Dinner at Malmo’s Townhall

Patrick General, Travel

One of the many things keeping me busy the last several months was preparing for my presentation at Øredev . As part of the welcoming of speakers to the conference, Malmo invited us to their town hall where the Deputy Mayor welcomed us with a very traditional banquet.

As you can see from the photo above and below, the town hall’s interior is definitely grandiose and decorated with spectacular fittings. When we sat down we could even see the old chimney stacks lined up against the wall to provide heating prior to electricity.

We had an amazing meal, being served a very traditional local banquet. It first started with a very strange looking soup.

We later find out it’s Black Soup. Yes. It’s made with similar ingredients to Black Pudding, except everything was based around Goose (which we had as a later meal).

Despite knowing what was cooked in it, I found it surprisingly delicious although made slightly more strange by the cinnamon and cloves sprinkled throughout. I had a fantastic evening meeting all the other speakers and conference organisers. This was definitely one of the best conferences I’ve been to as well.

Family in London Final Part

Patrick Travel, UK Life

After the few days spent in Rome the family spent a few more days in London before heading back home. I took these few days off as well, to maximise the amount of time we had left together and to also make full use of all the bits of knowledge I’d acquired over the years.

On our first day back to London we spent the morning at the Tower of London exhibition where I got to see the Crown Jewels for the first time. I think it’s definitely worth going early if you want to have a look at them close up as we got to walk by, stunned by the amount of queuing people might need to do on a busy day. They have at travelator in front of the jewels as well, to continue to keep the line moving and since we visited really early, we got to take our time going back and forth a number of times to really marvel at the jewels and gold inset on each of the various decorations.

We also joined one of the morning tours where one of the Beefeaters who worked here took us around. Our guard was highly entertaining and told us lots of inside secrets about the place which made the free definitely worthwhile joining.

After the Tower of London experience, we took yet another London experience, a black cab ride back to London bridge where we dined at one of the best fish and chips places I’ve found in London. The Anchor Bankside is also a bit of a historical pub though draws the tourist crowds being perfectly located on the walking path between the Tate Modern and Borough Market. Here, their fish is lightly battered and super crispy, with its only downside being perhaps slightly oily. The entire family still appreciated the experience.

We then headed out to the edge of London where we took the train to look at the Thames flood barriers. It’s quite far our and it’s a free experience that shows a different side to London. We had a really clear day and so we could also see some of the strange and out of place buildings located in Canary Wharf.

Although we weren’t trying to, I think we took all forms of transport that day, next catching a bus back to Greenwich to see the Prime Meridian and its surrounding parklands before catching a ferry back to town to take our family to do some of their souvenier shopping. By this time, the cold outside the busy schedule kicked in again when a few of the family members fell asleep on our journey back in the warmth and slow rocking of the Ferry.

The family finished off their European adventures with a visit to the London Eye and St Pauls before we saw them off past security at the airport. I’m certain that everyone enjoyed their holiday although the memories no doubt started to blur since we packed in so many things. Still, it was nice to share as much of our favourite parts of London with the rest of our family.

Rome

Patrick General, Travel

I couldn’t exactly take three consecutive weeks off in a row so while the rest of the family enjoyed their time in Paris and Salzburg, I went back to work. Instead the compromise was for me to meet them in their final European destination, Rome since I hadn’t spent any time there either. Since my sister organised most of the other parts of the journey, Rome was my responsiblity.

I managed to find a decent apartment located right near the Spanish Steps that was extremely convenient for when you arrived from the airport and the main train station and also perfect walking distance to all of the major Roman tourist destinations.

Like most other old European cities, Rome is packed with plenty of tourist destinations and although we strived to see as many as we could, doing as the Romans do, took our leisurely time doing so. Like most other tourists, we wandered the various piazzas, went along to all the magnificant buildings and marvelled at the winding streets whilst enjoying plenty of gelato in the process.

Here’s a picture of the famous Trevi Fountain that, I think, is best lit up at night.

