Category Archives: United Kingdom

6 January, 2012 · 7:34 am

London Day 2

After the mega-museum day yesterday, we thought we’d take an easy day wandering along Oxford and Regent Streets and seeing where they took us.

We started by walking along Bayswater Rd until we reached Marble Arch, so named because it has a large, marbly arch in the middle of an intersection. This is also where the SHOPS start.

I’d been advised to visit Evans, Next and Debenham’s among others, but only really had luck at Evans, where I found a pair of jeans. The others had lots and lots of stuff, but not much that appealed. I had an interesting time with “customer service” at Evans!

The changeroom is plastered with signs saying “for any assistance with sizes or locating items, please ask”, and the girl at the changerooms mentioned it as well. However, when I found that in my attempt of “let’s try a few different sizes”, UK size 18 was too big (yay – that’s a size 16 Australian – phew) and looked around for someone to swap it, there was noone to be found. I waited a bit, then pressed the “for assistance, please ring” button in my changeroom. After a good three or four minutes, a different shop assistant appeared. I asked for the swap, and her response was “I can’t leave the changerooms, so I’ll have to find someone else to do it.” Hmm. I waited a few more minutes, and eventually yet another lady thrust the jeans into my changeroom.

Meanwhile, I’d tried on another pair, and while the fit was good, I’d accidentally grabbed a “short” pair instead of “regular” length. I asked if I could try them in the “regular” as I’d picked up the wrong ones. Deep sigh. She’d try to find one.

More time passed, enough to try the other jeans, found they were pretty good and cut enough on the generous side to allow for the big dinners we’d been having so far, and put them on the “I think so” pile. I was thinking about maybe trying a size 14, but things were taking so long and with so many deep sighs that I was worried that I’d be either hounded out of the shop in my underwear if I asked for another favour, or given a decisive “No.”

Finally, the lady returned with the jeans, but as I was putting them on I noticed she’d picked up the “extra long” length rather than “regular”, so the hems were literally under my feet. Rather than have another discussion, I decided to just buy the first pair! Nicely stretchy and wide-leg, in a deep indigo denim. Noiyce!

Even though I didn’t find anything to my taste at Next or Debenham’s, we did manage to find a few suitable items for small people of our acquaintance at Mothercare, so before long I was dragging a couple of shopping bags with me to show for the morning’s efforts.

Morning tea was a wheat-free Red Velvet cupcake and a cup of tea from Lola’s in the Selfridge’s’s food hall. Gorgeously light and fluffy, it tasted like a real cupcake! Nom nom nom…

Appetite sated for the moment, we wandered up to the Wallace Collection near Oxford St to keep a little culture in the day. The lower floor has a lot (and I mean a LOT!) of awesome old weaponry and armour. Suits of armour, equine armour, shields, swords, pikes, daggers, rapiers, flintlocks, spurs, and other pointy and dangerous things abound!

Upstairs was a lot of paintings, the most interesting one to me was the Madame la Pompadour image, as I’d seen photos of it before. One of the big rooms upstairs was closed, but I found there was certainly enough art to more than satisfy me in the rest of the building!

Next came lunch, and I fulfilled my salad craving at the Selfridges food hall. I don’t know why you aren’t allowed to combine salads in the same container, even if they’re the same price. Hmm. Yet another strange “customer service” moment? In any case, my red rice and aubergine salads were tasty, even if they were in separate containers!

We took a detour down Regent St after lunch, and stepped briefly into Liberty, until the price tags cowed me into submission and we left. Some very pretty things in there, but three hundred pounds for a small scarf is a little out of my price range.

Then through Piccadilly, a quick stop for R to revisit Kirsty MacColl’s memorial bench and we hopped on the tube to return to the hotel before heading out again to dinner at St John’s Restaurant to celebrate R’s birthday (4 weeks early, but we thought we may as well use the occasion to have a nice night out).

St John’s was great. It’s a “nose to tail” restaurant, so they use quite a bit of offal and cuts which don’t usually get served as gourmet food. From the outside it’s a very unprepossessing place, but we arrived 10 mins early and were told we were “too eager” and needed to have a drink at the bar before we could possibly take our seats. And I checked – our table was still sitting empty all that 10 minutes!

