Hampstead, London 2013

My wife used to work in Hampstead when she was a student. I must say that it looks very different from other parts of London. It looks more posh than the rest.


Walked into a book shop with a small section for kids and Asians.

We took a stroll from the Hampstead Heath tube to the Hampstead High Street. Our main destination is the La Crêperie de Hampstead, a small stall well known for its crepes. It’s located outside a pub.

La Crêperie de Hampstead seems to be in a dispute with the operators of the pub. The former posted messages saying that they will be evicted and had asked for support by signing a petition. My wife and I put our names on it.

However, at the back of the stall, the pub operators also posted a very small notice explaining the situation. They explain that they are not evicting La Crêperie de Hampstead but were asking the Creperie to move their equipment out. More details here.

Notwithstanding the fight, I must say that our Belgian chocolate and banana crepe was really nice. It was worth the wait. The only complain that I have is that one of the cooks rudely asked us not to take pictures of her.

Bratislava, Slovakia 2013

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is only an hour away from Vienna by train. We took a train from Simmering train station to Brastislava hl. st for only 15 Euros.

Upon arrival, we were clueless on how to get to the Old Town (where all the nearby attractions are). We managed to get directions from some cops who spoke broken English.

According to them, Bus X13 will bring us to the Old Town. Tickets can be purchased from a machine at the bus stop. Funnily, the bus tickets go by minutes. The cheapest is 70 cents which is only for 15 minutes. Taxis on the other hand seem expensive.

English is widely spoken by the younger Slovaks. Hence getting around is pretty easy.

The Old Town is filled cafes and restaurants. Each corner is serenaded with music played by violinists and guitarists. Our day consists of walking around the Main Square and its surroundings. Central European interests me a lot. Food is interesting. Lifestyle is laid back. Girls have big boobs.

Free WiFi is also ample. Most of the WiFi connections were provided by restaurants and cafes.   

Most of the buildings of a street is individually built. That means each building is special on its own.

There are many small alleys to explore around this road. I wandered into some of the alleys to take pictures.


Stumbled upon this at one of the alleys

I found an eco shop at one of the alleys. It has a grapevine grown outside its premise.

Some of the obscure alleys had retail outlets and restaurants – I wonder how would their business survive considering that location of retail business is paramount. Speaking about location, there was one Chinese restaurant located at a busy junction. However,  it had no customers and a waitress was seen sleeping outside the restaurant. 

We walked to the Korzo, the pedestrian only zone of the historical city centre. It was filled with cafes and restaurants.


A cafe

We bought a painting made from aerosol spray cans. The artist signed his name on the artwork. I hope he becomes famous one day so that we can sell the painting for millions. In fact, while we were walking around the town, one street painter walked up to us and asked us who made the artwork!

We had lunch at a place called Slovenská Reštaurácia U Prasiatka. We chose this restaurant without doing any research about it. It has a huge statute of a pig with a crown. Any restaurant with a pig statue outside should be good!

I ordered the stuffed potato dumplings with smoked meat. It was awesome.

My wife ordered the trout. She loved it!


Awesome beer


Cool urinals!

No visit to Slovakia is complete without a visit to one of the castles. Hence, we headed to Bratislava Castle which is located up a hill. We walked from the city centre all the way to the Castle. A taxi driver said it will cost us 15 Euro to get there and it is far, far away.

We decided to walk and it only took us 15 minutes. Bloody conman.


The famous Cumil – Man at Work Statue. A symbol of reconstructed Korzo.


What da fak is this..


What da fak is this..!


Walkway up to the Bratislava Castle

We had to walk up some steep stairways to get up to the castle.

From the hill, we could see a panoramic view of the city. I couldn’t see a single skyscraper but medieval buildings,  apartments and forests.


Danube River. Sounds like The Noob River.

The castle was almost empty as most of the exhibitions were closed. We walked into the castle to find a huge courtyard the castle. It looks like an ideal place for a rave!

After our trip up the castle, we had dinner at Modrá Hviezda at the foothill of the castle. There is a small cave inside the restaurant called Cave Igo. Their food is highly recommended by TripAdvisor but we were too full to have anything.

We had to rush back to the train station to catch the 2nd last train. If we miss this one, we will need to wait for 2 hours for the last train. After deciphering some Slovakian words, we found our bus X13 again to the train station. But before that, we were pretty worried that bus X13 wouldn’t show up!

I am told that there are many other  beautiful castles outside the city. I wish I had more time to explore Bratislava. We will certainly go back to Slovakia again to see them!

Vienna Food Guide

Vienna is awesome place for food in particular pastries and meaty meals. There are all sorts of pastries to try. It felt like I just died and went to cake heaven. 


Bought this off a small bakery. Quite tasty. Recommended by the cashier.