We also went to Campo de Fiori, one of the famous markets for food, where you could watch all the excellent seasonal produce available to all the locals. It’s definitely a place that’s more accomodating to tourists with plenty of market stalls taking advantage of all the potential buyers, particularly with many of their premium products such as truffle based products and high quality olive oils, and liquours. One stall even sold stove top Moka’s of all kinds.

I’d organised for us to join a number of tours because of the deep history associated with the city and plenty of it unknown to us or that a real person would provide a much better experience than any guidebook possibly could.

Our first tour took us to the Vatican City, technically a country on its own though we didn’t get any stamps in our passports to prove it. Going on a guided tour to enter here is definitely worth it because, if anything, you get to skip the infamous queues if you’re in a tour group. Unfortunately when we went, we skipped the lines to buy tickets but still got caught up in the security queue given all of Europe was apparently on extremely high terror alert.

Our tour guide, a friendly American Irish tour guide was well worth the money (we went via Eden Walks) providing excellent entertainment and keeping the tour interesting and relevant. He even went ahead and brought props of his own making to help explain the insides of the Sistine Chapel rather than crowd around the public ones the rest of the visitors would.

Here’s our tour guide prepared with a copy of the Sistine Chapel roof top since you’re not supposed to talk in the building and the collage of pictures outside is overcrowded with tourists

The vatican city is vast with so much history I think you could repeat the tour four times and hear about different aspects all of the time. They have some pretty spectacular statues such as the one below showing the slaying of Medusa.

They also had plenty of non standard statues, some of them particularly freaky looking like this life-like statue with eyes painted in.

We also did a tour of the famous Roman ruins, the Forum and its well worth getting a guide for this yet again because there is literally nothing but ruined stone formations which require a fantastic story teller to bring to life. We had a fantastic Swedish/Italian tour guide associated with Preso Tours whose quirky humour made us laugh quite a lot. She was a lot younger than many of the other tour guides so I think that also contributed to the high energy in the tour itself. We ended up this tour in the huge Roman Colosseum which was quite surreal to stand inside, both from a size perspective but also from having watched the movie Jumper last year where they spend a good amount of time at.

We had plenty of great food and although we succumbed to probably some of the more tourist joints, the quality of the food still ended up being reasonably good. At least I think the food we ate ended up much better quality than some of the cheapo tourist joints you’d find in London.

Family in London Part 2

Patrick Entertainment, Food, Travel, UK Life

The family didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked to in London but we certainly packed in quite a bit before they headed off to Paris to start their European adventures. We made sure that we tried to complete as many interesting things they would have appreciated including:

Breakfast at Simpsons on the Strand – One of the poshest places to have breakfast, this restaurant serves breakfast for the … hotel and has a very classic selection including kippers on toast (something you don’t see everyday). The poshness of this place is also reflected in the price – their full English breakfast (including liver, black pudding, etc) costing a hefty portion. I decided to go for something a little bit different and chose the banana pancakes served with creme friache and maple syrup.

Changing of the Guards – Being in the area, we walked through St James Park to witness the well known ceremony, the Changing of the Guards. It seemed like huge number of tourists also waited in line to see the marching band, and the colourful troops go through their rituals to swap in the old for the new.

Buckhingham Palace – We pre-booked tickets to be able to walkthrough the palace grounds. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take any photographs inside so nothing visual to remember but it was certainly an impressive lot. The audio guide kept us busy right to the very end although it was sometimes a squeeze in some areas. The Queen is very popular!

London Duck Tours – The British used these amphibious vehicles during the second world war and now they take tourists around and into the Thames on a very well guided tour. I felt a little sorry for our tour guide who constantly cracked jokes but unfortunately our group didn’t seem to respond very well to him. We learned lots of tidbits of information such as where the Earl of Sandwich first created his well known sarnie and the location for the Queen’s very own pharmacist. Definitely fun and entertaining.

Tierra Brindisa – I wanted to give our parents a true taste of spain, so one of the Brindisa restaurants it had to be. We feasted on plenty of tapas and especially enjoyed their speciality picante chorizo, rocket and roasted peppers on toasted bread. The family was well fed and well chuffed after visiting this place.

