dragging himself up and down the sand bank, looking for adventure...

We ordered the wine, (lovely!)

and then the food started arriving.

First was an amuse bouche of what was described as "asparagus vichyssoise". I was a bit confused by this, but I think they just used the vichyssoise label to let you know it would be cold, but why not call it something like "chilled asparagus soup". There is no place for asparagus in a vichyssoise! Bit weird. Tasted nice though.

Next up came the starters. I had gone for the special of the day which was a smoked haddock tortellini with parsnip puree. It was quite nice - the tortellini casing had been overcooked and was a little tough, but the flavours were rich (too rich according to SS who had a taste).

SS had ordered the cod in curried mussel juice, with saffron scented linguine. Unusual for him to go for something fishy, but he really enjoyed it. The linguine looked a little like fettucine to me, but I am hardly an italian food expert. His was the better starter.

Next up came the mains. I had ordered the monkfish fried in brown butter, with cauliflower florets and puree, confit celeriac, cubed potato in pesto, shalot and chive dressing. Quite a mouthful to say and to eat! The monkfish was lovely - one fatty bit I had to leave however. The cubed potato varied from acceptable, to almost crunchy as it was undercooked. The puree and celeriac were lovely. In retrospect, I should have said something about the potato, but they cubes were quite small, and by the time I had eaten half of one it seemed a little churlish to complain. And they might have made us move seats again! :-)

SS ordered the Beef 3-ways options - braised oxtail with glazed button onions and turned mushroom; tournedos wrapped in pancetta with leaf spinach, seared foie gras and confit celery; slow cooked topside with baby carrot and dauphinoise potatoes. He said it was the best beef he had ever eaten, and his favourite part was the topside. I tried some of the braised oxtail and it was superb. Oh well, he won again on that course!

So all that was left was desserts - we were both really full, and the options involved a lot of my least favourite pudding types - pannacottas, summer puddings, and white chocolate tarts. So we both went for the ice creams/sorbets (which also aren't my favourites). I had blood orange and white chocolate. SS went for blood orange, raspberry and mango. And when mine arrived somehow they had picked up that it was my birthday, so I had a nice little message at the bottom which was a nice touch. I also had a glass of the Maury with my sorbets, and SS went for a glass of the Tokaji (which really did not taste like any Tokaji I have ever had, but did taste pineapple-y so he was happy!

We wrapped up, and headed off slightly unsteadily to the tube, and home!

Isle of Man - windy weekend away

2010-07-05T10:16:00.033Z

For my birthday, we decided to head over to the Isle of Man after our very enjoyable long weekend last May. This time I booked the flights early and got a very good deal, and we had secured the last room at the popular Albany House B&B in Peel. I also pre-booked car hire for the 2 1/2 days, as whilst it was easy and cheap last time to catch buses and trains, we wanted more flexibility this time. And considering the Isle of Man is only 30 miles long and 10 miles across, petrol and traffic weren't going to be too much of a problem.
We had a 9:15am flight from London City Airport, so walked along to Bank Station at 7:30am, catching the DLR out there. As always with me, we were there much too early and had checked in and were sitting in the waiting area before 8:15am. But that gave us time to check out the duty free wine, and relax a bit. The flight took off on time, landed early into Ronaldsway, and we collected our car without incident (except I had forgotten to bring my paper license, only the plastic photocard, and so had to pay an additional £10 for them to call the DVLA and check I had no endorsements - which of course I do not!).
For a change, the car was both exactly what I had ordered (a Ford Fiesta), diesel, and was in a colour that was not repulsive - rather a nice metallic black actually. It felt very different to drive compared to the Jaguar, particularly the diesel element...

We headed to Castletown first, which had been our favourite town from last time. It was still lovely - I managed to not find a free parking spot, so had to pay 50p for one hours parking towards the edge of town. Of course I then passed about 5 free spots on the walk back in. Ho hum. We had a nice stroll around the town, and found our dream house on the harbour's edge - garage, nicely decorated, good size. Not for sale of course, but that is just detail!

