Madrid

A few
girlfriends and me decided to go on a weekend holiday to catch some autumn sun,
so we decided Madrid.

This is
actually the first tine I've ever been to Spain - Spanish islands don't count.
We were staying at a very Central location at Alonso Martinez, many things were
in walking distance so didn't require the Metro as much. 

The hotel
was very modern, having laptop, iPod dock & shower with 3 shower functions
but annoying it didn't have the basics of a kettle with free tea & coffee,
even though I don't drink it, it's the principle!

I was not
surprised this 4* Hotel didn’t have a phone in the bathroom as my friend was
telling me I need to look out for one, I really don’t believe why hotels would
put a phone in the bathroom, is it really necessary?

The museums were not bad, Del Prado reminded me of London's National Gallery- a lot of classic oil paintings all religious; interesting to see but wasn't my cup of tea. The Sofia however reminded me of the V&A as there was modern art from Dali and Picasso in the permanent collections, and I really loved the building itself made of glass & steel, the third floor with the terrace had such a lovely view of Madrid 




Going to
Ventas to see the famous Bullring was a good trip, shame we missed the last
fight before the end of season, which was the day before, but it was a
fascinating building to see and in Madrid hear history of. The largest park in
Madrid, the Retrio was a lovely stroll, passing people jogging, stunning scultptures
including statues in fountains. We also saw a man on roller-skates dancing
around was pretty funny! We also hired a rowing boat on the lake, was a 
very
good laugh in the sun; 45min for under €4 a boat pretty good (^.^)

We checked
out the typical Spanish touristy things - flamenco dancing at Casa Platas,
though we were expecting the more extravagant dressing and less acoustic
singing, it was so chilled we were falling asleep! Unfortunately this is not
worth the €32 we paid.


What threw
us off was by the markets, in this park/ square area there a crowds of people
trading card! All kinds as well, from Pokemon, Football even Hello Kitty, to me
it’s a very 90s Retro hobby, but these people were serious with their Yellow
Pages sized books of card collections! 
The
Botanical gardens were a nice trip for €2.50 but need to be in the right season
as the flowers were dying, vegetables were ready to be harvested unless you
fancied seeing some cactus :p

In La
Latina, which is quite a trendy spot for the locals for drinking in the
evening, but also good for The Sunday Flea Market. It was a good trip to look
around selling allsorts of touristy things like t-shirts, bags, jewelry, random
trinkets and bric and brac but there were also a few places that sold antiques
too!



So many things accomplished on the trip, the long weekend
was long enough for it ^.^ 
Will do a Madrid Food Porn post too!! -^.^-

Sorry the Text layout is so crap, I am not technical enough to work how how to lay it out nicely! >.<"


  

Horse riding weekend away

My friend asked me whether I fancied going on a weekend Away to go horse riding. I thought why not it's quite a good deal, £200 all inclusive of Travel, horse riding, food and accommodation.

So off to a Welsh village near Brecon  via the mini bus that picked us up from Ealing Common station; I was a bit sceptical because of the poor weather conditions, but in the end it didn't really bother me; when it rained, it poured in sessions!

The accommodation was at the organiser's farm house, was basic amenities, but was fine bonus was there was a hot tub in the garden!

During actual horse riding day was a good little adventure but 18 of us lined up on horses did slightly slow the pace of things. Majority were beginners in riding and couldn't control their horses who lingered to snack, one girl slipped off her saddle twice because it was too loose on the horse. Was funny when one of the horses started playing with the water as we crossed the river.

Evening was chilled majority of the people were playing this murder mystery game, but I chilled with my cognac and lemonade with my magazine by the fire- very unlike me for a Saturday evening but was nice (^^) I didn't join the game as they spoke Mandarin, a dialect I'm poor at (mental note, still need to have lessons in that language of throw myself to the actual country to learn it!!)

This is a lovely escape out of the city, unwinding and getting aching thighs from the riding. Was quite a bit of me time which is nice, since I wasn't really able to participate in some conversations. It's a good break for a large group of friends especially if it was a birthday, Tony the host makes a treat of a Baked Alaska, very yummy (^.^)

Definitely would recommend this trip to people

http://www.bushwakkers.co.uk/

Bank Holiday Madness

So 2011 has brought us a very long Easter break, for those who were lucky enough to book the 3 days in between Easter and what the Lovely Windsors gave us, another bank holiday for the Royal Wedding.

