Based in Sg

Bohol and Punglao island, last trip

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 15:42:00 +0000

I seem to be running vaguely late on this post...

It was back in July last year, last trip before leaving Singapore

Here we go, I'm done with travelling SE Asia (for this time) and this is the last post on this blog where I have been more or less regular for the past 4 and 1/2 years.

The last trip was to Bohol in the Philippines. On the advise of a few friends, we are avoiding the ferry from Cebu and taking a connection flight to Tagbilaran which means that I have booked 4 single flights with 4 different airlines (including tiger airways!!!) and I can now say that the connections were all super smooth!

Before moving on with telling you all about our WE, I need to mention the transfer between terminal 1 and 4 in Ninoy international airport. We were lucky enough to see a shuttle bus rapidly arriving but as it took about 30 attempts to open the bus door, it was longer to board. The driver decided not to close the door again and our case which he had left on its wheels was luckily caught by a fellow passenger before it escaped on the tarmac. Ah yes, I should have said that by that point, we were actually on the runways, after passing a gate, in the middle of the planes. And I thought international airports were secured areas......

Then he stopped us on the back of a maintenance workshop and told us that was terminal 4????????

We were actually at the back of baggage delivery, someone nicely opened a door for us to let us go back to the front if the building where we could access departure. Once at departure we were laughing at the sound of "cocorico" thinking this airport was really country style having chicken at the back door, that's when we realised the chickens were actually being tagged as checked-in luggage and did not seem to appreciate to be in carton boxes and were protesting loudly!

Anyway, moving on to the WE itself.

After a night in the air, we arrived on Bohol island by 9am on Friday morning, a short taxi ride and we stopped at our hotel on Alona beach, Punglao island. It's a lovely little beach with a few resorts, bars and restaurants offering the option "toes in sand" and massage places.

After a dip in the pool and a siesta we enjoyed all activities on offer (at least bar and massage). Baby A was very popular (despite being very grumpy due to lack of sleep) and went from arms to arms, philipino ladies just LOVE kids!

Saturday was island hoping day, we booked ourselves a little boat to go snorkelling, enjoyed squid adobo with the locals and visited a desert island.

The water was very clear and the sand very white and... I got sun burnt..

On Sunday, we abandoned the sea for a country side tour. First stop were the famous chocolate hills which are actually more chlorophyll hills than chocolate as they are all greens!

A climb of 214 steps took us to the top of one, as it was raining a bit, the view was a bit cloudy but that only gave a bit more of a mystical feel to the scenery.

Second stop was the man made Forrest, we then by passed the butterfly farm to arrive directly at the tarsiers conservation centre. As it was the middle of the day, it was nap time for them but they were still very cute! Looking a bit frighten by tourist coming close to them to take photos with iPads...

We had lunch on a cruise on a beautiful river, it looked super touristy but was actually rather enjoyable!

On the way back to the airport, we stopped at a very old church partially destroyed by the latest earthquake and we avoided the biggest python in the world/Asia/ the Philippines (can't remember), apparently he can eat a pig, he would have taken baby A as a peanut!!! (and I hate snakes...)

Anyway, time again for the airport and our 2 flights back home! Lovely last WE in Asia, hope to be back soon!

KL, 2nd round

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 01:24:00 +0000

Our first trip to KL was one of our first trip when we arrived in Sg, this time it's one of our last trip! And it looks like we have made progress! Last time we had not managed to find anywhere decent to go out, this time we partied until the morning!

Anyway, the official reason for going was the famous Redbull airrace which we had previously seen in London and Perth, Australia.

On Saturday morning, we made our way to Changi airport, testing for the first time as parents our capacity to travel without check-in luggage with baby A.(test passed successfully!)

Reaching KL under a grey sky, we spent the afternoon at the big Buddha, a KL highlight we had missed last time, let's say that the highlight of the trip was probably the Magnum ice-cream...

No, the view from the top of the stairs with the Petronas towers in the background was actually quite good.