Nevertheless, the cider I had while waiting was nice, although not on tap. The food itself was lovely. I started with the lamb’s tongues and a glass of champagne, which went down very well. While I’ve never been a huge fan of tongue, this was light and tender (and didn’t look at all like those huge beef tongues you used to see in the supermarket!) R was enamoured of two starters, the rabbit offal (heart, liver, kidney and something else he couldn’t quite identify) and the restaurant’s signature dish: marrow on toast. So with the waiter (who sounded exactly like Mr Nigel-Murray from Bones) aiding and abetting, he tried both, and said they were amazing.

For mains, I had the mallard with beetroot, and a side of green salad. This was really lovely – the beetroot somehow cutting through the intense gamy flavour of the leg, while adding to the sweetness of the breast. R’s choice, deviled kidneys on toast, was apparently another winner.

Then came dessert. I chose the chocolate mousse with creme fraiche, which was incredibly rich and dark chocolate, cut beautifully by the sourness of the creme fraiche, while R tried the rhubarb crumble, which was “the best rhubarb dish he’d ever tasted”. I forebore to mention my humble homegrown rhubarb crumbles from last year; after all, this was a restaurant that Tony Bourdain reckons is his favourite restaurant, and won Best London Restaurant in 2001. I suppose the rhubarb grown in our backyard and lovingly sauteed and baked can come a close second best…

I’d recommend St John’s to anyone who enjoys something a little different. While there’s (strangely!) not a lot of vegetarian offerings on the menu, there is one or two entrees and one main, if so desired. There are also a few options of “usual” cuts for those who might be a bit taken aback by the signature uses of offal and lower grade cuts. While they didn’t make a lot of changes for my gluten free requests (no bread provided, and they forgot by the end and gave me wheaten biscuits with dessert), the waiter was able to advise which dishes had toast as an integral part, or used flour in the preparations. It was really a lovely dinner.

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5 January, 2012 · 6:08 am

London Day 1

Our first proper day in London started with… wait for it… a very exciting trip to the Launderette!!! Well, I have to say I was quite enamoured of the prospect of clean clothes that I hadn’t hand-washed in the bathroom basin and draped over the furniture for a while.

The day properly started after this nail-biting interlude, with a wander through Hyde Park. I’d started the morning by reading a regency romance, to really get me psyched up for this, so I was imagining dashing heroes and swooning maidens meeting in a secluded corner of the park to exchange pleasantries and maybe even hold hands, before promenading on Rotten Row at the fashionable hour!

Well there may have been some illicit meetings behind the trees, but probably not many. We did see lots of birdlife (Canadian Geese are huge, btw) and wildlife (squirrels are still very cute, but rats aren’t) and human life (but the only people allowed to swim in the Serpentine are the Serpentine Swim Club, and only between 6.30 and 9am) and joggers.

Rotten Row was pretty devoid of Fashionables as well, unfortunately, but we fixed that by promenading up to the Albert Hall and memorial.

Next stop was the V&A Museum, which I’d been looking forward to, as I’ve got some fabulous books on their fashion collection. Unfortunately (this did cause a lot of indignant squeaking from the peanut gallery) the Fashion Collection is closed for remodelling and not opening again until Spring! How could they do this to me? Many exclamation marks later, I managed to drown my sorrows in lunch, a fish pie from the cafe. (I didn’t see they’ve got a salad bar until after we’d procured pies. Once again I was eating potato. Sigh.)

Thankfully, the Theatre and Performance collection was open, otherwise I think I may have staged a one-woman riot. They had an Annie Lennox exhibit, which was great, and included some of her fabulous stage/video costumes. Other pieces of interest included Pete Townshend’s broken guitar (one of them), and stage costumes from Adam Ant and Mick Jagger. And of course, there was some scribbles from Mr Shakespeare.

The jewellery rooms were pretty drool-worthy as well – some pretty blingy pieces there. Well worth a look!

Next up was the British Galleries, and we focused on the 19th century ones. Luckily I was able to catch a glimpse of a Regency gown in the early section, to appease my costume hunger. They had a lot of furniture, tapestries, crockery and all sorts of accoutrements of life, which was very fabulous.

Our last stop at the V&A was to see the Raphael exhibit, on loan from the Queen, apparently! These were on a huge scale, of course, and were very imposing.

The gift shop provided lots of opportunities for pressies for people back home, and while the bookshop had lots of books I wanted to add to my collection, taking coffee-table hardbacks in long-haul luggage just isn’t fun. Good thing bookdepository.com has a nice range of V&A books with free shipping. Woohoo!