Those, well me suffered the wrath of trying to sort a weeks worth of work in the space of 3 days and meet upcoming deadlines for the week after. (-_-)

I was the not so lucky one to get the in between days off work, so ended up getting so stressed out with work, trying to man the fort and keep on top of things, not easy as the mound piles up causing me to stay an extra hour at work trying to sort things out and send to factories and work out what orders & sorts *sigh*

Felt so drained after. Making dinner with my friend in East London, tube delays on Jubilee there and make things worse, my head was not screwed on properly today, cleverly left my keys in the office! PK! (＞人＜;)

Ended up crashing round my friends who I had dinner with so another long trek to East from South West what's bad is my laundry's still on rinse hold since it started washing my clothes @ 8am!! Fingers crossed they'll still be fine!! (O_o)

 Definitely need the Royal weekend bank hol to revive from my traumatic problems

Really wasn't indenting to watch any of the Royal Wedding, but as I went to visit family friends, they had it on from Kate getting onto the car to the couple heading to the private rooms of Westminster Abbey to write in the register books, one word - LONG!!

I just wanted to see who Kate was wearing! Will say the dress did look stunning on her and nice of it being Sarah Burton's work. My friends thought there was not much to the dress, but they never thought about the details that were pit into it- a lot of Royal Needle work!! (z_z)

But to lighten things up to my Bank Holiday was nice to catch up with childhood friends, though shocked that she's 3 months pregnant. Lots of people growing up around me, settling and sorts; Aunt's starting to give me pressure of finding someone..... Not liking the pressure + mind is on other things! （ーー；）

I will say I now see and understand how interesting snooker is from this weekend, it's quite exciting and I'm very impressed how young and talented Judd Trump is making to the finals, cute but a 小弟弟！Hehe！gan bade to him!! ＼(^o^)／

Shopping in Hong Kong

Majority of people who are on holiday in a big city such as New York, LA, London, Tokyo of course why wouldn't they take the opportunity of checking out the fashion and therefore go shopping!


I did a fair bit of this when I went HK. The city has many trendy quirky styles. From the very kawaii Japanese style to the slightly urban grungy edge. HK fashion is very influenced by Japanese and Korean looks where the shapes are quite exciting and a breath of fresh air to me, compared to the European High Street style - here's a few places and brands I encountered to share with you:-

Mong Kok:-


There are the typical places like off Fa Yeun Street (花园街) there is the market there and on the side plenty of clothes shops, cheap, not bad for fast fashion, however the quality is not really to point call it Primarni quality, but hey, my job is quality control related!


Tung Choi Street, a very long street that has the well know to Tourists Ladies Market (女人街) knock offs designer bags, belts, souvenirs, shoes clothing, and off one of the streets is section known for Sportwear AKA (Trainer Street)


旺角中心/ Argyle Centre, Nathan Road


One of my last shopping discoveries when I ventured to Hong Kong over 2 years ago was just on the corner and next to one of the MTR exits. This was one of my favourite shopping places, consisting of 3 floors of fashion shops selling bags, shoes, make up and of course clothing, every girl's shopping paradise; best thing the place doesn't close until 11.30pm!

Chic @ 堡 Shopping mall HK, Soy Street


This Shopping Mall is also 3 floors, known to sell al sorted toys and clothing, mainly menswear and men's sportswear, there's also a few salon shops to do nails hair for the girls


CTMA Centre 兆萬中心, Sai Yeung Choi Street South


This shopping centre is also a place for selling majority of toys, games and a few gadgets, however this place sells clothing as well, majority of the styles that I saw in the units were cute girly floaty styles Japanese and Korean influence  


Tsim Sha Tsui:-



This is actually a new dicovery for me thanks to my friend Vincent, he took me to a little area called Granville Road which is quite a hidden treasure


Rise Shopping Arcade, Granville Circuit, Tsim Sha Tsui, Opens late lunchtime 1pm till around 11pm


3/4 floors of little boutique shops selling a varied range of clothes, from designer, vintage and wholesale seconds. Vincent told me it used to have a floor devoted to bridalwear but not anymore, unless it they moved to the higher floors, we didn't venture any higher as we couldn't find the lift! hahaa!


Rise is very eclectic fashion wise and suit a lot of the fashion lovers, there are also shops for menswear as well compared to the Argyle Centre which has just womenswear. Prices do vary in Rise, pending on what you buy, you can try haggling and they do give you a discount if you by more that one item 10-20%

DNA Galleria, 61-65 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui


This place is around the corner from Rise Shopping Arcade, it's actually a brand spanking new shopping arcade 3 floors of a range of different styles of clothing from sports wear to tailoring to street wear. Sweets and gadgets are also sold; in a nutshell it's a mini mall selling alsorts
The Layout of the place is very open, and I really love the Pop artish interior of large figurines around the store, what's strange is the way they do the check outs. There are individual check out desks around each floor, but as you purchase items from the shop, they give you a receipt  to make payment at the check out before obtaining your brought items. 