Anyway, the evening was better, we roughly knew where to go out but it still took us 1h walking around to find "the" street with all bars and restaurants. The locals just don't know it or they pretend really well! (may be in a Muslim country it's better)

It was good fun, on top of lots of bars and restaurants, the street presents a very high concentration of Ferrari and Lamborghini!

Sunday afternoon was race time in Putrajaya (officially the federal administrative centre of Malaysia, it's a man made city with big buildings, big roads and no human)

No one had a clue that there was an air race anywhere, there was not a single sign until we were inside the air race zone, there was nothing to drink except coke which I mistaken for ice tea... And food choice was between pink sausage or deep fried chicken...

Hmmm

Moving on from Malaysian organisation, the race was ok but nothing like the fun we had previously experienced in London or Perth, a bit of a disappointment...

Not to pile onto the organisation, I won't mention how to get out of this place!

Anyway, looking forward to the next Redbull airrace (out of Malaysia! :-)

Japanese food, Honeymoon 4

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:16:00 +0000

There is more than sushi to japanese cuisine! There are waxy display, yakitori, umeshu, sake and so many more!

Kyoto and Nara, Honeymoon 3

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 11:16:00 +0000

Temples, temples and japanese weirdness!

1. Kyoto

2. Nara

3. Japanese weirdness

They go mad for cherry blossom!

Flushing a toilet requires a degree AND fluent Japanese!

Otaru and Sapporo, Hokkaido Island, Honeymoon 2

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 15:20:00 +0000

On the way back from Niseko, going to Sapporo, we made a stop in freezing Otaru

View from the train between Otaru and Sapporo

Sapporo and it's beer factory

Vientiane, temples and tuk-tuk paradise

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:02:00 +0000

Photo catch up announcement

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:54:00 +0000

As I'm about to leave Singapore for sunny London, I catch up with a few late posts as photo posts, it has been too long for me to remember any good stories!

Here to come:
- Vientiane, Laos
- Hokkaido island, Sapporo and Otaru, honeymoon 2
- Kyoto, Honeymoon 3
- Japanese food, honeymoon 4

East Timor, the trip which wasn't on the list

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Mon, 26 May 2014 17:50:00 +0000

Dili, east Timor is not known as a SE Asia highlight, but thanks to AF and M who recently moved there, we got the opportunity of discovering Timor Leste for a long weekend.

The length of the visit wasn't really up to us as there are only 3 flights a week between Singapore and Dili, anyway it was May 1st, so extra long weekend.

We flew with Air Timor but they do not have planes... So it is chartered by Silkair. 3h30 flight and we land in Dili which has a beautiful mountainous background. The airport vaguely reminds me of Luanda but smaller. A few helicopters are ready to take off to go offshore, visa process looks confusing and signs are written in Portuguese (and the local language, Tetum - I think that's how to spell it...)

The conveyor belt is so short and running so fast that it ejects the bags off in a very efficient manner. Anyway 30$ lighter (per person, including baby A, despite R's attempt at negotiation...), we have our bags and are out, delighted to realise that AF and M came to pick us up as we had no idea where they lived...

We pass the only mall in town where people came to ride the lift when it first opened as it was the first lift in Timor! Now it's more for the AC that they come to visit. Temperature is similar to Singapore, it's the end of the rainy season, but we had a beautiful sun for 5 days.

First stop is the market where we try to buy fruits and veg for the WE, negotiation is mandatory as prices are largely inflated at the sight of our caucasian faces. I meet an old lady who I assume doesn't own a mirror as she has flashy red lipstick but only on her bottom lip and teeth, I later will learn that it is not a mirror issue but a local habit of chewing a root which makes saliva bright red.

After buying watermelons and tomatoes, we take a walk up to the Christ where we get a lovely view of the area, baby A gets lots of whoooo and ahhhh as baby carrier don't seem to be common.