We moseyed around the shops, where there were some painters sprucing up some shop fronts, and some lovely hanging baskets (I didn't notice the CCTV cameras until later!).

The day was just beautiful as we walked around the middle harbour,

where we saw a flyer for this fantastic event the following day:

That's right - the World Championships of Tin Baths. Our B&B hosts told us the next day that since the world championships are now held every year in Castletown, there is actually a shortage of tin baths on the island - one intrepid businessman has now started up an import business solely for these useful items.

You will notice SS had already had enough of being caught in photographs at this point, and so was now starting to try to RUN out of frame...

The castle looked lovely on the clear sunny day.

After an hour or so, we got back into the car, and I decided I wanted to go up and take a look at Ramsey on the north coast of the island. Ramsey had got high reviews on the Tripadvisor forums from those that live there (the same people that say how awful Douglas is), but we had not made it that far on our first trip. We worked our way up the middle of the island (following the TT roads actually!), and eventually came to Ramsey.

Well, what can I say - uninspirational is as kind as I can be, absolute dump is what I would like to say. Poles away from the other towns we had been to. It was rundown, and had an almost deserted air about it. To be fair we did drive back through it again on the Sunday, and saw some potentially nicer parts, but the parts we saw on the Friday were awful. Firstly we walked around the harbour, where there were real working fishing boats pulled up, with men doing various tasks to the boats.

Then we went back down the "main" shopping street, where the shops varied from run down chippies, to down at heel pet shops, a couple of clothes shops with clothes that looked like they had not been sold since the 50's. We were a bit snacky so I bought SS a cheese pastie, and I had a sausage roll - that was all we could find really on the go. They were not improved by being put in the microwave, and there was no offer of sauce. Sigh. It tasted OK (in that lard-y fatty sort of way), but 3 hours later SS was still saying to me "was there garlic in your sausage roll? It's OK, I LIKE garlic". Yeah, right.

The shopping malls off to the side were full of empty shops, and depressing pet stores:

and it was just generally a very depressing place to be on a Friday afternoon. So we decided to get out of there after about an hour (I kept wanting to give it more of a chance, but couldn't work out where else to go to discover the "real" Ramsey). We headed out of town towards Maughold, as there had been a house I had seen on the internet that just looked lovely - work to be done on it, but in a nice setting. It has been under offer twice and the deal has fallen through, so I was curious to see what was what.

Luckily, I found it easily from my recollection of google maps (plus, let's face it, the Isle of Man is not that big), and we pulled in. Initially I didn't want to go right up to the house in case there was someone in there who might be annoyed at trespassers, but when we noted the boarded up side window, we decided to take a chance and stick our heads in.

Hmmm, peering through the dirty windows it was clear it certainly has not been occupied for a while.

I still love the house style, the setting and the views,

but really it would need so much work, and the closest town is Ramsey, so that strikes it off the list!

Back into the car, and off to Maughold. We drove through the village looking for a likely local pub for a quick pint, but apart from a strange man sitting alone in the bus stop, watching the world go by, there was no sign of a pub. We continued on along the road, but then I saw on the map that there was a lighthouse on the coast at Maughold. I am a bit of a lighthouse fan for those that don't know, so the car got turned around, we headed back into the little hamlet, parked the car, and made our way through the cemetery out along the path to the lighthouse. The view back into town was so idyllic, I could hear choirs of angels and the ping of chocolate boxes opening at every turn!

Walking along, the view to the south and east was equally stunning...

Once we got to the edge, a warning sign greeted us. Of course SS just ignored it and strode off towards the cliff edge. You can't really see how windy it was, but the closer we got to the edge, the more the gusts picked up into a solid gale. Despite the warm day it was really cold in the wind!

The view down to the lighthouse was lovely, but the wind was picking up even more (I am trying to stay upright and hang on to my sunglasses in this photo...), so we headed back to the church again.

Whilst we had been walking the Grey Power bus had arrived. The first I knew of this is when I joined SS looking at the ancient celtic crosses (from about 600AD), and I felt a knock on my ankle. Yes, one of the old dears had knocked me with his walking stick to get me to move. No "excuse me dear", or "would you mind if I had a closer look, I'm in a rush". Nope, just a whack on my ankle. Weird people. They were all the same - they were on a tour, on a schedule, and wanted to see everything. Anyone in their way - whack!