The Place is still quite new and of course has a few empty units that need to get filled in.

Things about Hong Kong

There are a few things I’ve noticed in HK that I’m not used to: -

Transport

Their MTR (Tube in our case) they have signal! I’m so used to being unreachable on the mobile on the tube

The Mini bus 小巴，I don’t really have clues where their bus stops are, >.<” they are so urban and hidden you have to shout out to the driver to tell them where you want to stop. There are actually different prices to the journey but don’t know the actual prices unless you ask the driver or look at the chart in the mini bus - I know without a doubt I have underpaid twice as the driver warned me, and have overpaid quite a few times by a few $

TV

Being typical TV, there isn’t really much on apart from the typical TVB series, series on talking about food, silly game shows and the worst thing, the excessive amount of news they have! I swear 70% of TV is mainly news, stocks and shares – . –

Obsession

In Hong Kong there is a very big obsession in beauty and sliming. Foods saying are so good and enhancing their skin, slimming products the celebrities endorse and campaign encouraging people to become such skinny twiglets of size 4-6, seriously a lot of the women and fair percentage of men in HK are very slim, maybe it because of different environment, diet or lifestyle they live. Makes me feel a bit on the fatty side

Since being in Hong Kong and post Japan earthquake disaster, I keep hearing that salt helps reduce the amount of radiation. So in China and HK there has been the mass hysteria of buying salt and the market selling their salt at a higher price to the usual cheap rate of $2 a pound or whatever weight it is they use to $20 HKD of course. But even so ridiculous prices, there was even a man who died because of consuming so much salt, TV had to create a program in how to consume the salt properly >.< honestly it’s common sense! My friends and I did crack a few salt jokes saying we should order the typical salty food products for dinner

Alcohol/ Rugby 7s Weekend

I think I came to HK particularly Lan Kwai Fong during the wrong weekend!! As some of you will know, LKF is renowned for being the main Square for bars drinking and clubbing, very Western influenced. But this weekend was hectic! Felt like being back in London, on NYE – overcrowded bars and on the street filled with lairy drinkers in fancy dress.

Damaging thing in LKF, cost of alcohol and entrance to the club – 2 bottles of Corona over $100 HKD?! Entrance into a club $300-400HKD. Rip off though I didn’t go to the clubs, my friends told me they’re usually small, overcrowded and the dance floor is always rammed can’t even properly dance!

Aside from that, I was really not use to being allowed to drink on the street! People were just buying their alcohol from the 7 Eleven, as it was cheaper to the bar of course and just drinking outside, I will admit I had ¼ bottle of my Corona left to drink before entering one of the bars and doorman took my drink away…. Oh well at least I had a laugh from the doorman as he questioned whether it was 5 girls in our group. I said “Yeah if you include my mate Kafai” as we know he’s still a man, but possesses many nicknames including Woman (hahahhahaaa)

Ok this will do of this chapter of blogging under this topic, I’ll throw some fun posts very soon!

Living in Wo Hang 禾坑村

As some of you may know I am holidaying over in Hong Kong for 2 weeks, the weather’s been over cast temperatures ranging from 17-22C not too humid either, which is good.

Instead of staying down in Central HK in hotel/hostels, saving the money & staying in Dad’s village where he grew up in called Wo Hang, in the New Territories; nearest KCR station would either be Fanling or Sheung Shui and 20min bus ride from Sha Tou Kok (town on the edge of China’s border) in a nutshell, I’m still kind of living in the middle of nowhere! Fortunately there are buses to the stations or next small town where there are amenities for everyone’s use.

Other reason to be out here is that my parent’s have been sorting out our new house, 2 buildings 3 floors, one of the reasons I’m back to HK, House-warming gathering for the house, more details about it in a bit.

Living in the village is quite nice, very peaceful minus the dogs that walk around the village and barking in the night, but saw a really cute puppy hanging around the street with 3 other puppies, they were all mixed breed but still quite cute! (-^.^-) ok went a bit off the topic. 

The air is much much cleaner here plenty of trees and grass around compared to Central as there so much pollution from the buses, cars and lorries. 