Westminster Abbey, Big Ben – We got here first thing one morning to ensure we could join the English guided tour around the abbey rather than simply take the audio guide that everyone else does. Doing so gave us access to parts of the Abbey you wouldn’t normally see including getting to sit where the choir sits during one of their services. It was my first time inside here and I hadn’t realised exactly how many famous people had been buried here, or at least there were monuments too. It seems like they’re running out of room for them all!

Harrods – A trip down to Knightsbridge of course requires a visit to this well known institute. Although we didn’t really come here to buy expensive goods, the family enjoyed wandering the grounds, even visiting the tiny little pet shop they have on their top floor.

Afternoon tea at the Berkeley – My sister organised this trip where we indulged in many different types of sandwiches and overdosed on extremely decadent cakes, slices and other desserts all while enjoying tea served on Paul Smith designed crockery. The Berkeley is very well known for adapting their afternoon tea experience to current fashion trends, even providing pictures for you to understand the inspiration for the various plates that stand before you. A very impressive selection and well worth its high price.

West End Musical – Sister Act – My mum really wanted to see a musical and so my sister organised to see Sister Act. It was actually a very entertaining and well produced musical although the hectic schedule, extremely chilly exteriors and warmth led to a couple of people napping during the show!

BBC Television Centre Tour – As part of the service to the public, the BBC conduct tours of their television centre and they’re definitely worthwhile. Our two tour guides, part time actors for various shows in the BBC provided a wealth of entertainment as they took us around the history of the buildings, the sets where they film various shows and hosted us for a little bit of mock news and weather reading using some of the technology they would for the TV.

Mum even got to face off against a dalek (though I wouldn’t be smiling as much as she is if I met one for real).

Westfield Visit – Seeing as were in the area, we thought we should take them to the new Westfield Shopping centre, just to see how the shopping experience changes being in a different country.

Tower Bridge – We made sure that we visited the well known Tower Bridge (often mistaken as the London Bridge which isn’t really that special) where we also took in the City Hall.

Dinner at the Bleeding Heart Tavern with my flatmate – Finally before the rest of the family headed off to continental Europe I made sure that they got to meet my flatmate, Tom, who they’d all heard about but yet hadn’t had the chance to meet. We dined at the cosy Bleeding Heart Tavern where everyone really enjoyed their hearty British meal.

Family in London Part 1

Patrick General, Travel, UK Life

Their visit began with a short stay in London before they headed out to Paris and Salzburg for another week. I met them in Rome after that before returning with them to London where they stayed a few more days before heading back home.

One of my favourite parts about people visiting London is I get to show them all the little inside secrets you only really get to discover when being a bit of a local – developed through time discovering them for yourself, or by talking to other people about little secrets around town. London is one of those cities where you continue to unearth any of these for a lifetime and still not be done.

My family’s visit first started with us greeting them at the apartment we’d hired for them, a nice modern apartment in the central location of Bayswater called Space Apart. It had really funky interiors and modern furnishing and had plenty more space for the entire family than either my sister or I could comfortably fit in our places. They arrived late that Sunday evening so I picked up some takeaway from one of my favourite Chinese restaurants when I used to live in that area.

The next day started off almost ridiculously early where we had to meet at the Cumberland Hotel in order to join our prebooked tour bus to head out to Stonehenge. When planning our itinerary, this was actually one of the only places that my Dad really wanted to go see. My ever organised sister found a great little tour bus that did a whole trip visiting Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle in a day. Quite a bit of a whirlwind tour! Starting off at 7am, our little tour group consistently of only around 12 people headed out and our friendly Irish tour guide pointing out interesting facts and cracking jokes as we made our way out of London.

I remember it being a bitterly cold day, and since we left town so early, found ourselves one of the only parties at Stonehenge for the morning – a boon for taking photographs and taking our time to wander around the great stones. I think the family really enjoyed visiting the site, and probably like every other visit, exclaimed at how much smaller the stones appeared.

You can’t really spend that much time at Stonehenge so about an hour or two later, we found ourselves heading for the Roman ruins located in Bath. Bath had many more tourists and we found ourselves sometimes struggling to get space around the Roman ruins whilst still trying to get a good look at the baths.