Yes, that bus does have "Memory Lane Tours" on the back!

I had a quick look around the graveyard (all SS would allow me - he does not understand my fascination with gravestones any more than he understands my love for lighthouses). I particularly liked this stone - maybe drawing the name on first would have been helpful, before starting to carve?

Finally, back into the car, and we headed down south through Douglas and then across to Peel. we got in at 4:10pm, and checked into the B&B. Warm welcome from Nigel, and straight up to the room. The room was small (which we knew and had expected), but adequate for what we needed.

The tea collection was great, and kept in a very sweet box style caddy. I made a couple of cups.

We closed the door, put on the telly, and I watched the Nadal/Murray match at Wimbledon whilst SS had a nap. Very enjoyable (particularly as Murray lost).
We headed out at about 7pm for our 8pm dinner booking, as we had noticed that our destination (Harbour Lights cafe) was BYO. Had to get some wine! Just as we left, the clouds had rolled in, and there were a few spots of rain. By the time we got 100yards down the road, the wind was still blowing a gale, but the rain was also now very heavy. Awful. The IKEA umbrella I had borrowed at the front door was completely inadequate, and kept turning inside out. SS just strode on, the benefits of a leather jacket and no hair becoming apparent again! I had not just spent 20 minutes drying my hair to have it rained on and going curly, so I had to keep ducking into doorways and restoring my umbrella back to its normal shape. The locals just pulled up their hoods and walked along if they had to be outside. But generally it seems that wen these storms come through, everyone just stays indoors for 20 minutes if they can.

We found a bottle of Rioja in the local co-op, and decided to grab a quick drink before dinner. We headed for the pub on the corner on the waterfront, and SS was given a sample of their 3 bitters - Bushys, Old Bushys and OKells. Then we found a sticky chair, and settled in with my gin and tonic, SS's Old Bushy, and the locals...

We only had time for one drink before scurrying over to the cafe - luckily this being an island, the rain had indeed blown over in 20 minutes. We were just unlucky that it was at its heaviest when we were venturing out.

The Harbour Lights was lovely, and busy.

The waitress was perfectly polite but did not have the time to be overly friendly which was a shame, but the food made up for it. Firstly we were given a hot, freshly baked loaf of bread with some lovely soft, salty butter - delicious!

Then I started with the queenies and prawns in a white wine and cream sauce. They were lovely, particularly with the bread.

SS had the french onion soup which he said was very good but very filling.

Had we known what was to come, we would not have ordered starters. We had both ordered the loin of pork for our main, which the waitress advised came with a side order of veg and some fries.

First the hot empty dinner plates were delivered, and then we were each given one of these charming wooden boards with a huge slab of pork loin, a piece of crispy crackling, 3 crispy roast potatoes, a large ball of stuffing and lovely home made apple sauce (not sweetened - just delicious chunks of apple).

I was then expecting just some side veg, but oh no, a giant bowl of fries, and then a giant bowl of veg, and THEN a giant bowl of dauphinoise potatoes arrived.

The food was really delicious, but I felt quite sad as we were so full we did not even have room for one chip, let alone get close to finishing the other veg. There was enough food for 4 large people!

We ate what we could, and then got the bill and headed back outside. Peel Castle was all lit up across from us, and it was a beautiful sight as we waddled back up the hill to the B&B.