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum, just across the road from the V&A. R wanted to come here to see the dinosaur skeleton, and it was pretty amazing! Their exhibits on the whole were great – like the Roman Baths at Bath, these guys do a great job at organising and arranging their stuff so that it’s interesting and relatively easy to manage wandering around finding things out. Well worth a visit, especially for kids! The gift shop here also had some great things – anything nature, science, or dinosaur related you could think of, and more you wouldn’t think of!

By the time we finished here, the gates to Hyde Park had closed, so we walked the long way around, past Kensington Gardens, back to the hotel.

Dinner was a Malaysian place around the corner that we spied this morning while finding the launderette (see? Great things came of that launderette trip!) which was very tasty, especially the black glutinous rice pudding. Yum!

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5 January, 2012 · 3:12 am

Arrival in London

We left Edinburgh at some ungodly hour of the morning, with the promise of dirty bad weather ahead: gale force winds and blizzards in the north. Good time to get out of Dodge!

More fun awaited us at the train station, as all the trains on the board had a platform assigned, except for our trusty 8.30am to King’s Cross. Hmm. We wandered about, looking for info, and at 8.15am all the screens went blank. More hmm. Lots of people were now wandering around looking slightly panicked. Since it was now 8.25am and no info on the screens, I found a harried-looking person with an official-looking badge and asked her where our train might be. She said she “guessed” it would be Platform 11, so we rushed over there, and successfully boarded before the train left.

The wifi system gave us free access to the train update webpage, which was a font of information, such as telling us that all further trains north of Newcastle were now cancelled due to the weather, and apparently shortly after we left Edinburgh, Waverley Train Station was closed until engineers could assess the building! Scary stuff.

We were continuing nicely until I used my 15 mins of free wifi to post this on facebook. This apparently jinxed us well and truly, and we stopped. This was apparently due to signal failure somewhere, but since at least three trains passed us in the opposite direction I’m forced to conclude that it was actually Signal Jinxing that caused the problem. We started again, then stopped. Then started, and stopped.

Eventually we limped into King’s Cross Station almost two hours late, but hey, at least we hadn’t been blown over like the truck in Scotland!

After two short tube hops, we burrowed out from the Underground at Lancaster Gate, to be faced with Hyde Park on one side, and our hotel on the other. Great location.

The same can’t be said for the state of the hotel. It’s a bit similar to the Tyddyn Llan: it’s an old building that is a bit in need of some love, but this one is even more so. The furnishings are all a bit old, the carpet has bare patches, the floor creaks and we can hear the people in the room upstairs – whenever they move it sounds like elephants tapdancing on the ceiling, the tiles in the bathroom are cracked, there’s a bit of a musty aroma, mixed with stale cigarette smoke from the “smoking” rooms… and the lift is only big enough for two people, or one with luggage!

Nevertheless, the bed is big (it’s two single beds squashed together, which at least gives us room!) and the bathroom has hot water, even if the pressure isn’t great and it’s liable to change temperature if you look at it funny. The room size isn’t too bad: there’s room for all our stuff, and it’s conveniently located and relatively reasonably priced.

We wandered out quite early for dinner, as we’d missed lunch due to the train fracas, and stopped at a pub near Paddington Station which looked quite nice. The food was pretty dull, but at least they had Aspell on tap.

Next stop was the Sainsbury’s in Paddington Station (like everyone else in London, it seemed!) for supplies: yoghurt and pineapple for dessert and some GF bread to augment brekky.

The walk back to the hotel was pleasant; while it’s cold here, it’s nowhere near as cold as Edinburgh was!

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4 January, 2012 · 3:56 am

Scotland Day 3

Our last full day in Edinburgh we thought we should head back to the shops, as I was starting to think about all the pressies I needed to buy! Our first week in the UK wasn’t really conducive to the purchasing of pressies for people back home, as we were either with family, or in places where there weren’t a lot of souvenir shops. We’d been tossing up the idea of going to The Playhouse which was directly opposite the hotel, to see We Will Rock You, but decided against it in order to support the more commercial enterprises of the city.

