Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince!!!!

It rained, it poured, it even hailed.. but we still made it to a fan-filled Leicester Square last night to check out the stars strut their stuff on the red carpet at the premiere of Harry Potter 6. 

Draco Malfoy!

Luna Lovegood!

Nymphadora Tonks!

Dean Thomas!

Fred & George Weasley!

Ron Weasley!!

Harry Potter!!

Helena Bohnam Carter!!! I mean, Bellatrix Lestrange!!!

Crazy-eyed fan!

I'm just so darn excited about this next HP! The HBP was probably my favourite book of the series so I've high expectations for the movie. Have already pre-bought tickets for next Wednesday when it opens in cinemas and am eagerly awaiting......

We Remember The Time

There was a time when I though your name had to be Michael to be a world wide superstar. Think early nineties and recall Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. A few days ago, one of those giants fell. If I didn't know better, I'd think that Michael Jackson was British from the way that the news of his death was received here. People were dubious that he (or any person) could pull off 50 concerts at the 02, now we won't even see 1. 

On Friday 26th of June, fans gathered at Trafalgar Square to pay tribute to the King of Pop. Some mourned his passing, most celebrated his life, though all were there to Remember The Time..

Jamie's Italian & Oki-Nami at Brighton

Continuing on from my last post..

After icecream on the beach, Dylan, Adam and I met up with Michelle and friends at Jamie's Italian restaurant in Brighton. To our surprise, Jamie turns out to be Jamie Oliver! We only had coffee at his new restaurant as it was around 3pm, but plates of food around us definitely looked worth coming back for. So after a stroll around Brighton shops and a cpl of pints we headed back to Jamie's only to find a long queue out the door (we didn't book earlier as they don't take bookings). It would be a 1.5hr wait for a table! Stuff that! It was already past 8pm and we had to drive back to home afterwards too.

So we back-tracked to a Jap place we past earlier called Oki-Nami. To be honest, we chose it because it had cool lighting and a nice ambience. The food, most fortunately, turned out to be just the kind of thing we liked too - Japanese tapas, if you will.. 

Didn't think to take photos while we were there but here's some from their website:

Glowing pastel neon lights that drew us in.. (note the awesome way the lamp shades light up)

Now try to imagine this at night.. 

Food was well presented as you'd expect from a Japanese restaurant. 

What you wouldn't expect, and what we didn't know at the time, is that this place is co-owned by DJ Norman Cook - aka Fatboy Slim! Not that that made the food taste any better. I reviewed Oki-Nami here in case you're interested in what we ate.

All in all, a pleasant end to a pleasant day.

ps, the drive home only took around an hour.

Jamie's Italian

11 Black Lion Street

Brighton

BN1 1ND

012 7391 5480

Oki-Nami

6 New Road 

Brighton

BN1 1UF

012 7377 3777

Brighton Up Your Day!

Has been awhile between posts, not because life has been boring but because we've had a number of OS visitors! Hopefully I will get around to doing a catch up post about that soon. 

Today however, I wanted to share some photos of our outing on Saturday - Brighton - my first trip to the beach in England. A trip to Brighton on the train takes around an hour. We opted to drive even though we knew that it would mostly likely take even longer, which it did. Almost 2 hours on the way there! Traffic was crawling south out of London and Dylan suspects that Tom Tom didn't take this into account when routing the fastest way to the freeway. Despite this, I'm glad we drove rather than train'ed as it's much more scenic and entertaining.

So this is Brighton beach:

Brighton Pier (there's a theme park at the end of it!)

The walk along the beach is filled with things to see/do/eat

Like fish and chips! I'm not a die hard fan of this dish, but if fish'n'chips always tasted this good then maybe I would be..

HAD to have one of these after..

Chillin' on the beach (with my icecream)

Baked Euphoria

I must say real estate agents have it very easy back in Sydney compared to the London variety. Today we met with 3 different agents at their respective offices only then to be chauffeured to properties they shortlisted based on our criteria. None of this business where you rush to each "open house" only to get there 5 mins before the inspection closes only to have the agent tell you you're too late!

All in all it was a very long and tiring day. We did find the perfect apartment.. but in the wrong location. It wouldn't have taken much for it to have been the right location, perhaps a nice cafe near by.. a park or a quaint little pub.. a patisserie.. tree lined street with Victorian terraces.. am I asking for too much, people?!!??!

*sigh*

Despair not though, for valuable ground was made on the afternoon tea front today!

The interior of the Euphorium Bakery - I think this picture is the best description I could give.

Broccoli, blue cheese, mushroom & mascarpone brioche - £2.40/£2.90 (take away/dine in).

I thought it was more tart-like rather than brioche though, but whatever. Tres good in every way except perhaps calories.

Carrot Cake - £1.80/£2.30. Not that terribly exciting to look at (but when is it?) though very pleasing to the taste buds. Not too sweet, moist yet fluffy.

 

Mocha - £1.90/£2.40. It's not often that I find a Mocha I really like, but today was one of those rare occasions. Lovely dense froth followed by (dare I say) perfect proportions of chocolate and coffee in a smooth, velvetly consistency. 

Euphorium Bakery

202 Upper Street

Islington, London

N1 1RQ

020 7704 6905

Oh, Britannia!

It's funny to think that I'm giving tour guides around London when I don't really know my way all that well yet! This week I was hosting some aunties and uncles from Oz and took them to see Buckingham Palace and the Ceremony of Changing the Guard. It was my first time seeing it too so it worked out well. I recorded some of it so now you can see what I saw aswell!



And some pictures I snapped..

And lastly,

These guys were digging up bulbs of some kind from the garden just behind where we were standing in the rare London heat. For that, I thought they deserved a photo.