We got back to the B&B and went straight to bed. I was sleepy after the early start and long day of driving so SS watched the news for a while but I just couldn't keep my eyes open.
In the morning we got up, showered and headed down for breakfast at just before 10am. The fruit with breakfast was lovely, fresh strawberries, raspberries, grapes, pineapple, oh and hideous horrible snozzcumber fruit (ie melon). We had some of that to start with, and I made conversation with our breakfast friends, an older couple from Sussex named Nigel and Celia. They were ... outdoorsy, and pick their holidays to combine their love of islands and their love of public transport. Needless to say, SS did not really say a single word to them - I was left to make all the conversation which got a bit tedious. By the time our hot breakfast arrived, we were all staring at our plates chewing in silence. I did try.
The hot breakfast was a little disappointing considering the write ups I had read. It was a genuine, 2.5 star, average cooked breakfast. I had ordered scrambled eggs (always my tester for a cooked breakfast) and these were dire - hard, pale lemon coloured, and tasteless. The mushrooms were small dry button mushrooms. The tomatoes, beans and sausages were fine, and the bacon was fatty. Oh well. I am only being honest.
Nigel and Celia headed off, and then Nigel (the owner and "chef") came in to entertain us. He is a very chatty person. Within the first 3 sentences we had heard how he trained with Jamie Oliver (despite from my guess being about 20 years older than JO), worked at Le Manoir with Raymond Blanc, and then he rushed over and got photos of himself with the Hairy Bikers. That set the tone for the next half hour of the successful story of Nigel. He was a nice man, but there is a difference between being interested in your guests, and giving a monologue. I decided to turn the conversation to my advantage and find out about the business and the island life, but it was difficult to keep Nigel en pointe. After about 40 minutes, SS stood up as Nigel was mid sentence and excused himself, leaving me there! I only managed to escape after another 20
minutes, and sure enough, there was SS lying on our bed enjoying watching the news. Such support!

We decided to go down the coast that day - the weather was variable looking, still windy. We managed to escape out the door without being caught in a monologue again.
First stop was Niarbyl, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful spots on the island. I am sure it was just the weather that day, but I would disagree with this opinion.
Back in the car, and we headed further south to Port Erin. We did remember this town, but as we drove through SS noticed the tower on the head to the north of town - we had seen this on our last visit when we did the long walk around the bottom of the island from Port St Mary to Port Erin. SS suggested taking a walk up to it to see what it was. This seemed a very good idea to get some exercise after our large breakfast. I parked the car, and we set off along the Coronation Walkway...

The tower seemed a long way away to start with, as we headed off along the mown path. There were locals walking their dogs, and we really stuck out a mile as fairweather tourists - Nigel and Celia would have laughed at SS in his leather jacket I am sure (which was my fault as I had said he would only need a t-shirt that day not a long sleeved top - he took his leather jacket as a fall back position only...). Slowly the tower got closer...

As we got nearer, there was a high way and a low way to approach. I broached the suggestion of trying the high way, SS said better to stick to the low way so we agreed to do that. By the time we were approaching the tower hill from the south, I had to put everything into my backpack, tie my hair back in the wind, and at times was climbing up the rocks with both hands and feet. Fun fun.
We got to the tower, and headed up the very narrow stone spiral staircase to the viewing platform at the top. Apparently Milners Tower was built for a safemaker, and it has a footprint in the shape of a key...

The view from the top was very lovely, although the sun was not keen on coming out yet through the clouds.

From the top we could also see a concrete building that must have been some kind of machine gun emplacement during WWII... So we decided to go down and take a closer look...

Guess who was getting annoyed again about having his photo taken??

Inside was just as it would have been left - fascinating little piece of history.

Looking back over to the tower, you can clearly see to the left of the photo the way we climbed up to the tower, and to the right, the easy flat walk approach! Funny in retrospect, and always good to get some exercise.

We headed back to the car (the easy way!) and continued on right to the bottom of the island, facing across the sound to the Calf of Man. SS found a nice small ledge to sit on and look out, and I went to have a closer look at the seals basking on the rocks in the islet in the sound.

Very happy seals:

By the time I looked back up, the sun was out, and SS was lying back enjoying the warmth out of the wind...

The seals were now making their way up on the rocks to get away from the rising tide.

Then I noted some of the other species that had made their way on to the rocks. I was very curious as to why some of the people were holidaying on the Isle of Man, but thought perhaps these people might not take kindly to my questioning.

The weather was getting a bit nicer but it was still breezy, so we decided to go and have a look at Port St Mary. SS has a soft spot for this small place as his previous employers had their office there (which has since shut).
First thing we passed was this ramp - I am sure there is no relation to the Kenyan Happy Valley!

