30 before 30 – Progress Report

1. See the pyramids – Egypt in October booked! DONE What an experience! See my blog post here for more information on this one!
2. WILD swim (in the Hampstead Ponds) DONE Next stop, Kings Cross Lido this summer.
3. Read 30 books (I’m midway through no 20 now and it’s the middle of April!) Not 100% sure I’m going to finish this one, but I can only try.
4. Visit the Sky Garden (it’s free!) Date night plan for this one sometime soon, or date night with my sister as I know she wants to go too.
5. Sky dive (in Brazil in June?!) This is definitely happening in Rio.
6. Catch up with ALL the #Bordeladies This happened (minus Gale, but that would have been too difficult!) at Fanny’s wedding last weekend in Long Eaton. So much fun, check out my blog on local eatery, The Harrington Arms.
7. Make Aligot (amazing cheesy, garlicky French mashed potato) The blooming recipe card is STILL on my pinboard! This will be done!
8. Visit St Pauls cathedral – DONE! This was amazing! Yet to write a blog post on it yet, but will be done soon.
9. Eat at a Michelin starred restaurant. Turns out i already did this a few years back when i ate at Arbutus in Soho – their pre-theatre menu is great value and really yummy!
10. Do a centurion (drinking a shot every minute for a 100 minutes) Trying to get a date in the diary for this one…when I have a lot of sleep time the next day!
11. Eat at Duck and Waffle – Bday brunch I think!
12. Get a new phone, this one is pissing me off! Still P-ing me off, still no new phone!
13. Be more creative – this one needs some specifics! I’m thinking an actual project?? I did do melty Crayon-Art like this but I’m thinking something in the garden now that the weather is heating up a little bit. More Pallet furniture maybe? Lee does have a power-drill!
14. Learn to needle felt – Hazel was going to teach me this, still not happened!
15. Learn a song with both hands on the piano. Again this was a Hazel one, still not happened.
16. New! Visit the Tower of London
17. New! Write a poem I’m proud of
18. New! Write a new blog post everyday until I turn 30 –  could be a lot of random ones…but I can try. It could be my new lunch time activity at work. Better than reading the Daily Mail…
19. New! Go on a brewery tour in London
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25. These need filling in…!
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30.

If you have any suggestions let me know!

30 before I’m 30 – no 1 (See the Pyramids) : tick!

The first thing on my list of “30 things to do before I’m 30” has been achieved!

Seeing the pyramids has to be on everyone’s bucket lists, & I feel very privileged to have done it before I turned 30 on the trip of a lifetime with Timeless Egypt!

I’m planning on writing a full blog post on the trip but I just wanted to post this quickie on the Pyramids at Giza, which include the Great Pyramid (it really is bloody massive!) since it was on my list.

It’s amazing learning about the history and trying to fathom quite how long ago the pyramids were built and how the thousands of builders managed to build something so huge without modern day technology. It truly shows their ingenuity and intelligence at simple but effective engineering practices.

From a personal point of view, it’s a very humbling experience being in a place that holds so many thousands of years of history, where so much has happened and it’s incredibly hard to actually understand it all!

A lot of people ask whether it lives up to its expectations seeing something in person that you’ve seen so many photos and video of. Often people say that famous people are smaller or not as hot in real life after you’ve seen them on television or film but regarding the pyramids, they were totally worth it and lived up to all expectations!

Even in my photos here, it is hard to demonstrate quite how big they are! When you’re looking up at the pinnacle and the sun is glinting over the top, their immensity is truly shown.

Book 6 of 30 – Inca Kola by Matthew Parris

I decided to revisit an old friend when I spotted this classic in the charity shop

The crazy thing is I read this last time in 2005, whilst I was travelling in South America and at the time I don’t remember thinking it was out of date compared to my experience of Peru and Bolivia.  I haven’t been back since but after I flipped open the cover I realised it was originally written in 1990 – it was already 15 years old when I first read it, and now 25 years old!!

Still a great read detailing travel, trials and travails through Bolivia and Peru. A truly great adventure for both author and reader!

Falling in love with Italy

Italy is famous for its food, well it’s history, it’s mamas boys, the Leaning Tower of Pisa AND it’s pizza, gelato, pasta, arancini, Canoli, Olives, Campari and Chianti!

