Home again, home again & belated Berlin

So I think we last left our readers as we were hanging out in Berlin, still suffering from some fairly poor weather. Thankfully, that at least got better while we were in Germany - it hardly rained at all! We, however, were a bit "done" with being tourists. On our first day we walked to the Brandenburg Gate, went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, and wandered past remnants of The Wall. After that, however, Hank and I decided that a break was deserved and desperately needed. We'd spent over 2 weeks at that point looking at art & old buildings, traipsing through cobbled streets trying to figure out where we were and how to get where we wanted to go. Generally we were exhausted!

So, we took some time off and just sat around for a day, followed by a very leisurely day at the delightful Berlin Zoo. (I got no end of amusement in trying to pronounce the animal names as they were written in German... Das Hippos!!) I'm always quite partial to polar bears and otters. Hank's favorite was the primate building, specifically the squirrel monkeys that were running around generally looking crazy and ridiculously cute at the same time. One of them even had a teeny baby clinging to her back, and was still jumping from branch to pole to other branch as crazily as the rest of 'em.

After Berlin, we managed a quick final visit in London, where the always-delightful Amy gave us a place to stay for a few nights. We had a great pub night with friends, whom I think had sort of started to get used to us not being around. (I have a feeling they enjoyed the peace & quiet of the office, as well as giving Hank's replacement a chance to dig through the piles of mobile phones to actually discover whether there's actually a desk beneath them all!)

We've been home about 6 days as of today, and we both feel good to be back. Home is comfortable (if still a bit messy), the cats seem like they're back to their old (read: incredibly lazy & loud) selves. It's a bit of a shock to walk outside the front door and not be surrounded by the billions of people, busses and cabs whizzing past. It's peaceful, comfortable, and definitely shockingly quiet (by London standards, that is). We've seen a few groups of friends here and there - Molly came over the day we moved into the house to make sure we had things to eat - she brought some essential groceries...and ribs!! Home feels more like home when there's pork to be bbq'd (ok, maybe Hank doesn't share that opinion, but whatever).

Vienna, then our Czech-ered visit to Prague

We've not had really consistent internet access since we left Vienna, so thus the two-city summary post.

We departed Venice one evening, and arrived in Vienna the next morning - just like magic! OK, not that glamorous, but it was pretty easy to catch the night train between the cities. It was even more comfortable than I'd thought. Hank is standing here in front of the beds, and the other side of the compartment is literally inches from his back. It had a small area with some storage cubbies and our own private sink - natch. Sadly the weather had worsened by the time we arrived in Vienna, so we wound up having to purchase umbrellas, coats, and extra long sleeved shirts & pants just to avoid freezing to death. (OK, maybe it wasn't that cold, but it was pretty nasty when we'd packed expecting a continued European heat wave!!)

We started out the tour by visiting the palace & royal apartments, the museum of Empress "Sisi", and a few other areas. I have to say that I was MOST impressed with their display of baking dishes & accessories as soon as you walked into the royal china & silver museum -- that's a serious dedication to a love of baking!! (Molly, we thought of you all throughout the china displays... you'd have gone nuts.) We even managed to have a small patch of good weather during our walking tour of downtown Vienna, which was a nice treat.



However, the highlight of Vienna has to be visiting the cafes. I've heard of Viennoiserie and Viennese-style cakes before, and I even have an Austrian baking cookbook, but I've rarely had the opportunity to taste traditional Viennese pasteries. We first found a really lovely cafe called Demel where they had a viewing area to watch the pastry chefs rolling out strudel dough and pulling fresh cakes out of the ovens. The cakes themselves were just delights to see, not to mention utterly delicious to taste! There's a hotel called the Sacher Hotel where the Sacher Torte was invented. I'd had versions of Sacher Tortes before (chocolate cake with apricot jam, covered in thick chocolate ganache), but I never really liked them. Annie convinced me via IM that I really needed to try it once again, just to try it in its original form... I am so glad she did! It was awesome - really a moist and chocolatey cake (ones in the past had been pretty dry). Hank wasn't much of a fan, but he didn't leave any left for me to steal, so I can't think he disliked it that much.

Sadly the way things worked out was that our 3rd day in Vienna was a Sunday, and in Europe nothing is open on Sundays, really. So we chose that as a day to travel to Prague, having heard such great things about the city. On looking back on our visit, Prague I think had the most mixed feelings - it was an incredibly stunning city, but we had a bunch of crappy things happen.

When we arrived at the Prague train station, the cabbie who took our baggage into his questionably-driven car was immediately flagged down by a guy screaming at him and a police officer in tow. Wanting to avoid that situation entirely, we caught a different ride. The hotel we finally made it to was alright, a few hitches there (incompetent IT people who never fixed the wifi, bad desk service giving misleading information). Funny enough there was a really killer mexican restaurant 2 minutes away - something both Hank and I have been craving while living in the UK. (Apparently there are like 6 mexican restaurants in Prague, and I could only think of 2 in all of London, neither of which were all that great.)