Evening is spent in the proper expat fashion, restaurant and bar! :-) (lovely Portuguese dinner)

The day after, it's an early departure to the dive shop to organise dives and transfer to Atauro island where we are spending the WE. The ride to the island is bumpy to say the least, we are all completely soaked apart from the baby who slept all the way through!

The 2 dives were wall dives, first one being a very quick drift dive as well! Amazingly there is only 25km between the island of Timor and the small island of Atauro, but the ocean goes down to more than 3000m depth! It's apparently a well known corridor for whales to move across oceans.

Unfortunately no whale, but we saw dolphins, splendid corals and the usual tropical fish (I know, sounds a bit blasé...;-)

Moving onto the island, we discover our lovely little house on the beach which has electricity! But apparently not enough to support a fridge as we discovered once in pitch dark the first night...

We have an early night after a dinner of pizza and gnocchi at the famous island Italian restaurant. (We had to book and they opened only for us!)

Day 2, we decide on an hour walk on the beach towards the main village at around 11am, great idea in the burning sun!

Good swim in very clear water while observing Japanese and Timorese people do some team building activities on the beach, that was really random...

After failing to find a fish to BBQ, second evening is made of take away pizza and salad. I think it's the first time in Asia where we struggle to find food! Fishermen did not seem interested in getting us fish!

Sunday morning, as soon as we see people coming out of the water, we jump on them to buy some fish, they didn't got much, most fish were really small but after a bit of tetum/Bahasa communication they agree to sell the fish, to prepare them and even to cook them!

Absolutely delicious! But lost cause to try to find a big fish for the evening, it was nearly church time! so guess what? Back to the Italian restaurant!

We did make it to church before that just to have a look, very lively mess, the full island must have turned up, it was packed!

Our snorkeling activity in the afternoon did highlight the lack of big fish in the area so I guess not a strong motivation for fishermen to go for small prays.

Monday morning, we make our way back to Dili with much better sea conditions. As we ban pasta and pizza from our plates, we do finally get some fish and a magnum!!!

(we had spent the WE talking about desert we couldn't get!)

Another walk on the beach and a few badminton games later and it is time to head back to Singapore. It was so nice to discover a country which sees very few tourists, don't wait too long to visit, it's changing fast!

Luckiest girl in the world (Update)

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 05:06:00 +0000

As we had forgotten the cable to charge the go pro, we didn't have photos of our full day diving, but someone was kind enough to send a few shots!

So you can discover the whale shark, estimated length 6m and me! (Please do not confuse the photos...;-)

Luckiest girl in the world

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:09:00 +0000

On the list of mandatory places to go while living in Asia was the Maldives. After more than 4 years in Singapore, we thought it was time and it just happened to be over my birthday!

There is not that much to say, the photos are worth a thousand words as they say but just for good measure:

- Seaplanes are so cool!! The view was amazing!

- There is not that much to do but surprisingly we did not get bored a single second: diving with whaleshark and mantas, canoeing, sun bathing on the beach, by the pool, by the other pool, eating and drinking seem to feel up a day very quickly!

- It's as beautiful as on the brochure photos!

Bali for Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 08:31:00 +0000

Again, I'm late...

Last year (...), we decided to celebrate Christmas in Bali. With all our visitors, it was the easiest place to rent a house and have all sorts of activities. Unfortunately it was also the rainy season...

We had a lovely house in Seminiak where we could reach restaurants, bars and the beach by foot (and by stroller as baby A goes everywhere with us!).

First part of the week was rather poor, weather wise, it rained a lot! Anyway, Parents managed to go to the usual highlights of Bali: Ubud, Tanah lot temple etc

Like a miracle, on Christmas Day when the full family was there (all 8 of us!), the sun turned up and after a lovely baby gulling we spent the afternoon surfing and jumping in the waves!

Here are a few shots of the week visits, including the monkey- earring theft, some beautiful temples and the coffee and tea tasting menu of the plantations with their local bat... (No particular reason for the bat. As far as I know!)

Sunday afternoon on a boat

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 07:39:00 +0000

S had the great idea of renting a boat for a Sunday afternoon tour of Singapore waters.