As a lover of all of these things, I was super excited to be in Sicily for 5 days, with plenty of time to sample the islands goodies.

We started with pizza by the beach in Cefalu at a restaurant recommended to me called ‘Al Gabbiano‘ – they made the pizza in the shape of a heart for us 6 girls! So cheesy but the Italians know how to earn a tip!! It was so amazingly cheesy that the tomato sauce it did have was massively overpowered which was a shame – it looked and tasted good anyway 🙂

Ofcourse I had a cheeky Aperol Spritz to accompany my lunch – love that tangy, bitter Aperol dancing on your taste buds with the sweet prosecco!

Obviously after that we were pretty stuffed but after a bit of sunbatheing on the beach we were soon ready for our first gelato – at “Gelateria l’artisanale”. I decided to try the other local speciality – Granita. Basically a posh slush puppy but eaten with a spoon not through a straw. The pistachio I had was amazing, so much like pistachio gelato but as it was less creamy it was so refreshing – will definitely be looking up recipe ideas now I’m home. I didn’t take a photo but it was served in a plastic cup, so a lot bigger than a gelato serving!!

The next delicacy we stumbled upon was Arancini. Since discovering that the Italians take the humble bowl of rice, roll it into balls and then deep fried those balls (with a cheesy or meaty centre!) I have wanted to try them – it just seems like such an amazing idea!!

First I had 4 cheeses, OMG!! Silky melted cheese surrounded by glorious saffron coloured rice, with a crisp crunchy outside…heaven!

The takeaway (I’m not really sure what you would call it!) we got them from was called “Ke Palle” in Palermo, and I kid you not we went back 3 times in one afternoon! Continuing my pistachio theme I tried a sweet one, it wasn’t quite as good as the hot savoury ones but still pretty darn tasty, and it looked super cool:

In London you can grab these tasty morsels from the Arancini Brothers, they have one branch on Kingsland Road just outside Dalston Junction station, another Old St and another in Kentish Town. I haven’t been yet but I hear good things and will definitely be heading on down soon to get my fix!

So where was I? What other goodies did we salivate over? It definitely wasn’t the seafood, which we were expecting to be amazing since we were on an island but I’m not sure if it was the time of year or what but we were pretty shocked at how bad it was! Jess had a swordfish steak which was rubbery and we had a “seafood mixto” at Al Gabbiano as a starter – it was a weird mix of grey bits of squid, a few anaemic looking prawns and some crab paste!

We find amazing pasta though! In the hills, high above the ocean, we stopped      for a very rainy lunch in Castelbuono, stumbling across this totally deserted restaurant with amazing views and great pasta. So simple, so Italian but absolutely stunning flavours – tomato, ricotta and basil. Done perfectly!

Oh and the views:

So remember how oh so long ago I told you about parmesan ice cream? Pictures speak louder than words but basically we stumbled across an ice cream festival in Palermo! Whilst we were trying to find a car park, which by the way was horrible drivers in Italy are terrifying, we couldn’t drive down the street as it was blocked for Sherbeth, the annual Gelato festival where producers send their best flavour to be included.  Visitors pay €6 and get s little card which gives you 4 small cornettos and 2 large cups of your choice!! The problem is choosing…

As you can tell there was a lot of gelato consumed that day!! Best.Day.Ever.

On that note, time to love you and leave you dreaming of Italian food!!

Bordelady Silliness in Sicily

Last week was a change from the norm, swanning around a Sicilian villa in 30c heat wearing my Millie Mackintosh maxi dress complete with pom-poms with my 4 favourite bordeladies (#andheather)! We stayed 5 nights so not quite a long weekend, not quite a full week and with 5 other girls it stayed on the right side of girly silliness with enough lad banter and drinking games to keep us sane!

The practicals:
We flew with Ryanair from Stanstead to Palermo
We stayed in Cefalu
We slept in Residenza Santa Barbara (booked on villas.com)
We swam in the villa pool and the brilliant azure ocean
We drank Aperol Spritz & lots of prosecco
We ate pizza, gelato and a lot of tapas style salads and nibbles
We chartered a boat for a morning and jumped off the roof
We photographed ALOT, having bought a selfie stick on the beach (hard to fit 6 people in a photo!)
We drove into the hills to explore beautiful towns perched on cliff tops
We stumbled upon a Gelato festival in Palermo and had parmesan ice cream!

