Austria

UK

Greece

Italy

Denmark

It is getting warmer here in London as summer sneaks in, despite the ash cloud, but there was a niggling argument that would pop up throughout winter amongst work colleagues and other english friends. Uggs. In England it seems that Uggs are reserved for teenage girls who wear them out to the movies and the shops as a fashion statement. It is believed that Uggs are for women. Well I have news for you… Men can wear Uggs! Uggs are a type of slipper that you can wear around the house, regardless of gender. But this would simply not get through to the English.

There’s also a large misunderstanding of what Ugg’s are. The belief that you need to have Ugg Australia branded Uggs (that cost a fortune here, roughy £150) in order for them to be real. An Ugg is a type of shoe, not a brand. Which is why Ugg Australia lost their case to stop other brands naming their footwear Uggs in Australia. Ugg Australia is not an Australian brand and they are not made in Australia, they simply use (in most cases) Australian wool. So no, you don’t need to have an Ugg Australia branded Ugg for it to be ‘real’, and it doesn’t matter what gender you are, Ugg’s can be warn by anyone!

There’s nothing like working away at the BBQ in boardies, t-shirt, beer in hand and Uggs on feet.

For my birthday this year I was treated to a night at Fawsley Hall in Northamptonshire. Fawsley Hall is a lovely old country house hotel that I spent many an event working at back in my events management days. I loved this place and never got a chance to spend a lovely relaxing evening enjoying the surroundings, until now…!

So we prepared for our 2 hour journey on Saturday lunchtime after plenty of birthday spoils in the morning. Brief pit stop at the Oxford motorway services to fill up on a KFC snack and we were soon winding our way through the Northamptonshire countryside. This is a beautiful drive through some really picturesque little villages and past acres and acres of fields which are just perfect.

As you come off of the main road there is a mile of dirt track to get to the hotel which is fun in a Polo, good job we had missed the snow!! We had actually been pretty lucky with the weather and managed to get out for a walk around the grounds after checking in. The spring lambs were jumping around and it was nice not to hear any cars and breathe in the fresh air. Bliss!

After our little walk we settled in our room with a bottle of pink Moet bubbles and watched The September Issue – thanks Sam for putting up with the girly afternoon haha! We decided to go for a pre-dinner drink in The Great Hall. So we sat back on a huge sofa and ordered our apple martinis. The service at Fawsley is exceptional, from the moment you come in the door you are treated like a VIP, our host in The Great Hall tended to our every need and bought the menus for us to choose our food before being taken to the restaurant ‘Equilibrium’.

Whilst enjoying our cocktails we were treated to a little plate of amuse-bouche which were delicious and surely a sign of good things to come. We were led past the plebs in the main dining room and into a small dining room which is Equilibrium, the hotel’s fine dining restaurant. Again, the service was polite and slick. Now I’m not sure if it was our fault that we didn’t choose the tasting menu or that we were left to our own devices to choose from the al la carte menu… but we had made some major fails!

To start they bought us the first palette cleanser, the butternut squash in a shot glass. Bit too much and a bit to gloopy but we got through most of it without vomitting. We had both ordered the ‘24 Hour Suckling Pig’ starter. Our expectation of what was to come was not what was sitting in front of us now. Carried away with the title, we had ignored the fact that this was in fact a cold terrine and not the juicy hot pork belly type creation we had envisaged. Even the little side plate that looked like a nice bit of crackling was in fact a posh sausage roll. Pretty disappointed but it was edible nevertheless.

By now we were quietly laughing to ourselves and hoping the next course was going to save the meal. Hmmm. The next interim course was a duck egg hollowed out and filled with the richest scrambled egg I’ve ever tasted along with some really strong ham. Looked good, tasted way too heavy. Holding back the vomit on this one!

Main courses. We went for different ones here… Sam ordered the ‘Poached and roasted Partridge’, I went with the ‘550 Fallow Deer’. I won this one! Mine actually was pretty nice, although again the sauce was way too rich. Sam’s face said it all really…

(By the way, despite this tragedy on a plate we were actually having an excellent night, taking it all pretty light hearted).