My sister was right in not planning to take our parents to too many museums because our Dad didn’t even listen to the audio guide – simply rambling around looking at things until he found himself at the exit! It took us a while to work out where he actually disappeared to, not thinking he would tire of the place so quickly.

We had a bit of time to wander the town and grab lunch before we took the bus back up and around town for a bit more of a final tour before heading off to Windsor for the rest of the afternoon. I think it was rather late by the time we ended up at Windsor castle, so instead of opting to go into the castle, we decided to wander around the town. Given the trade off was only an hour in the castle, and that we wouldn’t have got much value it turned out to be a great decision since the family enjoyed browsing the stores of Windsor instead.

Leaving Windsor by the time dark started to set in, we found ourselves napping in the back of the bus on the way back to London and eventually got back twelve hours after we departed! What a day.

Given my passion for food and eating, my sister left all meals to myself to organise. Our first meal was to head up to Phoenix Palace to give them a Chinese banquet. I picked this place because it was a very nice fine dining experience with really tasty food and a very different selection of dishes including Kangaroo, Ostrich and Boar meat – something you don’t really see on the menu every day.
One Chinese tradition is for the hosts to take care of the guests, so keeping to this, my sister and I took care of the bill for the evening (as we did for the rest of the journey) despite the protests from our Dad who wanted to know how much the meal was.

Back to Blogging

Patrick Travel, UK Life

I’ve needed to catch up on some blogging. Frankly, life has got in the way with a combination of family visits, some holidays, busy work life and a number of conferences (and the preparation required by them) extremely busy. Fortunately I cleared my December schedule as much as possible to be able to catch up.

Leaking 2010 into 2011 didn’t appeal to me.

So what’s been going on?

At the start of October, my family from Australia visited my sister and myself for the first time since we’ve been living in London. We’re not quite sure why they’ve not been over here in such a long time but probably has to do with the fact that we’ve met them in many other countries before then. It was about time though.

The Doves Final Show @ The Warehouse Project

Patrick Entertainment, Music, Travel

Manchester’s been running with The Warehouse Project for the past several years, setting up shop in the arches below Piccadilly Station. Somehow they manage to get an amazing line up of DJs and musical artists playing sets and gigs for almost two months running. I reckon all those up North are pretty lucky.

I’d got a ticket to see The Doves when they first came out as I remember the amazing gig that Al and Suz brought me to back in Brisbane and how totally stunned I was by their awesome sounds. Trying to get a ticket to their gig is nigh impossible without resorting to the touts, so I was pretty stoked to get one to their show in their own home town.

The gig started really late with the support acts not starting until about 11pm at night. Given that most of the other artists were DJ’s I can understand this underground starting time, but I found it a bit strange for a gig. I don’t think The Doves came on until about 1pm, playing a decent set until about 3am in the uber-packed archways.

They played an amazing set although I think the speakers were set just a touch too loud as the ringing in my ears told me the next morning. I think it was also a pretty special set since they won’t be touring in the UK for a final since they needed a bit of a break.

Henley to Marlow

Patrick Entertainment, Travel, UK Life

One of the great things about England are the temperate climates for trekking around the country. Although trains are notoriously unreliable as a regular commuting vehicle with excuses like leaves on the track and snow preventing trains from running, they do tend to serve a pretty reasonable way of getting around on weekends. This bank holiday weekend, I headed out with a friend to Henley-on-Thames where we proceeded to take something like a 15km walk to Marlow.

The walk was pretty tame although we had plenty of local wildlife (below) often running around the fields we had to trek through.

Not everything was straightforward though with a number of paths not always very well signed unlike the path below.

Although a couple of the pubs we hoped to stop in for lunch weren’t open due to the bank holiday weekend, the blackberry bushes seemed to be in season and we tucked into quite a few along the way.

Arriving at Marlow, we sat down at the michelin-starred pub restaurant, the Hand and Flowers that I remember enjoying a meal at when I worked there some time ago.