Souvenir shops are something the Scots seem to do very well! I was looking for a few things in particular, and went into heaps of different shops, and they all seemed to have these things (I won’t mention what they were – it’s a surprise!) at exactly the same price! I ended up buying the stuff I wanted mainly from a place on the Royal Mile, because it’s got the cachet, right? Tshirts, woolen items, dodgy coasters, they all went into my bags, which were very heavy by the end of the day.

R on the other hand, was in his element, because the other thing the Scots do well in the tourist precinct is whisky shops! We chose a few 50ml bottles of interesting and different single malts for pressies as well as R picking up a bottle for himself.

We also stopped into a pub for lunch just off Princes St after wandering down in the bracing (bitterly cold!) wind. I chose my lunch off the “Light and Healthy” section of the menu – a Baked Potato with Bacon and Brie! Not the healthiest thing I’ve ever eaten, or the lightest, really. A bit of an understatement. The potato was about the size of a human skull, with some bacon slices (not just bacon bits as I’d expected – slices!) and chunks of brie shoved inside. Yum! I suppose it did come with a side salad, rather than chips…

The entertainment over lunch was watching the traditional New Year Edinburgh Derby, where one section of the pub would roar at something, then the other half would roar at something else. We left before it finished, but not before each lot of supporters had roared for a goal.

We did find a Middle Eastern restaurant just off the Royal Mile too, in case anyone is looking for a break from haggis and neeps. Unfortunately we found it just after we’d had lunch, so we couldn’t sample its wares. It does look a touch out of place next to all the “ye olde” woolen mill shops and kilt factories.

After a long day of souvenir-shopping, R decided he wanted an evening of a couple of wee drams of scotch over a traditional pub meal for his last night in Scotland, so we headed up the street to our “local”, the Conan Doyle. They lived up to expectations, providing a couple of scotches R hadn’t had before, and my new favourite cider, Aspall, on tap. Again, I tried to go for a slightly lighter option for dinner, starting with a nice grilled field mushroom. However, as you can see below, it was Scotland-ised, being served with another slice of bacon, smothered with cheese and swimming in a cream sauce! At least there were a few sprigs of greens for garnish. Thank goodness Edinburgh has a lot of hills, otherwise I don’t think I would be able to do up my jeans anymore!

Then for main, I ordered grilled seabass with rocket mash and vegetables. Hmm, rocket mash, I thought. Must be a wilted bed of diced rocket or something. No, they were missing a comma in the menu, and the lovely fish arrived on a mountain of potato mash with a pile of peas and a few more sprigs of rocket. Sigh. I tried. You really get your money’s worth with food here!

Off to London in the morning, so an early night after packing up our stuff and squeezing as much as we could into our bags. Too much pressie shopping!

 

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2 January, 2012 · 5:37 pm

Scotland Day 2

After the frenetic night that was Hogmanay, things are much quieter here on New Year’s Day!

We slept in and missed the dubious delights of breakfast at the hotel, so trundled up to the Conan Doyle pub for a Scottish Breakfast (or part of one for me- no Cumberland sausages or Haggis) and giggled at the lads up early looking for a drink, when the bar didn’t open until 12.30. Kind of strange that nothing else was open (not even the Tesco Expresses) but the pubs were!

We found this out in great detail after breakfast as we’d hoped to get some washing done and so walked down to the nearest launderette, a km or so down Leith Walk. We got there, only to find they are closed until Tuesday. We hadn’t figured on this, since most launderettes at home are unattended. This one apparently is not, so we huffed and puffed our way back up the hill with the same dirty clothes in our backpacks.

Lunch was the next mission on our list, and finding something relatively GF that wasn’t pub grub turned out to be more difficult that we thought. I was a bit sick of heavy meat meals, so we kept walking until we unearthed a Pasta Fresco cafe near the Royal Mile which among the Italian dishes, did baked potatoes. I had mine with Coronation Chicken, a combination which sounds weird but tasted great. The waitress told us she’d had a big New Year’s too, but had managed to turn up for work with a huge (manic?) smile.

We checked out a couple more souvenir shops on our way back to the hotel, but didn’t find those elusive perfect gifts. More shopping tomorrow hopefully – even though it’s a bank holiday, most of the tourists will have headed home so there won’t be as many crowds.