We left from Sentosa cove, a place where I had never been and where life seems to be sooooo hard... We boarded our lovely boat for an afternoon of sun, food and rose!

This seems to be a popular way of spending Sunday afternoon as we met plenty of other people enjoying the sunshine around St John's island but it is still Singapore, so impossible to avoid the tankers view at some point...

An experience to repeat!

Rawa, may be for the last time...

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 07:16:00 +0000

I have done a Rawa post before but another one can not hurt, so here are a few shots from the last WE on this paradise Island on the east coast of Malaysia. Baby A first trip to Malaysia!

Nothing else to add...

Photos are courtesy of O&S

Boloven plateau

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 04:07:00 +0000

Hmmm, we were in Lao roughly 10-11 months ago... Back in 2013...

So this is me trying to make a big memory effort!

On the way back from Champasak, we returned to Pakse to take a bus (again) to the Boloven plateau. As there is no main town on the plateau, we had picked one which looked big enough for a hotel and which was a bit central so we could tour the area on a motorbike.

The bus dropped us on the main road and we had obviously decided to go to the furthest hotel on top of a hill...

It was a bit like a ghost house, no one at the reception, dust everywhere long dark corridor but apparently the best hotel around ;-))))

Touring the area on our motorbike, we discovered gorgeous waterfalls (if you remember from previous Lao posts, waterfalls are the selling point of Lao), tea and coffee plantations where we indulged in numerous coffee breaks!

Coming back to town (hmm village), we thought we should stop for a drink at the first place where they were people. There was a nice outdoors setting, they only seemed to sell coffee but we asked for a beer (we had a caffeine running in our veins after that many coffee breaks!). As it is always around SE Asia, nothing is a problem, if we want beer and they don't have it, they send a kid to the shop to buy beer!

After one or two beers, we started feeling a bit like intruders, they were setting plenty of tables outside with soup, drinks and the excitation was building up. We thought that we better leave as there must be a wedding arriving or a big celebration. That's when we asked for the bill and were told it was free!

We could certainly not leave without paying, especially knowing that they had to go to the shop to get the beer! By that time people had started arriving for dinner. We had tried asking what was going on but English doesn't go very far in Lao... We noticed a table of tourists who were eating so we thought we would try our luck with them. They were staying at a guesthouse in town and were told to come here for dinner as this family was inviting the entire village and anyway anything else would be closed. It was half way between a family reunion, a religious event and a village party!

So we joined in! It was delicious, food had been cooked in massive pans, similar to the ones they use in the Indian temples in Singapore for celebration. They kept on serving us beer all night (by that I mean up to 8.30pm) and at the end, we made a donation at the temple set up in the living room to cover for dinner cost, drinks and a bit more!

It was such a great night, I would have liked to understand a bit more about the why and how, how often they do that, who organizes but anyway, it was nice to be part of the community.

The day after, we were back in a bus on our way to Pakse airport, flying to Vientiane (the flight which since the crash this summer doesn't have such a good reputation...)

Affordable art fair in Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 10:32:00 +0000

I had seen signs around town before but I had never been to the affordable art fair. Affordable and art do not seem to be in the same sentence very often...

The exhibit was in the F1 building, just above the grid.

While buying our entry ticket, I noticed that pretty much everyone was leaving with a painting! Seems like a good start.

The key points of the affordable art fair are:

- Paintings can not be above $10,000, there are even specific corners in the exhibition with art below $1,000.

- Galleries and artists are coming from all over the world, of course Asia but also Europe and the States.

- I have been talking about paintings but there are also photos, sculptures and other artistic items (not sure how to describe a piece of bubble sheet where someone spent the time to insert tiny pieces of paper in each bubble that finally reads "no time"... Love the irony!)

Despite seeing some awesome, horrible, amusing, original, beautiful, funny and ridiculous pieces, we did go home empty handed!

(we are actually running out of space on walls so not actively looking for more...)

