Fancy a port? Don't mind if I do...

To take advantage of a work meeting of Amelia's which was (every so conveniently) arranged for a Monday morning (now how on earth did that happen to get organised like that I wonder...), we spent the weekend soaking up the sun (and a lot of port) in Porto.

Now, it may have been the sheer delight in seeing sun again, or all the wonderful food and drink, but Porto would definitely have to be up there in my favourite weekend holiday destination list.  It was cheap, interesting, and not so taxing on the 'must-see' list that you didn't feel bad spending most of your time debating the relative merits of white or tawny port...  We did see some interesting things however, like climbing up the Torre de Clerigos to get a great view over the city, heading out to the beach to the Atlantic Ocean (I think I've got my geography right there), and stumbling across a bird market with every kind of parrot or canary you could think of.

The port houses in and of themselves are really interesting too - I learnt heaps of stuff about how port is made (essentially wine + brandy = port) and we tried to think that we could tell the difference between the aged and straight in the bottle stuff, but in hindsight who knows what we were talking about!  It was great that they're all so close together along the river and you really get a sense of how different some of them are in their approach to things (depsite most of the industry being owned by a few companies with several different labels).

The city itself is really interesting in terms of its buildings and layout.  There's the labyrinthine old town on the banks of the river, replete with red tiled roofs and blue tiled walls and which is basically crumbling away, then across the river is the Villa Nova de Gaia - essentially the 'new town'.  It was only joined to the old town by the Luiz I bridge, designed by a student of Gustave Eiffel.  Then back on the same side as the old town you've got Foz which is a beach area out the west of the city, then the newer areas further north.  We had an unlimited travel card which we definitely made use of during our three days there!

We managed to bring three bottles of port home with us - one white, one normal tawny, and one 10 year old tawny.  I'm now on the hunt for port glasses from the op shops so we can drink it in style!

Check out the rest of the photos here.

Fun times with a razor

To celebrate the end of winter, it was time for the annual de-hairing.  And, being a (very) good sport, Adrian let me have a bit of fun with the razor... (apologies for the sideways photos - I can't work out how to turn them round!).

But rest assured...it hasn't stayed like that!  Although the moustache is here for a few more days yet :)

New house!

It's been pretty quiet in this neck of the woods lately in terms of travel - however there are some trips coming up (Porto and Morocco!) so keep an eye out for those posts.  We've mostly been keeping busy by finding our new house and packing up all our stuff.  Here are some photos of the new place: pretty cute don't you think!

I particularly love how it has a garden - and a shed!  I've been longing to have something green and to be able to get out and enjoy the sun (when it finally shows up) so here's hoping it gets a bit of sun throughout the day.  It's still in South London and close to all the transport links etc. we need (well, that I need, not Adrian on his bike!) and should hopefully be a place we can settle into for a little bit.  We move in this Saturday - can't wait!

I also recently won tickets to the opening night of the Affordable Art Fair (£25 per ticket - score!) which we went to last night and we celebrated our new flat by getting two prints to hang on the walls.  The first is a Graham Carter print (he's based in Brighton) and you can see it as the first picture to the left on this link - it's the one of the panda made entirely out of birds.  It's reasonably large (bigger than A4) and we bought it just as a print so we'll need to get it framed.

The second is a print of this painting of the Battersea Power Station by Jayson Lilley (a graphic artist from Devon).  We looked at possibly getting the original painting (maybe A2 square, so quite large), but at £860 or so it was quite a big investment! Instead we've got a limited edition print which is quite a bit smaller (maybe only 15cm square) but box framed which looks really cool.  The power station is not far from our house so it should fit right in.

I can't wait to hang them on the wall!

Throwing ourselves down steep cliffs for fun

As is becoming a slight habit now (well definitely for Adrian!), once winter arrived, it was straight online to book our ski trip.  Having gone with the absolutely brilliant UCPA last time (kind of like the YMCA for France – ensuring that expensive sports like skiing or diving are available for those with less generous means), there was no question about who we’d choose this year. 

Adrian was keen for a bigger challenge than La Plagne, so we decided to go with Val d’Isere from 1-8 Jan.  There’s lots of back country area and it had a specialist ‘off-piste’ group which Adrian could join (think lots of hiking up mountains with a shovel strapped to your back).  I went with snowboarding again, and as usual with the UCPA, everything was thrown into the price (accommodation, four meals/day, gear, lift pass and full-time instruction).

This time we also learnt from our mistakes and flew over rather than submitting ourselves to the torture of the bus ride.  And thank goodness we did – we learned on arrival that something had gone wrong with the buses and they took nearly 40 hours to get there!  Yikes...  Although we didn’t do amazingly well either – a slight miscalculation of the tube times meant an incredibly stressful sprint to the train which we made with literally 90 seconds to spare!  It was a bit of a hectic start to 2011 that’s for sure.

