Jon's one year anniversary

Can any of you believe he's been here a year already?! And what a year it's been. It's flown by hasn't it? He seems to be settled in and enjoying his time here. And his accent has got decidedly dodgy!!!

It was a pretty low key celebration, I'm afraid I didn't do right by Jon and didn't get organised enough to plan anything great. But the actual day (16th April for those of you with a head for dates, unlike I, who had to look it up!) was Easter Sunday this year so we happened to have a nice four day weekend. We drove down to Hastings on the coast to visit our friend Nik who has just bought a flat down there. The weather was uncooperative so some of our plans were rained out but we had fun just hanging out with Nik and having him show us around the area. This included Old Town Hastings (Most memorable sight? A house shaped like a wedge of cheese, I kid you not! It is even marked 'the piece of cheese cottage' in case you were at all confused.) and the village of Rye. One of the highlights of Rye was a visit to a cute old fashioned sweetshop, a place with one counter, a friendly sweetie-man and shelves lined with row upon row of jars filled with sweets. It was lovely and nostalgic for me but I was disappointed to find you can no longer buy sweets by the quarter, but now by a metric 100g - just seems wrong somehow!

Anyway, I digress! After our sugar high and crash, we said goodbye to our very lovely host and headed back to London on the Sunday. We stopped at a pub for lunch on the way back, the John's Cross Inn near a tiny hamlet, the name of which escapes me now. We seem to be touring the UK by pubs! Which reminds me, I forgot to mention the bizarre sight in one of the pubs in Old Hastings, two mummified cats and a rat in a glass box, some legend about a witch! You'll have to ask Jon or Nik for the full story, I was too grossed out yet mesmerised to stop staring at it and pay attention!! Anyway, we had a nice Sunday lunch at this little pub on the road, a nice traditional old English pub which boasts the smallest dining room in the UK, a very low ceiling which Jon couldn't stand up straight under, and a very nice friendly landlord.




The real celebration was a couple of days later, at Vertigo 42, with two of Jon's flatmates, Steven and Justin. Vertigo 42, for those of you who don't know it, is a Champagne bar at the top of the old Natwest Tower, a tall and slightly strange structure in the middle of the City. It's on the 42nd floor and offers great views of London. Extravagant, and most definitely a special occasion place, we were looking for an excuse to go there! It was great, we sipped Champagne and cocktails and watched the sunset over London. Very appropriate for the occasion no?



And all the best to Jon for the year to come in London!

New York!

I'm afraid I couldn't think of a more catchy title for this post, so I settled for simplicity! Well, I finally got to return to one of my favourite places and talked Jon into coming with me! Well, hardly! He didn't need too much persuasion, he had only ever been there as a child and was looking forward to his first trip there as an adult. I had no complaints from him at all, he loved it and we had a wonderful time.

We were there for 5 days. We stayed in a cheap and cheerful hotel just off Times Square (and opposite the hotel Lauri and I stayed in the first time I was there years ago) and enjoyed being in the hectic heart of the city. I was so excited to be there, I could barely contain myself. Jon was impressed with how huge the place is, "I mean, it makes London look small!" It really is impressive, I always manage to forget just how big it is and how awesome the buildings are. We packed a lot in. I also took the subway for the first time which was exciting for me. And I promised myself I wouldn't do too much shopping, but we were both seduced by the retail demon and several pairs of shoes and jeans later... let's just say getting the suitcase shut when packing to come home was a joint effort involving the throwing of one's full body weight onto the case!

Aside from that we did a lot of the sites. We were lucky with the weather and had a couple of glorious days. We did attempt to do the Ellis Island thing one day but the promise of a three hour wait for the ferry was off-putting enough. This isn't Disneyland you know! We figured Ms Liberty wasn't going anywhere soon so we turned on our heels with a "No thank you!" and went with plan B! We walked the Brooklyn Bridge (although not all the way across), did the Empire State building, took a walk through Central Park, and walked until our feet almost bled - it is a very big city to walk the length of! On one of the days we met up with relatives of mine from Malaysia, who I hadn't seen in a few years, which was a highlight of the trip for me. We all went and rode the Staten Island Ferry, went to Wall Street and Rockefeller Centre together.

That evening Jon and I went to Top of the Rock, the observation deck at the Rockefeller Centre. After an extremely fun lift (elevator in American!) ride up to the top there are a couple of outdoor areas with fantastic views of the city. It was pretty cold out there at the time but well worth it. I highly recommend it as a less crowded and less in-your-face-touristy alternative to the Empire State Building.

We also ate some excellent meals. We had our fill of bagels and smoothies and hearty American breakfasts, and all the other great things NYC had to offer. We both managed to forget how huge American portions are and overordered a lot! We met up with my friends Ari and Mandy one evening, who came up from New Jersey to have dinner with us. Another exciting meeting for me as I haven't seen them since I was last there three and a half years ago. They took us to Carmine's, an Italian restaurant which is something of a NY institution! It's a "family style" restaurant and let me tell you, I have never seen so much food on one table for four in my entire life, it was almost horrifying!! We didn't even make a dent in it! And this was me, hungry, and already drunk on cocktails since we'd had to wait over an hour for a table! It was hard for me to even look at pasta for a little while after that.

It was a great trip, and as well as Jon's first adult visit to the Big Apple, it was also his first time back to the US since he moved to London. Speaking of which, that was almost a year ago, we'll be celebrating his one year anniversary in a couple of weeks. More on that later.

Happy St Patrick's Day!!

The Cotswolds

I don't get out of London enough! Jon and I went away again last weekend, for a quick jaunt around the Cotswolds and once again I was amazed at how much I love the English countryside yet never see it!

We stayed in this beautiful hotel just outside Cheltenham, an old 15th Century manor house called the Hotel De La Bere, after the family who owned it. It was really gorgeous, everything creeked and rattled but had so much charm. We ate in the dining hall with stained glass windows and scary looking family portraits looking over you, and had a room up a narrow stairway in the tower which made me feel spooked out and Rapunzel-like all at the same time!

We spent the weekend driving the "Romantic Road", a route through the scenic Cotswolds (although I guess it's pretty much all scenic). It took us through lots of cute little towns and villages and parts of the hilly countryside with spectacular views. Jon drove the whole weekend, he's getting to be quite nifty behind the wheel now. It's almost like he's always driven on the wrong side of the road!! We were quite lucky with the weather and although it was cold it was clear enough to appreciate the views and imagine how even more stunning it would be in the summer when everything is green and lush instead of varying shades of yellow and brown. I also forget how friendly people are outside of the city too. We stopped and walked around a few of the villages, which was a bit like walking back through time, and ate good pub lunches by roaring log fires.

Our next trip will have a slightly different feel to it. We're heading off to the Big Apple in a couple of weeks and I am very excited about it. I'll be back with more on that!