At last we were on the home straight… desert. Again, we had gone for different options. Sam ordered ‘Quince’ and I ordered ‘Artichoke’. Yep, that’s what we thought!! Sam won this round. Simply excrutiating… no idea what it was supposed to be really but I just shoved as much in as I could and took a large swig of wine.

I have to say, even though the tastes were too strong and at times pretty unbearable all mixed together (yes I think we probably should have read the menu properly), the presentation was fantastic and service faultless. We would have stayed for a nightcap but thought better of it just in case they tried to feed us more food!

We giggled our way back to the room and that’s as far as I’ll take you…

Fantastic birthday weekend in our majestic country house hotel.

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We decided to celebrate New Years Eve in London this year (09/10). Some of our lovely friends from Sydney were making the trip over to the UK around that time, so we figured ‘why not!’.

Going against all the advice we’d been given about spending a new year’s eve in London, we booked our tickets for the Hed Kandi Glitterball at the O2. Woo!

So on new year’s eve morning we packed our little overnight bag and headed up to the big smoke. Met up with the guys for a lazy pub lunch in Notting Hill and then checked into the sulubrious Travelodge at Kings Cross.

As it was a glitter theme we decided to put a bit of sparkle into our outfits for the night haha! We set off all dolled-up in our finery to Ramona & Justin’s hotel for a few drinks to get in the mood.

Once we’d had a few glasses of fizz we were ready to go. It was all very relaxed which was quite refreshing compared to the usual new year’s panic. We got the tube all the way to the O2, picked up our tickets, put our coats in the cloakroom and went straight to the bar… we couldn’t believe how easy it had all been, topped with the fact that they were offering 4 shots for £10!! Brilliant!!

The evening proceeded into drunken singing and dancing as these things tend to and as the clock struck 12 the Hed Kandi glitterball exploded. It was very emotional! More singing, more dancing, more drinking…

We really didn’t want the night to end, we were still dancing after we’d got our coats and were heading out of the door. What an awesome night!

So then came the weirdness… stuck on a tube with hundreds of other partygoers can swing either way. We’re all drunk and talking nonsense so you make friends with the ‘tube people’ sharing stories of the night. We got a crazy idea in our heads that we would carry on the party somewhere else but after a few circuits of the northern line (because we were too drunk to work out where we were going), we decided to call it a night…

Probably a good idea!

So all you people out there… don’t listen when someone tells you London is crap for New Years Eve. If you plan it right and get into the right atmosphere it can be as brilliant as anywhere else, just know when to call it a night!

Thanks to our Sydney peeps for making it such a special night

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We arrived in Vienna on Christmas Eve. Our first impressions were that of German efficiency as we waited at the spotless station for the prompt train into the city…

As we checked into our hotel (Hotel Wien) we were told that most things were closed on Christmas Eve in Vienna, as the Austrians celebrate this as we do Christmas Day. We were a little worried at first but it did mean that we could enjoy a lovely walk into the town centre in search of a hearty Austrian meal instead of settling for something local. It was great to get an impression of the city by foot and it seemed that everyone else had the same idea… the town centre was buzzing! Not a lot open though so we found one of the few places open and grabbed a table. It was quite an odd place, tucked down the back of a building with a rather bizarre interior and very dark but we weren’t going to be fussy! Then something hit us… smoke… people smoking everywhere, even the bar staff, it felt like it was wrong considering Sydney and London have the no smoking ban in restaurants, but it was quite normal here!! Very weird.

So we quickly finished our meal and headed back out to the streets decorated with some of the best Christmas decorations we’ve ever seen. We grabbed ourselves a polystrene cup of hot gluhwein from one of the street vendors and wandered slowly back to our hotel for a quick nightcap before hitting the sack.

We awoke on Christmas Day with anticipation for the presents that santa had brought in the night… oh no, that’s when I was a kid sorry… we woke up, said ‘Happy Christmas’ to each other and went to feast on the hotel’s breakfast buffet!

