4th of July fireworks in NJ

Just chillin’, watching the fireworks with my family in NJ.

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Harrods – photo shoot and makeup lessons

We went to Harrods to participate in two of their Hollywood promotional events. One was a makeup lesson from one of Bobbi Brown’s top makeup artists. For an hour I was transported into the secret Woman’s world of foundation, blush, and eyeliner. I learned how to get that ’smokey eye’ look, how to shape the eyebrow, the pitfalls of bronzers, and how to transform a ‘day’ look into an ‘evening’ look with some eye shadow and lip gloss.

It made me appreciate being a man and never having to deal with all that crap.

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The other event was to star in a “film noir” photo shoot. They provided the trenchcoats, hats, backdrop, and a professional photographer. We asked to recreate the posters from Casablanca. The photographer kept calling us “Humphrey” and “Ingrid.” I liked the results. We’re thinking of using one of them with the wedding invitations.

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London Freewheel 2008

This is the 2nd year in a row that we cycled the London Freewheel. That’s when they shut down some of the main streets and bridges in central London so that only bicycles can ride. We joined over 40,000 cyclists to ride the 12km route.

We saw all kinds of cycles:

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A massive line of rollerbladers also crashed the party…

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We saw lots of London’s famous landmarks (all taken from the seat of my bicycle as I rode by):

The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.

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Wellington Arch and statue, Hyde Park Corner.

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Victoria Memorial, in front of Buckingham Palace.

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The Tower of London.

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Admiralty Arch, Trafalgar Square

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George IV statue, Trafalgar Square

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And another statue atop a building that I can’t identify. (They’re everywhere in London, it’s hard to keep track.)

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We also saw some of the red-coated guards on their watch.

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At the end, we relaxed in the park with some free juice boxes.

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We also got to see Chris Hoy, who won 3 gold cycling medals at this year’s (2008) Olympics.

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And the £20,000 bicycles that he used to win them.

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Whew! We cycled about 6 hours that day. Can’t wait until next year’s Freewheel!

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Mela Festival 2008 – Gunnersbury Park

Once again we went to the Mela Festival, London’s biggest Asian (mostly Middle-Eastern) festival. A lot of people go for the music and dancing, but we go for the food.

I started with an appetizer of onion bhajis and meat samosas.

Thirsty, we went for coconut milk. Nice coconuts, eh?

The main course was best… Jamaican jerk chicken and grilled corn. Uber-delish.

A new addition to the festival were the carnival rides. They even had a small roller coaster, the “Wild Mouse,” which was awesome. I would have gone on it twice if I didn’t have so much to eat.

It was fun, but not scary. About the scariest part of the ride was the transgendered alcoholic mascot.

Taste of London 2008 – Tasty & Tastier

Our second year at the Taste of London, once again held in posh Regent’s Park.

This time we took detailed notes of every dish.

Restaurant: Trinity

• Cottage Pie – beef short rib, onion, bone marrow, and anise carrots.

  Very beefy. Bland mash, although perfect consistency. Greasy bone marrow, but as expected. Carrots from heaven. Rating: 6/10

• Pigs Trotters – Crackling, pain poilane and sauce gribiche.

  Crackling was very hard, felt like I might chip a tooth. The pigs were
  on a nice piece of toast, and the ’sauce gribiche’ tasted like a raw
  olive paste. Rating: 6/10

Restaurant: Cocoon

• Chilli Tiger Prawns – with chilli bean sauce and Thai basil.

  Spicy, but the good kind of spicy. Served on a big leaf with some tender asparagus. Rating: 8/10

• Duck Rolls with Seaweed Wrap

  Good and crispy, lotsa soy, and the seaweed wrap was a nice touch. Rating: 8/10

Restaurant: Cafe Spice Namaste

• Dahi Batata Saev Mumra Poori – crispy puffed poories filled with crushed potato seasoned with a trio of chutneys and served sprinkled with roasted puffed rice and chickpea vermicilli.