Here are a few pieces which caught my eye.

Note the 4 Damien Hirst's and the little scribble with a pencil on the price tag;-)

Chinese New Year: the year of the wooden horse

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 04:41:00 +0000

It's been a while...

Since the last post, A was born, so my time on the web has reduced significantly...

Anyway, she is asleep so I'll give you a quick update on the preparation for Chinese New Year. We are leaving the year of the water snake behind to enter the year of the wooden horse. From what I have read, it is much better!

During the recent family visit, we went for a little walk in Chinatown and here are some of the decoration.

Langkawi (during Ramadan)

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 06:45:00 +0000

For some reason we had not made it to Langkawi yet so when N and P mentioned an already organized trip, we lazily jumped on the occasion of a WE in Langkawi in good company!

It was the beginning of the rainy season but that did not affect us much as the weather was beautiful all WE, what we should have been more careful with was the fact that it was Ramadan and Ramadan in Malaysia is a serious business! That means that everything is closed during the day, so no breakfast after sunrise (and sunrise is early!), lots of equipment are on maintenance, some places were just closed and finding lunch was a mission! (Which we failed to complete, twice! It would have been Kids heaven (if we had any kids), lunch made of crisps and magnum ice cream...)

to summarize, I would say, not the best time to visit the place...

Anyway, after the first couple of days in a lovely resort where we didn't do much more than playing beach volley, drinking cocktails in the pool and moving from one bar to another depending where was happy hours, we moved back to langkawi island.

We had a hard day on the beach, annoying a crab and having fun on jet skis,

Followed by touring of the island on our muppets. Everything we wanted to do was pretty much closed but we did manage to see a few waterfalls, beautiful hotels for the rich and famous and deserted beaches.

And finally, we went island hoping to discover inhabited islands, fishermen and eagles.

Not too bad, but if you do plan to go to langkawi, do avoid Ramadan! It will make the trip a bi more interesting!

The little black jacket

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 02:42:00 +0000

First week of maternity leave and still no baby, so I'm making the most of the free time by going to exhibitions around town. Today was "the little black jacket", a free :-) show at the art science museum at Marina Bay Sands.

I had never been to this museum, it's in the Marina Bay Sands complex, actually in the lotus flower or the baseball glove depending how you look at it...

Here's for the building, now the exhibit! It's a serie of photos by Karl Lagerfield (himself!). Models are famous people wearing the iconic Chanel jacket.

It doesn't take long to see the photos (there are only 3 rooms) but it's interesting to see these very different people with very different style, both men, women and children, all wearing the same jacket.

I even got a free poster of an apparently very famous Korean actress!

Gillman Barracks

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 06:01:00 +0000

We have now been stuck in Singapore for a few WE, waiting for miss G to arrive so we are trying to occupy our time...

This Sunday afternoon was an artistic one, we made a trip to Gillman barracks, an old British military camp now occupied by art galleries. It was deserted! (Not just by the army, by viewers as well!) It's a bit in the middle of nowhere, close to some office towers, may be it gets busier during the week on evenings, who knows?

The buildings have some style and it's set in a nice green environment (excellent for mosquitoes proliferation as we were to discover later on at the bar!) and we found some interesting exhibitions.

First Edward Clydesdale Thomson and his distracted gardener

Then the weird Pilipino artist Riel Hilario who went to the big apple and got depressed as no one was into carving...

And Anthropos, a mix of 11 SE Asian artists.

We were allowed to walk bare feet on the little skulls!

The question remains about what they are trying to achieve; gallery owners did not seem to try selling anything, to advertise an artist would require a wider audience, I'm not sure really...

We were supposed to continue the visits and see a few more galleries but it took us too long to finish our glasses ;-)

Never mind, another day may be!

F1 2013, happy birthday to me!

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 09:45:00 +0000

A few months ago, R offered me some F1 tickets for my birthday. They took their time to arrive, but a couple of days before the Grand Prix, here they were!

