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!

Merry Christmas to all...

...and it's almost good night for us. We're currently sitting back drinking some nice port to cap off a lovely London Christmas. We have the webcam (handy gift from my bro) setup and have been chatting with friends and family most of the afternoon, so it's almost like being at home! But to those we haven't spoken to today, we hope you're having a wonderful Christmas and look forward to seeing you in 2007!

Do they know it's crazy time at all?

December is always a busy month, and moving to London hasn't changed that at all. Work always tends to go a bit manic, and right now the only thing keeping me from working 29 hours a day are the actual fun things happening! We had a work engineering party that included a visit to the Science Museum's video game exhibition. Seeing all the games that I grew up with behind museum glass tends to make one feel prematurely old... It was amusing to see how massive the early GameBoy boxes were compared to today's (I think you could probably fit all of a PS2's hardware inside of one). That, in good English workplace form, was followed by a trip to the pub.

My brother and his wife just recently paid us a visit - we had a great time! Austin and Hank had some guy-time at which Hank discovered Austin's limit of alcohol intake (shockingly low... wuss) with a rum tasting at a Soho Cuban cigar & drinks bar. I ordered a fig and vanilla daquiri which was a very girly thing to order, but OMG that was tasty. So between that place and the local Tiki bar (called the Trailer of Happiness), we've definitely scoped out nice local watering holes. Janine is also a fellow knitter, so we scoped out a couple of knit shops, then went out for a lovely cream tea (cream tea = scones with jam & devonshire cream + tea) at Kensington Gardens. The boys avoided such frivolous girlish things and went...Drinking! Duh.

Hank and I are staying in London for Christmas, and our friend and co-worker Amy has kindly adopted us for the season. Christmas eve dinner is at her mom's, and Boxing day lunch is at her aunt's! I'm still learning about a lot of the differences in traditions here around Christmas, such as that you light Christmas pudding on fire with brandy but not Christmas cake. And Christmas crackers are *seriously* better than the cheapy little ones we'd ever get in the US. Harrods had boxes of crackers for the hefty price of £799 for 5 crackers. Apparently Tiffany also makes custom crackers... I wonder if Santa's still taking requests? ;)

Belgian Beers

I tasted a few different Belgian ales while living in the states. Local stores had a few of the more well known ales in stock (Chimay and Duvel).

Our trip to Brussels was a chance to find some less known and hopefully more exciting brews from small family breweries.

After our trip to Bruges, Danielle was in dire need of a nap (editors note: Danielle is napping at this exact moment in time), so I decided to head down to the hotel bar with a book and a Partagas SD#4.

I talked to the bartender for a few moments about local beers and such and he pulled a Tripel Karmeliet from one of the fridges.

"Try this one. If you don't like it, I will pour a different beer for you and you will not have to pay for it," said the bartender.

An offer like this is not one to refuse, at worst you end up eating a nice pile of olives to mask the flavor of bad beer.

This brew is a bit of a darker malty ale and went down very smoothly and paired well with a few olives.

I also discovered a nice surprise at our restaurant this same evening. They had Jenever on the drinks menu. Jenever is the national spirit of Belgium and started out as a spirit distilled from rainwater. The rainwater was ditched in favor of treated water during the plague years.

Jenever has a nice floral/herby flavor and is best served cold like Sake, Vodka and Gin. Generally I think of it as a cross between Sake and Gin.

The next night led to the moment of the trip for me, Beer Mania. BM is THE place to go for beer in Belgium. It is a very comfy spot with a lovable drunken dog and a great staff.

The back of the store contains some nice wooden tables and a huge wooden bar. The staff will pour beers to your taste. I really enjoy bright and hoppy beers, so he poured a Bink Blonde for me. This was dead on my sort of beer. No chemical tastes. Just a smooth bright beer flows down nicely and leaves a tingle in your mouth.

Danielle likes a more malty beer, so the staff poured her a Mea Culpa, which was created by the owner of BM. She really enjoyed this beer and said it was exactly what she wanted as well, plus the glass is beautiful.

Next we wanted to try a lambic and we wanted to try it in its raw state (no sugar added). They poured a nice bottle of Girardin Kriek. Kriek is a cherry lambic and this brand was light, crisp and very tasty. Danielle, who is usually a very slow drinker, managed to polish off her glass and part of mine very quickly.

On your next trip to Belgium, take my advice and visit Beer Mania first. This will give you the lay of the beer land and make the remainder of your dinners much easier as you will have idea of what beers will go well with your next meal.

Happy Thursday

I'll be celebrating today, being Thursday, by going to work (had to wait 30 minutes for the tube this morning... so it was like a holiday schedule, but it's not because it's Thursday), going home, stopping by any number of open stores that aren't having massive sales to pick up some food, and cooking some dinner. We might watch some football (although I believe it's referred to as "soccer" in American-English) on the telly.

But Happy Thanksgiving to everyone not reading this in a non-US country. I'm sorry I'm not there to bake pies for the occasion!

They swore they'd been good...