We went with Bryony, a friend from Oxford, and Frances, a friend from Adrian’s work.  It was good having four because we got our own little (very little) room and could all compare notes from when we got back from our respective group sessions.  The snow was pretty icy for the first few days, but luckily we got a big dump on the Wednesday night and so everyone got some excellent powder runs in.

One of the crazy things about Val d'Isere is this bar called 'La Folie Douce' which is located right in the middle of all the runs and only accessible either on skis (or snowboard!) or via a telecabine.  It was crazy to come over the crest of the hill and see it with all the music pumping away.  This is what it looked like in the middle of the madness:

At the UCPA they didn’t supply helmets with the gear so I ended up buying one (just about as cheap as renting one).  Thank goodness I did because I took two big falls in the first couple of days (one completely my own fault, the other when someone ran over my board) and broke my helmet!!  Better than breaking my head...  Luckily I’d remembered to keep the receipt so now have a brand new one nestled in the cupboards at home.

It was awesome snowboarding down the glacier right at the very top of the ski area – I think it’s about 3600m above sea level.  I loved the off-piste powder too – makes you remember why you pay all that money to go!

As usual, lots of photos uploaded here – enjoy!

Brumal Budapest!

When we found out that both of our offices were closing down over the Christmas period, there was a mad scramble to the internet to see what cheap, last-minute deal we could get for a quick holiday between Christmas and NYE.  Of the places we had down on our respective ‘want-to-visit’ lists and which had good deals on offer, Budapest came out tops!  (Or ‘top-best’ as our guide in Turkey a few years back would always say).

So early on Boxing Day it was off to the airport for a quick hop on Malev Hungarian Airlines (no cheap airline for us my friend!) over to freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing (there aren’t enough e’s in the world to explain to you the coldness) Budapest.  But luckily, as we were living it up in style, our hotel room was nice and warm (although not cosy – we got the wheelchair friendly room so it was massive!) and we were well rugged up against the cold wearing an interesting and fashionable selection of thermals, gloves, scarves, jackets and hats.

We spent the first day exploring the Buda side of the river, including the usual suspects of the castle, St Mattias church, the Fisherman’s Bastion and Gellert Hill.  It was all covered in snow and any refuge indoors we could find was most welcome, but the walk up Gellert Hill was nice and warming as well so a good choice of activity to round off the day.  We also got into the local culinary scene by trying some paprika flavoured chips!  Dinner was at the Christmas market in the middle of town on the Pest side.  We got a fried potato pancake kind of thing smothered in sour cream (Hungarian cuisine is most definitely not calorie-conscious) and a kürtös kalács which is a kind of twisted Hungarian doughnut.  Delicious!  The Christmas market was smaller than the ones we had seen in Munich, but it was nice to be able to catch them for a few days after Christmas anyway.

Day two was spent looking at things on the Pest side, including the Synagogue, food market, Parliament, and Heroes’ Square.  The highlight though was definitely the baths – we went to the Szechenyi baths which were the big ones at the top of the hill (painted yellow).  It was dark while we were there, and snowing, so with the heat coming up off the 38 degree water it made it all foggy and very cool.  Such a strange feeling to have the snow coming down while you were heated from the bottom!  They had three outdoor pools, then lots of indoor ones – and we tried them all!  The saunas were a bit too hot for me to stay in for too long, but the whirly jet pool outside which propelled you around in a circle was ridiculously fun.

I should mention here the joy of our hotel breakfast.  It was a buffet in the Hungarian style – so lots of eggs, meat, bread etc. Basically perfect lunch food!  There was a small sign asking not to take things for lunch, but it was ignored by almost everyone there.  We tried to be subtle about it, but some families had almost chain-gang style lunch making going on with piles of ham and cheese rolls ending up at the end of each table!  It was great though to have some boiled eggs and rolls to get us through the day between our massive breakfast and dinners...

Day three we went out into the Budapest ‘burbs to Memento Park.  It’s basically a big patch of land where they put all the statues from the Communist era together.  Because they were mostly intended to be seen from a fair distance, having them right on the ground looks crazy!  The scale is all skewy.  It was a bit of an adventure getting the trams and buses out there and thank goodness I knew about how long it should take because it felt like we were seeing the entire suburban landscape on the way!  Unfortunately again, it was freeeeeezing so while they had a really interesting film on (an original ‘how-to’ guide for communist spies), it was far too cold to sit there watching it for long.  We also saw the cathedral that day before heading to an all you can eat and drink restaurant for dinner.  While this wouldn’t normally be top of our list of places to eat, it was actually really good – lots of Hungarian things like goulash and the quality was pretty good.  The red wine servings were rather enormous though which led to a bit of a headache the next day...

Our last day was spent visiting the cathedral and some other random bits of pieces around the city like a great sculpture made up of little shoes along the banks of the Danube.  It was kind of a shame it was so freezing that we couldn’t stroll around the city at a leisurely pace, but at the same time the snow was very pretty and it was always a great excuse to pop into a coffee shop for a piece of cake to warm up!

The photos are here – enjoy!