I was not disappointed as I was treated to a different stand everyday!

Friday for practice, we started with a beautiful view of the Marina, Marina Bay Sands was even showing some F1 on its wall and a checked flag under the "boat" at the top. I discovered that despite being a night Grand Prix, there is a lot happening before dark: Porsches race, GP2; plenty of time to get roasted in the stand! (It is actually rather rare to stay outside in the sun in Sg, and that was a reminder why...)

I also discovered my noise limit, Porsches I can do without earplugs, GP2 can not lah! (as Singaporeans would say)

We gave a miss to the big concert that night (some Koreans bands) but caught a little bit of a British artist at dinner time at Esplanade.

Saturday for qualifying, we were in the posh zone: zone 1 where we got a free ride of the Singapore flyer (the big wheel) just ahead of GP2 race!

Then, it was time for Porsches qualifications, a bit more practice and finally F1 qualifications.

The seats were fantastic! Just outside of the pit lane looking over turn 1,2 and 3. I believe it's where the best photos are from.

At dinner, we saw Bob Geldof performing and post race, we went back to the Padang for a really cool concert of the Killers.

Sunday was race day for all categories, Porsches, GP2 and F1, this time we are on the Padang stand (ready for Rihanna's concert!)

We got to see the tour of the pilots on vintage cars, the safety car a few times, the thing is, we were so close to the track that it wasn't really good for the photos...

But we were indeed at the best location to watch Rihanna (not) singing and moving her bump (a lot)!

All together, a fantastic birthday present!

Where are you from?

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 07:40:00 +0000

It has been a while since I have written a "special note", one of my little philosophical discussion with myself... But a question I was recently asked 3 times in the laps of 3 days prompted it.

It is rather frequent when abroad that I am asked where I am from and I never really know what to say! If I'm in Thailand for the WE let's say, I would tend to say that I'm from Singapore (because after all, it's where I came from for that particular WE!) but then people look at me weirdly, apparently my eyes don't look Asian enough...

This time, the 3 questions were asked in Singapore and all of them within the boundaries of the F1 circuit. (Post on F1 coming, R is playing with the photos!)

First while ordering beer, someone heard us speaking French and asked where we were from (in French), he didn't seem very satisfied with the answer Singapore... Neither did he seem satisfied with France, what he was looking for was Lyon/Burgundy.

Then the next day, we were asked to fill a survey at the entrance gate and to the question where are you from we said France, again False! He was looking for Singapore as we live here and have employment pass, he had another question later on for nationality...

And finally, metal detector guy asked me where I was from and this time I got it right, I said France and he was happy!

As you can tell, France is my go-by answer because in Asia people can not tell from my accent! (British people please do not laugh too hard...) and then they are surprised that my accent is not horrendous! :-)

When I was in London, I couldn't answer France to the same question as most people already knew that from the way I speak!

May be to please everyone I should go with:

"I hold a French passport, was born and grew up in Lyon (to be replaced by "Lyon, France" if talking to US citizen, they like attaching state to city!), spent most of the last 10 years in and out of London and currently live in Singapore" but that seems rather extensive knowing that most of the time the person doesn't really care...

So I'm still looking for the perfect answer but may be, as my physics teacher would say: "tout depend du referentiel!" (my answer should be adjusted to the referential!)

Forgotten koalas and kangaroos!

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 05:08:00 +0000

It appears that I had written an article about the penguins but nothing on the koalas and kangaroos!

Back in April, R had to go to Australia for a business trip and I very nicely offered to keep him company... We were based in Fremantle (slightly south of Perth on the west coast), but as we had been there before we didn't want to spend the WE in town so we went north to the Yanchep national park to pay a visit to the koalas and kangaroos et we came back with some rather cute shots!

I believe the koalas could do with a mani pedi but even that would probably be too much work...

Enjoy!

Feeling like a tourist in London

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 11:43:00 +0000

I now have to admit it, I am like a tourist in London!

