A Swedish wedding

Continuing my tradition of jumping all over the place in time, I'm going to interrupt the India travel story to give you some photos of our long weekend in Västerås and Stockholm. We were there for my friend Stina's wedding and it continued the tradition of beautiful weather and wonderful hospitality that have been the hallmarks of every trip I've ever taken to Sweden.

We helped them set up the venue (a beautiful barn) and then enjoyed all the festivities - despite everything being in Swedish! The food and wine was excellent, we loved the fact that the DJ played a ridiculous amount of ABBA, and it was so much fun being in the sauna and (wood-fired!) hot tub at 3am with the sky being nearly as light as the middle of the day. 

Stockholm was great as well and this time we finally made it to the Vasa Museum which was really interesting and well worth a visit. We also had the most delicious lunch at Nybrogatan 38 which is a little restaurant in the upmarket Östermalm area of Stockholm. We arrived late (the Vasa Museum had held us captive for much longer than anticipated) and even though they were operating a reduced menu it was still really good and great value. Just check out the size of my salad:

Thank you so much to Stina, her family and friends for making it such a great visit. We promise we'll come back and take you up on the offer of cross-country skiing!

The rest of the photos are online here.

The Golden Triangle: Delhi

(I can't believe I never posted this...better late than never I guess!)

As part of my part-time job last year, I was incredibly lucky to be able to go to India, somewhere that I've wanted to go to for ages, and which I've heard so much about from Mum and Alexandra.  I worked for several days at a conference in New Delhi, and then had a week to go exploring.  I was supposed to travel with a friend, but unfortunately she couldn't make it, so it was just me tripping around.  I didn't feel unsafe really at all, although being a white female by herself you certainly got a lot of looks outside the main tourist locations.  I did do some shopping at the Lajpat Nagar market on my first few days to get some clothes to blend in - a couple of shalwar kameez which were actually the best things to wear, nice and loose and light.

While the conference was on we did a bit of exploring, including the Hauz Khas complex which was very relaxed and a lovely green respite from the city, as well as the Qutub Minar, which is a 73m tall minaret which was built between 1192 and 1368.  The complex has got this fantastic iron pillar in it which is rust resilient, and quite advanced for the time of its construction (unknown, but predating the Qutub Minar at least).

After the conference I moved to a B&B  in the Defence Colony and spent three days doing some exploring around both that area and the central city.  As it was monsoon season it was a complete washout most days, and apparently one of the days was the third heaviest day of rain they'd had in 10 years - I can believe it!

Thigh-high water in my road in the Defence Colony - just don't think about what you're wading through...

While I was in Delhi I packed in as much as I possibly could.  I saw the Jama Masjid mosque, which is the largest mosque in India, holding up to 25,000 worshippers, the beautiful Red Fort, Indira Ghandi's house, the Ghandi Smriti (site of martyrdom, including an amazingly modern and interesting museum, full of things to interact with), Safdarjung's Tomb (taken there by mistake after the rickshaw driver didn't understand my directions), Humayun's Tomb, the shrine of Nizam-ud-din-Chishi (where I nearly lost my shoes after coming out a completely different way than I went in and taking about 20 minutes to walk around and find my original point of entry where I'd left my shoes in the first place...), the Jantar Mantar (a huge outdoor observatory) and the incredibly elaborate Akshardham Temple on the outskirts of Delhi.  You're not allowed to take photos inside the temple, but here's an image I've found online of the amazing elephant reliefs - so detailed (and there are 148 elephants in all, surrounding the base of the main temple).

I also got taken on a tour of Delhi by a very enterprising Sikh rickshaw driver who, as well as taking me to the inevitable shops, also took me to the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, the largest Sikh house of worship, in Delhi.  They feed, for free, an astonishing 10,000 people per day which is pretty amazing.  I tried the food and it was pretty good!  I also got a tour around the kitchen which was churning out food on a pretty incredible scale given the basic nature of the equipment.  Loved this guy who was overseeing potato preparations:

After Delhi I was supposed to get on the train to Agra, but fell hook, line and sinker for a scam at the train station and was conned into getting a car and driver for the whole round trip.  I was completely suckered in by the fact that everyone talking to me was in uniforms and seemed completely legit.  I should have known that it was all a big, fat con, but ah well, never mind.  These things happen!  In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that expensive (and they refunded me the price of my train tickets), and it was probably safer to travel that way as opposed to on trains by myself given I had just shown myself to be overly gullible!  My driver, Mantun, was actually really nice and friendly (and I am sure not in on the scam itself), and he took me to places I would never, ever have seen had I been on the train, so I'm happy to see a silver lining in it after all.

