Birthday at The Ledbury

Today is J's birthday, and he requested that we go to dinner at The Ledbury, a restaurant in Notting Hill. Sounds easy enough but for the fact that I had to make this reservation 2 1/2 months in advance! It's a two Michelin-starred French fusion place that known for good food and a service staff that chased off looters with rolling pins and kitchen knives during the London riots (true story).

Anyway, we were supposed to go last year for J's birthday, but work got in the way and we ended up cancelling. It was looking like J may have to cancel again, but he managed to escape for a few hours.

The restaurant is quite small and newly refurbished so it's cosy and modern. The staff was very attentive, but not invasively so while we enjoyed our three courses apiece. It's funny how these fancy places always have a three course menu or a tasting menu. In any case, it's never just three courses because they always bring out random things like an amuse bouche or a pre-dessert, not that I'm complaining or anything. =) They were also very generous with the bread - not only did a plate of warm, delicious bread arrive at our table, but a server walked around offering bacon and onion rolls or malted bread out of a basket. 

The food was quite interesting and there was stuff like foamed hay on my plate, and it tasted just like hay. Strange, but not bad. It was all interestingly great, nothing predictable at all. At the end of the meal, they brought out a little extra dessert for J since it was his birthday, and he was pretty happy when we got even more dessert in the form of petit fours. I'm not quite sure why they brought that out, but that brought the total number of desserts up to 4 for the two of us.

We were stuffed by the end of the night, and the hostess offered to ring up a cab to pick us up. What a nice little touch! In any case, we demolished the rest of the petit fours while we waited and complained about how tight our waistbands were feeling. Now we're home and in elasticized clothes so we're much, much happier.

A Week in La La Land

I just got back to London yesterday after spending a week in LA, and I'm still feeling a bit jet-lagged, but I'm hoping I'll be over it by tomorrow.

I arrived in LAX on Monday night and pretty much crashed into bed then spent all of Tuesday with my family trying to adjust to Pacific time. LA is 8 hours behind London, so the adjustment wasn't easy and it never really took. I woke up at 5AM on most days I was there - yuck.

I had set Wednesday aside for running errands in Orange County, so I had to rent a car. I was actually pretty terrified of driving since I had spent the last year not driving at all and training myself to become accustomed to the British rules of the road. Thank goodness it turned out that adjusting back to American driving was a cinch. I made stops at the DMV (damn in-person renewal!), the dentist (because I'm still scared of British dentists), the tailor, the doctor, and the Target (Boots can't compete). Whew - suffice to say it was a busy day.

Thursday was a lot more mellow in terms of getting some running in during the day time and seeing my BFF Helen for dinner at Luna Park by mid-Wilshire. We both ordered pizzas, which were great, and I got lots of free refills on my diet Coke, which I no longer take for granted since living in the UK. 

I had an appointment at the hair salon on Friday, which pretty much took all day (I have a lot of hair), and then Helen picked me up and we went for drinks at Pink Taco at Century City shopping center. We met up with two of her buddies and kicked it at the bar, and I munched on way too many free tortilla chips and salsa. I was pretty tired, so we headed back to her apartment and I fell asleep while we were watching through Practical Magic. It had been a while since we had a slumber party. =)

We woke up early the next day to have breakfast at Starbucks and then go hiking in Temescal Canyon. Although neither of us were familiar with the trails, we had lots of fun getting lost and it was nice because it wasn't too hot or sunny. We probably hiked around 4 miles, and we would holler "Rattlesnake!" at each other when we wanted to speed up.

Fortunately, we didn't see any rattlesnakes, and we headed to the farmer's market at Santa Monica Promenade where we ate the most delicious strawberries I've ever eaten. I also got a chance to check out the new Santa Monica Place, and we did a little bit of shopping despite being gross and sweaty and dirty and still in our hiking clothes. It's good that no one in LA bats an eyelash at this kind of stuff.

