Leaving.. on a jet plane..

...don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go....

Don't you just love that famous song? Everytime I'm excited about going on a trip somewhere that song goes on repeat in my head. Well, the first line anyway, I can never remember the rest of it.. hahaha..

Did I hear you ask where am I heading off to again? I'm heading to this skyline..

to a place call HOME.

I should be in the air right about now, as this post goes live. The next time I sign on, it'll be from Melbourne.

Good bye London, for now anyway...

I'm off again .... =)

as when this post went live, I am on my way to one of the most frequented cities in the world ...
this may be my last European trip for a while.....but I'm going to enjoy every minute of it! at the expense of 2 days salary...

Blogging could be..

Blogging could be addictive or it could be a drag...............

Having not blogged for a while, I must say I am slowly getting addicted to it again.. slowly, probably not fast enough for my usual impulsive standards - not that I am a very impulsive person.

maybe.. just a little, when I get addicted to a particular ds game (not since Crosswords and Cooking Mama!), series or book that has got me so hooked and on my toes that I just can't let go and I would drag out every/any excuse I could to stay home just so I could keep reading/watching or playing whatever game it was that I was playing. Lately, it's been Neves and Mario Kart that has been occupying my spare time.

Photography is/was also very addictive....

I first bought a dslr almost 2 years ago, I remember snapping every Tom, Dick and Harry; every damn building street and what not that I came across. As a result, I would end up filling up my SD card with 300+ photos in the span of 5 hours.

I remembered when I went on my trip to Japan in 2007 I took about 300 photos (on my then 2gb Extreme II SD), the first day I was in Osaka. 300! Like geez, what was I snapping? Can't remember now. Sure enough, I ended up having to cut down the amount I took and made a point of culling down all the photos I took that day before bedtime every night just so I would have enough memory left to take more photos the next day. Suffice to say, I ended up burning some onto a DVD half way through our trip just so I could take more photos for the remainder of our trip.

So what's this gotta do with blogging? Well, part of the reason why I've not blogged about any of my European trips was because of the same reason. I lost interest. I took over 1000 shots on my first 2 trips (Luxembourg and Bremen) after arriving in London. It's taken me a whole week (approx 3hrs a night) to sift through the Luxembourg photos and come up with the condensed amount on a previous post.

I'm a lot better now and a lot less trigger happy than I was when I first started traveling. I no longer snap at every damn thing I come across in my trips. If anything, I found that as the number of trips increased, I got a better understanding of what I actually enjoy doing on each trip and made better use of the time in the city (that we were visiting) rather than spend the whole time trying to record what we visited/saw on each trip.

I've discovered that I loathe tours to cathedrals (though I do like their stain glass windows) and castles and I would rather spend the day walking the streets or markets and dining out alfresco style while watching the locals pass by.

I've discovered that I am a very visual person, weird and colourful things catch my eyes more often than anything else and people. One other thing that I've also discovered is that I am camera shy! I often miss a photo opportunity because I am too embarrassed to point my camera at a person if he/she is looking at me.

Argh! well, maybe not. I'd rather be safe than sorry, the last thing I want to do while traveling is get chased or beat up by some local dude because he didn't like/want me taking a snap of him.

So there, now that I've got Luxembourg up, I only have 26,260 photos (RAW + JPEGs) to catch up to my most recent trip, New York....*chuckle*

ps. Baking and cooking wise, I really haven't made anything worth blogging about lately. Most of my baking and cooking these days are repetition of previously made recipes. Mostly, it's been done as more of a last minute potluck dish than the desire to try something new. Other times, it's when I'm assisting with a friend's baking whim. Not having all my baking equipment in London, really takes the fun out of trying something new. I know it sounds like another excuse for not blogging, but reality is, it really sucks when I want to make mini tarts and haven't got even a muffin tin to use as a substitute for the tart shells. Sure, I can always go out and buy one, but considering we're not sure of how long we're staying in London for, it's probably not a good idea to start collecting stuff for a new kitchen, particularly where budgeting is concern.. :P

