Hi All,
It hasnt been that long since I last wrote but I didn't get around to talking about Barcelona due to the length of my last email.. Let me address that now!
Let me start by saying this : Barcelona is a great city. Its realy chilled out, and Spain is probably one of my favourite cities in Europe. The weather is great, and I love the whole eat late, stay up late vibe, especially on holidays. Archiecture is really interesting in Barcelona with Gaudi's relgious/nature influences all throughout the city. The ONLY slight blemish to the city this time was that I wasn't blown away by the food there (it wasn't bad, just wasn't amazing!) and the month of August is not the ideal time to go due to the fact that a LOT of local shops/restaurants close for most of August as everyone goes on holidays!
Highlights of Barcelona:
- Relaxed atmosphere
- Great architecture: Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo (pronounced baiyo), las rambla
- Waking up late, eating late
- Jamon Iberico at the markets - so much better value than eating at a restaurant!
- Getting my tan on!
- Relatively cheap compared to London /Paris
The best food we had there was from markets, and the best things at the markets is of course Jamon Ibero! There are a lot of different varieties in terms of cut (shoulder vs leg), acorn vs non acorn, breed pf pig, time of aging (1-5 years) and the flavours do very drastically between them, I personally tried as many different types as possible, all in the name of science of course. Other meals in Barcelona were good, but not amazing - the other highlight being a squid ink paella at a relatively fancy restaurant.
I think food quality was limited by the afore mentioned closure of lots of local restaurants due to August. I'll give barcelona the benefit of the doubt just this once..
It just so happened that Viv, Miranda and Josh were also in Barcelona on the same weekend! Thanks for letting us tag along with you guys!
Just to go onto a tangent...After 5 months of 'low cost carrier' travelling I think I have now established several rules:
1. Saturday morning flights are generally not worth it. Getting up at 3:30am to get to the airport ruins your day, and you end up wiping out in the afternoon anyway so its not like you get to spend a full day anyway. Saving accomodation for a night sounds like a good idea, but the opporunity cost of losing half of saturday due to tiredness and extra expense to get there in the morning must be considered.
2. Location of the airport is important. Depending on when you live, the airport is really important. For example to get to Stansted Airport from Clapham early in the mornig or returning late at night is a NIGHTMARE. We got up at 3:30am for a 7am flight and only just made it and it cost us about 20 pounds to get there. While you may pay an extra 20 pounds to fly from a close airport, this is easily cancelled out by the size of the taxi bill at 12 midnight when you land..
3. Book in advance - plan 3 months ahead!
We also went to Berlin last weekend, organised by Linda... Friday night flight of course - the woman is a pro and learnt the before 3 rules a long ago... She booked us a MASSIVE 2 bedroom apartment in the Mitte district (east berlin).. We arrived on Friday night and immediately smashed a currywurst once we had dropped off our bags. Currywurst is fantastic, its just a sausage fried in oil and covered in tomato sauce which has curry powder in it. We had it at a place right under friedrichstrafe station and I have to say the chips here were amazing - really crunchy and went great with the curry sauce! We also had a few drinks a bar called Van Gogh, it was a really eccentric little place which specialised in cocktails and had a man playing a piano and singing in the corner. Really chilled out place and was absolutely packed from where we got there at about midnight to 2am when we left..... to have KEBABS! Great call by Linda to redirect our taxi driver to take us to a kebab shop instead of home!
This was probably the first kebab i've had since i left australia and this was pretty good! Not too fat, and had enough vegetables to make me feel healthy. The meat was cut really small so that was interesting too. Kebabs and currywurst are EVERYWHERE in Berlin, much more so than in Sydney. Unfortunately, food went downhill from that point, the rest of the meals we had were unmemorable, with a few average roast pork dishes and various sausages/wurst dishes were not impressive. I do remember having a few better meals last time I was in Berlin, but I think the south of Germany (e.g. bavaria) is more well known for food..
The highlight of the trip was definitely the Fat Tire Bike tour - which was 5 hr bike tour throughout berlin. Riding a bike is definitely a good way to see a city - i just dont think you cover enough ground on foot. We apparently covered 14kms on the tour, and although when you think about it, over 5 hrs its about 3 km/h we did have a 1 hr lunch break and stopped constantly to talk, take photos etc. Also we werent tired like we would have been after walking 14 kms..The tour covered most of the highlights, reichstag, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, bradenburg gate, museum island etc. and the guide, a Kiwi named Francis was quite knowledgable.