So the silliness:
6 girls, a selfie stick, Iphones with slowmo and timelapse functions – we sure did get silly and took a shite load of photos which will probably never see the light of day! There was jumping on the beach, into the pool, car selfies, bin selfies and (not photographed) even a bit of skinny dipping!

Here’s just a few 🙂

There were also some incredibly beautiful places we visited:

Ultimately, we had a molto bene holiday and I will definitely be back!

Ps – the food was so good I’m going to write a separate post about it 😉

Book 3 of 30 – It happened in Paris by Molly Hopkins

As fun a romp through Europe as you would expect from an ex-european tour leader turned author! I can vouch for the stories and antics the characters get up to – I’ve heard many of them happening myself first – hand!

It may not have the best writing style but it’s fun, frivolous chick lit at its best.

2.5 days in Istanbul – Days 1 & 2

I’ve left this a little late but considering the title of the previous post, I thought it necessitated a follow up…

Obviously Istanbul (& then Dalyan & then the return to real life) were far too much fun, so I conveniently forgot to continue on from where I left off…but I have now discovered I can write blogs offline and then upload that should solve some of my problems – and entertain me during morning commutes 😉

Our time in the ‘bul seemed to flash by in a awe inspiring mirage of beautiful porcelain tiles, rooftop views of mosques, the routine calls to prayer and the sights and sounds of an incredibly interesting city perched between Europe and Asia…basically I loved it. The food, the buildings, the history, the art, the smells and the culture – oh and did I mention the baklava?! To. Die. For.

So here’s a taster of the things we did (& yes I’ve made myself limit it to one photo per place or I would post hundreds and hundreds!)

Galata Tower

Beautiful views over the Bosphurus,  & you don’t even have to climb the stairs – there’s a lift!

Tolpaki Palace

Beautiful tiles everywhere! The circumcision room had the prettiest (weirdly…).

Blue Mosque

Some people pray, some people play.

Haga Sofia

Just continually had my mind blown away with the beautiful architecture,  and the Haga Sofia has this HUGE open dome with no supporting pillars (unlike the Blue Mosque) which makes it all the more impressive. 

Boat cruise on the Bosphurus

After haggling him down to €5 per person we enjoyed a sunset cruise along the Bosphurus. Amazing to see the changing colours of the city, day to night,  Europe to Asia.

Grand Bazaar

A bit touristy but definitely worth it to stock up on Hamaan towels and pretty bowls. Stick to your guns when haggling! You will get the price you want eventually!

Basically, a picture says a 1000 words:

2.5 days in Istanbul – Day 0.5

After arriving slightly later than planned at our hotel just below the Blue Mosque (Sultahnet Mosque), we immediately ventured out into the surrounding area to find our bearings. With mum and dad having been 4 years ago and having stayed in a vaguely similar area we quickly found ourselves at the hippodrome (via a few shops ofcourse!) and the pedestrianised area around the Hagha Sofia and the Blue Mosque. With temperatures pleasant but not too warm,  we meandered a little marvelling at the gorgeous architecture of the Blue Mosque and it’s 6 spires before deciding to find a restaurant for dinner.

We had a recommendation from the hotel- the Tria Elegance but of course he had given Dad directions from the hotel and we were not there anymore!  Walking around getting hassled by Hosts for us to come into their restaurant was a little overwhelming after a long days travelling but we persevered. Mum made a few friends along the way and Fi contemplated dinner at rhe Four Seasons (still expensive even when located in Turkey) and we eventually found the Tria Elegance around 10pm.  Luckily life in Istanbul doesn’t stop come night fall so the restaurant was still packed. We enjoyed a lovely (& well priced) dinner of mezze, then main courses (I had spiced chicken with aubergine puree) followed by Baklava, and of course all washed down with pints of Efes 🙂

A taste for wine

Travel trade day for the Languedoc rousillion region = an excuse to wine taste during the normal 9-5. Basically some work chitchat and a lot of vino!!