Well, the good thing is, I'll be heading home (Melbourne) soon in a few months. Though we're still not certain whether it will be temporary or for good, at least then there will be no more excuse for me to not try out something new or old like this: =)

Luxembourg

The famous Stain glass window at Gare de Luxembourg

Luxembourg, better known to the locals as Grand Duche De Luxembourg is a small country snuggled in between 3 of Western Europe's famous countries: Belgium, Germany and France. It is the worlds sole remaining Grand Duchy - ruled by a Grand Duke. Luxembourg's population ranges in the half a million mark but every day at least 200,000 more people enter the country from the borders of Belgium, Germany and France on a daily basis for employment purposes. Most Luxembourg natives speak at least 3 languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, it's official language. Luxembourg is also....... .

Umm... Eh... what am I doing? It's starting to feel like I'm writing an essay on Luxembourg. Really...? What was I thinking? If you really want to know about Luxembourg, you should just do what everyone does, Google or Wiki it =)

Of course, I did that too... when I went there last November.. hehe.

Luxembourg was pretty much the first European country we visited after we arrived in London last year. Usually, one would be visiting one of it's more famous cities such as: Barcelona, Paris or Rome. But not moi, considering we hitched onto a trip that one of our friends organised, I don't think we're in any place to complain *grin*

So what did we do in Luxembourg? I won't bore you with the details but in short, we hitched on a walking tour, feasted at the xmas market tents, did a bit of window shopping and took one last stroll by ourselves on the Sunday before heading back to London.

Luxembourg Town Square

One of the many paths in Luxembourg's Old town.

Grund

Top - Bottom: Pont Adolphe and Rout Bréck (Grand Duchess Charlotte - Red Bridge)

From Top L-R: Statue of Grand Duchess Charlotte,
Giant Bell in the Notre Dame church compound,
Notre Dame Cathedral spires and a laneway in Luxembourg New Town.

Top to Bottom: Houses in a valley, Old house in Old Town,
Window with Xmas decoration.

Top L-R: Some photos during our walkabouts.



Schloss Erhaut Bruecke,

An old building in Old Town



Luxembourg Christmas Market



Christmassy decorations around town and at the Xmas Market.



Top to Bottom, L-R: Toy Soldiers, Candle Holders, Christmas Trees around town.



Top to Bottom: Children art and Artwork at the Luxembourg Centre for Arts



Puppets at the xmas market.

Raclette!

Candy!

Me!

More photos on Flickr.

A Service Interruption Announcement

Hello and Sorry for the lack of updates and unanswered comments. It's been 3 weeks since we moved into the new home and we're still without a phone line nor broadband for that matter - no home phone = no broadband since everyone's on adsl over here.

In the last 3 weeks I have been leeching internet wherever possible from friends - carrying my trustee laptop with me wherever/whenever I go over to someone's house and from the nice dude 2 floors down who offered and set us up with his wireless connection. Unfortunately, the problem with leeching is that you get access whenever the router was up and running or when you're at your friend's apartment. This has lead to a shorter presence in the www and I've not been able to actively visit all of my favourite blogs nor update this little blog.

I won't bore you to death with my frustration of trying to get a phone line activated in our apartment. To summarise, my frustration = "BT CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS" - except for the 2 kind ladies who work on the phones at BT who were my saviour when I was at the point of releasing a flowery splurge of message to the next person who would be at the receiving end of my phone call.

In the mean time, here are some of my favourite photos (from travels and miscellaneous things) to fill the emptiness....

London, thus far...

Dear Diary,

It's been over a month since we arrived in London and how quick time has flown! We haven't done as much as we'd thought we would've but it just seems like after the first week, days just seem to go by and sometimes we feel a little uninspired and lack luster?

Days are shorter here too. The sun sets early here. Before you know it, the room becomes dark and the lights all come on and you start thinking it's night 7pm at night when it's only 4pm in the afternoon.

