Marc and Amanda’s Wedding

Patrick Brisvegas, Travel

I’ve known Marc and Amanda sine the earliest University days and it was my great pleasure to share, with them, their wedding day on Friday. Things started off ominously with the volcanic ash in Europe threatening to leave the to-be couple stranded in London. Fortunately they ended up leaving even earlier than expected, getting on one of the earliest flights to leave shortly after the government lifted the flight ban. Things continued to look up with a perfect Gold Coast day heralding in the beautiful ceremony at the Hyatt at Sanctuary Cove.

Everything ran really smoothly and it was a wonderful ceremony attended by many great family and friends from both sides. Things continued on after the ceremony with a lovely reception and dinner at Arundel’s Country Club where a final farewell saw the newly-weds depart the venue. I count myself particularly lucky knowing what a wonderful couple these two make and will continue to be over the next coming years.

Catching up with all the crew

Patrick Brisvegas, Travel

Returning to Brisbane and the Coast after so many years – about three and a half since the last time I’d returned – it was great to catch up with so many people. I’ll admit I didn’t exactly leave a lot of time to do so, but I’m really happy to have fit in so many visits in just under a week. This has, of course, meant plenty of eating and drinking that I will no doubt pay back when I return to London.

Ben and Michelle were the first people I saw, almost literally as I hopped off the plane in Brisbane. I had a frantic time picking up a sim card – Virgin Mobile had a great deal including 1GB of data before organising to meet these guys around Brisbane. We had a fantastic lunch in the luxuries provided by the Valley’s Cloudland. What an awesome time that was. Great food, beer (fat yak FTW) and awesome company.

Later that evening, I met previous Brisbane generations of TWers and the current generation of TWers at the Regatta. I caught the City Cat from the city, really enjoying the ride where we stayed until closing. I think we got the hint when they turned they almost turned the lights so low we thought they’d turned it off, as well as the roller doors closing in on the boathouse.

I then headed out to Milton, walking along the bikepath, to catch up with Gary, Jen and their toddler, Lila where we had a delightful breakfast and plenty of coffee. Lunchtime I returned to the city to catch up with Mike, Marie and their fresh little girl, Tara where we headed over to Punjabi Palace to relive some good ol’ times.

The evening sent me into the valley to catch up with some friends from high school, Kia and Josh where we enjoyed the amazing mixologists at The Bowery Bar. I’d seen Kia when we came over to London last year, but hadn’t seen Josh since I worked in Brisbane. It was really great to catch up.

Mel and Ben joined us later in the evening where we enjoyed their company and departed for a late evening meal to the Tibetan Kitchen. I’m amazed they let us in since it was really late for a Brisbane dinner although we got the hint when they started mopping down the floor around us that it was time to go.

I saw those guys off to catch one of the late trains before heading back into the city. I had to get up really early, after scheduling a breakfast at The Gunshop Cafe when it first opens at 7am! This meant getting up even earlier so that I could walk across. Here I met Paul, Michelle & Ethan, Hamish, Kate and Amaya and Matt for a delightful relaxed breakfast. It’s so refreshing to occupy a table even with a waiting queue and never feel rushed off the table – leisurely ordering a coffee, tea or juice and ordering really late.

Down the coast, I’ve also managed to catch up with Suz, Al and their three kids (whew!) as well as another high school mate, Dave and his, now wife, Bianca (last time they’d just gotten engaged). I finally caught up with lunch with Shannon who’d come and visited London about a year ago.

I have Marc and Amanda’s wedding to go to today before I fly out for Melbourne for a week of work. It’s been a bit of a hectic schedule but I’m really glad it’s all worked out in the end. Thanks everyone for making time to meet me. I certainly appreciated the short time I got to spend with everyone.

Back in Brisbane

Patrick Brisvegas, Travel

I’ve spent the last week travelling between Bangkok and Brisbane only to return to Australia Marc and Amanda’s wedding on the Gold Coast this Friday. I spent a few days in Brisbane catching up with as many people as I could before heading down to the coast to spend time with the family and before I fly out to Melbourne for work.

It’s remarkable to see the differences in Brisbane having not been there for three and a half years now. Some things don’t change.

For instance the City Cat ferries are still going on providing links by those lucky enough to live, work or study so close to the river. It’s a fantastic way of getting around and Brisbane has done a lot to integrate more of the transport systems using an Oyster-like system to do so.

Brisbane’s bikeway are still popular as ever. Watching all the people cycling around made me miss how easy it was to get around, although once again, it’s only those lucky enough to already live on the bike paths – with very little provided for those living in the northern suburbs or those greater away from the Brisbane CBD. Instead, there are many more bridges (I think they have plenty now!) and a number of tunnels providing ways of bypassing the city centre. I would have liked to have seen more public transport develop, but I’m afraid it seems like most people drive everywhere.

Other things change such as St John’s Cathedral (pictured above) finally finished their building and construction. I think I remember them trying to fund raise lots of money and plenty of construction still to come. Like other things, Brisbane now has plenty more buildings and redeveloped areas including many CBD-based apartment blocks.

Even places like Chinatown have been redeveloped, although that area is looking much less Chinatown and much more inner city living. I can see the impact that places like Cathedral Place have had bringing more affluent younger people closer to the city.

There’s even a Wheel of Brisbane that gives you a fairly decent view of the city during the day, although the same tinting that keeps you from being roasted during the day makes it apparently impossible to see any decent views during the night.

I’m glad to see Brisbane continue to develop. The CBD is still heaving during the day, but the same quietness descends in the evening as the rush of people spread out to the outer suburbs. It feels slightly busier, but given the weather and the laid back way of life, it’ll never feel as busy as London ever does. I can’t complain about the weather though 🙂

Up in the Air

Patrick Movies, Travel, UK Life

Over the weekend, I managed to see the movie, Up in the Air. I remember this getting some really positive comments at the BFI Film Festival last year, and thought some of it would be quite appropriate, doing a lot of travelling as a consultant. It stars George Clooney, and Vera Farmiga, who looked stunningly different from her role in the thriller movie, Orphan and a very talented Anna Kendrick.

The movie focuses in the travelling lifestyle of Ryan Bingham (Clooney) who works for a firm that is brought in specifically to fire people. It reminds me of a scene out of Officespace or some movie like that. However his preferred lifestyle of not being attached to anything comes under threat when firm newbie, Natalie Keener (Kendrick) comes up with the idea of replacing this face-to-face lifestyle with video conferencing software.

There’s many great parts to the movie, including where Bingham teaches Keener some of the finer arts to travelling light. I can definitely relate to this, thinking of the many hours I spent last summer travelling to and from Copenhagen. Perhaps more typically represented is the life of the US-based travelling consultant where it’s all about racking up miles, status points and credit points. Overall the movie started off really well but then it started to drag its feet, pursuing too many different story lines to properly address in a single movie. This left the conclusion rushed and it felt like arriving at a banquet only to be told the kitchen was closed when dessert arrived. I’m puzzled as to why it’s had big screen success, as I think it’s place is definitely in a bit more of a niche crowd.

TheKua.com Rating: 6.5 out of 10

2009 A Personal Retrospective

Patrick Copenhagen, Entertainment, Food, General, Music, Restaurants, Travel, UK Life

It’s that time of year to look back and see what’s been going on for 2009. It seems like it’s been a quieter year than most before and despite not wanting to do a lot of travel, it still seems like I ended up doing a fair amount.

Travel
The year started off in the US where I spent the day getting back from Boston before celebrating the New Year in New York. Since I was travelling to Marlow for work during the week, I didn’t end up going anywhere until March where I met the rest of the family in Japan.

Rather than hitting Tokyo, we met them in Osaka where we headed out to places like Kobe, Nara, Himeji and then spent the rest of the time visiting the temples and shrines of nearby Kyoto. April saw me head up north to visit my old flatmate, now living in York. The start of May then saw me head to Chicago for the first time, for a wedding and catching up with lots of people I knew living there.

I also took advantage of the great weather to head to Brighton for the first time. The end of may, I headed out to Sardinia for a conference where we ended up pretty much isolated from anyone else for the entire week. Great times yet I still remember the water being particularly cold.

It was around this time that I also started doing the weekly commute to Copenhagen for several months. I think I ended up staying over on the weekend twice – once to see what life in Denmark was really like, and then another to head over to Malmo (Sweden) on a very convenient and modern train.

August then saw me returning to Chicago for another conference before finishing off the year with a trip to Edinburgh in November and then Finland for a pre-Christmas holiday. I’d also mention travelling to Cambridge daily since returning from Copenhagen but other than eating out and resting, I don’t really get to see much of Cambridge.

Music
I don’t think I got to see as many bands this year seeing Aussie bands Eskimo Joe and The Living End in April, followed by amazing musician and talented whistler, Andrew Bird in May. I then saw John Butler outshine the Union Chapel in July. October then saw a flurry of activity including The Cribs, Franz Ferdinand and then Scottish musician, Calvin Harris play a sweat inducing performance at The Forum. The year finished off with a performance by Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakomoto.

Food
I think this was definitely the year of the Michelin-starred restaurants for me. I was very thankful managing to find the only booking open in a three month window for the world’s 3rd best restaurant, Noma. What an unbelievable experience the tasting menu here was.

Amazingly local food accompanied by great service. I still remember the evening sun setting at just before midnight casting an amazing warmth into the converted warehouse when we sat down to eat.

We had just as an amazing meal at Restaurant Paustian v. Bo Bech before leaving Copenhagen. When visiting Chicago for the second time, I made sure to head out to Moto to enjoy the delights of clever cooking techniques and dining dazzlery. I can still picture the sparkling bombs that explode in the mouth for dessert. I also took my sister out to Rhodes 24 for her birthday (admittedly quite late in the year) and also ended up having a lunch at (overrated) Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant. There was plenty of other amazing food places eaten ate but I woulnd’t be able to list them all.

Lappish Adventures

Patrick Travel

For most of our trip to Lapland, we stayed in the town Saariselka deep in the Arctic Circle. We figured that being so far north, we’d have a chance to see the Northern Lights and despite the great conditions for it (clear skies and really low temperatures) we only caught a brief glimpse of them.

As you can see, there was plenty of snow around and that meant there was plenty of opportunities to do lots of snow based activities. We managed to get around to doing some snow-mobiling, some cross country skiing, riding with some reindeers and sledging with the husky dogs. Saariselka also has a 1.2km long downhill toboggan trail that is definitely worth going down at one stage.

Although my most favourite activity was the cross country skiing, controlling the husky dog sledges was an inexperience to behold. We had a pack of six dogs on our sledge and it was amazing to see how they are simply built to run. Each sledge has a brake that digs into the snow and with our dogs, even with my full weight on it, their jumping efforts sometimes managed to move the sledge just a little bit. Fortunately it’s enough to get them to all stop running at the same time because they manage to run fairly fast.

The dogs are pretty silent when they’re running at full speed and its amazing to see how quickly they want to run as soon as they stop. They start howling, and even leaping in their harnesses, or digging into the snow waiting to get ready. Some of them do sit down, a little bit more relaxed but I’m guessing they’re some of the older dogs used to dragging people behind them. I think we managed to do about two and half hours of a course which was pretty good value for money.

Staying in the snow

Patrick Travel

Being somewhere extremely cold such as Lapland, you think you’d be crazy for wanting to stay in the cold. However figuring it was a once in a lifetime sort of experience, we thought we’d try staying in one of those ice hotels. I’m sure that most people have heard of Sweden’s famous Snow Hotel and being even further north, Finland has its fair share of places like this. So we decided to stay a night at the Snow Village found in Lainio.

The main part of the Snow Village is made out of snow compacted together to form an entire building which changes design every single year. Despite the extreme temperatures outside (-20 degrees Celcius), the insides of the Snow Village maintain a comparably warm 0 degrees Celcius, just perfect for the ice beds that you sleep in. This year’s theme was focused on different elements and colours, with four different corridors representing different themes. Here’s some of the examples:

This corridor was based on a Fire-theme, hence the bright red colours:

This one was based on Water, thus the blue:

And then Forest clearly green:

And finally an Air-theme completely white:

Despite all the layers of clothing, when it’s -20 degrees Celcius outside, the insides feel strangely warm as a result. Fortunately the different corridors are built as one big structure so the temperature inside stays relatively constant. It’s a different story on the outside where you are exposed to all the elements such as snow and wind. It still looks pretty spectacular from the outside.

Just like any ice hotel should have, there’s an ice bar where you can sit on blocks of ice and even a dance floor completely made out of ice. During the early parts of the evening it doubles as an ice restaurant where you can eat your food whilst enjoying the ice atmosphere. Don’t worry if you don’t want to eat in the cold because they also have a proper building with plenty of heating to keep you warm if you find it far too cold.

Part of the experience of the ice hotel is really staying over in one of the many rooms dotted along the different corridors. They offer two types rooms, the deluxe suites which are all custom made and unique with different characteristics and varying structures, and the more ordinary ice rooms. Since you actually get to see all the suites we stayed in one of the normal rooms with ice beds that look like this:

There’s a mattress to protect you from the icy bed, although you are also given a sleeping bag and thermal fleece to take into the room when you are ready to rest your weary head. The suites are pretty spectacular and the following knight and castle-themed room was definitely my favourite.

I can definitely recommend the experience, even if you do it for just one night.

Trip to Edinburgh

Patrick Food, Travel, UK Life

The last couple of weeks have been amazingly busy. I seriously don’t know where all the has been going. I know at least where this last weekend went as I took the train from Kings Cross up to Edinburgh. Figuring that I come into this station from work anyway, I figured it’d be easiest getting on a train that takes about four and half four rather than catching planes, waiting for airport security and then catching a bus on the other side. I’m really glad I did as well. The train was comfy although going first class doesn’t include a meal like the Virgin trains do. These ones to Edinburgh are taken care of by the National Rail East Coast line. I reserved a table so that I’d have access to power sockets although I didn’t need to worry since I think all of those seats came with it.

Our trip to Edinburgh (seemingly like many trips) centred around hanging out with friends enjoying good food and wine. Eight of us went up, having a lunchtime booking for Michelin-starred Restaurant Martin Wishart.

MartinWishart

We had an amazing meal (more of that over here) and plenty of wine to go along with it. Like many great meals I’ve had recently, this one seemed a bit like a marathon taking just under four hours to complete. We were lucky then that this place was a couple of streets away from the vaults of the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society.

Whiskey

We spent the rest of the afternoon until early in the evening sitting around in the dark oaked halls of the vaults, sipping a wide variety of drams and simply enjoying each other’s company. It definitely got busy towards the end of the evening, where we stepped out to grab a quick meal before heading home to our wonderful apartments. The next morning we had breakfast at Urban Angel, one of the best places for a Sunday brunch before walking around town and having to return to London early afternoon.

One other place worth visiting if you’re in Edinburgh and dying for a good coffee is Artisan Roast. It’s got a fantastic little vibe and particularly great coffee.