  The rice and pastries were very crispy, with a nice spicy aftertaste. Still, a bit unsatisfying. Rating: 7/10

Restaurant: Aubaine

• L’Exotic – light vanilla cream, fruit salad topped with a vanilla crumbe.

  Delicious dessert. The vanilly was creamy, the crumble added texture, and fruit was cool and fresh. Deducting 1/2 point for the grapefruit, but otherwise perfect. Yummo! Rating: 9.5/10

Restaurant: Le Cercle

• White Chocolate Delicacy – white chocalate topped with whipped cream and strawberries, served in a paper cone.

  The whipped cream was too foamy and it could have used more strawberries mixed in. The white chocolate underneath was excellent. Rating: 8/10

Restaurant: Boxwood Cafe

• Valrhona Hot Chocolate Fondue – with marshmallows, biscotti, and strawberries for dipping.

  This is the only restaurant that we repeated from last year, and they didn’t disappoint. If you’ve got a chocolate craving, this hits all the right spots. Rating: 10/10

There were also lots of booths for independent food sellers, and our favorites were:

Company: Simply Organic

• Sweet Potato Soup – with chilli and coconuts.

  Thick, creamy, and very satisfying. I’d like to learn how to make this at home. Rating: 8/10

Company: Tartaholic

• Almond Butterscotch Pie – ’nuff said?

  To. Die. For. It’s a good thing that they’re not stocked in my local grocery store, or I’d weigh a metric ton. Rating: 10/10

Company: Oddono’s Gelati

• 1/2 Chocolate and 1/2 Vanilla Caramel - don’t call it ice cream. This is gelati all the way.

  Very good. The chocolate was a little thin, but the vanilla caramel was perfect. Rating: 8/10

After all that tasting, I was stuffed. They don’t have Thanksgiving in the UK, but meal-wise this is a good substitute. I’m already anticipating next Taste 2009.

London Open Gardens Weekend: Sunday in the Park with Mitch

Once a year, many of the private gardens in London are opened up to the public for one weekend only. The movement started in 1998 with 40 participating gardens. In 2008 there were over 170 gardens, many of them with fairs, food, and music. It costs £7.50 per ticket (about $15) for unlimited access the whole weekend, which is split between the gardens for non-profit upkeep and maintenance.

It was a beautiful Saturday and we intended to stroll through the gardens and perhaps have a picnic. But it was a weekend so we slept late, had a relaxing breakfast, walked the dogs, and by the time we got out of the flat it was mid-afternoon and some gardens were already closing.

We started along Woburn Place at Russell Square Gardens, one of the more popular areas on display. Designed in 1804, it’s considered to be one of London’s finest examples of a classic English garden.

It was hosting a family faire with several events. There was a Punch & Judy show. It reminded me of a Tom & Jerry cartoon with lots of comic violence.

A display of large Birds of Prey: hawks, owls, vultures and the like.

(All the kids were calling this one “Hedwig,” from the Harry Potter books.)

And an amateur belly-dancing troupe.

For me, the highlight were the garden beds on the edges of the park. They were immaculately maintained, lush and in perfect bloom. The bees were loving it. (My camera’s macro zoom isn’t very good and all the pictures came out blurry except this one.)

Down the block is a rooftop zen garden atop the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). It’s a very peaceful site, the kind of place I could sit for hours and read a book or take a nap, although it was designed for the meditation and contemplation of “Forgiveness.”

It featured a checkerboard garden of stone and lemon thyme,

and also a rock garden.

Next we strolled to Gower Street to The Academy . It’s a backyard garden behind a set of Georgian houses from 1776, and a hangout of the “Bloomsbury Set” in the early 1900’s of artists such as Virgina Woolf and E.M. Forster. The Academy is now an exclusive bed & breakfast, and you have to walk through the lobby and dining rooms to get to the garden in back.