The promenade and the houses along it are lovely, plus a nice beach below with people splashing around the pontoon happily. I am sure the water must have been freezing tho'.

Into town, and past the narrowest house I have ever seen - no optical effects used here...

Past some of the best presented houses we had seen,

And some rather run down workshops:

Before we decided to stop for a quick pint in the Albert Hotel. SS was once again looking coy, so you will see the Headless Drinker on the right of the photo... Nice view out the window to the marina.

We were both getting a little sleepy, and this was supposed to be a holiday, so we headed back to Peel for a little rest. A couple of hours on the bed watching telly was called for!
We headed out a little before 7pm this time, as I wanted to walk around Peel Castle to see if we could spot some of the basking sharks that are known to pop up there at this time of year.
We had a quick walk around town on the way down, and there was a lot of activity going on for a Saturday night in Peel, and some interesting "do-er-up-ers" waiting for someone to love them...

Unfortunately no luck seeing any basking sharks, but it was a nice walk. I did see a seal, but that was the best that the sea could provide. Maybe next time! The view back over town was very pretty.

We stopped for a drink at a different pub. Some locals joined us again...

The pub had a lovely collection of teapots, grouped into themes around the wall. They were really lovely. Some of my favourites were the tap teapot, the Polo Mint teapot, the Christmas collection, and the backhoe teapot... There were so many to choose from!

We left and walked down to TyNi's where we were booked in for dinner. We passed this lovely on shed on the way, with a very old phone number still there!

It was very busy and very noisy in TyNi's (run by Tyler and Nina, hence the name). There was a birthday party with 10 girls on the table behind us, and two other group tables as well as a lot of doubles. We were not hugely hungry still, so went straight to mains. SS had the meaty platter (with two pork and leek sausages, a gammon steak, chicken, fillet and sirloin steak as well as bacon. Chips, onion rings, mushrooms, and tomatoes on the side for him. We shared a pepper sauce.
The wine was one that we had seen in South Africa but not tried - there had been a court case against the Goats Do Roam label by the Cotes du Rhones producers, but it had not been successful. Our Goats in the Village was a very nice shiraz blend.

We were very fat, waddling home again, and you can see how light it still was at 10:20pm!

Back to the B&B, and a repeat of the previous night with me heading straight off to sleep.
Sunday morning was our last day. We got up, and headed down to breakfast at 10:20am. Nigel and Celia were there, as well as another couple. Luckily there were all eager beavers and headed off as soon as we appeared (I choose to believe that it was nothing to do with us coming down :-) ). SS opted for kippers, I went for a fried egg, tomatoes and sausages as the things that Nigel did OK the previous day. We also had another great selection of fruit there.
Nigel and Nikki had told us we had a late checkout which was fortuitous (the sea was so rough the people coming over into our room were delayed until the evening). So we went back upstairs and relaxed in front of the television again. We finally checked out at 12:30pm, and managed to get out with only another short 25 minute chat to Nikki and Nigel. This one was more interesting in that Nikki told us how they managed to basically avoid paying any income tax.
Then we headed off across the road to the car. We had decided to head up the west coast through Ballaugh to Bride and up to the Point of Ayres. The scenery up and along the coast was stunning. The wind again was very strong, so much so that when I opened the car door to get out and take a photo, I thought it would be ripped from its hinges!

I had to stop and take a photo of the church steeple in Ballaugh - those who have seen Lord of the Rings might recognise the Witch King's helmet?? Also, the graveyard was very good, altho' again I will need to visit it by myself, SS was ready to get going!

We headed around the north of the island, then stopped at the Ayres beach area in the National Reserve. I had given up on trying to tame the wind with my hair blowing everywhere by the point, so just put my sunglasses on over the hair...

Back into the car, and along to the Point of Ayres and the lighthouse there. This was a very bleak area - might be a bit testing even for me!

There was a little car parked along the front which showed the commitment of some couriers on the island!