We mostly just walked around beautiful old town Prague to look at different buildings, as well as did a tour of Prague Castle, but we also had a really fab walking tour giving the highlights of the city, and a fabulously bad driving tour out to a couple of smaller sites in C.R. The sites at which we stopped, a castle I can't recall the name of (at least until I pull the photos off my camera) and a city called Ceský Krumlov were themselves great stops. The castle had amazing carved walnut walls & ceilings, beautiful pictures and original furniture from the late 18th and 19th centuries. The city, Ceský Krumlov (photos to be posted soon, I swear) was stunningly beautiful - huge arches and a castle carved into the massive granite faces of the surrounding hills. However, we were only allowed to get out of the cramped van to spend about 45 minutes in each of these places. I've decided that a tour guide that points out advertisements on the side of the road, and tells you which the "agricultural minstry" building is is really worse than having no tour guide at all. But we've taken a collective deep breath from the mishaps, loved the non-crappy times we did have, and are now in Berlin.

Phew, ok, I think that's it. I've messed up my knee a bit, so am currently taking advantage of being forced to sit in one spot for a few minutes to be able to write this. Hopefully it'll get better tomorrow so we can check out some Berlin spots, and I can practice my newly learned skill of being able to count to 10 in German. Woo!!

Jesus, Mary, and... nope, mostly just them

Italy is filled with artwork. Jam-packed, I'd even say. The subject matter, however, is a tad limited. Our first full day in Florence had us visiting the Uffizi gallery, home of major Renaissance and Gothic artwork. Most of the remaining time in Florence can be boiled down to shopping, pizza, gelato, more shopping, and some more gelato! We found THE awesomest gelato place in the world just across the street from our hotel called Grom. They'd be scooping you the flavor you ordered, but in the mean time (those 30 seconds can be a long wait, you know) try these two other amazing flavors. The hotel itself was good, but I'd stay there again in a heartbeat just to have easy access to that gelato!

We saw a really wonderful rendition of the La Boheme opera (think "Rent" but in Italian, with fewer trannies) in a gorgeous Anglican church. It was the abridged version, as there were only four singers, but being able to hear something so moving in a small crowd in the acoustics that only old churches seem to offer was a great experience.

Florence itself is really a lovely city, but everything seems to pale in comparison to Venice. (The churches are bigger, the shopping is better, the food is more varied, and the crowds are more crowd-y.) My dad & stepmom happened to be finishing up a cruise in Venice at the same time as we visited, so we spent about a day with them. They had arranged for a private tour of a few places, so we tagged along to see the Doge's Palace, St Mark's Cathedral, and a few smaller churches showing the progress from Gothic to Renaissance design around the city. Laura, the tour guide, was amazingly informative. Hank and I usually take the "wander around until we find something cool" tourism approach, but it's a bit lacking in background... having Laura give explanations was really important in a place with such a rich history (and a bit sordid, stealing a saint's body in a basket full of hams like that!). The interior mosaics of St Mark's were absolutely breathtaking - the place is massively huge and just glowing with all of the tiny gold mosaic tiles. Even having seen beautiful cathedrals before, seriously, I have no frame of reference to compare this with. It was simply amazing.

Speaking of hams... I've become an expert in prosciutto & melon. Man, it's tasty stuff, such a perfect balance of sweet and salty, yum.

I've asked Hank what all he has to say thus far about our travels, which he summed up as, "Food good. Feet bad." Amen.

Moved out, moving on

The last couple of weeks have been a haze of packing, organizing, scheduling, and stress, but we've survived and are now ostensibly homeless, wandering through Europe (sounds romantic, eh?) But let's go back a few days and start from there.

Last Thursday was possibly one of the single most stressful and downright worst days I've had in a long time, possibly ever. Bleh. I'd had to reschedule the movers to Tuesday (requiring an additional night's stay in a hotel) because the ONLY time the inspector (hired to see what damage and chaos we've caused to our flat) could come was 11am on Thursday, the day before we were leaving the country. But the only time I could get a cleaner in was 9am on Thursday, so the flat was still a complete disaster when the inspector went through the flat with her clipboard of doom in-hand, pointing out each and every scuff mark, nick, bit of dust, and even pointed out to the cleaner how many things she's missed in her cleaning. So it'd turned out the cleaner I'd hired was good at wiping down surfaces, but not actually getting anything clean! She had to redo one bathroom 3 times, after I wound up re-doing the other bathroom after she'd cleaned it twice. I expressed my opinions to the cleaning company about what to do with her, but eventually they just told me that I had to follow her around the flat pointing out every single thing I wasn't happy with... it wasn't something I enjoyed (for those of you who think I actually would!!). It was like a scene from Mommy Dearest combined with the worst Martha Stewart-esque moments I've ever had.

So rather than being able to spend the day doing last-minute work I needed to get done, Hank and I were scrubbing walls. Then I realized the power charger that I was using to charge literally every single bit of electronic equipment I was taking on the trip with us wasn't working, so I needed to come up with 5 separate chargers. Then, when trying to find out where I could get one of the last chargers late in the evening, my laptop crashed! It was definitely a last-straw to my nerves... they crashed about as quickly as my hard drive. But really, from there it could only get better!! (Thankfully both hard drive & sanity are still operational.)

We met friends that evening at the greatest Tiki bar in London, had good drinks, good food, more good drinks, some drinks on fire... Despite it being a sad occasion on which we had to say farewell to lots of good friends, it was at least a lot of fun doing so.

The next morning, at a shiny 5am wake-up call, we flew to Florence. Right now Hank and I are in Venice, having spent our previous 3 days in Florence. We're quickly becoming experts on gelatto, pictures of the Virgin Mary (just ask us about plasticity of forms in renaissance painting!), and tragically expensive shoes (only tragic because we can't see spending that many Euros on them, but DAMN are they hot!).

One week left

So a week from today, Hank and I fly to Florence to begin about 2 weeks of vacation. I have such a hard time believing that it's really been a full year we've lived here! It's especially hard to believe that it's the end of summer, because we really have had a crappy summer in England. It's winding up to be the wettest summer on record... lucky us!!

In terms of the actual process of moving, this past week was crazy-insane just trying to get everything coordinated. I wound up having to reschedule the day the movers were coming to be a day earlier since the people who need to inspect our flat when we move out were incredibly inflexible about the one time they could show up. So coordinating our actual packing time with getting in cleaners, taking the cats to the airport, planning a two-week vacation, coordinating dinners and drinks with friends, AND Hank's birthday on Monday... crazy-insane, as I said. But at least there's been a good stock of dark chocolate at work, so the body count is fairly low.

Comparatively I haven't thought much about the vacation that we're going on - the whole moving thing has sort of been what I've been working on. But we're going to Florence & Venice, then depending on how timing work out, Vienna, Prague & Berlin. We realize it's a bit rushed to try to see all those places in just over 2 weeks, but at least it will give us ideas about what we'd want to come back to visit in the future. There are so many places that we still want to see that we didn't get to while living here... we'd need at least another 5 years over here! (And that's only if we don't have to work... I better start buying some lottery tickets.)

A Parisian Anniversary

For Hank's and my 5th wedding anniversary, we splashed out a bit and had a lovely long weekend trip to Paris. We found a really great deal on a 4* hotel in the area just by the Eiffel Tower, surrounded by quiet streets, tons of boulangeries, and gourmet cafes. I don't think we would have had nearly as good a time if Hank hadn't started eating fish a few weeks ago, however -- it's not a veg-friendly place, really. (Hank would have been just fine surviving on Nutella crepes, I'm sure, but it's always nice to have options.)

We did a lot of the basic touristy walking around bits - Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, those sorts of things. We also toured the inside of a fair number of shops - hey, it's the end-of-season sales... in PARIS! How could we not? We each bought a few things, and I found a baking store - natch. Picked up a nice new crepe pan and a few other bits for baking fun. Hank also picked up a very snappy beret, which he wore to work (all day at work, I should say) on our first day back. His French office mate had a few chuckles, but the girls in the office said he was tres chic. (Back off, ladies...)

We also went out to Versailles. The last time I'd been I really thought Versailles had been a disappointment - lots of dust bunnies in all the rooms, really nothing fabulous to see about it. This time we took a separate tour of the private rooms of Louis XIV - XVI, where they keep the bulk of the original furnishings that they've had to purchase back (it was mostly auctioned off during the revolution). The outside of the buildings were also in the process of being cleaned -- the place was really very wonderful and gave me more of the impression about how it would have been back in the day. The gardens are of course just massive - we barely made it through any of them due to exhaustion & the heat (we Brits aren't used to this thing you people refer to as "the sun"). I tried to convince Hank to take me on a paddle boat, but as I was suggesting that he do all of the paddling, I don't think we would have gone very far.

The food was, of course, stunning. We treated ourselves to La Table, one of Joel Robuchon's restaurants in Paris. The funniest part was actually the guy sitting next to us trying to order rose wine with dinner, to which the waiter said (in your best French waiter accent), "Non." It was the only moderately snooty service we had at all, and it wasn't at all directed towards us. I even had one of the waiters compliment my French... score! But the food overall was just so amazing. We had absolutely wonderful fresh fish dishes, and at La Table I had duck that I'll remember for the rest of my life! They also served us the richest mashed potatoes ever from personal ceramic crockery that they bring to the table and spoon gently (and artfully) upon your plate. There was a open-air market on Sunday just at the metro stop nearby our hotel that we walked through... everything looked just as perfect as Whole Foods, but without the Whole Paycheck prices. Perfect radishes to be eaten with butter & fleur de sel, whole (and I do mean whole) chickens, ducks and geese, zillions of cheeses and pasteries... it really made us miss California. I've long been trying to defend London food, but really after seeing just what anyone can pick up for a few Euros at a farmers market in Paris, I think I need to give London some tough love and say to put France in charge of food in England. It's such a travesty that the only place I can even see food that pretty is in Whole Foods that just opened up in Kensington (affording it is an entirely different matter).

Sorry, photos are still on the camera... but I'll post them to Flickr soon, I swear.

On the topic of coming home, Hank and I have just under 3 weeks left in London... sniff. I'm starting to wrap up projects, and arranging transportation for the cats, our stuff, and eventually ourselves back to California. (Can you believe that round-trip tickets cost about 1/3 less than one-way tickets?? What kind of math do they use??)

The rain in Spain falls mainly in...England?