Anyway, J's birthday is coming up and my parents commissioned me to get him a gift so we wandered into Hugo Boss where we were assisted by a very handsome shop assistant. Way to go, Hugo Boss! We ended up buying J a very nice raincoat (from my parents) and a gray suit (from yours truly), and we had lots of fun making the shop assistant try stuff on for us. I bet he would've twirled if we asked him to. But I didn't have time to since I had to go to dinner with my family, where I ate way too much sashimi. The rest of the night was spent hanging out my little brother and his girlfriend. Just a really chill and nice Saturday night.

I had to go back to Hugo Boss the next day to exchange the sizes for J's gift, and Helen volunteered to take me to the mall again. We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and then we harassed the Hugo Boss assistant some more. More fun! I had to say goodbye to Helen since I had to meet my friend Nancy at her apartment where we were going to carpool together to our friend Dan's wedding! I was pretty happy to also have a hot redhead for my date. =)

The wedding was around 4ish, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was at the Bel Air Bay Club, and the wedding was on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Gorgeous!

The venue was amazing, the groom was happy and the bride was gorgeous. To sum it up, a perfect wedding.

I was due to fly back on Monday afternoon, and I hadn't had a chance to see one of my other close friends so she volunteered to drive me to the airport. Luckily, we had time for a quick stop at the In-n-Out by the airport, and we did a very quick catch-up before I had to hightail it to the airport to make my flight. It wasn't nearly enough time spent with her, so we'll definitely do a proper hang out session on my next visit.

It's good to be back, but at the same time, it's hard to realize all over again that my family and friends all live on a different continent. I didn't realize how much I missed them until I was back in London riding the Heathrow Express into central London and thought to myself that they're all looking at a completely different landscape at a different time of day. Life goes on there as life goes on here, and I'm missing it. But London is home now, and it's always good to be back home.

Kitty

I've had Kitty for about 15 years now, and I left her with my parents when I moved to London. We were originally planning on being in London for only 1 1/2 years, and it didn't seem reasonable to put my cat through the whole process for her to be with me while I was in London.

Now that it looks like I'm probably going to be in London for the foreseeable future, I've researched and researched bringing my cat overseas. It's a complicated process that's even more complicated by the fact that the organization overseeing animal imports into the UK is changing its rules in January 2012. Luckily, the rules are being relaxed so that mandatory quarantine or a 6 month waiting period after the rabies shot is no longer the norm. Instead, the waiting period has been shortened to a mere 21 weeks.

Starting January 2012, the new procedure of getting my cat into the UK goes something like this:

1. Rabies shot
2. Microchipped (with an international chip)
3. Obtain paperwork from the vet affirming the rabies shot and the microchip
4. Purchase IATA approved carrier with attached food and water dishes
5. Purchase absorbent material for the carrier (newspaper is not approved)
6. 24-28 hours before the flight, tick and tapeworm treatment administered by the vet and affirmed in writing (this requirement is under consideration and may no longer be required as of January 2012)
7. 21 days after the rabies shot, Kitty can fly

I spoke with a pet agent at Virgin Atlantic, one of the airlines approved to transport animals into the UK, and this is what I found out about bringing a cat from LA to London:

1. Pets fly Sunday through Friday on flights VS008.
2. The airfare starts at $526 (but can go up based on the size of the carrier) and admittance fees imposed by the UK authorities are 260 GBP.
3. Pets need to be brought to the airport 4 hours before the time of the flight.
4. After landing, the animals are brought into pet reception, and the cats are put into a cat run and given food and water.

With the total travel time clocking in at around 18 hours, it's got me questioning whether I should bring Kitty over at all. I miss Kitty lots, but I don't want her to suffer for so long, especially when she's pretty old. She's always been extremely frightened of pretty much all people, and these days, she just seems interested in laying around and eating. She's just not that frantic kitty that I remember - she's mellowed out, and I feel like it's due to old age.