... but photographic proof shows otherwise. Such naughty kitties we have! Hopefully they've been well behaved for Auntie Amy this weekend. Apparently they have already tried to get into the shower with her (and then went into the litterbox with wet paws and then running throughout the house)... so I'm not holding out much hope.

Bienvenue a Bruxelles...part 1

Hank and I took the Eurostar from London to Brussels on Thursday evening - it's incredibly odd to be in a different country across a body of water with no major jet lag and never having left the ground... and it was all in under 3 hours!

Our adventure today took us to a city called Bruges (or Brugge, depending on what language you're speaking). It is a stunning city with quaint little cobblestone streets, a lovely canal bordered in trees wearing the colors of fall, and waffles. OMG there are waffles everywhere. And they're tasty. There's also a chocolate shop about every 15 feet. Those are tasty, too. And I shouldn't forget about the beer. Each beer has its own specially shaped glass. One store we went into must have had a couple hundred different varieties... it was all I could do to manage to get Hank to leave the store.

We'd had plans to go to a tapas restaurant for dinner, but as that didn't work out as planned, we wound up at a lovely mediterranean/French place called Bonsoir Clara. We both loved our meals, and Hank tried a local spirit (we keep forgetting the name) that tasted like a very floral sake with a vodka chaser. And Hank kept talking about it having something melon-flavored (he claimed honeydew, specifically), but I think he was just trying to impress me. ;)

Tomorrow we wander Brussels and see what's to see, and yes, to have des moules et frites! (hold the mayo)

Kitties are home at last!!

The girls finally arrived last night about 8:30pm! They seemed as relieved to get out of their kennels as we were to see them. They walked right out and let us give them some hello snuggles, then proceeded to wander around for the next 2 hours just taking in the new sights. Our friend & co-worker Amy was over to meet them, and both Taka and Neko let Amy give them some head scratches. Taka meowed at us until the moment we turned out the light to go to bed – she sure had a lot to say about her grand adventure.

So, the whole process of getting them hear was far more painful than we’d first anticipated. We hired a company to manage the travel, make sure all the paperwork was in order, etc, but they turned out to be incredibly unresponsive and unreliable. About a week before they were set to travel my mom identified another pet relocation company. She was kind enough to make at least 3 different trips to the vet for all of the last minute signatures and treatments the cats require to enter the UK. The paperwork then had to get sent overnight to the USDA for a stamp in order to leave the country, and all the paperwork had to accompany them on the flight to the UK to be inspected by DEFRA once they arrived.

Unfortunately, the vet made a mistake and didn’t give the cats one of the two treatments the UK requires for entry (even though all of the UK documentation says so). The USDA didn’t notice it before they approved the paperwork, and the relocation guy didn’t notice it either before the cats got shipped off. Unfortunately, the UK DEFRA inspectors DID notice, and the cats had to be put in quarantine until a vet could go on-site and give them the missing treatment. Then they would have to wait 24 hours before they could be released, meaning almost a day and a half in the kennel. All totalled, the mistake cost just shy of another $500. Ugh. These are very expensive kitties, but waking up with Taka sleeping on my hip and Neko snuggled up around my head, they’re worth every shilling.

Quick update on the kitties

I was hoping to post a very happy note that the kitties had arrived, however there's a problem with the very stringent requirements they have to meet before being allowed into the UK. Unfortunately the vet in the US neglected to give them one of the required treatments. So they have arrived to the airport safely, however they are stuck for another 24 hours until the treatment can be administered.

So far most of this process has been a complete nightmare from start to finish. I'll update in more detail later on, but big thanks to everyone who's been involved in getting them here - Hank and I will be tremendously relieved once we've seen that they are safe and sound at home.

The Hank Perspective

So, what's London like? A massive ball of people, cars, shops and buildings. Since I mostly speak English (American at least), things have been fairly easy.

London is a city of discovery, which really appeals to my ADD addled mind, which leads to many hours of just roaming around the city in search of something interesting. Walking in London can lead from aged churches to sex shops in a matter of seconds.

My favorite discoveries so far:

• Rough Trade Records
• Sister Ray Records
• La Casa del Habanos (fantastic selection of bourbon and Cuban cigars)
• The Umbrella Store (sword canes)
  

I also discovered the Holga 120cfn just before we left for England. This little wonder is a cheap, plastic medium format camera. Your average photo geek would sneer at the lack of macro or lenses the size of cannon barrels. While I do love our SLR Digital, the Chinese built Holga produces some amazing images and encourages playful photography.

The shot above was taken in a underground station with multi-exposures and a tad bit of hand movement. I think this shot hits the heart of my feelings for London. Colorful. Bright. Fleeting. Things are always in a state of flux.

Check out my Holga shots on Flicker


As to concerts, music is plentiful here in London and it is nice to be able to light out on a week night in search of some sounds. My first London concert (well, unless you count back in March for the Fonal Records Tour), was the recent Sunn o))) show. RUMBLE.

Hopefully Danielle and I will be seeing Pram Halloween night.

So far, London has been great.

Only where I work... (part 1 of many)

... do you see a developer riding a Segway to get something from the printer down the hall.