We're staying with friends at the moment, in Central London. Free loading is great, except you feel bad so you start cooking (actually that was a requirement for free loading here) and cleaning and doing the laundry for them. Before you know it, you're someone's full-on maid! Hey isn't that great, your best friend is also your maid. Ah.. I digress.. life's too short to complain about that.

Did you know the Brits love their sandwiches? There is a sandwich bar/pattiserie-cum-sandwich bar at almost every corner offering sandwiches (duhh..), pannini and baguette rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner. According to one of our friends, most Brits grab a sandwich for lunch and a packet of crisps (English for Chips!). No wonder subway does so well here and get this, you know those subway meals that we used to get with a cookie and a drink? The meal deals offered here are with cookie or crisps. Wow! It must be true!

So what have we done in the last 4 weeks? Umm... not much London wide - strolled across the London Millenium Bridge and Hyde Park, did some window shopping from Oxford Street down to Piccadilly Circus, stopped by Leicester Square and had dinner in Covent Garden. We also took a trip down to 2 of the most famous London Markets - Borough and Portobello in our first 2 weeks and since then we've also made our first 2 trips to Europe! Yay... We spent the weekend (just past) in Bremen, Germany and the weekend prior in Luxembourg.

Will write about Bremen and Luxembourg at a later time, for now here's a peek of some of our London photos.

Portobello Markets:

1. Hummingbird Bakery

2. Cakes, Olives and Bread

3. Others

Borough Market

Ok. Gotta go. I'm so buggered. Am sick again (2nd time now) and have been baking christmas cookies all day. Til next time..

xx iL

New York City, USA

It is said that Americans love New York so much that they name the city and state twice - New York, New York or so says one of the many travel shows I remember watching during the 20+ hour the flight from Melbourne to New York.

I can’t quite remember the name of the show, but a little bit of googling later I found out that the famous New York, New York phrase was actually coined from a song by singer, song writer, composer Gerard Kenny who was born and raised in New York. So good, they named it twice. And they’re right about that. I love New York!

We only spent 4.5 days in New York, but in the short time that we were there, we managed to cover a fair bit of New York. Amongst the places that we visited were: Central Park, 5th Avenue and walked from Brooklyn Bridge all the way to (the wrong side of) the former World Trade Centre site to pay our respects. We also made a side trip to do some shopping at Woodbury Common Premium Shopping, walked the streets of SoHo, Times Square and did some last minute shopping at Macy’s.

Central Park
Top, Left to Right: Strawberry Fields, View from Lake, Autumn in Central Park,
Bethesda Fountain and Terrace and Tricycle rides throughout Central Park.

Top, Left to Right: 5th Avenue, Atlas Statue at the Rockefeller Centre,
The Apple Store and New York City Times Square

If you ever visit New York, you must make a trip to the Empire State Building. The New York city view from the top of the Empire State Building is amazing. A friend suggested that we go in the day and at night, unfortunately, due to time constrains we only manage a visit in the night time. We still managed to get some really great shots but I so wish I had my tripod with me that day..

Top, Left to Right: New York City Skyline from
Empire State Building, GE Building at the Rockefeller Centre and M&M's World

When we told our friends that we would be stopping by New York on the way to London, we received loads of suggestions from friends who had been there about places to eat, places to visit etc. Seeing that it was our first trip to New York, we decided against packing our schedule with touristy things that everyone suggested and instead took an easy approach and just went with the flow.

I did manage to tick off a few things off my “To Eat” list:

• Blueberry Bagels (From H&H Bagels)
• Hot Dog from the street vendor
• Pretzel from Auntie Anne’s

I know I know… it’s a pretty lame “To Eat” list, but I love bagels and fresh blueberry bagels with pinkish hue on the bread, not purply grey hue due to the use of frozen blueberries and I can't go past a street side hot dog that seems to make an appearance in every cop series on tv that is based in New York. ;)

I even managed to convince Alv that we should have Bagels for breakfast twice during our stay in New York, so I got my Blueberry Bagels TWICE! :D

We mostly ate on the go during our trip but we did make sure we ate a proper dinner. W took us to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant called Celeste on Amsterdam where Alv ‘reckons’ we saw Milena Govich from Law & Order a few tables from us.