It features a goldfish pond in the center with a stone fountain, a slate patio for having tea, and a gravel pad with vines hanging from trellises, all surrounded by thick green trees that act like a curtain to hide and protect you from the big city outside. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t have a wide-angle lens to do it justice.

Lastly we went down the block to Bedford Square, 1775, the best Georgian square in London. The lawn is immaculate, shaped like a large oval with a pair of trees in the middle which were screaming for me to string a hammock between them.

Outside of the park is a brand new origami-looking Bedford Pavilion (Feb 2008). It’s the winning design from a contest held by the Architectural Associations’ Design Research Lab. The goal was to make innovative use of a new type of concrete called “Fibre C.” From a distance I though it was made of metal.

It would have been a perfect day to take the dogs with us, but I don’t think the gardens would have appreciated their kind of watering & fertilizing.

Remember, remember the fifth of November. (I don’t!)

November 5th in Britain is kind of like July 4th in the US. Except that instead of celebrating the declaration of independence with fireworks and a barbecue, they celebrate the capturing of a traitor who nearly bombed Parliament with fireworks and a bonfire effigy (still a kind of barbecue, I guess you could say).

It’s called Guy Fawkes Day, and before last weekend I never heard of it. Well, I sort-of heard about it because the movie ‘V for Vendetta’ was a futuristic, fictional version of the story. Guy Fawkes was part of the ‘Gunpowder Plot,’ a band of religious rebels who rented a room underneath Parliament, filled it with barrels of gunpowder, and were planning to set it off during its opening session to kill the King and most of the House of Lords. It failed because one of the conspirators wrote a letter to warn one of the Lords not to attend the opening session, and leading to a search of the grounds. It is said that they found Guy Fawkes in the chamber with a lit candle in his hand.

The king gave special permission to torture him until he gave up the names of his conspirators. Then he was sentenced to the worst death sentence they had: to be hung, drawn, and quartered. That means he is hung slowly until almost (but not quite) dead, then taken down a laid on a table where his intestines and private parts are cut off and burned in front of his eyes (‘drawn’), and finally he is beheaded and his limbs separated (‘quartered’) and the pieces of his body are sent all over the kingdom and hung on pikes as a warning to others. But Guy Fawkes was clever… he jumped when they hung him, so his neck broke and he died before they did the drawing & quartering.

I think it’s ironic that they celebrate a near-bombing with a huge display of mid-air explosions, but maybe it’s just me.

We went to the Royal Windsor racecourse with a group of our friends. It’s a small place (I think ‘royal’ was just a marketing ploy), but they converted the standing grounds into a nice carnival fair with rides and games. Here’s a blurry-yet-artistic photo with some nice shadows.

Next they start the bonfire, which represents the burning-in-effigy of Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators.

Then it’s on with the fireworks!!!

Yay! Guy Fawkes didn’t blow up Parliament! Look at how big the explosion would have been!

Yay! No-one noticed him dragging in barrel after barrel of gunpowder into a room directly underneath the main government building. (Didn’t they ever hear of Homeland Security?)

Yay! He was hung!

Yuck! He was drawn!

Double-Yuck! He was quartered!

After the fireworks we were treated to a very camp, cheesy tribute band to Take That, which is Britain’s top boy band. They’re called (gulp) “Fake That.”

I expected people to leave, but they really got into it. Especially the girls. Marta was no exception.

Robbie Williams sure looks like he’s packing down the beers. Let’s hope that shirt doesn’t come off later in the show!

The music was ultra-cheesy. They did remakes of Barry Manilow and the Bee Gees. Even scarier… they were among Take That’s biggest hits. I figure that they were probably just as cheesy as the real thing, so I guess I saw my first boy-band concert. We had a blast. HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY!!!

Happy Halloween 2007

We started off with a little pumpkin-carving. And I mean little, because we could only find teeny-tiny pumpkins at the store. Still, they had plenty of pumpkin seeds for toasting. Marta’s is on the right, mine on the left.

