September '07

Yum Cha at Phoenix Palace, Baker Street

As it was Erik's last weekend in London, we decided to have his last yum cha with him, at Phoenix Palace. Baker Street was only a brisk cycle away so we'll definitely make this journey more frequently!

There was a humungous queue for tables inside and outside the restaurant, and it was probably more than half an hour later that we were shown to our tables and we were STARVING by then. We ordered heaps of food and the waitress warned that it would take half an hour for our dishes to arrive ...

The food was devoured as soon as they arrived -- various types of silky cheong fun, dumplings, radish cakes, etc, all of exceptional quality.

Borough Markets, Tate Modern

Muffin's celebratory eating session was not over yet! We woke up in what can still be described as MORNING and made a beeline to Borough Markets, a place we bring ALL our visitors to London. We taste-tested and ate our way through the markets, though our selection of food was different to what we normally eat (with the exception of Monmouth coffee). We had some venison burgers, a pain au chocolat, tabouleh ... and bought two cep mushrooms (for £3.70!) and two tubs of olives.

To work off our fullness in preparation for dinner, we walked towards Waterloo from the markets, making a quick detour to Tate Modern and left when we got sleepy. There was one memorable display there which we liked -- which was a video of ants carrying around some shiny circles.

 

 

We went for a stroll in Camden Markets to kill time while waiting for our table at Asakusa. Lots of food were going CHEAP because it was close to closing time (*makes mental note*).

Asakusa is the BEST find of a Japanese restaurant so far in London. In our excitement, I forgot to take photos of our dinner! Here's another blog of the restaurant until I get a chance to go back to take my own photos ... Not only was it delicious, it was incredibly VFM (value for money) -- for the four of us, the bill only came up to £75, including drinks and dessert. We were truly stuffed to the gills. Between us, we had devoured three servings of sashimi, one serving of sushi, a delicious stewed pork, a stewed aubergine with bonito flakes waving about, a mackerel with miso and two servings of tempura. Dessert was a pancake with red bean in it.

Muffin's Birthday

I bought Muffin a book on mushrooms, which arrived a few days earlier.

Had lunch with work people at the usual greasy spoon, Cafe Madeira, which was becoming greasier than usual with each visit ... we decided that this would be our last visit. We promise!

As it was Muffin's birthday, he was allowed to watch a crappy horror movie at the cinemas. I was forced to watch Rob Zombie's Halloween.

London Freewheel!

The day we were waiting for (kinda) had finally arrived! Today, the bicycles will take over the streets of London.

We donned on our daggy red bibs and headed to a hub in Finsbury Park, then set off past the cheerleaders to the main route.

Boldly going where bicycles normally don't go ...

Taking over the streets

Cycling whereever we pleased

 

Bicycle parking

All the free sandwiches were gone by the time we got to St James's park so we went off the designated route and headed off to Kiasu (again) to replenish our fats.

Cycling to ... Golders Green

We rode all the way up to Highgate today, up probably the steepest hill in London. So when we got to Nero's at Highgate I was hot and tired -- and ordered a Frappe Latte. After reading the Sunday paper, we headed to Golders Green via Hamstead Hills. More hills! We stocked up at a Korean grocery store, and also bought some salmon for our steam boat.

Checking the route in Hampstead Heath

Cycling to ... Bayswater

A collegue had alerted us to the presence of a new Malaysian restaurant in Bayswater, so we had to check it out. Now that we could cycle basically anywhere in London, we could easily alleviate the guilt of eating too much ...

First stop was to our local bike shop, to purchase more locks for our bikes, this time for the wheels. After that we headed off to our local Nero (where the barista knows us by our coffee order) where we enjoyed our daily Americano with hot milk / soya with the Saturday paper.

Then we were off to Bayswater via bike. It's a new experience, seeing London from above ground (rather than popping up from various Underground stations). When we reached Bayswater we discovered HEAPS of restaurants along Queensway -- we'll definitely need to come back and try them all out! But this time around, we ate at Kiasu.

It's now been more than 4 hours since I've eaten ... I'm still having problems digesting my food! Looks like I'll be skipper dinner tonight ...

More accessorising ...

It's taken me two weeks, but I've finally finished my Scotland blog!

We bought some chunky ABUS d-locks for our bikes only to come home and find that they do not fit anywhere on the frame ... Also bought some lights, and realised that we had to remove the whole light as it didn't have the clips on them like our old lights ...

Our new bikes!

We went to Evans Cycles in London Bridge to pick up our brand new bikes -- we got a Trek 7.3 FX each. Mine was a women's model. And it is SWEET.

I was worried that the gold colour was a little too Bling before, but this is more like a tan, so it's ok ...

Curry Festival?

There was meant to be a curry festival in Brick Lane, so we had to show up. It wasn't much of a festival -- we were hoping there would be lots of stalls and that we would be able to sample a large variety of curries ... but it was just the usual restaurants along Brick Lane with extra tables put out. Nevertheless, the turn out was good, we normally don't see that kinda crowd there! Also the other markets surrounding it were packed.

We found a city farm while walking around ...

 

There was a particularly bossy goat pushing (butting) the other animals around ... and one animal was standing in his own food trough -- haven't you heard of the food and mouth disease going on, matey??

We had lunch at our usual Brick Lane haunt (Sweet & Spicy). I had the lamb biryani and Muffin got today's special (chicken curry).

Free movie!

Muffin scored a free movie via SeeFilmFirst ... so we got to watch a remake of 3:10 to Yuma at Swiss Cottage -- a Western with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

We found that we could easily walk to Swiss Cottage ... I imagine the journey would be even faster on a bike ...

Work work ...

We're back at work, after our long holiday in Scotland.

This time Muffin and I are working on the same project (yay!) so today we ran over the requirements document in Nero ...