We spent a very cruisy day wandering the main sites of this beautiful city. At one point we decided to follow the hordes of locals entering the The Church of St. Augustin, it seems we had crashed their Christmas Day mass… the music and singing was spectacular, we just stood in awe for a while.

We then decided to seek out one of the famous Christmas markets… which we soon discovered pack up over Christmas! Yes, we were suprised too, and a little disappointed. The idea is that you buy all your things FOR Christmas at the markets, so there is no need for them when its actually Christmas, oh I see…

Seeing as we were going to have a Christmas dinner rather than lunch we stopped at a posh cafe (one of the only things open!) and had a slice of cake and a hot chocolate. Must be time for an afternoon nap…

For Christmas dinner we went with the recommendation of our hotel staff. Augustinerkeller in the centre of town was like an old wine cellar, it had a really nice cosy atmosphere and the biggest plates of food! We shared half a pig leg and it was still too much, luckily we had experience of this in Prague and knew better than to order one each… unlike some of the other dinner guests… suckers!!

We ended the evening with a hot punsch back at the hotel which was quite frankly horrible, but we persisted and wobbled up to bed… its lethal stuff!

For Boxing Day we decided to take the train to Schonbrunn to seek out the only Christmas market that was still on at Schonbrunn Palace. What a gorgeous place. Definitely worth a look even without the market. The stalls were set up on the forecourt of the palace with a big Christmas tree in the middle… this is what we had been looking for. So we had a wander around, got a mug of spicy apple punch (not the alcoholic kind this time!) and a pretzel/donut/cake thing – it was a mixture of all these! The grounds of the palace were particularly beautiful, especially on a crisp day like this one.

The afternoon was spent on the Wiener Riesenrad (big wheel) at Prater amusement park near our hotel. This was one of the first ferris wheels and was constructed in 1897, it felt old too!! The ‘gondolas’ were more like caravans or portakabins stuck to the big wheel, you could even hire one out and have dinner in it… not the most romantic thing to do with tourists gawping at you from their caravans!

We had one full day left in Austria so we thought we should go in search of some snow… a day trip to Salzburg!

We were picked up by our driver for the day (we can’t remember his name, so lets call him Peter!). He had a bit of a nervous tic along with quite a thick Viennese accent, so we were a bit worried that we might have trouble understanding him but he seemed to relax into the journey and the tic faded (or we got used to his pronunciation with it!). We picked up our travelling companions, an american couple (lets call them Bob and Judy haha!) and set off on our mission. The first hour was spent sleeping before we pulled into a motorway cafe for a pit stop.

The next couple of hours were spent winding our way through the Viennese Lake District going through the most pretty towns and landscapes. We were mesmermised by the scenery.

We stopped in Mozart’s mum’s birthplace (yes they have milked him for all he’s worth!), a small town called St. Gilgen with the most authentic, detailed Viennese buildings. A definite must-see.

We passed the hills and lakes that were featured in The Sound of Music – we must remember to watch that film again… finally reaching our destination, Salzburg. First impressions were that it was a chocolate-box city that would look even better with snow! Our guide showed us around the main sites and then left us to discover the city ourselves. First stop lunch! It was so cold outside it was too nice being in the warm so we took our time, braved the cold again to pass through a graveyard featured in The Sound of Music and headed straight for a cafe for a slice of cake and a hot chocolate!!

We really enjoyed our day in Salzburg. Peter was a great guide and Bob & Judy were pleasant travelling companions!

The next day we stocked up with Milka chocolate and headed to the airport for our journey back to England.

Despite the lack of snow for our ‘white Christmas’, Vienna had been wonderful.

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It started with the whisky. We were in Scotland, so we had to try some Scotch Whisky. Our first night (misty image above) in Edinburgh was spent in a local pub. After failing to find somewhere that served traditional Scottish fare, we settled on a nearby pub that served whisky. After our meal we ordered two whiskys with some ice and water served in a teapot on the side (no, it wasn’t like World Bar). Did I mention that neither of us are whisky drinkers? It’s the devils drink, and we found out why the next morning when we weren’t able to wake in time for our free breakfast at the guesthouse!