Halloween is also Jack’s birthday (best guess, based on the records from the pound). Happy Birthday, mutt!

Then we dressed up and went on the town. Can you guess our costumes?

It’s from the movie A Clockwork Orange. We went as the droogs. I was Alex. We walked around with a cane singing ‘Singing in the Rain’ and creeping out the people we passed. We looked really great, and almost everyone guessed it. But in a close-up, does it look a little ‘Cabaret?’ Maybe we’ll do that next Halloween.

We started the night by taking a ride on the London Eye. I didn’t know that it is now the most visited landmark in the whole world, even beating the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. (Previously I thought it was the Eiffel Tower, but I was wrong.)

The ride is very smooth and slow. You don’t feel like you’re moving at all. The capsules are big, too, enough for about 30 people.

The Eye gives you some of the best views of the city. This is Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, all in one shot.

Next we did the ‘Spooky’ Thames cruise. It’s the same as the regular tourist cruise, except the tour guide tells you haunted histories of the buildings and bridges. It’s a special thing they only do for Halloween.

My favorite story was about Tower Bridge — it’s where they used to display rotting heads on pikes, of traitors and criminals from the Tower of London prison. They served as a warning to the ships entering London, because it’s the first bridge they pass under.

Also, while they were refurbishing London Bridge for a new exhibition next year, they found an underground vault filled with bones. Not too surprising, since it was once used as a burial ground for people who died of the plague. They thought they had already found all the plague vaults, but it appears they missed one!

We finished off the night with a late-night screening of Black Sheep, the zombie-sheep movie. It was silly, funny, and of course a bit gross. Not as sophisticated as Shawn of the Dead, but still a good time. If you can only see one killer zombie-sheep movie this year, make it Black Sheep.

The ‘London Freewheel’

For the first time ever, London shut down the central tourist roads to create a 14km (8.7 mile) route only for bicycle riders. It’s part of the city’s promotion of bicycles as the answer to both traffic and pollution. They been pumping tons of money to build bicycle lanes and parking spots all over town. (This event alone cost over 2 million pounds.) And they’re trying to introduce a huge bike-rental system like the successful one recently started in Paris.

I’ve been riding a bicycle to work for the past few months, so I was all set. But Marta hasn’t been on a bicycle since she was 14. So I borrowed a friend’s bike and she started practicing in the park. Guess what… it was just like riding a bike! She was immediately riding around like a champion.

With practice under our belt, we were ready. The main route started at St James Park, which is a bit far from our flat, but the city organized several group rides to get us there. First we met up with about 100 cyclists in our city.

It took about an hour to reach our local ‘hub’ at Ravenscourt Park where we joined a few thousand cyclists. They were giving away free Red Bulls — I guzzled one down and took a few more for the ride.

We were led in small groups, riding along the small, quaint residential streets of central-west London.

NOTE: From this point forward, all photos were taken while riding my bike!

We rode through Hyde Park to get there. I had never seen ‘the Serpentine’ river before, and I didn’t know you could rent paddle and rowboats — I’ve got to try that sometime.

There was quite a lot of bicycle traffic as we approached St James Park. They planned for 30,000 bikers, but they underestimated how popular it would be. They tried to freeze the registrations when it reached 38,000, but on the day of the event nearly 45,000 showed up.

Finally, St James Park. And in another surprise for me… Buckingham Palace!!! Wave to the Queen!

This is the map of the whole route:

And this is where we started:

Inside the park they were giving away free sandwiches, courtesy of Hovis, the main sponsor of the event. (Hovis is a bread company, sort of like Wonder bread in the states.) We also got to see lots of cool homemade bikes, like this one with a huge stereo speaker system in the back (check out the subwoofers in the ‘rockets’):

And this custom chrome bike with spinning rims. Pimp my Bike!

Finally it was time to join the throng and cycle through London’s main streets.