OK, so I know I've been complaining to everyone that this summer has been raining constantly. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last 2 months that we've seen two non-rainy days together. We'll occasionally get a sunny afternoon, or *gasp* even a full 24 hours without rain. But then it turns back into truly crappy weather.

London itself (at the moment) isn't under the water that places just to the north, west & south of us are. But we've definitely had our fair share of impacts:
- Our building gym is flooded. It'd just been refurbished after flooding just before we moved in. Grrr.
- Most of the restaurants we tried to eat at within about 3 blocks of our flat had flooded last Friday.
- About 1/5 of the stores I saw in Notting Hill/Portobello Rd were closed last Saturday, at the height of tourist season, because their roofs had leaked or the sewer lines overflowing had flooded their basements.
- The tube system was at least 60% blocked (not just delayed) for most of Friday & a lot of Saturday.

So, when I said it was raining a LOT, you believe me now, dontcha??

BTW, our flat is on the 4th floor. We haven't needed to buy a boat. Yet.

Do we remember the way to San Jose?

I know that Hank and I have mentioned to several people that we were looking at trying to get my assignment extended by work to stay here a bit longer. After being in limbo for about a month, we found out last week that the director of my department decided not to extend me out here. As California is the main home of the company, and we're a pretty small team still out here in London, there is more need for me to head back to the main hive.

I haven't really said anything about how I feel about this so far, because really I'm torn straight down the middle. I loved working in CA, lots of exciting things happen there, it's easier to get things done when there are so many more people you can ask questions to in the hallways. But I have loved working in the smaller London office where you get to know the people you're working with so much more - it's like being at a start-up again (a very, very well-funded start-up). CA has nice lovely sun. Living in London lets me wear scarves that I like to knit... and hats are really fabulous accessories! I have friends I miss tons in CA. I have new friends I've met in London that I don't want to leave. Professionally it's better for me to go back to CA. Professionally I've done well here in London and there's still more that I can do, and you get to wear all sorts of different hats in a smaller office. We've got our nice house with a good back yard for BBQs in CA. We live in an area in London where I can walk to get anything I might need, eat at 100 different restaurants, see movies, shop, etc.

So really there are as many reasons to be in one place as there are in the other. I've been a bit teary about this a few times, but I always come back to two points: 1) I knew this was temporary when I signed up, and 2) we're insanely lucky to have had the opportunity to do this at all.

My assignment expires Aug 31. We're planning to travel around for a few weeks afterwards, then head home sometime in September. That's all we've worked out thus far... will give updates once we have actual details for the plan.

Quote from today:

"...Six to nine hours of torrential rains..."

And now back to our regularly scheduled summer...??

An open letter to tourists of London

Dear Tourists in London,
I'm glad you're here enjoying this great city. It's awesome (except of course for the rain we've had every day since June 1, how hot the tube gets when the temperature goes over 75 deg F, and the fact that everything here costs 2x as much as it does anywhere else in the world). I love this city, I hope you do too.

However, I have a couple of suggestions/favors I'd like to propose to you today regarding London's public transportation system. It's easy, gets you where you want to go, albeit at astronomically high cost. So consider these the few freebies you'll get:

1. As you get on the tube, please try to do so in something resembling the orderly manner that the British have refined down to an art form. It's not the Continent - we queue here. I like queuing - it works. (No cuts, no butts, no coconuts.)
   
2. For example, your 3' x '3 x 2' backpack in which you seemed to have packed your entire life for a 2 week jaunt around England won't fit through the turnstiles no matter how much you try to pull it through like the Little Tortoise That Could. (Now un-wedge your backpack and step aside or I'll miss my train; that makes me grumpy. )
   
3. When you race up to be the first person at the turnstile, don't choose that time to find your transport ticket. If it's not in your hand, you've negated your place at the front of the line. (Excuse you, now move over. )
   
4. I realize London's streets are a total nightmare - I mean, it takes cabbies like 2 years of study just to qualify to take the certification test. The "London A to Z" (yes, I do pronounce it "A to Zed") is a wise investment. But I advise not you to choose one step past the exit turnstile of the tube, the bottom of the stairs exiting Victoria station (the single busiest station in London), or crowd the dead-center of the sidewalk just outside of the station to start consulting with your entire tour group of 18 over your "A to Z". (I happen to know where I'm going, so get outta my way.)
   

So, I hope these hints are just reminders of common sense that I'm sure all tourists innately possess, but may forget temporarily amid the excitement of this fabulous city.

Think of the tube entrances & exits as well as the sidewalks as our highways & interstates, since most of us don't have cars here. Anything you'd give me the finger for at home if I did on the highway, I equally would consider un-advisable when you're on the roads & public transport systems here. (And just as an FYI, road rash doesn't look good on you, so would you mind moving out of my way now?)

Best regards,
A fast-walking lady who's got somewhere to be that isn't Madame Tussaud's.


PS - for those thinking I've completely gone mental, I point out that there's not a little bit of sarcasm in this! ;)

The Algarve

Hank and I opted for a beach holiday this time, and we got some great recommendations about the Algarve area of Portugal (the very southern part of the country from the coast all the way to Spain). We've been doing so much city touring that having some time to just sit and read books (or play our entirely-too-addictive new PSP game) was such a treat!

We stayed in a beach town called Armacao de Pera, and the hotel was right in front of a long, busy beach section. Mostly we hung out at the pool-side area nearby steps that led down the the beach. (It was happily convenient to the pool-side bar area... imagine that!) We also had 6 solid days of perfectly sunny weather - something I haven't seen in London since May (... mutter, grumble). I'm doing my best now to savor having my skin color be something besides translucent for once. Hank, usually the king of first-day sunburns, managed to stave off getting fairly pink until our last day - hurray!

The hotel was a bit of the "cheap & cheerful" variety, but we had a killer room setup with a huge living room area and two windows both looking out over the beach. My afternoon naps were to the sounds of the waves less than 100 yards away... (man, I could use one of those now). The pool/beach area was really nice, however, and since that's where most of our time was, the rest of the hotel didn't matter a whole lot. The city of A. de Pera was definitely not tourist-gentrified, but still had lots of good restaurants and cafes. There was even a "circus" in town (with really freaky clown posters up all week... yes, Julie, I thought about you!) on the last night of our stay... we walked down to where the carnival area was going on, and they had the usual rigged games and questionably-safe rides. We opted instead for some churros freshly-made and rolled in cinnamon-sugar (not those nasty frozen ones most fairs get now) and continued our wander around town.

Portugal is very popular with British tourists... we were never without an English menu or someone to help take our order in English (although "sangria" doesn't really need too much translation). There's also the other European factor I hadn't considered when opting for a beach holiday, which was the prevalence of older gents in speedos. I'll not apologize for saying that unless you're a speedo MODEL, just don't go there.

In the evenings we picked a few of the nearby cities to visit, the largest one being Albuferia. There was a crappy, tourist trap area of that city that we mistakenly showed up at, and then a cooler, old-town area down the hill by the beach that we hiked down to. We even went back on our last day there to look around when the shops were open before heading off to catch our plane home. We ate a delicious dinner at a restaurant called A Ruina (The Ruin, located in what I'm guessing is a restored bit of old building) where you ordered by going up to the fish counter and pointing out the fish you wanted to eat. The calamari was so unbelievably tender and un-chewy - I never really knew squid came anything but rubber-bandy!! No sauce, just lemon... I'd go back in an instant just for that dish.

Ooh, and for the shocker of all shocks, on our first evening in Portugal, Hank said he had an announcement... HE NOW EATS FISH!! And he did, too - like every night! We shared some really delicious fish dishes like prawns in spicy piri piri sauce, some red snapper, and on his first night of eating FLESH in >16 years, he ate most of two swordfish steaks. Now really, is it *that* far a leap to starting to eat bacon?? ;)

Happy Wednesday!!

To all our friends in California (or Massachusetts or Illinois or where ever), we hope you have a nice Wednesday. It's yet another rainy day here in London, with no flags, no bbqs, no fireworks you illegally smuggled back from the next state over that sells "the good ones." Anyway, we hope you're enjoying your no-frills-here-in-England Wednesday however you like, as they try to repress the sad memories of the-one-that-got-away.

Now time for a cup of tea with one of my British co-workers, no doubt descendants of those crazy, rascally red-coats. Viva la revolution!

May flowers and June gloom

I've been meaning for ages now to post my photos from the Chelsea flower show. I took about 150 that day, so I finally had a sec to cull the list down to the ones I liked best. A lot of ones from the indoor show didn't turn out as good as I'd intended (macro zoom + flash = very challenging), but I'm overall really pleased with how lovely some of them turned out. I could have been using crayola crayons and butcher paper and any images from the show would have turned out equally amazing, though! The place was just packed with some of the most insanely gorgeous gardens and flower exhibitions I could ever imagine. (It was also wall-to-wall people.) I have all sorts of grand ideas of what I want to do to my backyard once we get home - too bad I don't have those gardeners' budgets, too!

The most amusing part of the day was the sale at the end of the show. Most of the indoor exhibitors sell off their displays - they're not allowed to disassemble anything until 4pm, but once the bell rang at 4pm, it was chaos! A lot of plants were already tagged as sold, and people came to collect huge Japanese maples or fuscia trees or bamboo or ... My mom, who went with me that day, bought some exotic flowers from one place, and I went to the daffodil display (one of my favorites of the entire show... they're just such happy flowers!) and bought a giant bouquet for £2 that had maybe 2 dozen blooms in it.

The trees and flowers around London are all still quite happy, mostly because I don't think we've gone 5 days since the start of May without at least one day of rain. Mostly it's been very overcast. Winter here wasn't all that bad, and I thought to myself, "Hey, self... this whole England thing isn't that bad." Well, actually, it really does earn its reputation for a reason.

Summer faires that aren't so fair

Walking down to Portobello Rd this past Saturday for a haircut, I passed by a school that was holding a Summer Faire. There was a jumpy castle, bbq, games for the kids, etc. Nobody really seemed to be having that great a time, however, as it was POURING down rain.

Summer in England doesn't necessarily mean summer weather. There was however, a bit of sun on Sunday between 1pm and 2:15pm, which has thus far counted as "summer".