Anyway, that more of less brings you up to date with my travels. London has been getting slightly colder but hasn't really turned the corner yet in terms of temperature, I dont have a coat, but its fine so far. It is getting dark earlier now, its dark by about 7:30 pm now,compared to almost 10pm in the hights of summer.. 6 months of darkness here we come!
Danny is coming to visit for a couple of months, arriving tomorow night! It gives me an excuse to go to my first 2 star restaurant in London - The Square in Mayfair. I hope its good!
Hope you are all well. Write back when you guys get a chance!
Take care!
Miles
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Africa Day 3
You know what, its been more than a year since my trip to Africa and I'm still on day 3. I could give up the blog here but that would be quitting! And I don't quit! Well not often - not unless im really getting flogged, in which case i just throw a tantrum and demand rematch... but thats not really quitting!
Anyway - Day 3...
You've probably forgotten the context of this now, but I'm still in Uganda, in the QE2 national park. We went on another game drive - and on this day we saw
- a whole famly of elephants crossing the road (i still remember this, it was my first closs sighting of a large group of elephants!)
- a hippo out of the water and about 5 m from the mutatu. This was the first and last time that I would see a hippo this close out of the water!
- Antelope, Warthogs (pumbas)
- A lion from a distance
We also went to an african village which is probably the first time i came close to a proper third world village. The kids were dirty, they didnt have running water, and i'm not even sure if they had electricity.
I don't think they had seen a lot of asians nor had they seen a lot of asians with hairy legs because they seem to be fascinated with the hair on my legs.. and they kept stroking it... weird i know...
We also went on a cruise of the the lake and on the cruise we saw
- Elephant in the water
- Maribu Storks - The ugliest birds in the world. Carrion eaters of course.
- Hippos in the water
- Crocodiles
A really cute kid!
who insisted we take multiple photos of him...
That afternoon - we went on a chimpanzee walk, where we went in search of chimps! Unfortunately we only managed to see glimpses of them as they were up in the trees. We had a cool guide though, who held my hand as i walked over a fallen over tree to cross a river. There is a 90% chance that I would have fallen in without her help..
Dinner was roast Goat! It was AMAZING. One of the best meals of the trip. To get a roast in the middle of africa was pretty special actually, I didn't expect to have that kind of food, i thought we were going to be eating really simple food throughout the trip but every once in a while we'd do something amazing like a roast side of goat and roast vegetables...
I believe this was the night wher Katie, Bahn and I had our first late night chat... :)
Good times...
Anyway - Day 3...
You've probably forgotten the context of this now, but I'm still in Uganda, in the QE2 national park. We went on another game drive - and on this day we saw
- a whole famly of elephants crossing the road (i still remember this, it was my first closs sighting of a large group of elephants!)
- a hippo out of the water and about 5 m from the mutatu. This was the first and last time that I would see a hippo this close out of the water!
- Antelope, Warthogs (pumbas)
- A lion from a distance
We also went to an african village which is probably the first time i came close to a proper third world village. The kids were dirty, they didnt have running water, and i'm not even sure if they had electricity.
I don't think they had seen a lot of asians nor had they seen a lot of asians with hairy legs because they seem to be fascinated with the hair on my legs.. and they kept stroking it... weird i know...
We also went on a cruise of the the lake and on the cruise we saw
- Elephant in the water
- Maribu Storks - The ugliest birds in the world. Carrion eaters of course.
- Hippos in the water
- Crocodiles
A really cute kid!
who insisted we take multiple photos of him...That afternoon - we went on a chimpanzee walk, where we went in search of chimps! Unfortunately we only managed to see glimpses of them as they were up in the trees. We had a cool guide though, who held my hand as i walked over a fallen over tree to cross a river. There is a 90% chance that I would have fallen in without her help..
Dinner was roast Goat! It was AMAZING. One of the best meals of the trip. To get a roast in the middle of africa was pretty special actually, I didn't expect to have that kind of food, i thought we were going to be eating really simple food throughout the trip but every once in a while we'd do something amazing like a roast side of goat and roast vegetables...
I believe this was the night wher Katie, Bahn and I had our first late night chat... :)
Good times...
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Miles in London - Part 8
Hey guys!
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
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