High-tech coffee machine found at a convenient store.


Didn’t try this but the whole shop was selling this.


Awesome!

Although coffee culture is big in Vienna, I didn’t like their coffee. I still prefer Melbourne styled coffee.

As mentioned before, food in Vienna is not cheap. Portion is not extremely big but one dish should suffice to feed two Asians.

Figlmuller

A recommended restaurant with over 100 years of history. It was tough to get a place for dinner as it was full. Fortunately, they have an outlet few metres away which had plenty of seats.

Snitzel is highly recommended here. The restaurant claims to be the first to come out with a large snitzel using the best pork and cuts. Snitzel is basically boneless meat, thinned, coated with flour, beaten eggs and bread crumbs, and then fried.

We also had veal goolash (some sort of stew) with butter dumplings.

They were all very nice!

Website: http://www.figlmueller.at/

Sacher Cafe

This cafe claims to be the origin of Sacher-Torte cake, a chocolate cake covered with a layer of chocolate and a thin spread of jam. Whipped cream is served on the side.

Sacher started off as a cafe but eventually grew into a hotel. The recipe for the cake is said to be 180 years old and has never changed since then . It’s interesting to have a cake ate by people 180 years ago.

Although its famous in Vienna, I’m not a big fan of it as it is a little bit dry. But it’s something one should try when in Vienna.


We also had sausages and Sacher toast. They were nice.

To get there, stop at Karplatz station. There are a few exits hence take Exit A  – Kartner StraBe. This exit is the nearest to the cafe which is behind the Vienna Opera House.

Website: http://www.sacher.com/sacher-cafes/

Cafe Diglask

Another famous restaurant. It was recommended by our tour guide while passing by the place.

We had typical Viennese breakfast and their apple strudel. The latter was good.


Coffee was so-so.


I was extremely interested with this pink coloured cake. But when I was told that it was made from marzipan, I want to put this cake on a plate and flung it out from the restaurant.

We bought some cakes back to London for Sow. But Sow said the cakes were not flight proof. The cakes looked like it rolled down the stairs when it got to London.

Website: Google+

Demel
Founded in 1786, Demel is a famous pastry shop and chocolatier. This is apparently the birthplace of Sacher Torte cakes.

We had their famous Anna Torte and Sacher Torte cakes. The former was good but the latter was just so-so to me. It was pretty dry. I guess I’m not a fan of Sacher Torte.

I ordered a Melange (small espresso with milk and foam). I didn’t like it too.

Website: http://www.demel.at/

Schonbrunn Palace @ Vienna, Austria

We also visited Schonbrunn Palace. It is a place to visit if one likes massive imperial gardens – very nice scenery and filled with joggers. If I had my jogging shoes on, I would definitely jog around the palace. We wandered around the garden and took some pictures. We wandered around the garden and took some pictures. We didn’t enter the palace as it was closed.

I wonder when would our Government open our old palace at Jalan Istana to the public. It looks like a pleasant place for public activities. I am told that there is a stream inside the compound of our old palace.

Vienna, Austria 2013

As part of our Europe trip, we stopped by Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia. We spent most of our time in Vienna and only half a day in Bratislava.

I like Vienna. It’s spacious and clean. The buildings and architecture are interesting.

The train system is smooth and simple. It’s also linked to the tram system. However, getting around can be difficult as the names of the places are long. If you look at the map, you probably won’t be able to find a place as it is too comprehensive.


DA FAK

The only drawback of this place is that it is very expensive. A meal for two can costs 30 Euro. Tipping is required. 10% of the bill is sufficient.


Shelves made of paper boxes! Each drawer has a bag.

A day trip train costs me 7 Euro but the good thing is that they usually do not check your tickets and there are no barriers to the train stations. It reminds me of Berlin’s train stations. 

We stayed in a nice apartment nearby Meidling HauptstraBe station. It looks plain from outside but the apartment was beautiful!

We found the place through AirBnB. Our host doesn’t live in the apartment thus we got the whole place for ourselves. She installed a small locker on the door. She kept the key to the door inside. In order to open the locker, we would need a passcode and this was given by our host.

Our host had everything ready for us. She had power plug converters to a written guide (of places to visit and eat) of the city by her!


View of the canal outside our place. It was so hot that some ladies soaked themselves in the canal. And they got to the front page from doing that.

Free WiFi is abundant in Vienna city centre. You can get them at the major train stations or restaurants provided by one company called Freewave.at.


St. Stephen’s Cathedral. One of the most prominent landmarks in Vienna. Loads of shopping arcades, restaurants and cafes surrounding the cathedral.