We made it to Edinburgh Castle the next day. It was freezing. I was wearing 5 layers of clothing, a scarf and gloves, yet the icy wind just cut right through as if I was wearing a mere t-shirt. Do people not realise there are warmer places in the world to live!? It hadn’t even hit winter yet and it was 3º in the middle of the day and below freezing at night.

It happened to be St Andrews day on the Monday so all weekend the tourist sites of Edinburgh were offering free entry. The Castle was great to see, but before entering we needed to rid ourselves of this ugly whisky hangover with some Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. This must be why the Scots came up with Haggis in the first place. As we, slowly, made our way up the Royal Mile, eyes squinting and bodies shivering (did I mention it was cold?), we entered a pub that served Haggis in several different ways.

I have to admit, I expected Haggis to not only look, well, like meat stuffed into a sheep stomach, but also taste a little off. To my surprise, it did still look relatively ugly, but tasted quite nice. There didn’t seem to be any sheep stomach involved, except perhaps for the cooking process, and it filled in the whisky hangover nicely.

After purchasing some Edinburgh Rock, a sweet candy that is basically like sucking on flavoured chalk, we walked through the city as the weather eased in the afternoon. What a beautiful city it is. I have to admit, the cold wet weather actually suits Edinburgh.

One thing I heard a lot from my English friends before coming to London was that the one thing they really missed was the pubs. Something I didn’t really understand until now, after having spent some time here. In short, it’s brilliant!

There’s nothing like spending your Sunday (or any day for that matter) in the pub. I’m not talking a couple of hours, but the whole day. Beer, food and football. I guess a lot of the pub culture has to do with the sheer number of pubs in England. The weather must also be a factor. You’re not gonna spend the day at the beach or outside if it’s cold out.

Unlike Sydney, you don’t have to rely on the pub being ‘posh’ for it to be worthwhile. You can pretty much walk into most pubs in London and see a diverse group of people in there. Having a pint, watching the football and snacking on some prawn cocktail crisps (although I still think Australia has better crisps!).

I did also have the pleasure of enjoying a cheap but plentiful breakfast at Wetherspoons. It was here that I witnessed how much of a pub culture there really is, after seeing an English man and wife, both in their late 50’s enjoying breakfast. This involved the man downing 4 pints in the time his wife completed 2 teas. Oh, did I mention this was all before 10am!!

Why have the people in the UK let it come to this? And don’t tell me it’s cause they’re tea drinkers!

It’s so difficult to find decent coffee here and it really comes down to the fact that there are so many coffee chains and so little independent cafes. Some may call big chains and franchises progress, something we haven’t reached in Australia (luckily).

This is most likely to do with cafe chains having to try and replicate the same (crap) taste amongst all chains. So I’ve decided to give a brief rating of them…

Starbucks – 2/5
Well we’ve all been to Starbucks at one time or another. We’ve all vowed never to drink their coffee. The only thing they do right is free wi-fi and if you’re into it, the cold frappafriggencinos.

Costa – 2/5
Really not too much better than Starbucks. The coffee is slightly more bearable but no free wi-fi keeps them from scoring any higher.

Caffe Nero – 3/5
Nero use two shots of espresso in their coffees, which make them quite good for a chain. Most of the chain coffees end up being quite weak after the massive cups have been filled with all that milk.

I was however warned about this, so I got a little coffee percolator while in Italy so I can make my own coffee while at home.

It is possible to find good coffee in London, you just need to try avoid the chains and find the smaller cafes, but be careful, smaller doesn’t always mean better. I was recommended Bar Italia in Soho, which makes brilliant coffee, but if anyone knows of any other good places to get coffee around London, please feel free to share them.

UPDATE – Ok, very weird. As soon as I finished writing this post I saw that the Guardian had written an article on ‘Ten of the best UK coffee shops’. I decided to do a bit of research and start making up a map here of some coffee shops to try out in London. Again, please feel free to share any you might know and I’ll add them to the list.

My mum and I were off to Calabria in southern Italy for a week, which is where both herself and my father were born and lived until the age of 12. Mum had only returned once on a family holiday in 2000 and it was the second time I had returned after a trip around Europe in 2005.