I have, however, discovered at least redeeming quality about summers here - Pimms with lemonade (which is fizzy here, like Sprite but more lemon-y). It's best served in pitchers with orange, lemon, mint, strawberries and cucumber slices. Alcoholic AND refeshing. Yum.

In other news, our next trip is booked for early July. This time, it's beach-flavored.

Blogging the blogger (and airing her addictions)

I've been blogged! A friend (and co-worker) and I did a presentation about the new feature we've recently launched. I was so excited Astraware was there, since, as they mentioned, I AM a total Bejeweled addict. (Those who don't know what it is really have no idea what they're missing... it really shortens those long tube journeys!)

Didn't find Heathcliff on the Heath

The weather finally changed for the better this weekend (horray!!) I attended a friend's piratey birthday party at a bar next to the Golden Hinde ship on the Thames. We all dressed up to varying degrees, had a good assortment of noise-making plastic cutlasses, and said "Arrrrrgh" quite a lot. It was quite a photographed event (and not just by those of us attending the party), and garnered a fair bit of attention from the 5-9 year-old crowd passing by.

Sunday Hank and I decided that spending the day outside in the sun would be good, so we took off for the posh neighborhood of Hampstead, specifically the Hampstead Heath. It's a massive open space with lots of ponds (some for swimming, some for ducks), hills, great views over London, and cool shady paths through the trees. I forget how little I get to hear birds singing in London. Our flat is quiet enough from traffic noise, but it's definitely lacking in nature.

While we were walking, I thought we took a path that was essentially circular, that would take us back to where we'd started. However, I really just managed to take us in a straight line to the opposite side of the 2-mile wide park, meaning we had to walk the 2 miles back to our starting place as the bus we needed doesn't run on Sundays. So, I've learned two things: 1) I will not survive long in the wilderness if I'm actually expected to get somewhere to be rescued, and 2) London transportation on Sundays and holidays is a pain in the arse.

A'dam

Ok, before I talk about our recent Amsterdam trip, first I have to whinge (complain) a bit: it's the 2nd bank holiday (3 day) weekend this month (yay) that it's been miserable and rainy. I mean, it's like a week away from being June, and I was wearing my heavy wool coat and hat today, and I could see my breath at like 1pm. Global warming, my bum.



But last weekend Hank and I took a spontaneous trip to Amsterdam, land of windmills for a very, very good reason (they have some serious wind). It was such a lovely, laid back city with canals weaving through it. There are bicycles EVERYWHERE. We sadly didn't rent any (I didn't feel I could juggle a bike, camera and map, and one bike crash per year is my limit), but it's definitely the way to travel there. The trams around the city were pretty easy, but mostly we just walked and enjoyed the lovely houses and quiet streets. We spent one day wandering around the city and taking a boat tour of the canals, one day on a trip out to the surrounding area to see the town of Edam (yes, like the cheese but not where cheese is made ironically) and touring working windmills, and another day museum-ing.

Most of the Rijksmuseum seemed to be closed off, but we did see the amazing Rembrandts on display. The Van Gogh museum also had so many pieces of his that I'd never seen even in poster form before, really fabulous stuff.


On a culinary note, we discovered how brilliant Dutch pancakes are. Yuuuuum. If you're ever in London, there's a great place to get some called My Old Dutch, however there's still no comparison with the real deal from the Netherlands.


Ooh, yeah, and they have really good cheese sandwiches in the Netherlands as well.

Pics from Stratford-upon-Avon are up!

Feel free to check 'em out here.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there.

We had another bank holiday weekend (meaning Monday was a holiday), so Hank, our friend Matt from work and I set off for Shakespeare-land: Stratford-Upon-Avon. (My favorite quote of the day, not to tease Matt too much, was, "So, anyone know what river this is?")

We managed to find a couple of plays that the Royal Shakespeare Company was putting on... there were a couple of requests for "The Seagull" by Checkov (no, not the engineer), and as a bonus: Sir Ian McKellen was in it! So, we doth booked our tickets and doth boarded our 2.5 hour train ride out of London early Saturday morn.

Stratford-Upon-Avon was definitely a different city than I think I'd expected. I didn't read up a lot in the guidebooks before going - mostly we just wanted to wander as we'd done before. But there were very few of the typically Shakespearian-style homes (one of which sat on top of what's now a Pizza Hut... shudder), mostly "high-street" (chain) shops, and everything closed promptly at 5pm. I guess I was expecting something a bit more like Hank and I had found in Canterbury where there were nice lanes to wander down, some independent shops, and perhaps something resembling life after twilight.

The play itself got mixed reviews from the three of us - Matt was the most positive, I was the least positive, and Hank stuck to middle ground. I thought the acting was marvelous - were they acting something I could get interested in, I'm sure it would have been a fabulous experience! The story just never grabbed hold of me.

The rest of the weekend we didn't do much, mainly relaxed. I got a bunch of knitting done - I'm so excited to be working on a project (a sweater, even!) for myself, after finally getting out of the "I owe someone a late xmas/bday/bribe-payment present" cycle. The weather up until this past week had been perfect and lovely, but this weekend the rain and solid gray skies set in firmly. We had a hard time getting motivated to actually want to go outside in it all. Personally I blame Taka & Neko for making napping on the couch all day look like such a tempting option.