The rest of the day consisted of an afternoon nap – the first I’ve had since Chefchaouen! Then we wandered out again for dinner, this time another Italian place called Jolly, for the hugest plate of chicken and king prawn risotto I’ve ever seen. So much for a slightly lighter meal! I can’t wait for London where we might be able to get smaller meals like sushi or salads occasionally – I don’t think my tummy’s been empty ever since we landed at Gatwick!

We finished the day with another local delicacy – a deep fried Snickers. I’d wanted the classic of the Mars Bar, but the chippy had run out, presumably with the influx of the world’s 80,000 biggest party animals the night before. It tasted pretty good though – just like a hot melty Snickers bar, really!

Maybe it’s the comedown from New Year’s, but I’m starting to get a bit homesick now, and missing family and friends. Plus, having to go out for every meal is fun to begin with, but it would be nice to just have some toast and a cup of tea now and then! It’s three weeks since we left home, which so far has been my travel limit. Another week and a half before we head back to Australia though, and moving down to London tomorrow will probably help. The frequent moving from one place to another, which is unfortunately our modus operandi in order to fit as many things in as possible, is taking it out of us and it’ll be nice to be in one place for a week.

 

 

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1 January, 2012 · 11:49 pm

Hogmanay 2011

Hogmanay was amazing! Princes St and a lot of the surrounding streets were blocked off to make the street party, and there were thousands and thousands of people wandering around between the stages and the bars and food stalls.

There were about 5 different stages with various bands playing – pop, folk, electronic and rock, and the two separated “extra ticketed” areas were the Keilidh (traditional music section – I could hear bagpipes) and the gardens section where the rock concert was.

I was a bit unsure about this at first, as the crowds in the street party were huge, with thousands of teenagers drinking. Think a cross between the Big Day Out with the Royal Show and multiply it by a hundred! Not really my scene, these days. Nevertheless, we had a great time. We watched a few of the smaller stages for a while before heading to the gardens section, as you couldn’t come back in if you left. Once we’d gone in there, there were a few less teenagers, but still thousands of people! The Princes St Gardens is on an incline looking down into a slight valley, facing Edinburgh Castle where a lot of the fireworks were coming from.

We wandered in quite late, so the best spot left was behind a tree (at least it was a deciduous one so we could see through it!) People were pushing to get through quite a bit, mostly because they were all getting pissed and didn’t really notice, I think! There was a no glass policy, but people were bringing in all sorts of things and the portable bars were doing a roaring trade. No bins either, so people just dropped their rubbish where they stood. By the end of the night it was quite literally a sea of plastic bottles and other rubbish.


Our spot under the tree got quite muddy quite quickly, as it’s been a bit drizzly for the past couple of days and it was on the hill. We ended up moving back slightly to a temporary barricade right at the back of the gardens which we hung onto and helped people get past without too much slipping, but a lot of people refused to take a hand and took a tumble instead! So many people were so drunk they hardly noticed, or bounced back up, only to slide again. Our boots were sodden with mud by the end, but we managed to not cover ourselves completely in it.

It was quite a sideshow, watching people trying to get past without slipping over. One guy managed to make it right to the top while balancing three open cups of beverages, without spilling a drop!

The concert itself was great. I’d listened to Primal Scream a bit before, and they really got the crowd moving (even though dancing in the slippery muddy slopes was a bit scary! We dug our heels in and wiggled where we stood for the main part.)

We got to talking with a couple next to us, a Scotsman and his Scandanavian(?) partner who had seen the band before and were really into it. They wished us a happy new year with a swig from their hip flask and helped us give a hand to those affected by the slipperiness.

The fireworks were amazing – they had a small show on the hour until midnight, when they were going off for a good six or seven minutes, from the walls of Edinburgh Castle, and all along the ridge of the Royal Mile. They were so close I thought people would get burnt from the debris, but they had it perfectly measured I think.

The band continued for most of an hour after midnight, even though it was raining by this point. It’d held off except for some drizzle for most of the evening, but started raining more heavily after midnight. Thank goodness I’d swapped my slightly warmer coat for my raincoat, and thank goodness again for my layers of Icebreaker merino!

We left just as Primal Scream was just finishing the last song, Rocks. The security staff had started taking down the barriers at the back (and some had fallen down, too – that’s how muddy it was) so we were able to clamber up the back bank rather than attempt the slide down the long muddy gauntlet we’d been watching people fall over in all night. This was was still very slippery, but at least there was a tree and a couple of the barricades to lever ourselves up with.