Having left my "home location" (as BP would say) more than 3.5 years ago, I am disconnected with what is London today. In my defense, the Olympic Games happened in between and so many things were done/redone for the games.

With D and A visiting for the weekend, I had made a fantastic plan, we were going to take the train to Waterloo, get on the Boris/Barclays bikes (never tried them), cycle along the southbank all the way to Greenwich, get on the Emirates cable car, cross the Thames, potentially go up the Shard (potentially, as it is atrociously expensive), then head for afternoon tea, take the sun in Hyde park and then go for cocktails and dinner.

But if everything else has changed in London, the British weather is still the same! Guess what, my master plan got disturbed by a full day of rain from start to finish! But after all I'm nearly British by now so I kept calm and carried on! ;-)

Train to Waterloo - Done

Cycle along the southbank to Greenwich - replaced by trip along the Jubilee line, walk around the O2 and coffee at Costa's.

Emirates cable - Done, couldn't see much but anyway spotted, the Excel, London city airport, the O2 and the Thames barrier

Shard - so glad I hadn't booked tickets, we would have wasted them!

Unplanned activity - racing boats in St Katherine dock getting ready for a race around the world with people who have never sailed before (I have to admit that the concept still escape me a bit...) boats were huge, security staff outnumbered public (easily), pub looked beautiful!

Unplanned activity 2 - getting absolutely soaked walking to tower hill station! 3 French girls in London, 1 pair of open toes shoes, 0 waterproof jackets, 0 umbrella... Keep calm, I said...

Afternoon tea at the Lanesborough - Finally somewhere dry!!! We dried our feet in the bathroom, made an attempt at looking presentable despite the wet hair and the soaked jackets! I still think that the guys opening car doors at the entrance were more looking the part than us...

We stayed over 2h, ate a huge quantity of sandwich, cakes, quiche, biscuits, scones, canapés and other delicacies, drank tons of hot tea and listened to the lovely lady playing the harp with music sheets on her iPad (beauty of modern technology!)

Taking the sun in Hyde park - the what?

We decided on making our way back to the hotel, switching the rain for the hot tub! 2h later when we decided to go out again, it was still raining...(the capacity of the sky to retain water sometimes amazes me!)

Cocktail in London got replaced by Tapas in Richmond! Not bad, they even had non-alcoholic sangria! (Thanks for virgin cocktails!)

And that's how you convert a plan for a sunny day in London into a pretty similar plan for a very wet day in London.

Obviously on Sunday, after having dropped A at Heathrow, the sun was out and so were the fancy cars!

(Photo credit goes to D and Instagram!)

D and I were able to enjoy a bit of dry outdoor walk in Richmond park where we met with some gorgeous deers.

Not to worry, as soon as I dropped D at Heathrow, it started raining again! If you can take me out of London, you can not take the English weather out...

Sunday Walk in Weybridge

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 14:26:00 +0000

Still in Europe, still in London, on a sunny Sunday, after a really good lunch it was time for a walk along the river.

Weybridge is not really known for being a poor area of Greater London, I was struggling to decide which one of these houses I should buy (just in case one day I have a few spare millions...)

I think I'm going to go for the last one hidden by the huge tree so no one can take a photo of me!

Otherwise, the locks are good fun to watch, apparently these boats can be rented for the weekend but they seem to be quite hard work! (According to the couple we helped)

Street art in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (M.) — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 14:11:00 +0000

I was spending a month in London and the Eurostar took me to Paris for the week-end. My good friend C being a huge fan of street art, I ended up in a street where several artists were having a go at a wall. It looks like the communication had been well done over the Internet as the street was packed!

Interestingly, most of the art was being glued to the wall like wall paper! Only a few people were painting or creating on the spot. These days everyone seems to come with art already done. I suppose it has the advantage of being quick and removable!

Throughout all the street art enthusiasts, there was one gentleman who did not seem to appreciate street art and thought it was a good idea to start having a go at everyone...

Anyway, I'll let you make your own opinion about street art by looking at the photos: