London Open House Again

Patrick Entertainment, Travel, UK Life

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since London Open House was on. Every year, different buildings around London open up their doors to welcome the public with most of them being free. Some are worth applying in advance for, ushering limited numbers of people around, whilst others you can only turn up on the day, and practice your British queuing skills with all the other people.

Coin Street Builders

This year, the whole weekend was planned out but I’ll share some of the highlights with you and I visited far too many sites worth mentioning. Saturday’s highlight was the OXO tower, one that you could only turn up on the day to book a tour given each hour. With only 18 people allowed each hour, it was definitely worth waiting the hour before the first tour began.

The X in OXO

The Coin Street Community Builders, responsible for the entire site were kind enough to at least collect the names and contact details for the huge volume of people they ended up turning away. The start of the tour begins on the ground level where you collect your hard hat and they give you instructions about how things to watch out for and the plan for the hour. We’re instructed to take the lift to top, where the Harvey Nichols Restaurant sits before we duck into a small door to take the, normally, restricted access door to an even smaller set of stairs where it’s obvious the hard hats are needed.

St Pauls from the OXO Tower

We stopped at the various different floors on the way up, stopping at each O-X-O before emerging at the top where you get an amazing view of the surrounding area. We were so high that we towered over the rest of the diners enjoying their river front views (pictured below).

River view from OXO

Day 2 started with another queuing experience at the Horse Guards near Buckingham Palace. We waited much longer than we did at pretty much any other venue but it was definitely worth the wait with a great story lead by one of the members of the First Guard walking us through the different rooms.

Horse Guard

I also really enjoyed your time visiting City Hall, namely because for the time invested queueing to get through security granted you access to some great views, a wonderful building to walk through without feeling overly crammed or rushed. Below is the cool staircases you got to walk down at the end of the tour.

City Hall

Other places we visited included Royal Albert Hall, BFI Imax, the Channel Four building, and the Treasury Building.

Quick trip to Chicago

Patrick Agile, Travel

Just back in the country, after another short trip to Chicago where I was running a presentation and a workshop for the Agile 2009 conference. It was a fantastic, exhausting and energising week where I finally got to put many faces to names, rekindle old friendships and make new ones.

Chicago

I also managed to catch up with some people that I knew in Chicago although it was a shame I didn’t have any more time to be able to do that. It’s great to be back.

Returning from Copenhagen

Patrick Travel, UK Life

I’m finally back in London after commuting back and forth from Copenhagen on a weekly basis. Doing a weekly intercontinental commute certainly eats up more of your free time, hence the lack of blogging for some time. Getting up at 4:30am every Monday to still arrive at the client by around 10am doesn’t really leave you with a lot of energy on a Monday.

I certainly did appreciate that we were working in Copenhagen at least. It’s a very liveable city, and if it weren’t for the draw of the bigger city like London, I would even consider moving there at some point. There are many great things about the city including:

  • Wonderfully separate bike lanes for cyclists
  • A work life balance that encourages a healthy and active lifestyle, and therefore very healthy and active people
  • Amazing quality food in restaurants (though service is a bit lack lustre)
  • The city has lots to discover yet is all very accessible (made even more by lots of public transport and the bike lanes)

      • I am, however, certainly glad to be back and looking forward to rebuilding a weekly routine, or least participating in all the wonderful things London has to offer during the week.

Breakfast Etiquette

Patrick Copenhagen, Food, Travel

Last week I was staying at the very nice Admiral Hotel, located near the riverside in Copenhagen. Like most hotel breakfasts, theirs was a buffer complete with a four slice toaster. I thought it’d be nice to have a single slice of toast with my breakfast, proceeding to put a single slice into the toaster before wandering off to add a few other items to my plate.

I sat down, watching from afar, waiting for the toast to pop when I saw another guy put some bread into the toaster. Thinking nothing of it, he waited for the toaster to pop and proceed to take both slices of bread, including mine.

I’m not quite sure what he was thinking but I certainly found it strange. At least there wasn’t any shortage of bread to toast.

Gammel Dansk

Patrick Copenhagen, Travel

Every Friday the client brings in some breakfast for everyone. This week, one of the guys brought in an extra special breakfast item, Gammel Dansk. Translated as “Old Danish”, it’s a drink they apparently have with breakfast during certain festivities.

Anders made everyone have a shot and all the locals apparently couldn’t wait to see everyone’s faces as they downed it with their breakfast. It was certainly strong, tasting like a much less sweet mirto or a stronger version of gin and that’s when the after taste kicked in… Urgh. It was obvious all the locals knew what was coming and enjoyed watching people react to its taste for the first time.

I can’t say that I’ll be making it my traditional breakfast drink yet.

Tivoli Fun

Patrick Copenhagen, Travel

Last week a bunch of us went to Tivoli Gardens for the first time. It’s apparently the location that inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland and I can really see why. Located right in the middle of the city, it’s amazing how much entertainment they pack into such a small amount.

tivoli

With only a few hours after work to really enjoy it all, we hit all the rides that looked like the most thrilling including several rollercoasters and various rides that dropped you from great heights.

Tivoli Gardens is amazing considering how old it is. It’s a great balance between entertainment for the young and plenty of activities for adults as well. Forget about cheesy, low quality entertainment although the park caters for all tastes. It even has two restaurants awarded with a Michelin star!

Considering we only about about £30 for both entrance and unlimited rides, you easily get the value for your money for a day.