Borough Market

A few weekends back a couple of friends from Sydney were in town. Unfortunately for them, the weather that weekend was the worst we've had since being here. At least the can say they've experienced the infamous dreary London weather now : ) Now, where would I take visitors from out of town? To one of my favourite markets of course! (And yes JS, it involves food!)

"Borough Market is London's oldest food market. It was established on the south bank of the Thames when the Romans build the first London Bridge. It has occupied its present site for 250 years" - from their website.

Borough Market boasts of fresh fruit & veg, meat & seafood, gourmet foods & baked goodies. 

So many types of mushrooms!

Scottish Monk Fish - nasty lookin' fella

Lobsters with pincers

So many varieties of cheese, and this was but one stall selling it

Pickled garlic, marinated olives, basil pesto, hommus, yummm

Fagot -  sounds a bit rude doesn't it!

Too-cute-to-eat cookies?

I had a particularly fun time at the German Sausages stall. There was a great big hearty German guy that just kept feeding us different sausages to try, though I did not get a photo of him. I bit into one and oily orange sausage juice dripped onto my jacket! The dear man quickly fetched me a bottle of water and some napkins to clean myself up!

We couldn't have possibly walked away without purchasing a skewer after his fine hospitality. But they were so tasty we would have regardless.

I have more photos of Borough Markets on my Flickr, click here to view.

Excursion to Surrey

Sunday had started off the usual way, sleep-in + late breakfast, when an eager and unrelenting Summer's day jumped the gun on Spring. Despite our best efforts to be lazy at home, we were too inspired by this glorious day and immediately called Dylan to plan a short road trip out of London Town. Destination: Surrey. We had no idea where exactly in Surrey we were going or what we were going to find even.. which made it all the more exciting. If we could just navigate out of London first..!

The streets of London are a little chaotic at the moment with many roads dug up due to Boris replacing old, leaky Victorian water pipes. But with Dylan's superior navigating skills and some help from iPhone Maps we eventually found ourselves cruising south west on the A3 out of London.

One hour later and a turn off the A3 found us in Cobham - light, leafy, green, meadow filled, prosperous Cobham - our first experience of non-city England.

Houses we saw were large and identified by estate name rather than number

And looked not too unlike something out of an Austin (minus the car of course)

Had to shoot these as we drove past hence the wonkiness.

The local pub

Enjoying a pint

Remember Fosters? I don't think they realise we don't even have it in Australia anymore

Street side window of the Pub

We asked the bar staff what attractions were worth seeing in Cobham. After conferring with a regular patron at the bar they concluded that anything worth seeing would be closed as it was Sunday. Instead, they suggested heading down to Guilford, which we did. There we visited another quaint pub before having dinner at Byron. The hamburgers we ate were very high quality but alas, starvation had driven me to forgetfulness and I have no photos to show for this fine meal.

Covent Garden, Again.

I picked up 2 very large punnets of strawberries for just £2 from the fruit seller in Covent Garden. Tonight we ate strawberries to our hearts' content and there's still a punnet left.

Also in Covent Garden today, we discovered the Real Food Market - a gourmet food market and taste tester heaven! After I was done dipping bits of bread into various pestos, balsamic vinegars, tahinis, sampling pastries, tortellinis, and smelling truffles (deep breath) Ad and I picked out a rather smelly, yellow and wrinkly cheese to bring home. It tasted very good however. 

The guy did tell us the name of the cheese but of course we don't remember what it was. Besides being smelly, yellow and wrinkly I can also tell you that it oozes when cut into. More oozy than Brie, that is until you get into the centre where it's firmer - not oozy at all in fact. I can also tell you that it's 6 weeks old. If anyone can identify it for me, please comment!

Those of you who know me well, know that I do not feel complete till I've had something sweet. I am very pleased to report that I feel very complete today.

Cupcake by Crumbs and Doilies

Natural History Museum

I really do love going to museums, aquariums, observatories and the like. I remember my dad taking me to the Power House Museum as a little kid and patiently waiting (only as a father could) while I played and examined every single little thing in sight. I'm sure he also has not forgotten times when I insisted that we go to the Sydney Observatory at some horridly late (or early) hour of the night (or morning) to see a passing comet. 

Nowadays I still love a trip to the museum (and the like), for all the same reasons as before and more. Every visit invokes sentiments which I find comforting when away from home. 

The National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, Tokyo was a-maz-ing. I wish I had taken photos and blogged about it when we were there but better late than never. The exhibits were very well dressed and lit. The taxidermy so incredibly life like that I would freeze on the spot looking at a deer looking at me, afraid that if I moved, I would scare it away. As with just about everything in Tokyo, the museum was immaculate and technological. Kids (big and little) could use these cards in the museum to collect information about exhibits they visited. It worked by placing the card on a terminal next to exhibit which then saves the information to it. The info could then be accessed from a PC at home or school or where ever. Neat huh?!

The Natural History Museum of London didn't quite compare to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, but I never expected it to. It was however just as warm, inviting and nostalgic as I'd hoped.

A few snaps I took of our visit:

Dinosaurs are a necessity, naturally.

Grr there are 2 grizzlies in this photo, can you spot them?

This crazy prehistoric fish was thought to be extinct but has been found in schools deep in the pacific ocean. It's also pretty special as it's believed to be a link between fish and land animals. See those 2 horizontal fins above and below its tail? Possibly an early sign of 2 legs!

Sorry, I can't remember the names of any of these minerals..

they're just so pretty though..

Ad refuses to believe that this cubic shaped mineral forms naturally in nature. It IS amazing.

And a fossilized turtle/tortoise shell. I was just really impressed with how this photo came out so I had to post it.