We didn’t do much research on the places to visit. Since we don’t have much time, we took the Old Timer city tour around Vienna. It’s a one hour on an open roof truck (hot hot hot!) mostly around the older part of Vienna. We got to see many popular tourist spots (many statutes too!). But we could only see those spots from afar as the truck doesn’t stop.


Old Timer!


I initially thought this place is a hotel but later found out it is not.

We even pass by a art school which Adolf Hitler tried to enroll when he was younger but got rejected. One interesting fact about Adolf Hitler is that he was an Austrian and wanted to be a painter.


Statue of a man on the roof. Can’t seem to find information about this statue. It has something to do with commemorating the first suicide after a stock market crashed. Anyone knows?

My favourite story about Vienna is how coffee was introduced to Vienna after the Battle of Vienna. After the Ottoman Empire retreated from Vienna, bags of coffee were found in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki took these bags of coffee and opened a cafe. However, to be frank, I didn’t like Viennese coffee. I prefer the dark and strong Melbourne-style coffee.

We were in Vienna for 4 days. It was sufficient for us to see the main tourist attractions in the city. We returned to London after our Austria trip.

More later!

Blackpool, England 2013

We made a day trip to Blackpool on our second day in Liverpool. It’s about 2 hours away by train. I’ve always read about Blackpool in Beano and Dandy comics when I was a kid. It’s well known for its amusement parks.

Our train stopped by a small town by the name Ormskirk.

It reminded me of the small towns of the game Transport Tycoon. I used to spent hours playing this game when I was a kid. The game is almost 20 years old and to my surprise, there are some enthusiasts who kept the game alive by putting it on the Internet, in particular on the website OpenTTD. I picked up the game again last December when business was slow. Like many of the 90s games, it will soon be relaunched on Android.

My wife and her sister wanted to go to Blackpool Pleasure Beach theme park but I hate theme parks (in particular, the wait). Hence, I embarked on a journey – to find good coffee at Blackpool. TripAdvisor recommended barista coffee located at Birley Street. With a name like that, coffee should be good.


“Build me a castle Daddy!”


A disabled friendly beach


Lady in a wheel chair with a toy doll. Eh?

I walked along the Promenade Beach under the hot sun. I had sunburn on my shoulder due to that.

The place is also disable friendly. I saw one man in a wheelchair on the beach. My wife said a man carried his wife into a roller coaster ride.

There were plenty of birds too. I had to be careful of the mid air bombardment by these birds. A hit on the face with bird poo would be a great calamity.

Fortunately, the view was great. It was great seeing Blackpool on foot. It’s a lively place with all sorts of amusement parks. Hotels were everywhere. One can assume that Blackpool lives on tourist dollars.

After an hour under the hot sun, I arrived at barista cafe. It’s a small cafe but with plenty of seats. The barista was pleasant and I ordered my double shot machiato.

Being able to find the place was a great satisfaction. It felt like I’ve gone through a long and hard pilgrimage.

As soon as my lips landed on the cup, I felt a hot sensation on my tongue. The barista burnt the milk. It was too hot to drink! It was disappointing! 

I took a taxi back to Blackpool Pleasure Beach meet my wife and her family. I walked so far that it costs me 6 quid to get back. We ate the obligatory meal of Blackpool namely fish and chips. It was not bad.

Overall, Blackpool was a nice experience but I doubt I will go back there again.

Liverpool Food Guide

Moose Cafe @ Dale Road

Recommend by TripAdvisor, apparently one of the best cafes around Liverpool city.

We ordered the New York Moose and New Hampshire Moose – both are eggs benedict on toasted bagel but with either salmon or parma ham topped with hollandaise sauce. Both are equally good!

Coffee however is so-so. Latte was a little bit milky for me. Macchiato was okay.

Address:
6, Dale Street
Website: http://moosecoffee.co.uk/

Bold Street Cafe @ Bold Street

Recommended by my sister in law, this place serves good food and coffee. Toasted seeded boomer with creamy mushroom is to die for!

Address:
89 Bold Street
Website: https://www.facebook.com/boldstcoffee

Duke Street Espresso Bar @ Duke Street

A little small cafe manned by one barista but with great coffee. They use the same beans as Bold cafe.

Address:
27 Duke St
Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Duke-Street-Espresso-Bar/367018186643341

Jamie’s Italian

On our last night at Liverpool, we had dinner at Jamie’s Italian – one of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s many restaurants. The man had built an empire of restaurants using his celebrity status.

Jamie’s Italian was packed most of the time hence we had to make reservations a day before.

True to his business acumen, there were loads of Jamie Oliver cookbooks on sale in the restaurant. However, food is pricey and just so-so. It’s overrated.

Website: http://www.jamieoliver.com/italian/liverpool

Williamson Tunnels, Liverpool

I first found out about Williamson Tunnel when I saw a short film about it on BBC News. I followed their Facebook page and I became very intrigued about it.