Getting There
The trip was off to a shaky start due to a hiccup at Heathrow airport. My mother had forgotten about some liquid items she had left in her carry on baggage. Rather than checking bags that caused concern, security simply moved them to one side and made people wait.Making people wait was probably a bit of a fear tactic, but checking the monitor I saw that our flight was on its final boarding call! After waiting 30 minutes and getting the attention of one of the airport security officers, the bag was checked and we ran to the gate to board, where we made it…just! Here I was expecting Alitalia to be as reliable as Olympic Airways and be late!

We landed at Lamezia airport and were picked up by my uncle and aunty who brought my mum’s cousin Pepe along. Pepe drives like a typical Italian, so we made it to his house in no time where we had a feast awaiting us.

The Food
I don’t know what it is, but the food in southern Italy is brilliant and there was no shortage of it, as Liliana (Pepe’s wife) provided a 3 course meal made up of pasta, rabbit, salami, cheeses and home made bread. The food they make is quite similar to what my family makes in Australia, but even something simple like pasta has so much more flavour there. Something that our relatives from northern Italy even agreed on.

It was also here that we tried horse meat for the first time. Now before you start yelling at me, we weren’t told it was horse, we were under the assumption it was veal!

Another delicacy is Stocco, which is a dried out fish (cod) that’s soaked in water and cooked in various ways. If this doesn’t sound appetising, the pizza a metro (pizza by the metre) made up for it.

The Coffee
We went for a coffee after lunch on our first day at a local bar and met Danilo’s friend Gabriele, who was to pick me up at 12:30 that night. Danilo is Pepe’s son and is the same age as myself.

Now the coffee. I’ve had a hard time finding some good coffee in England, but there is no such problem in Italy. Some of the espresso’s are made so strong that they are more of a syrup than liquid, but still tasted brilliant, as long as you like your coffee strong.

I found it a challenge to have less than 3 coffees a day, as almost everyone we visited would make you drink it!

Going Out
During summer in Italy you don’t head out until about 12:30-1 in the morning and depending on what you get up to, you won’t be home until about 5am.

I was picked up by Gabriele just after midnight and we drove around for around 45 minutes as it was still too early to go out. We were going to see a Beatles cover band at one of the beach bars. Cover bands seem to be quite popular in Italy, as much of the youth tends to prefer English music to Italian.

The process of ordering drinks at a bar or club is a little different in Italy, you first line up to pay for your drink and then take your receipt to the bar line to get your drink…hmm, not sure why lining up twice helps things??

Drinks can be quite expensive but will usually contain more alcohol due to free pouring. There is a quite popular cocktail called a ‘Negroni‘ which is made up of Campari, Gin and Martini Rosso. It’s strong! For those who prefer something non-alcoholic, latte di mandorla (almond milk) is a popular drink. Served ice cold, it goes great with a Nutella crepe.

The Culture
We drove around for most of the week visiting friends and relatives. Just driving was an experience in itself. Although the Greeks hold the record for highest death toll on their roads, Italy can’t be too far behind! They drive like maniacs and simply have no fear on the tiny roads that were once only used for donkeys.

The impatience on the road seems to carry over to every day life, where they manage to scam their way around a line at a post office even though they have a numbered ticket system. I mention this as it took us almost 2 hours to be served, while some people would come in and take multiple tickets if they couldn’t push in and convince the person behind the counter to serve them sooner.

Work conditions are still quite tough in southern Italy, with many people having to move north to study and find work. This is the reason many Italians migrated after the war to countries like America and Australia (if not to northern Italy). This makes Calabria quite busy in August as all the Italians return for their holidays from their jobs in the north.

The Family
We had been to Italy on a family holiday in 2000, but it isn’t until you meet family and friends again that you realise how much can change in 9 years. It almost sets a checkpoint in time where you notice change more, as you haven’t seen it happen gradually.

In the small towns that my parents are from, your neighbours are considered to be family, whether they’re distant cousins or not. You grew up together and everyone helped each other out. You weren’t just raised by your parents, the adults around you all played a role in your upbringing.