We had a walk along the shoreline, and you can see by the angle at which SS is standing again how strong the wind was. This was the strongest place we had been for wind such that we couldn't even talk unless we put our mouths to each others ears. The wind just whipped the words away otherwise, and almost took my feet out from under me a couple of times.

From there, we got back on the road, following the TT roads south and over Snaefell Mountain. We were overtaken by a couple of nice Porsches which was very pleasing. Straight down and through Douglas, on past the airport to Castletown again (we had 30 minutes to spare so time for one last half pint before returning the car). Dropping the car off was effortless, and so we headed through security (shoes off!) and the on to the plane home. I will definitely head back again, I really like it there. SS seemed a bit less keen this time, but I still see there being so much more to do and see. Next time, a week long trip!

Athens!

2010-06-24T08:46:00.016Z

Yes, I was off to Athens earlier this week for some client meetings. I elected to go a little earlier to have a look around as I have never been to Athens - seemed a good opportunity. After a lovely flight over, the views of Athens and surrounding islands from the plane were absolutely beautiful.

Customs was effortless (I even got a smile). I collected my bag and headed out to the taxi rank. The large Greek driver (lets call him Pavlos) seemed nice, knew the hotel, and in I piled. Generally Greek taxis do not seem to have aircon, or if they do, they don't use it. So I had Pavlos continually lowering and raising the windows to adjust the airflow, in a way that it seemed most like to result in my hair completely covering my face and trying to enter my mouth. Pavlos also drove like a rally driver. All of that I could deal with, until I glanced at the meter, and noticed in the "Tarifa" box the number 2 (ie the night rate) as opposed to 1 (the day rate). Hmmmm. A common trick in Greece by unscrupulous drivers. So I had a couple of options, I could have a fight with Pavlos on the freeway, and potentially get left at the side of the road, or I could wait until we got to the hotel and enlist the help of the staff there. I decided on the latter, but this left me a bit nervous for the rest of the drive at the prospect orf confrontation ahead.

We pulled into the hotel driveway, and (of course!) Pavlos flipped the tarifa to "1" as we drove in, turned around with a smile and announced that the total would be Euro 41 plus extras - Euro 50 in total. Yeah right. I leaned forward, pointed to the meter, and said firmly "No, you had that meter on "2" all the way in, that is not the right price!". It descended into finger waving, and I said "Right, I will go and ask someone in the hotel! Stay here". I stomped out, and left the door open so he couldn't drive away. As I stalked off to find someone, I saw him try to reach behind and shut the door. I flew back over, conscious my suitcase was still in the boot, and said loudly, "No, you don't go anywhere! My bag is still in the boot!". He said "yeah yeah". I managed to grab the bellman, explained what happened, and asked him what the bill should have been. He said Euro40 in total, including the extras. He then exchanged words in Greek with the driver, who got my bag out of the back, and grudgingly took the Euro40 I handed him. Then Pavlos stomped back to his taxi, and squealed off. I realise it was only Euro 10 difference, and Greece is a very poor country, but that really is not acceptable for other tourists particularly from a registered taxi.

All a very horrid introduction to Greece.

Then I checked in and went to my room - the usual uninspiring Marriot decor, but very clean and a huge bed.

I relaxed for a while, letting the day cool down a bit (and me cool down a bit). Then I decided to go and see the town. For some reason, I walked up to the Plaka (I didn't want to deal with more taxi drivers mainly). It was a long hot walk up the road, dodging feral drivers, and inhaling the smells of garbage. Not the most auspicious beginning, particularly as the pavements were non-existent, and my shirt was starting to stick to my back in the heat.

A lot of the cooler side streets once you get towards the centre of town have beautiful old monuments just across busy highways, if you can see past the rubbish skips...

Everyone who has been to Athens has not been glowing about it, but I have to say once I started wandering around the Plaka with the gorgeous views at the ends of laneways, and the little tavernas and souvenir shops without any hard sell going on, I was very impressed. It was still really hot - the dogs had the best idea I thought... There were also beautiful views up the side alleys to the Acropolis.

There was also a nasty little tourist train that was making the rounds, stuffed full of the larger variety of American...

I took lots of photos, and did some window shopping - cheapest postcards I found were 15c each - beat that!