It was a relief to get back to the hotel and have a hot shower – we were both aching from the cold and from walking and standing bracing ourselves in the mud for 5 hours or so. The chippy around the corner from the hotel was doing a roaring trade, so we stood in the queue to get our own. Pretty terrible chips, as they were cooked really quickly to get then out to the customers, but at least they were hot!

So that was Hogmanay! A definite experience, but I don’t think we need to experience it again.

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1 January, 2012 · 10:59 am

Hello Scotland

After packing up, driving two hours and dropping the car back to its owners Thrifty in Wolverhampton, we hopped on the train and headed north to Edinburgh. The train was a bit squishy and quite warm, and although the booking page had assured us we were booking two window seats facing each other over a table, in reality we had two window seats one behind the other. We nabbed one of the aisle seats so we could sit together, and I sat there holding my breath at each stop waiting for someone to tell me that was their seat, as people seemed to be doing at every other seat!

We arrived at Waverley Station as it was raining (of course) so we hailed a taxi to take us the short drive to the hotel. We’re staying at one of the Holiday Inn Expresses, and it’s very boring and anonymous, but still it’s kind of nice to be in somewhere boring after all the “character” hotels we’ve stayed at! The outside is lovely anyway, as the building is an “historic” one. There was a moment of panic on check-in, as they couldn’t find our reservation, which I had dutifully carried out on their website, and prepaid! Thank goodness I had the reservation confirmation with me, as apparently their reservations department hadn’t passed it on. Only eight months of notice, thanks guys! We managed to get a room at least, and they gave us a drinks voucher, which was nice.

As we were settling in, there was some noise out on the street, and noticed they’d put on fireworks, obviously to welcome us to town. Yay!

There are the occasional creaky “character” floorboards we’ve come to expect, and breakfast is a bunfight (almost literally) as there is nowhere near enough space for everyone booked into the hotel to eat breakfast. Wonderful shower though – awesome pressure and nice and hot.

After checking in we wandered out into the chilly evening to find some food. I was craving something not hearty or traditionally British or Moroccan after the huge servings of meat we’ve been having so far on this holiday, so we were looking for Thai or Chinese or something similar. We found the No. 1 Chinese Restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel, and set on combination stir fry with gusto! Yay for crunchy vegies!

This morning after the breakfast skirmish, we wandered around to the Royal Mile. Because it’s New Year’s Eve, there were thousands of tourists wandering around. We walked up to Edinburgh Castle, but were put off by the huge crowds.

We had a look in some of the souvenir shops, and contemplated tartans, but R already has a traditional kilt from his last trip, and my family doesn’t seem to have any affiliations. I’ll pick up a few souvenirs before we leave though. We did see dog kilts, which would be a hoot next Christmas on the family doggies, but the largest size they had as for Scottish Terriers, and all our dogs are much bigger than that!

After wandering down the Royal Mile to see Holyrood Palace, we started walking up it again in search of lunch.

After popping into a whisky shop to R could taste a couple of new and different expressions (the shop had a resident dog, Maggie), we ended up stopping at the oldest pub on the Royal Mile, which was first opened in 1740-something. Not bad! Unsurprisingly, they had some “traditional” Scottish food, so R had a lamb hotpot, and I explored the “Stovies” – basically potato and beef, mashed together. Imagine cottage pie mooshed. Tasted pretty good, but bland and salty at the same time.

After lunch we wended our way through the ever-increasing crowds, through a shopping centre (and over a scarily see-through pedestrian bridge – my fear of heights was on full alert!) and back to the hotel to prepare for our Hogmanay evening.

 

 

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30 December, 2011 · 6:08 am

Wales Day 2

We spent today driving around Wales some more, taking in the amazing scenery, soaking up the cold (uhh) and exploring some of the sights in search of somewhere to say a final goodbye to R’s mum.

We began with a hearty breakfast, of course! I had the smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and R chose the big Welsh breakfast: eggs, bacon, tomato, black sausage and laver bread (boiled seaweed. hmm.)

This breakfast of champions took us hundreds of miles through Snowdonia National Park to find where the Mt Snowdon Railway started. The railway is closed for winter, but we thought it would be a good spot to view the parts of Snowden which aren’t currently obscured by low-lying cloud. On the way we also saw a hydro-electric plant, which looks pretty amazing, and drove up and down a mountain including some nice sharp turns on cliffs in the rain (not really one of my favourite things to do, as those who’ve been reading the Morocco posts will know, even if this time I was driving!)