Journey to a different land

So as hinted at in the last post, Hank and I hopped continents last week and headed to Morocco. We left very, very (painfully) early on Thursday morning, but arrived in Marrakesh and had most of the day to spend walking around. We stayed at the Riad Houdou in the Medina, the oldest part of the city. The streets there are completely mind-boggling: tiny alley ways criss-crossing and turning into larger streets packed with people, bikes, donkey carts and mopeds, lined with stalls selling everything under the sun. There were stalls with live chickens in back and fresh chicken meat in the front, bread, lamps, metal work, furniture, carpets, silks, clothes... you name it, it can probably be found here. It's completely impossible for tourists to find their way without street signs, so some of the locals take the opportunity to show you the way, and then ask for a return favor of anywhere between 20 dirhams to 70 dirhams. (What you give, if anything, is up to you.) I think we both thought Morocco would smell like spices and cooking food, but this first impression jut sort of smelled like wet donkey.


In Marrakesh there's a main market square called the Jeema El Fna. During the day there are dried fruit, orange juice carts (they have the most AMAZING oj there... I could have drank gallons!) and snake charmers out and about. At night, folks pull in carts and start cooking - it becomes a massive outdoor restaurant serving skewers of chicken and lamb, vegetable couscous, french fries, spiced olives, and bowls of snail soup. Mmmm. We also tried a cinnamon ginger tea and some chocolatey-cinnamon dessert. The tea was great - my mouth was absolutely on fire from how gingery and spicy it was. The dessert thing was hard to describe - sort of like dry paste. Neither of us really liked it, but both of us eating dessert cost about $.50!


On Friday morning we met our wonderful tour guide, Rachid. (Here's his email if you're interested in booking a trip.) We drove out of Marrakesh and approached the Atlas mountains. The changing terrain over just two or three hours of driving was amazing - we went from pretty flat, arid landscape to chilly mountain air with lots of wildflowers, and then mountains that were pretty barren deserts where you could see every layer of earth which the primordial oceans had worn down.


We stopped and took photos of a couple of kasbahs (protected castles) on the way. They ones we saw were 300-400 years old, but several of them had been refurbished and are commonly used as movie backdrops.

That evening, we arrived outside of a city called Zagora on the edge of the Sahara. We hopped on a couple of camels, who were surprisingly calm, didn't spit or bite at all, and our intrepid guide led us about 4-5 miles into the desert. We ate dinner in a lovely Bedouin tent amongst the stars and sand dunes, which I think was truly the highlight of the trip for both Hank and me. (We did, however, opt to drive back into the city the following morning for expediency, but I would really have enjoyed riding the camels back in the morning sun.)

Saturday was mainly driving back into Marrakesh, and then spending a bit more time in the Medina doing a bit of shopping. Morocco is renowned for carpets as well as minerals... happily we brought back a couple of both!

Hank and I were both stunned how completely different Morocco was, and that it's such a short flight from London (just over 3 hours). Marrakesh is definitely aggressive towards tourism, but out in the smaller cities people were less interested in selling us things, henna-ing my hand without my permission, or in general trying to get a couple bucks out of us. The scenery is absolutely picture-book, and changes every moment. In a heart beat I'd go back for a week or two and work my way around different areas of the country!

Galavanting

Having a tiny bit of free time this evening (and a cat fast asleep and dreaming of something that's making her paws all twitchy) I figured I'd give a bit of a post between trips, house guests and the normal chaos of work.

The day after I got back from Cali, our friend Annie came for a visit. Mostly she museum-ed herself out, as Hank and I were busy with work, but we had a few great days together. She and I managed a manic day filled with shopping, looking at very old crap in museums, more shopping, followed by tea at Kensington Palace Orangery, and perhaps a bit more shopping together. She even finished her first knitting project at my local Stitch & Bitch meeting - a fabulously chic cap! (Post the friggin' pics, Buckethead!!) My brother also stopped by for two quick visits - seriously, though, I think he just comes for the waffles.

I got back this past Sunday from Switzerland - we had an engineering meeting in Davos (pronounced by the Swiss as daVOS!), then worked for a day in the Zurich office. Davos was the most fabulous snow I've ever skied on ever ever ever... for all of 2 runs. The top of the mountain was two tram rides (about 15-20 minutes) up, completely in clouds, and had been snowing for the past 3-4 days pretty steadily. It was that white fluffy goodness of snow that I've never had in California (a few thousand feet in altitude really DOES make a difference). But it was so hard to see between the snow and the low cloud cover that the only way I could tell how steep the run was by skiing behind people and seeing how far down they were (that was when it was possible to see the people in front of you, of course). So, I headed downhill to have a rosti and a beer for lunch. I just classify it as re-prioritizing.