My parents are happy to have Kitty staying with them in their big old house where Kitty can look out the window, and she has her own room. It also doesn't help that my mom said that if Kitty could talk, she'd say "don't make me go to London!"

I don't want to bring her over for selfish reasons, but at the same time, I think she'd be happier with me, and I don't want her to think that I abandoned her.

What to do, what to do...

A Wedding

I found out a few months ago that one of my old co-workers had just gotten engaged, and I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the celebration yesterday!

First things first, I had to get my hat sorted. It's tradition here that a woman keeps her head and her shoulders covered at a wedding, but I'm not quite sure how much that's observed these days. In any case, I thought a fascinator would be a good way to go, and my British girl friends recommended either going to Accessorize, John Lewis or Debenhams to see the selection. They're always surprised when I tell them that no one wears hats to weddings in the US, and I'm always surprised when they tell me that they hardly ever wear hats to weddings.

Anyway, I hopped over to John Lewis on Friday after work and ended up with two fascinators nicely tucked away in hatboxes. The morning of the wedding, I back-combed the spot where the clip would fasten and sprayed a little hairspray (or lacquer as they call it) and stuck the fascinator in and hoped it would stay put for the rest of the day.

 It was an incredibly muggy day, and the thought of going on the tube while all dressed up was not appealing at all so J and I hailed a cab to Islington Town Hall to watch Yuliya and Alex get married. The town halls here in London are much more beautiful than the city halls back in the US, and I could see why so many weddings are booked there.

In any case, the ceremony was short and sweet, and we stood outside to throw rose petals and confetti at the newlyweds as they exited the building.

I also got the chance to catch up with my old co-workers and get the latest news on what was going on with the case I was working on while I was there.

After the obligatory photographs, we all piled into the cabs that were waiting to take us to the reception at The Chapel Bar, which turned out to be just down the street. The reception was a low-key affair, and we all imbibed in lots of champagne and Prosecco before digging into a delicious buffet. We couldn't stay long since J was anticipating some work emails, but we got a chance to chat with the bride and groom before we left.

All in all, it was a very sweet and low-key affair - a wonderful wedding and a great rehearsal wedding for the newlyweds who have another wedding in two weeks time in the Ukraine.

Montjuic

J and I woke up on our last morning in Barcelona eager to return to Montjuic. We had only seen the area around the art museum the previous night, and as beautiful as the architecture was, we wanted to check out the gardens.

It was another boiler of a day as we headed into the first of the many gardens that nestle in the Montjuic area. Each garden is known for a different botanical speciality i.e. water plants, leaves and grasses, etc. We hiked from garden to garden, stopping frequently in the shade to cool off and drink some water. It was a looong and hot walk but absolutely beautiful, and we came across more than a few cats along the way, strangely enough.

We first visited the Jardins de Laribal, which was full of interesting water features.

 

 

There were also beautiful architectural details...

Then we wandered over to the Jardins de Mossen Cinto de Verdaguer, which is renowned for its water plants.

 

We also stopped in at Jardins de Joan Brossa and Jardins de Mirador on our slow and steady trek up to the Castell. We were sticky and hot by the time we reached the Castell, but the views on the way up there made it absolutely worth it.

The Castell itself wasn't bad, and J had fun in one of the lookout points.

We were tired and gross by then so we decided to take a taxi back to our hotel instead of hiking back as we planned. We arrived back in our room just in time to take another shower before we had to check out - hooray for late check out!  We made use of the free coffee voucher that we received at check-in,  and we sipped our delicious Illy coffee in the coffee bar in the hotel lobby before we had to head over to the Aerobus bus stop in front of the Corte Ingles department store to head to the airport.

We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, and we relaxed in the waiting area of the quietest airport I've ever been in. The airport is super clean and modern, and there are no public announcements at all. You can't imagine how nice it is to wait in absolute peace. And then we were on our way home. Damn.