Most of our friends and family don’t speak English, so I was having to make do with the small amount of Calabrese dialect I knew. This differs to northern Italy, as Italians in most of the bigger cities have a better knowledge of English.

The Beach
It was great visiting family and friends that we hadn’t seen in years, but it meant there wasn’t much time to go to the beach. The beaches in Calabria are some of the nicest sandy beaches in Italy. The ocean is calm and even warmer than the Greek Islands. It’s a shame I only got to spend an hour there, even though we were only staying 200m away!

This was our second visit to Bristol due to the failed first attempt. The first time we had come unprepared for the 3 hour wait so we made the sensible decision to try again another day… but this time come prepared to wait!

You see the first time we went it was a Monday and although the website had said that you could expect queues of up to 3 hours, we figured that they were referring to the worst of times, like the weekend… but no, they meant EVERY day!

So we joined the end of the queue this time with our prepared packed lunch. It seemed to go fairly quick at first and we found ourselves at the ‘2 hour wait’ sign. Better than 3 hours hmm.

At first the people around us provided some mild entertainment but then the crowd turned ugly, literally! I actually don’t think I’ve seen so many unwashed, badly dressed weirdos all gathered together like this before… and I don’t think it was the sun making my eyes play tricks on me either because there wasn’t any sun, which somebody should have told one young lady who was standing in the queue in a bikini top… and she really shouldn’t have been wearing so little, it was like a freak show, although you didn’t want to look you couldn’t keep your eyes off it!!

When the guy behind us asked his mate “you spell Banksy B A N K S Y don’t you?”… err do you actually have any idea about the exhibition you’re lining up for?? Their conversation really went downhill after that, by the end of the 2 hours they were pretty much just grunting at each other.

They were definitely not as bad as the couple in front of us. The guy was intent on sucking his girlfriend’s face off and feeding her ice lollies! It was like being forced to watch your parents kissing, after an hour and a half I wanted to bang their heads together! Even the girlfriend looked like she’d had enough and was trying to duck out of the way!

Anyway, just as it was getting to the point where I wanted to scream, we made it to the door. The excitement really started to build, the type of excitement like at your first concert as a teenager, OMG, OMG, OMG… it better be as good as in my dreams…

Thank f*ck Banksy delivered. Over and above expectations. We love you Banksy!

Sam was assigned the task of taking pictures as I just wanted to float around and soak in the art, I should have worn something floral. He did a magnificent job as you’ll see below.

The room ‘Art of Banksy’ was dark and moody, every inch was covered with canvases and at one end there was a mock up of what Banksy’s studio might look like, with sketches and stencils, I could have stood at the chicken wire and stared at this for hours.

‘Unnatural History’ was a collection of his animatronic pieces, like the nest of CCTV cameras, the chicken nugget chicks feeding on a tub of sauce, a leopard skin coat that looked just like the actual animal sleeping on its branch… and who could forget the old Tweety Pie (I think this was Sam’s favourite!).

The part that I enjoyed the most was walking around the museum looking for the pieces that Banksy had planted alongside the museum’s permanent exhibitions. A dildo among the stalactite and stalagmite exhibit was the first find. Brilliant! It was a very clever idea to get all the thousands of people there to see Banksy’s work to walk around the whole museum instead of going to one room and then leaving.

He’d done a makeover on some famous statues surrounding the burnt out ice cream van which doubled up as an information booth, guarded by a policeman in riot gear riding a carousel horse… everything, however amusing it looked had a deeper meaning socially, religiously, politically… blimey, I was feeling really cultured.

There was a perfect scale model of Jerusalem carved from olive trees by Tawfig Salsaa that Banksy had bought and added 284 toy soldiers and 1 terrorist… which we couldn’t find unfortunately because we couldn’t get close enough to see the tiny figures.

The graffiti’d portaloo Stonehenge was Banksy’s parting gift, complete with a crow dangling a tampon from its beak!

We left with the biggest grins on our faces. It was well worth the torturous wait. We love you Banksy, whoever you are!