Losing our sushi making virginity

The other morning I woke up having dreamt about smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels. This resulted in a walk to the local store and a tasty breakfast for Oren and myself. Yesterday however, I woke up having dreamt about sushi and faced a problem that wasn't as easy as walking to the shop.

You see, sushi is terrible in the UK. You cannot find the large sushi rolls, futomaki, anywhere which of course is what you see most in New Zealand. However, the Japanese chain by our work, Wasabi - does do a delicious tofu curry which I usually delight in once a week.

So yesterday I went out and spent about £10 on getting the neccessary ingredients, recruited Oren to get the salmon and used some leftover honey soy marinated chicken for the below results.

Taste wise - it was pretty close, the rice was a bit sticky but it seems that would be quite the art to perfect. The pot is going to need a lot of scrubbing. I can't wait to go to Japan and try all the new and interesting foods when we get there.

We had a lovely Christmas dinner, both our first Christmas together as well as the first one both of us had spent away from our families in the middle of winter. But that is another post for another day.

Snowy SW6

I thought the snow on Friday was pretty amazing when it arrived without warning and in five minutes had coated everything. However on Saturday morning, we woke up to this view from our bedroom window:

Of course we had to head straight outside, I have seriously never seen so much urban snow and snow so quickly.

You may remember our entry on the cemetery by our flat which we thought would be pretty amazing to visit and not too far that we would risk freezing or breaking our necks.

Oren wandered off and made a probably slightly inappropriate snow angel.

It was really interesting see the graves, angels and tombstones covered in snow. It's a fairly eerie cemetery anyway but the snow made it even more interesting.



I got to admire both the tree skills of a squirrell and Oren.
Then it was back home to the central heating.

Getting closer to the possibility of a white Christmas

Visiting the Leprechauns

On fairly short notice, Oren had two days off in a row in early October. Me being me, I jumped straight on Ryanair with a "WHERE CAN WE GO?!" attitude. My sister and I had booked flights like this before in 2007 and had ended up in Milan, Italy. However, Oren and I found ourselves in Dublin, Ireland for a Sunday - Monday jaunt.

We did the typical Irish thing which was to go to the Guinness Factory to experience a part of history and obviously drink a bit of beer. Out of sheer luck, the prepaid ticket machines printed out two tickets each so we got two beers - one which we got to pour ourselves. Obviously it's a life skill to know how to properly pour a Guinness and we even got a certificate for it.

I regret not getting a horse and carriage ride back to our hotel. I always see them everywhere and want to go on one. That night we went on a nearly 2 hour ghost walk around Dublin. We thought for awhile that we would awkwardly be the only two on it but an American couple also joined us. It an off the beaten track sort of ghost walk and we went to parts of Dublin that were scary if only for the fact that there were drunken Irish in tracksuits stumbling around. I'd highly reccommend it. While London is Buckingham stronghold, Oren found Dublin to be on his side.

The next day, we wandered our way around the sights of Dublin. We managed to find both our namesakes in the Dublin castle chapel:


We went to Christchurch Cathedral to see how it compared to home - I've never been inside the one in the Square, and we weren't going to pay ridiculous euros to go inside this one either. Oren managed to steal a sneaky photo of the inside while I gaped at the price.

Due to too much Masterchef we decided to find a nice restaurant for one of the days in Dublin. Thanks to my awesome googling skills, I had come across a Michelin star restaurant in Dublin called Pig's Ear which was near Trinity College. The assumption is that Michelin = overpriced but we got a 3 course lunch for €19.95. As a starter I had Butter Potted Crab with Spiced Mayonnaise & Melba Crisps and Oren tried Fried Hen's Egg with Clonakilty Black Pudding on Toast with Lentil & Mustard Dressing. Both were very delcious. We decided to be prentious only after this course and take photos:

My main: Lemon & Thyme Roast Breast of Chicken with Roast Potato, Crushed Spiced Swede, Toasted Hazelnuts

Oren's main: Silverhill Duck Leg with Butter Beans, Smoked Bacon & Cabbage, Orange & Sweet Garlic

Oren's dessert: A berry fruit crumble thing - complete with pop rocks! Mine was a bitter chocolate tart.

Overall the lunch was amazing and a steal for the price, there was no service charge either!

On the ghost walk our guide had taken us to St Michan's church and we decided to round off the afternoon there. Basically it is a very old church with a Viking foundation and has vaults constructed of limestone which has preserved the bodies that are entombed there. There are three mummies you get to view know as the Nun, The Thief and The Crusader and they are rather creepy. Some kids on the tour with us dropped a chocolate bar wrapper into one of the coffins. The Sheares Brothers are also there.

Then unfortunately it was back to Dublin Airport, Gatwick, a train to Victoria station and a bus back to our flat. I'd love to return to Ireland and hire a car and drive around when we have the time.

Our only planned trip now is Japan in April for 9 days. We both really can't wait and we got a good direct flight deal with British Airways from Heathrow - only a 35 minute tube ride from our flat. Seems such a novelty. It's also a relief to know we will have some proper sushi soon enough as sushi in England is terrible.

Hoping with Christmas approaching and snow forecast, we'll have some festive photos of Christmas lights, trees and some of the markets around London.

When the Road Runs Out

September 10-12 saw us attend our first UK music festival, End of the Road at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset. EOTR is about as far removed, though, from the big summer festivals like Glastonbury and Reading as could be imagined, which was basically what we wanted as we sought the closest experience to our festival of choice in New Zealand, Camp(us) A Low Hum. I must say, this compared very, very favourably to CALH.


