FIVB Beach Volleyball International

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Grace

Lynley works at BP so as one of the sponsors, her company is lucky enough to get first dibs to the London Prepares Series – which is basically a series of warm-up events testing out some events for the London Olympics. She was lucky to get some to today’s event: the FIVB Beach Volleyball International at Horseguard Parade. Best of all it was the Women’s finals events! Heh heh.

And what a gorgeous day we had for the event!

The London Olympic event is going to feature a 15,000 seat stadium – hard to imagine when today’s event featured a mere 1,500 seats! I really liked this event as we were able to get pretty close to the action, in fact, it turns out that half of winning team (Brazil’s Liliane Maestrini) must have had her parents in the stadium as upon their victory she came charging up in the stands next to us! She was really gracious too with all the cameras right in her face!

I used to play a lot of volleyball (indoor not beach) so could appreciate the sport for what it was but I’ve never seen beach volleyball played at an international level. Boy those girls were good. Yes, I did say on the interview with Clare Balding for BBC Two’s Olympic Countdown that it’s about the sexiness etc. of the sport but its also about the athleticism. They are so fast and quick and flexible.

It’s a shame Great Britain couldn’t bring home from their gold medal match – though they really played with heart.

And don’t forget there are the cheer girls …

Plus a musical performance by these two … can’t recall who they were though!

Celebrity sightings included the Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Woods and Sir Steve Redgrave (who presented the flowers to the teams in the medal ceremony.)

Golden Dragon’s Cheesy Eggy Steamed Bun

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Grace

Warrick

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Grace

And a visit to London wouldn’t be complete for Rache if we didn’t take her out for one last drink and dance. Venue of choice was the Warrick which, if not being particularly exciting in the basement area in terms of people, had a pretty good DJ at least. A good happy hour too which was surprisingly available on a Saturday!

And yes it did get teary …

Chocolate Walking Tour with Great British Tours

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Grace

Next stop on the “Rache’s Last Day in London” itinerary was a Chocolate Walking Tour with Great British Tours.

The walking tour had a pretty good itinerary visiting the following areas:

Cox Cookies & Cake (the place known for adult themed cupcakes – the chocolate coming from the Triple Valrhona Chocolate Chip cake) (S)
Mrs Kibble’s Old Sweet Shop (not strictly linked to chocolate it nevertheless was a cute find with jars are filled with retro sweets)
Freggo (Arguably the best ice cream in London – the tenuous link to the tour being a chocolate ice cream flavour) (S)

Prestat (One of the oldest chocolate shops in London Prestat has been awarded two Royal Warrants which basically means it’s a supplier to the royal family! The Dufour family who created the store is widely credited with creating the truffle)
Fortnum & Mason’s
Ladurée (Again a tenuous link with chocolate – but I can well understand people’s obsession with gorgeous macaron – the Salted Caramel one I had today was divine)
Charbonnel & Walker (A posh chocolate store and truffle specialist)
Selfridges but mainly we had a pitstop to visit Godiva. (S)

The stop at Godiva was the best of the whole tour. The tour which was sadly lacking in chocolate tastings (which is what you normally expect from a chocolate tour.) Godiva not only gave us a little talk on what to look for in good chocolate but gave us plenty of samples (which other members of the public were very happy to muscle in on! Honestly some people have no shame!)

So, what do you look for when tasting chocolate? There are four things:

1. Shine. The chocolate should be shiny.
2. Snap. When you snap the chocolate there should be a loud audible snap.
3. Smell. True chocolate makers will not wear perfume because it can permeate the chocolate.
4. Not melting. It shouldn’t melt when you hold it in your fingers.

Our tour guide was pretty good to be honest. She was training to be an actress so was getting right into her spiel. The funniest thing was how she was telling us about the tour operator and how he didn’t really care how many people went on the tour. She said she had previously given a Harry Potter tour which had over 60 people on it!

But as I said before I can’t rate the tour too highly because it wasn’t really a co-ordinated effort with the stores we visited. It was more the case of standing outside as our tour guide told us about the place and then having free time to go in ourselves. At one store, Prestat, we must have waited outside for about 20 minutes simply because the store couldn’t handle that many of us in there. I would normally expect that on a tour we’d get some sort of privilege, even if it was only as simply as getting samples. We did get some samples (as marked with (S) above) but I think that was more because the store felt sorry for us or the store generally offered samples anyway.

Art4fun

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Grace

Rache is in London town for the last time in a long while as she is soon heading to start a new life in Canada. We are going to miss her terribly but I was happy that she had the time to spend at least another day with us before she headed off. We were trying to think of something a little bit different to do and with the weather being a bit dodge it kind of limited our options a bit. However, Rache and Emma came up with a brilliant idea to hit Arts4fun. They have various venues around London but the basic premise is that we could paint our own ceramics, get it fired up and then have a cool piece of art or whatever to take away with us.

The only drawback was that there was a hen party that came in about halfway through our time there – and they were very loud and just a little bit disruptive.

At Arts4fun you can paint as many pieces as you want – you pay a set fee to use the facilities and then a price per piece. You do have to leave your pieces behind to be fired, however, so you should ensure you have the opportunity to come back and pick your art again. Alternatively they have postage service.

Oh, and if you’re worried you’re not creative enough to play they have plenty of templates on hand for tracing or painting over and the staff are very helpful with ideas on how you can paint your piece.

What a fantastic way to spend a couple of hours on! It was very cool indeed and, in spite of the hen party, was a great way to relax, chat and just generally chill out.

The carnage of our table:

Mushroom Nachos

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Grace

Emma is sadly leaving our team so, as is tradition, had leaving drinks. The Hop Poles is a pretty good venue for drinks being quite close to the station and also having some pretty good snacks at reasonable prices. For the most part the snacks are good anyway … this plate of mushroom nachos being a bit odd.

Even odder the whole thing was accompanied by barbecue sauce! Still, it went down very well with everyone!

Fish Finger Sandwich at the Sali

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Grace

A gorgeous day today to be having a fish finger sandwich out in our local’s beer garden

Rioting, Looting and Arson

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Grace

Some kind of crazy has come over London. It started on Saturday evening quietly enough with a peaceful march Tottenham in response to the shooting of a man by police when trying to arrest him. But then it all broke loose and people started to loot and riot in a frenzy that sparked several days copycat opportunistic rioting. The first I really heard of it hitting my area was when I woken by text messages at 4am yesterday morning from concern people in Australia!

Its kind of eerie how many areas of London feel like ghost towns during the day with many shops shutting early and boarding up their glass (where did they get the wood?!) There is also notable police presence in many areas.

At any rate I hope it stops soon! The police can surely only do so much overtime!

All You Can Ping Pong

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Grace

When its all said and done £21 (factoring in the 12.5% service) for as much dim sum you can eat is not a bad deal here in London. It also means you’d choose dishes you probably wouldn’t normally so in some ways it is also good for encouraging adventurousness. I was very happy to introduce Cathy to All You Can Ping Pong (actually called Lazy Sum Days) and she and I certainly gave the All You Can eat aspect a good go.

Don’t think I’ll be needing to eat dinner tonight!

Peacock Bar: Chocolate Making

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Grace

A recent offer came up for Afternoon Tea followed by a class of your choice – you could choose from cup cake, chocolate or cocktail making. Jenny was interested in getting a group of us girls together for such an event but thank god they didn’t want to do the cup cake making. To me cup cakes are so last year and that includes the multitude of offers you see around for cup cake making/decorating classes! We didn’t really know what to expect at the Peacock Bar but when Nimet and I arrived it was to see a Hen party going about their cupcake and cocktail making business. The girls who run the classes were dressed up rather cutely in that 1940s look which really set the feel for the day.

Jenny was running late for our class but luckily the organisers were fairly relaxed about things getting us drinks to occupy us whilst we waited for Jenny. It was good that they weren’t concerned with trying to start things exactly on time and that they had the flexibility to adjust the timing for us.

When Jenny did arrive we were a bit disappointed to find that afternoon tea wasn’t on offer – instead we got the chance to make chocolate and …. yes, cup cakes! Argh! As none of us had really read about the offer before arriving we weren’t actually sure what we were supposed to get! I guess the cup cakes were a substitute for our afternoon tea?

The pros of the day were, as I mentioned, the flexibility of the organisers (Jenny was late for over an hour but they didn’t mind!), a very casual and relaxed atmosphere, very friendly hosts, divine quality chocolate for our chocolate making (and we got to dip fruits to eat as we went along too!), with the cup cake making there were lots of different colours and extras to decorate our cupcakes (and we could eat as many as we wanted!) and finally even when we were finished they were happy to let us sit around (when they really needed to chuck us out as they had function.)