Stuff

Stuff - we have it now. Specifically our stuff, at least most of it... our surface shipment with the rest of our clothes, shoes (ooh, how I missed my boots), DVDs, a zillion of Hank's CDs, and just a *few *cooking items arrived this Saturday. I swear I was unpacking this one large box of cooking tools for a solid 40 minutes - it was bottomless! Unpacking took up the majority of the weekend, but it's nice to have this place feel more like our home. And now I can start doing some serious baking - yay! There is one box of stuff that seems to be missing - I am for now assuming it was mistakenly put in storage rather than lost somewhere. But if you see a couple of cast iron pans and a large stock pot looking somewhat lost between London & California, please let me know.

This week Hank and I will be flying to different countries for a couple of days (wow, it is strange to think about that). I'm headed for Dublin for work, and Hank heads out to Germany for a boardgame convention. It's a close race as to which of us is geekier at this point, I think. We're also trying to get in a long weekend in Brussles in the next few weeks. Mmmm.... chocolate....

What didn't we do??

Hank survived his first week of work. He sits about two desks away from me, and surprisingly his messy desk hasn't quite reached its way to me yet. *duck*

We had quite the busy weekend - the weather was forecast to be nice on Saturday but rainy on Sunday, however it ended up only raining Sunday morning, so we really had two lovely days of wandering around. Saturday we went to Greenwich, toured the observatory, and oogled at all of the lovely clocks. The highlight was really taking the boat back from Greenwich pier to Westminster, though.

Since the boat let us off right at Big Ben & parliament, we wandered some more and took a bunch of photos - TBP (To Be Posted). We noticed a fairly substantial queue (note the nice Britishizing of the vocabulary...) and saw signs that summer tours of parliament were being given. We were able to catch one of the last tours of the afternoon, and I have to say it was absolutely stunning. The House of Lords side is decorated using the ultimate Victorian interior design adage - if you can overdo it, do it! There was gold gilt on anything that would stand still long enough to take it. The House of Commons was bombed during WWII, and although they didn't say what it looked like before that, the current design is much more subdued yet still elegant. (There's nothing like plain oak paneling to make the lower house know its place, I say!) It was also a good introduction into the differences between parliamentary and Congressional processes. And yes, there was a gift shop with two types of whisky: House of Lords (single malt) and House of Commons (blended) - natch!

And no, Molly, we did NOT buy the parliament shot glasses.

Also, apparently the cats are doing quite well, for those of you who've asked.

The new "here"

What a week it's been - phew! Hank and I are now living in our London flat (they finished working on it about 3 hours after we showed up to move in...). We have all the basic furniture/TV/DVD/stereo that came with the flat, plus whatever we crammed into our *ahem* small amount of luggage that we'd brought on the plane. Even though I have a thing against driving in London (Dave & Julie remember it all too well, I'm sure), we decided that renting a car would be the best way to get everything done in the first few days we were here. It has actually gone very well, although I still hate pulling in and out of our building's garage with the 3" clearance I get on each side.

We made the obligatory trip to Ikea and picked up a few household basics. I won't name names, but a fairly major internet search engine's mapping system led us down possibly the most complicated route on city streets through London to get to the Wimbledon Ikea - an hour and a half drive for what it had said would be 6.5 miles. On the way back, we picked up a London A->Z (pronounced "aye to zed," mind you) and made it back in about 30 minutes. I'll be filing a bug on that shortly.

Since we don't have any pots or pans yet (just a baking sheet), we've been eating a lot of ready-made microwavable or oven meals. Apparently few people in London do much cooking - the store bought meals are actually quite tasty. We made a massive trip to the big full-service grocery store a few miles down the road (most stores are more local, small shops with smaller selections) for all the basics. There's also a natural food store close by our house, which makes picking up vegetarian things for Hank easy... but they also carry really nice looking bacon for yours truly. Hehe.

Apologies to those who've tried to call us or haven't heard from us by phone - we won't get home phone or internet access for another week and a half. I've got access while I'm at work, but my cell phone can't call internationally for a couple of months. But we're doing well and loving exploring around our new home.

Ooh, and for those who saw my photo of the world's smallest washer/dryer - it actually comes with the record for all-time longest time to wash and dry a load: clocking in at 5 hours! Wheeeee.

Final frenzy

The movers/packers showed up bright and early this past Monday morning, and left us an empty house around 4pm. (Photos to follow in a couple of days.)

Hank and I had spent the better part of the weekend sorting things into air (5-15 days arrival), surface (4-6 weeks arrival) and storage (don't see it till 9/07) piles. We only got 250lbs of air shipment so we really had to figure out what essentials we'd need for about a month. We over-shot by only 10lbs (I had thought it'd have been a lot more, actually), so it worked out alright.

Tuesday and all this morning I've been running some last errands, packing up my desk at work, waiting for the visas to be delivered (which they just were - yay!), and so on. It's definitely been pretty crazy!

Anyway, I am really excited to finally be going! It seems strange, like it's just a very, very long vacation (except for the whole having to work thing). I'll miss everyone a lot, but I know the year will go by a lot faster than I think it will...and we look forward to having lots of visitors while we're there!