The architectural style was what I would call French, but I think it is just European really, with a lot of 60's style flat blocks dotted in the middle as well. I consider it French because France was the first place I was conscious of the type of buildings, but they are the same in Spain as well and other parts. Every now and then I would stumble over another ancient site badly maintained and suffering from neglect...

Mostly I could just walk in to all the ancient sites, and I am sure I could have picked up some of the old bits and pieces and just walked off with them. Weird. the scaffolding holding up a lot of the old walls also did not look that solid, so I stayed back from those. Equally some of the pillars looked a bit ... new ... shall we say?

I started to get tired and hungry so I walked back down the long hot, dusty main road to the hotel. Strange again seeing really old things (Hadrian's Arch anyone?) right next to very busy smoggy roads...

The Marriot is in a REALLY bad location. It did give me an opportunity on the walk back to see all the different varieties of car rental shops - I doubt this is the real Europcar!

And to walk through beautifully decorated underpasses.

However the one advantage of the Marriot is the roof top pool and terrace. I had a quick bath to rest my feet and get all the dust off, then headed up to the rooftop for some dinner and to watch the day get darker and the lights come on on the Acropolis and the Parthenon. I found a table with a direct view across town to the Parthenon and Acropolis. This also shows how far I walked there and back in the heat - the Plaka area is on the far side of the Acropolis in this photo.

Here is the view across the road (to the north).

And also the view down the road (west toward Piraeus - you can see the sea).

I ordered a pint of Mythos lager (apparently local) to get myself in the mood. It worked.

I then ordered a starter of calamari (when in Rome - or in this case Athens...) followed by a Cobb salad (I know I should have ordered a Greek salad, but they are full of snozzcumber so that was never going to happen).

You can see the level of the lager going down as each course arrived... :-) I paced myself well. The waiter was charming, and I had all I wanted. I sent a few photos to SS to show him what he is missing - I am nice and sharing like that! ;-)

I was entertained during dinner by the conversation of the 3 PR girls at the next table. They were from "Lurndurn" and were all trying to outdo each other with their inanity. Then one "I studied classics at Edinburgh" decided to give the others a lesson on Greek history. I don't know much, but I know she was making loose with some of the facts. All very amusing in any case.

I took photos as the sun went down and the lights slowly came on.

I finally tore myself away at about 10pm to go downstairs to bed. I did watch a bit of the football (just to put myself to sleep) and it worked!

In the morning I ordered room service breakfast - it was slightly dull shall we say. I have never had such dry tasteless toast before - even slathered with marmalade it still tasted like cardboard (or how I imagine cardboard would taste). I choked it down, and saved the banana for later.

Next it was time to head out to the airport and meet my colleagues for our first meeting. The traffic in Athens was terrible at 11am, but my taxi driver was quiet, polite, and had the correct tarrif on - a delight after Pavlos.

The meeting was with a shipping company, and was distinguised by involving the CEO who was wearing a very large, very gold, very glitzy Rolex Yachtmaster II watch. Very eye catching.

After the meeting we headed back to the hotel for the drink. There were 3 of us - we headed back up to the roof terrace, I indulged in another Mythos lager, one colleague had a couple of vodka tonics, and the other had... a cup of tea! Yes, on a 33 degree day in the sun, with a view of the Parthenon, he had a cup of tea. Sigh.

We headed off for another meeting at 7:30pm. They like to start late and work late in Athens. The meeting finished at 9pm, and we were invited to the company's boat for dinner. They apologised that they could not take us out of the harbour, but the wind was so strong and was very choppy seas so we stayed berthed at the marina for the dinner. We drove down there (our car flanked by the CEO in his brand new BMW 635csi and the deputy CEO in his Porsche Carrera 4S). I should have know that the boat would be impressive just from that. But is was beyond impressive. A 40m Italian designed and built vessel, painted champagne metallic coloured. Staggering.

We got on, through the electronic doors, and proceeded to relax and have a glass of wine before dinner as we finished the work talk.