We passed by a lovely spot on a hillside with a view of a river, rough-hewn mountains, cliffs and rolling hills, and R thought that would be a nice place to scatter some of his mum’s ashes. We’ve been carrying them with us for such an eventuality, as she had been on holidays in Snowdonia when she was a child and had liked the idea of living on there after she passed. We stopped and waited for the other tourists to finish taking photos, but they seemed to be hanging on forever, so we just ignored them and did what we’d come to do. I’m sure she will find peace there.

 

Then we turned slightly and headed towards Portmeirion, the strange village where The Prisoner was filmed. It’s quite a bizarre place, with vividly coloured buildings and random monuments here and there. It looks like a place designed by kids – colourful, lots of different shapes, and statues and monuments with not a lot of cohesion. I think the producers of The Prisoner took advantage of the atmosphere that was already there, rather than the other way around! The gift shops there have quite a few Number Six souvenirs, including the fabulous bubble chair! You can even get your own blow-up weather balloon to re-enact those terrifying chase sequences!

Then it was back to Tyddyn Llan to recuperate before dinner.

I’ve never eaten at a Michelin star restaurant before, but I think I was expecting a little more. The food is pretty good, but not more than any of the “pretty good” restaurants at home. I’ve eaten at a lot of Australian restaurants which are equal or better than this one to my taste, like Neil Perry’s Rockpools, or any of the Made Establishment‘s places in Melbourne. This place is such a study in contrast between the lovely food and the good but not great rooms, that it’s a bit hard to quantify it while staying here. We’re in a “standard” room. Maybe the “superior” ones are better, but you’d still have the incredibly noisy creaking floors and not-great water pressure, even if the rooms or beds are a bit bigger and with nicer furniture. Rather then recommend it wholeheartedly, I’d say definitely come for dinner if you’re in the area, but otherwise don’t go out of your way to stay here unless you want to have a few drinks with dinner. Maybe it’s just that Michelin don’t cover Australia! The panna cotta with figs and lavender honey is pretty amazing though, and there was a much better spread of hors d’oeuvres that were gluten free, tonight! Another yum dinner!

 

 

 

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29 December, 2011 · 6:32 am

Wales (and food)

We left Bath this morning after another large Full English brekky. Tummies full, we wended our way through the backstreets of Bath at the command of the GPS, who I swear has homicidal tendencies (or at least a sadistic sense of humour). We may have also managed to scratch the doorhandle of the hire car. Good thing we went for the extra insurance!

After many winding roads and venturing in, then out, then back into Wales, we made our way to Tyddyn Llan, a Michelin-star restaurant with a hotel attached, in Llandrino, near Snowdonia National Park. We had decided that since we were going to only be in Wales for two days, why not make the most of it and go for some nice food!

The hotel/restaurant is in an old building whose floor creaks terribly, and has a pronounced list in the staircase. Even tiptoeing down the corridor produces a series of creaks and groans from the floorboards – but hey, the food is good!

When we were shown into the lounge to have nibbles and a drink before dinner, I was quite worried at the difference in the “gluten free” starter and the normal one. Mine’s the one on the right. Hmm. Not a good start. However, they picked up extremely quickly, letting me know which dishes were GF or able to be made GF, which only knocked out a third of the menu, and presenting me with a gluten free bread roll fresh out of the oven. Now that’s more like it!

I started with the Scottish scallops, which were divine. R’s game terrine was pretty amazing too (hmm, might have that tomorrow night). We followed those with turbot on a bed of leek risotto (hey, we’re in Wales: must eat leeks!) and monkfish with mashed potato. Nummy. Then I had the pannacotta with fresh figs (not locally sourced unlike most of the other food, I would imagine!) and R devoured the ginger steamed pud with custard. Ahh…

We tried to tiptoe upstairs, but may not have been terribly successful. The hotel cat, who had barely lifted a whisker in greeting earlier, looked up in disgruntlement as we trundled past its sleeping place after dinner.

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28 December, 2011 · 5:45 am

Bath

Bath is a gorgeous town, in muted shades of sandstone cream and pinky-beige. Even in the rain, it’s very regal (or is it just that I’ve read too many Regency romances set here, which are all about the peerage, or at least the upper vestiges of Society?)