But that's enough for this post, next post, Agra and Jaipur!  (Although if you want a sneak peak of all the photos, the album is online here).

Natural History Museum soapbox

One of the things I'm really interested in is how does research make a difference in the 'real world' - how does it get out there, and get communicated to the public (who are the ones who most often pay for it in the first place!).

So, while it's one of the themes in my research (although mine is more about interactions between research and policy, rather than the general public), I'm also trying to practice what I preach.  I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Natural History Museum's most recent late night as part of their Universities Week programme. 

The late night saw a whole heap of different universities turn up to the museum to talk about their research, and I was involved in the 'soapbox' event, where individual researchers stood on a platform for 45-60 minutes, talking to people as they went by.  We each had a question in front of us to draw people in (mine was, do climate sceptics matter?), and it was surprisingly enjoyable!  It was great interacting with different people and finding out what they thought.

There's photos and more info on the LSE website here.

Next weekend I'm also going to something called LSE Shout, which is a weekend away where we're learning to about creating research impact.  We're going to be looking at posters, web design, stand up comedy and films - should be interesting!

Finally summer!

Obviously I've been extremely remiss in keeping up the blog as of late - I'm going to completely blame it on the wedding (more on that soon though once we get all the photos!) - but I've made a resolution to try and be better about doing smaller, more frequent updates.

So, seeing as the topic on everyone's minds here at the moment is the fact that we've finally started to have some lovely weather, I thought I'd share a few photos from the last couple of days.  First up is our new garden, where the roses are in full bloom and all the wild strawberries are bearing fruit (which taste absolutely amazing).

Then on Sunday I went for a walk in Kent with some friends from LSE - fields of flowers (including some early lavender and poppies), gorgeous riverside houses, and the biggest cheese ploughman's lunch you've ever seen...

And finally, from less than an hour ago, lunch with Adrian (who's on call this week, and thus free and easy during the day) in Middle Temple gardens (only open to the public during summer).  The fuchsias were in particularly full flower - they look almost cartoonish in their shape I thought.

So, fingers crossed we'll have a lot more sunny days like these!

High Tea & Cocktails at The Savoy

Thanks to some very generous presents from siblings, we had an incredibly luxurious London afternoon to celebrate Adrian's 35th birthday.

First, thanks to a (very belatedly used) Christmas present from Dominik, we had high tea at The Savoy in the Thames Foyer.  Having been recently renovated, The Savoy is absolutely beautiful and such a sumptuous place to spend a few hours.  Adrian had the 'high tea' (sandwiches, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, crumpets, and cake) and I had the 'afternoon tea' (sandwiches, scones, petit fours, and cake) - basically so we could try everything! 

Both came with the choice of an extensive selection of teas, and I chose the 'Lychee Red' ("Surprisingly sweet and soft, with lingering, lifted aromas of Asian fruits and perfumer’s flowers. Baroque, decadent, and irresistible") and Adrian had a really interesting yellow tea (I didn't even know you could get yellow tea!) which was the 'Huo Mountain Yellow Buds' tea ("Graceful, sappy with a hazel sweetness and a distinctive cool finish that leaves the mouth very refreshed").  We each had about four or five whole pots, so it was just as well we both really enjoyed our choice!  The tea was served from a tea set consisting of a tray, tea pot and water pot, the cumulative value of which was £900...

The food was delicious, with the favourite sandwich of both of us being the egg (lightly flavoured with mustard), and my favourite thing overall being my delicious petit fours (although the lemon curd that came with the scones was pretty nice too).

The funniest part though I thought was that we were in the very front table, facing the entrance way, so we had prime people watching position (you can see the front table where we were in this video).  I know we're going to appear in a lot of people's photos as well!  (Adrian reckons they put attractive people in that spot, so I'll take the compliment thank you very much.)  I also thought Emmy would be interested in this stunning display of orchids in the foyer.

I was absolutely stuffed after the afternoon tea (for over £50 per person I should hope so), so we took a short walk across the river to the Southbank to peruse the bookstalls before heading back to the American Bar to meet Pam and Dan for some cocktails.  Again, while pricey, they were an absolute treat and thank you to Alexandra for sponsoring them!  I particularly liked my 'Blushing Monarch' (gin, Campari, Triple Sec, passionfruit), named after Princess Diana, who apparently frequented the bar regularly.

We finished the night at Cay Tre in Soho, with some really delicious, fresh Vietnamese food - something completely different to The Savoy, but the perfect yin and yang I think.

So, a completely decadent day in London, but definitely well worth it!