First it was down Bridge Street, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

Then we passed the Horse Guards, turned right and went to Victoria Embankment to ride along the Thames.

We passed Cleopatra’s Needle, a huge Egyptian obelisk which reminded me of the one we saw in the middle of Paris. [Interesting history here: it was made in Egypt in 1460 BC. Britain bought it from the city of Alexandria for £15,000 in 1878, to commemorate the victory over Napoleon over fifty years earlier. But on the voyage over, the container ship experienced rough waters and had to be abandoned by its crew. It was left floating and adrift in the Bay of Biscay, no-one knowing if it would sink. Five days later it was spotted off the northern coast of Spain, completely intact. She was towed to port and then a steamship came to finish the trip to London.]

We continued on the embankment to the Blackfriar’s bridge underpass, which was called the ‘loud zone’ because everyone was encouraged to ring their bells and holler to take advantage of the echo. It sounded very spooky, almost like a Halloween party with ghosts going ‘ooohhh–OOOhh–WOOO!!’

We looped around to ride over London Bridge, and I got another great look at Tower Bridge outside the Tower of London. Someday I have to sped a tourist day there, it looks so cool!

Then we turned around and rode the whole thing back again. The ride back was even better because we had a clear view across the Thames. And I got to see yet another place I need to visit: the London Eye.

By this time we had been riding for about five hours, and we had to spend another two hours* getting from St James Park to home. Thank goodness for those extra Red Bulls! In total we rode for about 50 kilometers, or 31 miles. I thought I would be tired, but I felt great — the next day I ran in to work instead of riding, and it was one of my fastest running times ever. Marta was wiped out because she wasn’t used to riding. But that didn’t discourage her… she liked it so much that she bought the bike for herself and now she rides to the train station every day instead of waiting for the bus.

Viva la bicycle!

*It really only takes an hour, but we went extra slow because Marta wasn’t used to riding on the roads with the cars and traffic.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Every summer for the entire month of August, Edinburgh (Scotland) is host to the largest arts festival in the world. 1.7 million tickets were sold for 31,000 performances of 2,050 shows in 250 venues. The shows are mostly theater plays and stand-up comedy shows, but also some music, opera, and art exhibits too. Most of them are first-time productions, and the best ones go on to biggest theaters and sold-out tours.

Marta & I went up for the opening weekend with some friends of ours. It’s less than a 2-hour flight from London, so it’s easy to get to. (In my office, there are several people who work in London during part of the week and then fly back to Edinburgh where they actually live.) And since Scotland is part of the UK, it doesn’t feel like you’re traveling to another country, no passports needed from here.

On the first day, we didn’t have any shows planned until the evening so we spent the day exploring Edinburgh. The highlight was the Edinburgh Castle, which dominates the city atop a rocky mountain in the center.

To get to the top, we first had to walk around the mountain. Along the way we passed the Scottish national flower, the thistle, a thorny, purple flower which was first used in the 15th century as a symbol of defence.

To get inside the castle, you have to walk to the entrance along the Royal Mile, a old street that stretches between the castle and Holyrood Palace, the Queen of Scotland’s residence.

Most of the stores are tourist traps selling everything Scottish – kilts, bagpipes, flags, and such. There are also street performers, like this one playing William Wallace (aka Braveheart)…

…and this bagpipe player:

There was also a museum of optical illusions (The Magic Gallery).

I found an old-fashioned police information box. (Eat your heart out, Dr. Who!)

There was also a large church & square, and you get an idea of how many people were there for the Fringe Festival that weekend.

After exploring the Royal Mile, we went into the castle. The first area you pass through is the Esplanade, where they host the Edinburgh Military Tattoo — a military parade & show.

At the top of the hill, there are some great views of the city of Edinburgh.