The first thing on the agenda was of course to set up our tent. We had bought it a few weeks previously but had not had a chance to have a test run at pitching it yet, and it wasn't until we had almost finished that we really how tiny the thing was. We managed to fit in it though. Just.

Please ignore the flag behind my head.

Some people were clever and hired these darling wagons for their accommodation; possibly something to look into if we go again next year.

"Purveyors of Fairydust"

Here is the central field of the grounds that held most of the food stalls, shops, pubs, activity tents and three of the smaller stages. Hopefully this gives you an idea of the laid-back vibe of the festival.


We enjoyed many fine local ales from the three on-site pubs: The Badger Inn, The Peacock Bar, and The Black Crow. My favourite drop was the Hedge Monkey - a malty, hoppy deep amber ale brewed in Somerton, Dorset.


For non-alcoholic beverages the Tea Stop, operating out of an old double-decker bus with a garden out the front, proved to be an excellent option. Here I am enjoying a milkshake and the view from the upper deck.



This is the main stage from afar. It was a lovely setting with lots of greenery and that cute archway off to the side. This picture was about away as far as you could get from the stage, and it was very easy to get up close for a great view of the performers.


Wandering amongst the mazey paths of Larmer led to many unexpected delights, including the macaws and peacocks that inhabited the site. Unicorns and zebras hid in the trees...


...while this delightful scene popped up in a clearing. It later hosted a lovely ensemble who played Joanna Newsom covers.


We probably spent too much time in the games area playing giant Connect 4. Here is an epic draw that we played out.


Oh yeah, a whole bunch of great bands played as well. As it happens we barely took a single photo of any of them, which probably says something about (a) how engaging the performances were, and (b) how much other fun stuff was going on around the place. If I were to pick two highlights from each day it would be Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade for day one, Iron & Wine and Caribou for day two, Errors and Wilco for day three.

There is a pretty high chance that we will go back next year, and early-bird tickets are already on sale... very tempting! For now we have our sweet t-shirts to remind us of the great time we had. His and hers, respectively:

¡hola España

I'll let Oren write about the End of the Road festival and I'll discuss Spain.

For the first time since arriving in the UK, Oren and I left these fair shores for a European adventure. I was easily seduced by the idea of Spain at the Spanish festival in Oxford Street. Oren had introduced me to paella at some stage, so Valencia made sense.
I can happily report that there were no transportation hiccups this time around. Begrudgingly we were up to catch a bus a little after 3am to the middle of nowhere aka Stansted Airport. Any claim that is even remotely near London is a lie. You always think the flights are cheap but then you have to factor both the time and cost to travel to god knows where.

However the good thing about early morning flights was that we arrived in Spain just after 11am and caught the metro into the city. Valencia airport is probably one of the few airports that Ryanair flies into that is actually near the place it claims to be so it was only a 20 minute Metro ride into the city. I instantly loved Valencia. It reminded me of a sunnier, friendlier Paris without any worry that you will be hassled by people trying to sell you Eiffel towers or tie "friendship" bracelets around your wrists.

We ended up wandering around the marble streets in the rising heat just having a look with no real idea of where we were going. We found this Cathedral:


I had found out that Valencia had a large aquarium that housed Belugas and desperately wanted to go so, full of paella from a local cafe, we walked down to the City of Science and Arts which is basically an architectural wet dream. Myself, I found it slightly tacky. However the walk through the gardens in a now dry riverbed was lovely.


By this time it was unbelievably hot. Having come from a rainy wet London to a very dry sunny Valencia at nearly 30 degrees, we were both melting. I though the aquarium was indoors but a lot of it was outside as you walked between the mostly underground enclosures.



The belugas were amazing but also a bit sad. One spent several hours floating at a gate wishing to get through and the other was doing a constant repetitive pacing through its tank. At one point the one at the gate started making the most screeching whale sound that echoed through the underground viewing area. It's sad that these majestic creatures have to be in aquariums so people can understand why we need to conserve our environments.

Our hotel was only about 10 minutes walk across a large bridge after the aquarium where we could delight in the air conditioning. I'm becoming a pro at booking hotels and we had a lovely place I had scored a 45% off. It was very fancy.
Our hotel was also in a good location, between the beach and the city and right beside two shopping centres. We ended up getting some bread, chorizo, duck pate, juice, beer and crisps and settling in for most of the night before wandering the other shopping centre and watching a man fail at selling corn outside our hotel window.

We woke up late due to a well deserved sleep in and were welcomed for a cooler day. It was mid 20s for most of the day. We decided to walk down to the beach via the America's Cup village. I guess the unfortunate thing is that because it's been in court so long, the village is dead but we took photos of the NZ building.
We walked right around to the beach and found ourselves a nice spot to rest. I decided to have a swim which was very refreshing in the heat. I liked that no one on the beach had any qualms about their bodies, no one was perfect, it was hot, they worn what they wanted. It didn't feel like a fashion or beauty competition like I had expected.
We both had been working hard so were happy to have a quiet day. We eventually made back to the shopping centre by our hotel and went to a Spanish place that sells montaditos which are a sort of tapas. It took us our first order to realise they were just baby rolls and were served with crisps! I really liked it, it was a lot of fun and with every order we got giant glasses of Spanish beer for only a euro! This of course lead to us napping in our hotel room later before going to another tapas restaurant for dinner that served lots and lots of meat. Oren did very well in proving that money spent on Spanish language papers at Canterbury Uni wasn't entirely wasted. I was very proud of him as I spoke no Spanish at all!



Unfortunately the next day we had a 11am flight back to Stansted. We took the metro and said goodbye to the heat and the sun to return to rainy London.


Next weekend we head to Dublin for which will probably be the last trip for a couple months as Oren can't have leave over the Christmas period from work.