This Thursday we're off on exotic adventure involving some desert, a hookah, and possibly a camel or two. And Burningman is still 5 months away! ;)

Wrapping up

I've got about a day and a half before my flight back to London, and I've been busy trying to figure out exactly how all of the stuff we bought will make it back to London. :D Hey - it's all so cheap!! I've stocked up on yarn (not like I don't have miles and miles of the stuff in London, but after going to the knitting convention and buying all these new cool patterns, I can't be expected NOT to stock up... that'd be just wrong!), some baking supplies (the surprising lack of Dutch-processed cocoa in England being one of the things coming back with me), new clothes & shoes...

So, besides decent prices on EVERYTHING here in the good ol' US of A, what did I miss? Funny you asked - I've got a top five list!

5. Listening to the radio. I didn't really realize that I never listen to the radio in London. I usually am traveling by tube, so I just play MP3s.
4. Singing along to music during my commute. Doing so in the tube is frowned upon.
3. Stores that stay open late. Like past 6. Sure, London has some grocery stores that stay open kinda late, but nothing generally helpful when you have an impulse to knit those pair of socks you're dying to try but you're fresh out of size 2mm double-pointed needles and self-patterning yarn.
2. Not having to wear a heavy wool coat all the time. Or hat. Or gloves. Or bring an umbrella.

and finally the number one (drum roll please....)
1. SUN!

I know that last one is sort of a gimme given that I do live in England, which does have a bit of a reputation.

16 degrees latitude does make a difference

Apparently I chose my dates to visit California pretty perfectly. It's been alternating between usual London-ish type weather (cloudy, and some pretty strong rain) and beautiful, sunny, fabulous days of 70 degrees F (21 C for those who who care). The difference in the strength of the sun (when there *is* sun to be seen in London) is pretty dramatic. I've managed to get in some time lounging outside recently to try and look a tad less ghostly.

I'm starting my 3rd week of being back in CA; I'd only intended to be here 2, but had to extend for work-reasons another 10 days. My first week was working in the office, and my second week was vacationing with Hank (though it's an odd concept to vacation at your own hometown). H and I spent quite a bit of time shopping with the bargain that is the US Dollar, seeing different family and friends, some more shopping. Hank's suitcase for his flight back to London just barely eeked by the weight limit! "Hey, I can't get good baking chocolate chips over in London, Mr Customs Officer!!"

Coming home after 6 months definitely felt odd. Everything seems a bit more garish than I had remembered it. England is just different enough to cause a bit of culture shock. I've also enjoyed checkout out what little changes have happened since I left - new buildings popping up, friends' kids getting bigger, etc. The highlight has been seeing everyone I've missed for so long! And oh, how I've missed the cafes at work.... mmm. The revised cafe in London just opened yesterday, so hopefully a lot of the effort I've put into promoting changes will pay off there as well!

I'm still in California for another 8 days or so, but I am looking forward to not traveling for a while and being home with Hank and the kittens (he propped them up in front of the webcam last night for me to see, but it's definitely not the same as waking up with one of 'em on your hip and one on your head).

Catching up

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I'm back in California right now, but sick in bed, so it seems like a good opportunity to update the last month or so.

For Christmas, we were adopted by our friend Amy and various sides of her family. Christmas eve dinner was at her mom's, and they made three wonderful pies for dinner! I made sticky toffee pudding, which I was relieved got rave reviews (actually having English people try my version of an English dessert was surprisingly intimidating). For Boxing Day we then went to Amy's aunt's house. That side of her family is predominately French, so I got some good practice of my language skills in. (Hank smiled and looked pretty.)

New Year's was pretty much just me & Hank - we went and stood outside Downing Street (Tony was in Florida, otherwise we would have yelled "hi") to watch the fireworks over the river. We ate dinner at a fabulous restaurant called L'Escargot in Soho - highly recommended! I had fish with clams and cockles that was simply divine, and a surprisingly great banana souffle for dessert that Hank (even more surprisingly) finished off for me.

January was definitely the craziest month we've had so far. First I had a work off-site in Zurich, so Hank flew out to meet me there and spend the weekend. The weather was so beautiful - and almost 50 degrees (F). I was glad not to be freezing, but it was disappointing we couldn't sled down one of the mountains. Zurich is a beautiful city. Shopping is pretty pricey, though, but they make up for it in CHOCOLATE! I think I brought back at least a kilo of chocolate with me. Hank picked up a few Cuban cigars also.

After that, our friend Kari came to visit, and brought her friend Bethany with her. They stayed for about 10 days, and spent 3 of the days in Dublin and dragged Hank along with them. (I'll let Hank post his update about Dublin separately.) Nope, I couldn't go since I had a date with my skis in Courmayeur, Italy! That was the site of the 2007 company ski trip, generally very successful except for the bout of food poisoning I was lucky enough to catch. But I got in two great days of skiing on the fresh snow that had dropped our first night after arriving. Courmayeur is one of the sites of the Turin olympics, but the site wasn't as large or as difficult as places in California that I'd skied. But I was able to watch Amy learn how to snowboard and ski down some of the black runs with other buddies from work, so it was great fun!

I've also uploaded a bunch of other recent photos to Flickr that I've had sitting around for the last month.

Happy 2007!

Hank and I welcomed in 2007 with 8 zillion of our closest friends watching the London Thames fireworks show last night. We hope you rang it in with friends (maybe a few less than we were joined by), and that the new year brings you everything you hope for!