The menu suggests traditional Italian fare where the pasta sauces are primarily tomato based sauces with a rare creamy sauce on the daily special. If I remembered correctly, Alv had their mussels and tagliatelle special with a creamy tomato based sauce, W had their ribbon pasta with a ricotta and tomato sauce and I had the Penne with a classic tomato sauce and little chunks of torn fresh mozzarella. (I got suckered in by the mozzarella). One thing I did notice was that if you asked for parmesan cheese, they would bring out the knob of cheese and freshly grate it on the spot! How awesome is that! Not the stinky parmesan powder that you get at some of the restaurants in Melbourne. Eech!

Anyway, it’s an excellent little spot that is always packed with customers queuing for a table even at 9:30pm – which I’ve been told is quite standard for dinner time in New York. Service wise, it was a little rushed, almost as if they are trying to turnover as many table as they could in the hour and we did have to wait for a while for table service but other than that it was a nice meal.

That unfortunately, was pretty much the highlight of our meals in New York. On the other nights, when we were exhausted from a big day of walking, we dragged ourselves home and ordered take-out (delivered) Thai from Land Thai Kitchen and a huge medium sized pizza delivered from Caesar’s Palace pizza.

For our last dinner in New York, on W’s recommendation, we took a quick stroll in the rain to the nearby Vietnamese joint, Saigon Grill. The eatery proved quite popular with the locals too as the restaurant was packed! Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long to be seated. Saigon Grill has an extensive menu ranging from your favourite little spring roll and pork kebab appetisers to your favourite fried rice and main dishes. I can’t quite remember what we ordered, according to Alv, he thinks we shared an appetiser for one between the two of us and ordered a stir fried prawns and lemon grass pork chop for mains.

And what would travel eating be if we did not indulge in some junk food eating at McDonald's and Subway. Yep, my junk food junkie boy even wanted his dose of KFC but unfortunately, we ran out of time.

To complete our eating experience in America we lunched on our last day at a little diner called the Three Star Coffee Shop. It’s a small little diner on Columbus between 86th and 87th Street in the Upper West. It’s what a diner should be, with small booths and classic diner décor – the blue (or was it red?) seats and brown/parquet walls. The menu is atypical of diner meals - burgers, salads, triple deckers, sandwiches, bagels, spaghetti, parmigiana, steaks and breakfast served all day.

For Alv’s benefit - because he loves "You've Got Mail" and "Serendipity", we were intending to try out Café Lalo and Serendipity 3 too! But unfortunately, due to renovations at Café Lalo and the lack of time, we had to give the 2 café’s a miss.

To summarise, New York, my favourite spot would have to be Central Park. I really enjoyed the walk we had through the park. It was serene amidst the chaos of New York City and I just love seeing autumn leaving its touch throughout the park.

I also really enjoyed our walk from Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan. It was just unfortunate that the day we chose to visit the Brooklyn Bridge was a rainy and over cast day, hence our terrible photos. Before getting there, I had this image of Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, with the orange blue sky in the background but alas, all I have to show is grossly grey skies which I turned into black and whites to suppress the gloominess of the entire experience. : (

Top, Left to Right: Manhattan Bridge, Staten Island Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge.

All in all, New York’s fantastic, we’ll definitely be back again next time for a better view of the Brooklyn Bridge if not just for the shopping!! :)

Top, Left to Right: Remnants of Halloween and M&M's! all 10,000 different colours of them!

Ed: OH! and I think we saw Seal at B&H. Could be wrong. But if it was him, we were only about 1m away!