According to Wikipedia:-

The Williamson Tunnels consist of a labyrinth of tunnels in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool, England, which were built under the direction of the eccentric businessman Joseph Williamson between the early 19th century and 1840. They remained derelict, filled with rubble and refuse, until archaeological investigations were carried out in 1995. Since then excavations have been carried out and part of the labyrinth of tunnels has been opened to the public as a heritage centre.

While waiting for my sister in law’s graduation ceremony to end, my wife, CY and I visited the tunnels. We walked there and found that the place is located in the middle of some residential buildings.

There is a small exhibition hall at the entrance to the tunnel.

There are loads of artifacts dating to the 1800s such as China, bottles, jars and even an abandoned toy car were found. They are put on display. Some of these jars have engraved labels describing the products such as cream and marmite and trade marks of old traders such as W.P.Hartley (jam makers – still in existence today!), Patey & Co (purveyors of perfumes & cold Creams) and JW Lloyd Dentist.

The reason why Mr Williamson built the tunnel is unknown. But it is said that he wanted to give jobs to local men especially men who had just returned from the Napoleon War. The construction of the tunnels stopped upon the death of Mr. Williamson.

We took a tour of the tunnels. We had to wear helmets for our safety. The tunnels were damp and cold but nevertheless interesting. The excavation is currently done by volunteers in the weekends.


This connects to a cellar of a house above.


According to our tour guide, this pillar was a result of an attempt to build a foundation for a hostel located above ground. They did not know that there is a tunnel below hence they filled it up with cement.

We were told that the excavations are still on going as many parts of the tunnels remain undiscovered. If we come back in 4 to 5 more years, there will be more to explore! 

Unfortunately, the tour is rather short (about 40 minutes) but our tour guide was very informative. I was hoping that we get to see the deeper parts of the tunnel. Nevertheless, I got to see the tunnels after admiring it from the Internet!

Liverpool, England 2013

The last time I was in Liverpool was in 2001 with fellow members of the Sheffield University Clubbing Society (yes, there was a Clubbing Society!). We clubbed at the now Cream @ Nation. It was so long ago that I hardly remember how the club looked like but I do remember that we took a van to Liverpool and security at Nation was tight.

We came here for my sister-in-law’s graduation ceremony. The place doesn’t look familiar to me at all. Probably because the last time I came was 10 years ago and it was at night!

Unlike London, Liverpool wasn’t crowded. Taxi was cheap and I managed to find good coffee places!

We spent a lot of our time wandering around Liverpool city. Getting around is cheap and easy. One can call a private cab (eg Delta cabs) and they will quickly despatch one within 5 minutes. They will even text you the cab number and model!

We stayed at Travelodge, located opposite of Albert Dock. It’s quite strategic as everything was nearby. The room is however mediocre. I wandered around Albert Dock to take some sunset pictures.


A building called Streaky Bacon – cause it looks like bacon. Sounds legit.

I didn’t manage to see much of Liverpool. I spent most of the time wandering around the city’s shopping streets while waiting for my wife to finish her shopping. I even spent couple of hours in Oxfam but I found one late 1800 book going out for 10 pounds. I also visit Standford, a store that sells mainly maps and travel books. They have been in business for more than 160 years.

As for my sister in law’s graduation ceremony, it was lively outside the graduation hall. Proud parents were brimming with smiles and thousand of photographs were taken just on that moment. I still have my graduation photo taken with my dad on my table.

A few of us didn’t get to enter the convocation hall as we did not have passes. Instead of waiting for the others to finish the ceremony, we walked to Williamson Tunnels, a labyrinth dug by men hired by an eccentric philanthropist in the 1800s. I first found out about this place from BBC News. I’ll write more of this later.

Dalston, London

Kat brought us to Dalston (Daston Kingsland Station) for brunch at L’Atelier. It’s an interesting part of the city with a mixture of locals and immigrants. But some parts of the town stink of urine.

L’Atelier is recommended for their food. We tried toast with salmon and scrambled eggs, and salmon and avocado. I think the food is just okay but the industrial deco made the place look hip. I guess its a hipster hangout.

We went back to Dalton for brunch again on our own but we had it at Dalton Superstore. I find the food here okay. Nothing to shout about. Anyway, this place is few doors away from L’Atelier.

The interesting bit of Dalston to me is the Dalston House. It’s actually a large mirror with a mock facade of a Victorian house on the floor. You can stand, sit or lie on the floor and the reflection of the mirror made it look as if you’re hanging on the Victorian House! There is no admission fee but the queue to have your pictures taken is pretty long!

Unfortunately, Dalston House is just a short term exhibition. It was closed after 4 August 2013!