Summer in the City

Mum has come to London and since she arrived we haven't stopped running!
We have been to Shakespeare's Globe to see The Merry Wives of Windsor; spent a full day at the Spa Sanctuary in Covent Garden; walked Regent's Park; wondered around Borough Market; browsed the Bermondsey Silver Market and shopped for antiques.

We have also eaten Sushi at Feng Sushi - Borough Market, Malay-Asian food at Champor-Champor near London Bridge, Italian at Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf, and Modern British at the Chop House - Butler's Wharf and Village East on Bermondsey Street.

On day 1 and 2 we took walks along the South Bank to Tower Bridge and then east towards Westminster Bridge past the London Eye.



It started raining the day Mum arrived and although it might not look like it in the London Eye pictures, it hasn't really stopped raining since!






The Merry Wives of Windsor - Shakespeare's Globe

The Sanctuary Spa - Covent Garden

Regents Park

Borough Market

Butlers Wharf

Fabulous Footie Weekend!

What a wonderful World Cup 2010 weekend!. It's still hot hot hot and on Saturday we took a long walk along the Southbank, watching the tourists sweat as they waited in queues for the attractions on the other side of the river :)



We stopped at Strada near Tower Bridge for a pint and again at Black & Blue near Borough Market for a snack.




It is unbelievable how many blooming flowers there are everywhere you look.

Every lamp post has a large basket overflowing with colour!
I took these pics in Canary Wharf and outside our apartment.
Our balcony food garden needed no help after the winter snow. The mint, rocket and strawberries just shot up from what looked like bare ground.

And then there was the footie! To watch the Holland v Spain final we headed to the Dutch pub in Soho, but seeing the queues, we decided on another pub just 100 meters away and also filled to capasity with Dutch people.

The atmostphere was fantastic! I thought we were going to raise the roof, and even though the Dutch played dirty (as usual) we still loved watching it.




After way too many beers, we decided on a late dinner in China Town, by which time no more tubes were running, so we had to walk through thousands of Spanish revellers from Leicester Square, to Covent Garden and then to Waterloo Bridge to catch the night bus home.

A Great End to a Great Weekend :)

Brussels / Bruxelles / Brussel

After 3 years of winter, summer has arrived! 29 & 30 degrees and not just during the week when we all sit in airconditioned freezers. No, this time we are enjoying hot weekends both in London and Brussels!

William has found work contracting to a bank in Brussels for a few months, so we are once again part of that micro trend of professional couples that live and work in separate cities - separate countries even!
But it's all good. We share the travelling, one weekend he returns to our apartment in London and the next I visit him at his pied-à-terre in Brussels.


Last weekend - another blissfully warm one - I visited him. Just 2 hours on the Eurostar et voila! - chocolates, beer, french food and sightseeing :)

Chocolats de la Belgique!
William's pied-à-terre in Brussels







Une petite et une grande Leffe Blonde and footie (Germany v Argentina)





Manneken Pis - the Tour de France was passing through Brussels while we were there.
Hotel de Ville / Stadhuis on la Grand Place

A long long winter....

So it's been an incredibly long winter....
I swear it started earlier than usual - sometime last year in October... that's 5 months ago!! And it's STILL cold. Not just chilly, but bitterly cold. Snow, sleet, rain, hail, howling wind, dark skies, long nights... Just rubbish really... So once again we spent the weekend INDOORS. And I got my cooking mittens out :)

This Torta di cioccolato e noci with walnuts, almonds and bitter chocolate was absolute heaven.














On Saturday I made my first souffle and I was pretty pleased with it - packed with spinach and still light as a feather














I got this Marmite Scone recipe from a family friend and they came out perfectly!

Like a Cat On A Hot Tin Roof !!

Valentine's weekend......

James Earl Jones; the woman from AVP, Bill Cosby's wife in the Huxtable family and the guy from The Day After Tomorrow and As You Like It.
On Saturday evening we treated ourselves to a night at the theatre. What a great cast! I thought it was an excellent rendition.
Lucky me - lucky us :D

http://www.catwestend.com

Then William took us to Locanda Locatelli - London's best Italian Restaurant.
Although it was sublime and terribly glamorous, it has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I find it sad that a renowned Michelin Star restaurant would charge more than twice as much for the same menu items - just because it was Valentine's Day.

http://www.locandalocatelli.com

African Sunshine

After a fabulous Club World experience on BA's 747 upper deck, with champagne and fully reclinable seats, we touched down in sunny Cape Town on the morning before xmas. From there we took a hire car along the quieter inland route to George, through the Du Toitskloof mountain Huguenot Tunnel to Worcester, Robertson and south to Swellendam, arriving at my folks early afternoon.
Xmas, my birthday and New Year flew by in a blur, visiting cousins, aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.

Almost everyday turned into a gorgeous sunny beach day with red wine sunsets on the front balcony.
We braaied many evenings and indulged in too much chocolate and cake, having to walk, run and cycle off the excess calories almost every day.

This picture was taken xmas eve while Dad braaied sirloin steak, the day we arrived. On other days William and I made fresh pasta, warm tagliatelle salad with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella and butternut and sage stuffed raviolli.
On New Years Eve the De Beers joined us for snacks and at midnight we got silly with Dom Pedros and a wicked chocolate cake from Christine!

On our last Monday, Dad drove us all to Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary and Birds of Eden - the largest free flight bird aviary in the world - near Plett. We saw many Lemurs, Tamarins and both a Howler and Spectacle monkey.
In the aviary we saw some local birds including Louries as well as exotic birds and waterfowl.
The above picture was taken at the Wilderness on the way back, enjoying a Foresters! While travelling back to CT to see Nix, Chris and D, William and I detoured almost 450km to Sutherland to visit SALT (the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere - and equal in size to the largest in the world).

We stayed over night at Kambru-Kind Guest House and had a fabulous dinner at Cluster d'Hote. Although the afternoon was cloudy, the evening cleared by about 9pm and we were lucky to use one of the telescopes at Sutherland to see the brilliant Sirius star cluster (Canis Major) and the spider like nebulae of Pleiadies and Orion.

The next day we drove a further 400km to CT through the dry Great Karoo and lush Hex River Valley.

This is Will at Wafu where we had sunset cocktails in the wind :) It was really great to see my mates again and we had 2 wonderful home cooked dinners with bubbles and red wine.But the time went too quickly and now I am back in cold London, missing them already, and the African sunshine !