The B&B is another gorgeous one, situated in a terrace along one of the main roads into town. Lovely rooms, full English breakfast delivered to your room in the morning, not too noisy even considering the road, and it boasts free parking up the back for our large beastie of a hire car. Yes, it took about 10 mins of inching backwards and forwards to the sound of the parking sensors beeping in an ever-rising crescendo to get it parked, but it’s there until we leave tomorrow morning.

The English brekky this morning was yum, especially as our hosts had kindly sourced GF bread and sausages to add to my plate, as well as the welcoming biscuits yesterday afternoon.

We set off to visit a few of the must-dos of Bath (or at least, the must-dos for us. Or me, anyway…) The Roman Baths complex was our first stop, and we were amazed at the well-managed and organised centre. There are free audio guides to listen to as you wander around (multiple languages, for adults and separate ones for kids, plus Bill Bryson doing a couple of commentaries at a couple of exhibits as well), as well as info beside most exhibits, and video reconstructions of Roman life and people, plus a couple of actors looking pretty cold out next to the pool in their Roman costumes. Definitely worth a look for anyone heading to Bath.

We paused briefly for a snack at the very poshe and very famous Pump Room. R had the Georgian Elevenses: a cup of hot chocolate with cream, a glass of The Bath Waters, and a Bath Bun with cinnamon butter. Yum! I fortified myself with the waters for wusses: Bath Waters mixed with either lemon or strawberry (mine was strawberry), and gluten free scones with jam. More yum!

Bath Waters taste kinda like you’d expect: very mineral-y, and warm. Too warm, but not hot. Just… strange. Not an experience I’ll pay for again!

Next stop was my Mecca, the Fashion Museum. Housed in the old Assembly Rooms, the Fashion Museum has huge amounts of stock. The exhibits show a select few, and have cupboards and racks full of other items behind them!

This is the Silver Tissue Dress, which is the oldest complete dress they have. It’s about 350 years old. I don’t think I’ll get that long out of any of my garments!

They have corsets and crinolines to try on for adults, and children’s replica clothing for them, too! I loved the corsets, as each was made almost like an abseiling harness – webbing and connectors and canvas, with instructions like this one: This way up, and Front and Back written on them!

I especially loved the “behind the scenes” section, which showed the nineteenth century in clothes for each decade as if they were in the storage areas, with annotations discussing the various changes to the female silhouette as society’s attitudes changed, and the variations in materials and fabrication as England moved into the Industrial Revolution. Very, very, very cool.

The twentieth century exhibition was also exhaustive, showing a diverse range of designers and shapes as the century went on.

The Assembly Rooms upstairs were also really interesting. I could picture the heroines of some of my favourite Regency-set stories there, peeping at their heroes over their fans, hoping to be asked to dance.

Our next destination was the Jane Austen Centre, which many, many people have looked pained at the idea of. Actually, as we were standing on a corner checking our map, a pair of locals asked us if we needed any help, and were a bit disapproving of the idea when we told them what we were looking for, saying “that’s not my favourite place”! It turns out the museum was opened by a couple of pub owners, and it’s got a very strong reputation as a place to rip off tourists! (Especially, I might add, as Jane Austen didn’t like Bath at all!) In any case, I was after some souvenirs, so we wandered up and visited the gift shop at least, purchasing various Austenish tatt, and taking a picture with the Jane statue and the (real) doorman.

We stopped at this point for lunch at The Salamander, a pub around the corner, starting with local brews of cider and porter, and pigging out (hur hur) on pork sausages and mash, and pork belly with black pudding and mash, respectively.

Once we could walk again, we waddled up the hill to the Circus, and on to Royal Crescent, an imposing semi-circle. Number 1 Royal Crescent, a house restored to Georgian gorgeousness, wasn’t open, so we satisfied ourselves by watching other tourists taking photos of the vista and wandered past the Royal Victoria Gardens (spying a squirrel on the way) and back to the B&B for a refresh before heading out for dinner.

We went to the Garrick’s Head Pub for dinner, which was great. R had the chowder for entree, oxtail for main, and I went straight for the steak with salad and thrice-cooked chips (yum). We both had homemade icecream for dessert before waddling (again! I’m sensing a theme here) back to the B&B to pack up before hitting the road again tomorrow, this time to Wales.

 

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