I was a little worried about my red wine with all the cream leather and cream rugs. The work talk was punctuated by a couple of the guys watching the Greece vs Argentina world cup match, and alternately cheering and "ooohing" as Greece did well or badly.

We moved over to the dining table for dinner,

and the chef (George) was just amazing. We started with a salad of rockets and pine nuts, with buttered langoustine tails. This was followed by a steaming hot fragrant risotto with mussels and king prawns. Then a big slab of simply cooked grouper with grilled mediterranean vegetables (courgettes, aubergines, asparagus, peppers). The fish was the best I have ever eaten.

We were already waddling by now, but dessert followed, being clementine segments in syrup, topped with vanilla icecream, and an individual chocolate cheesecake. Apologies for not taking photos - that would have been a little crass. Such good food, such lovely people, such a stunning boat!
http://www.cnl.it/yacht/yacht_photo.asp?id=45&Tipo=2&lang=ita

I was up a little later the next day, and had breakfast in the buffet area downstairs. The buffet was fine, but not sure it was worth Eur28!

I got changed, and caught the hotel shuttle bus up to town instead of walking - much more civilised, and I could look out at the sad dingy buildings, and weird motorbike drivers everywhere weaving through traffic.

This guy did not want to wait to get to his destination for a cigarette - not sure what they would say in England to smoking as you ride a motorbike...

I had a plan to walk around the Plaka, buy a souvenir Tshirt (sleepshirt) for SS, a present for one of my lovely godchildren, and a postcard for my mother. I did a bit of sightseeing first up around the parliament building - here are the riot police on standby (really on standby - relaxing in the shade of a tree with their shields piled up next to them, chatting!)

A couple of streets away I came across my first riot - all very civilised with the rioters chatting to the police. It really just involved the police blocking off a small section of road, the rioters standing around drinking coffee with the police, and one guy with a megaphone not saying anything really. Maybe there were waiting for someone to yell "GO!"?

So I gave up after a few minutes, and headed off again.

The Plaka area was just waking up, with shop owners setting out their wares, window cleaners doing their stuff, and scholars heading off to study (after catching up on their mobile phones).

I found a lovely shop in the end, bought SS a top that said "Greece", bought the lovely Sasha an embroidered local shirt, and my mother the said 15c postcard. Then I rushed back to catch the shuttle back to the hotel.

I did not envy the shuttle driver - it was quite a large shuttle bus he had to negotiate through narrow streets with cars parked either side in no form of order at all - terrible! Lots of back and forthing and reversing. But then in Greece I suppose a job where you just run tourists up and down to town in an airconditioned bus is a pretty good job?

A late night at the vietnamese

2010-06-07T12:48:00.003Z

Before leaving Islington, we decided to head out to another vietnamese restaurant on the Kingsland Road. This one came recommended by those weird "anon" people on the internet, so we guessed it must be good. We arrived quite late having again risked our lives on the 397 bus (scary bus ride that one), but they managed to find the worst seat in the house for us. I was basically sitting IN the aisle, so that every dish of food was delivered through to the other tables over the top of my head. I don't know how I avoided collecting gobs of sauce and pieces of chilli and spring onion garnish all night, but I can be thankful that it was not that busy by this time.

I started with the salt and pepper squid (one of my favourites when eating out, as SS refuses to eat squid after that incident years ago in Ibiza...). SS had the crab and corn soup:

The squid was VERY salty, but nice and crispy.

SS's soup was very hot. we had also ordered the sea bass and the sizzling ox, and a side of vegetables.

SS had also ordered fried noodles as he thought he would still be hungry! Everything seemed to arrive at once, so the table was overloaded. We ended up using the table next to us for the overflow plates. The food was all very fried (our fault for choosing it), and so I was VERY full, quite quickly.

As soon as the mains were delivered (it was about 9:45pm by then on a Saturday night), the staff obviously decided they were finished for the night, and started stacking the chairs on the tables, and mopping around my feet! This is always a red rag to SS's bull, and he starts slowing down his eating speed (never fast to begin with). So I sat placidly watching him finish off all the dishes, with the wet mop flicking my ankles, thinking about the nice cup of tea waiting for me at home...