In Wo Hang it belongs to the Li Clan, and they usually speak Hakka (another Chinese dialect I really don't know much of) There are only about 50 houses left in the village most are still old houses that are broken/ deserted as they belong to someone & haven't really done anything with their plot of land yet

I'll post more when I get round to writing and getting my bum down the library. Another limitation for me in HK/ Wo Hang Village, I don't have internet :( I know my UK phone bill with be more than usual this month from popping on FB! >.<" 

From London over to Budapest

I can’t believe it’s already been a week since I took my long weekend break over to Hungary’s Capital, feels like I’ve never left the capital! So Thursday evening after work missioned over to my travel buddy’s place in Canary Wharf before we had to wake up 4-5hours later to Luton Airport for our early morning flight with Wizz Air. A name sounds funny; sounds a bit fake but was a genuine airline, just a small company.

Seriously, leaving Canary Wharf at 4.30am who’s happy as Larry that early? I was more slightly grumpy but very witty with my usual humour!

The plane was pretty busy fair few groups; stag dos blokes getting drunk on the plane at 8.30am?! But Wendy & I mainly slept on the plane.

Arriving to Budapest, sun was shining, air was ice cool but refreshing, the sun warmed us up which made it better.

As we put our baggage in the hotel, chilled out and freshened up; we decided to head out and explore the going on in the Pest, Buda is the old side and the other side of the Danube River.

Why even out of the UK there are still men honking their horns at women walking along side the road?! If it was England, late in the evening, I’ve had a few I’ve be lippy & make hand gestures.

Wendy & I were already getting a bit snap happy with the scenery around us, Buildings on the Buda side looked amazing.

Checking out the usual touristy spots, Parliament, St Stephen’s church many other places. The architecture was beautiful, very detailed stone carvings, with a gothic feel.

Taking a visit into Margret Island in the middle of the Danube River was a beautiful escape, it definitely felt like autumn on the island, the leaves of rich shades of burnt orange and shades of yellow were falling onto the ground, joggers and cyclists around the island. Definitely a perfect Sunday, strolling and seeing the amazing pieces on the island. From the War monument on one end of the island, the ruins of an old church in the middle and finish off by seeing the Well and Japanese garden at the other end of the island.

Overall a wonderful escape, I thirst for more sight seeing adventures! ^.^

My First Epic Snow Trip!

As some of you guys may know I decided to take a holiday to the French Alps for a bit of snowboarding!!! Never done it before so very exciting, was glad I wasn’t the only Rookie/ beginner going, I still can’t get over the fact there was 21 of us going at that!! Now here’s me trying to document the highlights short but sweet in two sections, makes it easier of the training times and the evening craziness! hehehe

We were pretty lucky the fact we weren’t flying, but coaching and ferry instead, but man it was a long journey! 16 hours ~.~

Though we managed to survive killing time with conversations, watching Anchorman (funny film!) playing on the NDS multi player of Mario Kart, (I’m so not very pro @ that game!) and playing fun simple picto chat!! ^.^

Pit stop before the Alps, some of the guys brought Candy Up, it’s the French version of Yazoo, chocolate milkshake, very sweet. ^.^

As you can see in the pic, Roger modelling and advertising the large bottle of milkshake! it's all good and such a novelty!

As we finally reached Alpe D’Huez, it was getting pretty sunny, not too cold either but I layered up a bit, in case! As we all kitted up and hit the green slopes I was so nervous thinking; OK where to start?

So I started out learning to board backwards & skating Goofy (right leg first) bad terminologies, mixing skating and boarding terms! Any who; Yay! I am able to board backwards doing the falling leaf movement and falling along the way on my front and back; going down too quick and losing balance! Thank God I had wrist guards, but seriously wished I invested in a pair of impact shorts! Would have saved my ass from excessive failures!

Next stage was boarding front ways, using heels to control…. Still need practice! I can do it a bit but not so well >.<” Though most of the time I was boarding backwards as it was easier and I was very conscious of falling on my arse some more, really needed impact shorts!!

One of the last runs for the day, one of my friends Eric & I decided to toboggan out way down the slopes on our boards! Was exhilarating and fun! Though shame on me! Half way down the slope, I got off the board and was just about the clip onto the board, it runs away! >.<” Me trying to run chasing it, failing miserably! Luckily Will sped down on his board and rescued it… I felt so guilty, nearly hitting a pair of skiers and it was like an invisible man going down really fast! Major PHAROH!

You guys may seemed quiet confused but we all picked up of a fair few highlighting words; Beginning of the trip I couldn’t stop saying “Yea Man!” damn Will! We all said Epic a lot, and of course FAIL! Creating PHAROH! = major fail!

Song for the trip was definitely this Korean Tune b ShiNee, Ring Ding Dong, so catchy!!!