The castle was really cool. The rock it was built on top of is actually an extinct volcano. Its sheer cliffs and steep slopes make it an ideal location for a fortress, which is exactly what it was used for since the earliest records in 600AD. But it was King David I who laid the groundwork for using the castle as the seat of power in Scotland, holding first meeting of the Scottish Parliament around 1140. Of the buildings he constructed, only St. Margaret’s Chapel remains.

But it was mostly used a military fort. There are lots and lots of thick walls, with slits for the cannons to defend her.

The biggest cannon is called Mons Meg, a 6-ton siege gun used in the 15th century. It was powerful enough to fire a stone nearly 2 miles away, as recorded when it was fired in 1558 in honor of the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots. It finally broke in 1681 when the barrel burst during a birthday firing ceremony.

There were lots of other buildings, but we were running out of time so we only walked around to get a few pictures.

There’s also a small pet cemetery where the Queen and other royal/military dogs are buried.

On with the show!
The first night, we went to see the ‘One-Man Star Wars Trilogy.’ Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. One actor (Charles Ross, from Canada) stands on an empty stage and re-enacts the entire Star Wars trilogy in 75 minutes. It was absolutely amazing. He captures all the dialog perfectly — Luke’s whiny voice, Han Solo’s macho swagger, Yoda’s muppety grunts, even R2-D2’s bleeps & bloops. When he puts his hands up to his ears, you can almost see Princess Leia. He uses his whole body to portray the special effects, the X-wings, the droids, and especially the Walkers when they get toppled over in the battles of Hoth and Endor. He also throws a few inside jokes for the real Star Wars geeks, like making Chewbacca do a questioning ‘hey, what about me?’ roar at the end of A New Hope (because he’s the only one who doesn’t get a medal of honor). If you’re a Star Wars fan, you should really see this show.

The second night we saw Rich Hall’s live stand-up comedy show. I didn’t recognize the name until I got to the show, but I remember him from an old comedy show called ‘Not Necessarily the News’ which I watched religiously as a kid. He also invented the ’sniglet’ segment on Saturday Night Live — funny words that should be in the dictionary, but aren’t — and I bought all of his sniglet books. (One of them is still in my Mom’s house, in the downstairs bathroom!) He’s an American, but he moved to the UK and is now more popular here and Australia than back in the US. He won two awards for his comedy show at the 2000 Edinburgh festival and has been performing there ever since.

Our night wasn’t the best show for him. He tried to ad-lib and talk to the audience, but all the people he picked out were really boring and he just couldn’t make it funny. He also told the world’s worst one-liner: ‘So the waiter brought me a plate with a circle and two dots over it, and I said “No, I asked for an omelet.”‘ Get it? Umlaut? Omelet? Don’t worry, most of the audience didn’t get it either. And those who did get it (like me) groaned because it was such a bad pun.

Then we spent some more time sightseeing. There was a museum doing an Andy Warhol exhibit:

There was a street parade to celebrate the opening of the Festival. Look, it’s Dr. Who again:

A really neat-looking cathedral:

A typical Scottish hillside:

We also went to some of the most amazing restaurants. All of the food in Edinburgh was excellent, much better than in London and less expensive, too. If you’re a foodie, you should go.

Lastly, we saw the famous statue of Greyfriars Bobby (an actual Category-A historic landmark!). Bobby was a Skye Terrier who belonged to a night watchman in the 1800’s. When his master died, Bobby spent the rest of his life sitting on his master’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard cemetery. After several years someone pointed out that he should be put down since there was no owner, so the Edinburgh city council paid for the renewal of his license and ensured his care. When Bobby died years later, he couldn’t be buried within the cemetery (because it was consecrated ground), so instead he was buried just inside the gate of a property next to it, not far from his master’s grave. The story of Bobby’s loyalty has inspired numerous books, movies, and TV shows. The statue was built in 1981 and unveiled by the royal Duke of Gloucester. It stands outside a pub named after him (Greyfriars Bobby) and the statue & graveyards are popular tourist attractions.