Conquering Fears - Marmite

Sorry it's been so long since my last update, but the cold weather has been making it hard to do much of anything. It's definitely autumn, and I just want to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a good book. Needless to say, everything's kind of fallen by the wayside until I've made the mental adjustment to the cold weather.

The nice thing about the cold weather is that it finally got me to try Marmite! Now what is Marmite, you ask? Per Wikipedia:

Marmite is made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing. The British version of the product is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful flavour, which is extremely salty and savoury. This distinctive taste is reflected in the British company's marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it."

Judging from the description, this doesn't sound at all appetizing. It's even scarier when you ask people to describe the taste, and they just don't have the words. I've been instructed that the best way to eat Marmite is to get a nice piece of toast, spread a thin layer of Marmite and top it off with a slice of cheese. Believe it or not, Starbucks supposedly does a great Marmite and cheese sarnie!

I was at work late one day and the cold weather gave me a craving for some hot food. My work mate was making a Starbucks run, and on an impulse, I asked her to pick up a Marmite sandwich for me. It was hot and gooey with lots of melted cheese - perfect for a cold night!

I didn't hate it and I didn't love it, but I did like it enough to have it again. The best way I could describe it is that it tastes like hyper-concentrated gravy - brown and very salty, but with a much runnier consistency. I cut up my sandwich in bits and shared with some other people that hadn't had it before. Another American hated it, while the Japanese girl liked it.

Of course I couldn't let J get away with not trying Marmite at least once, so I dragged him to a Starbucks the following day and bought him a sandwich. His verdict - he liked it! Definitely enough to eat it again.

Now I just need to try Bovril....

Dalt Vila

We woke up on Sunday morning with a plan to head out to Ibiza Town, where we could explore the older bit known as Dalt Vila.

J was pretty excited because we heard there was a castle thereabouts, but that's not exactly true. What you do get see is a walled city and the Catedral - not too shabby. Interesting bit of information: the city was established in 7th century B.C. Craziness!

Anyway, we stuffed ourselves at the amazing breakfast buffet and headed into town. It was a short 15 minute walk to Dalt Vila, and we were in the city.

Because the high season had ended, a lot of the shops were shut and J and I spent most of our time roaming through the mostly deserted streets.

 

We could see the Catedral and the walls high above us, and we started the slow and winding way up.

 

I wasn't quite sure how to get there, but I figured we were fine so long as we were on a steady incline. And there were inclines. Lots of them. And stray cats. Lots of them. Words for the wise: the stones are slippery and the slope is steep so definitely wear your walking shoes!

 

 
 

Every time I thought we had reached the top, we came across another slope to climb.

Although it was a tiring walk uphill, we saw lots of interesting sights along the way. I was enamored with Ibiza's charming doors - they're quite small and have a small window in the middle with a metal grill covering the glass.

 

 

  

 

 

We finally reached the top, and the view and the breeze made it completely worth it.

 
 

 

We also got to take a quick look at the Catedral, which happened to be shut. Boo.

After enjoying the view for a bit, we decided to head back down into town for some lunch. It was only after we made it out of the walled city that we discovered that we had entered it from the rear. The front entrance was fine as front entrances go, but it wasn't one of those knock your socks off kind of entrances.

 

We were pretty hungry so we quickly grabbed a table at the pizza place right by the entrance of the walled city, even though I was wary of eating "tourist food." I was really surprised when I took a bite of my pizza - it was delicious! J and I happily munched away on our food as we watched the open air market in front of us. Because it was no longer the high season, there weren't that many people about.

After lunch, there wasn't much left for us to do since most of the shops were shut so we decided to head back to the hotel. We didn't need to be at the airport for another hour or so, so J and I decided to chill out in the hotel's library. I chilled and read magazines while J took a cat-nap.

Soon, we were off to the airport and on our flight back to London.

Turning thirty doesn't seem so bad when you get to do it in Ibiza. =)

Formentera aka Paradise

That's what everyone calls it in on the travel websites, and boy, they weren't joking. One of my Italian friends recommended that we check out Formentera, and I owe him a huge thank you for the recommendation.

Formentera is a little island that's a bit south of Ibiza, and we walked over to the port to hop on a ferry. We got quite the shock when we found out that it was 91 euro for two return tickets. Ouch.

We hopped on board, and J ended up getting a bit seasick from all the bobbing around. Luckily, the ride was only about 30 minutes, and he recovered as soon as we landed. He wasn't the only one - I looked  around to see several people clutching their seasickness bags.


As soon as we landed, we noticed a row of shops renting out cars, motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles. I decided that it would be a great idea to ride bikes to the beach, Playa de Illetes, and we rented a pair for about 14 euro and put down another 16 as a deposit for the two bikes. We had a bit of trouble finding a bike for me since I'm pretty damn short, so I ended up with a child's mountain bike. J was pretty happy with his girl's city bike with metal basket.

Somewhere along the way, we took a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of Salinas Nature Reserve, which was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1995. Talk about a good wrong turn! We ended up biking along a very scenic dirt trail and tried to avoid running over the island's ubiquitous green lizards.


As soon as we found our way to the proper road heading to the beach, we immediately made another wrong turn into another dirt trail, which also turned out to be quite fortuitous because the trail dead-ended at a open-air restaurant run and patronized by locals.


I had been warned about the incredibly high prices I was sure to come across in Formentera's restaurants for really crap food, so we were overjoyed to find a place where we could get delicious hamburgers with chips and drinks for around 25 euro. I don't think the restaurant even had a name, but it was right by Playa Llevant and the owner's dogs ran around as we ate our lunch.


We headed back to the main road and finally got to our destination, Playa de Illetes. It's no longer the high season, so the beach wasn't crowded at all and a large German family with very blond children were the only ones splashing around in the water. The sand was white and soft, the water blue and clear. The sun wasn't too strong and the breeze just right. We just couldn't ask for a more perfect day.


We dropped off our stuff on two lounge chairs and popped open an umbrella so J could have some shade. Just like in Barcelona, a guy walked up to us shortly after to collect the rental fees - so nice and easy! It should've been about 18 euro, but he charged us only 12. Sweet!

Anyway, my butt was majorly hurting from the bike seat, so I was more than happy to just lay there on the lounge chair for a bit. Then I got bored so I headed into the water.


The water was really calm with zero waves and quite warm. I kept walking, but the water was shallow and it didn't get up to my waist until I had walked a good 10 meters in.


The water was cooler the farther I went out, so I headed back to shore after splashing around a bit. J also took a quick dip in the ocean, and then we both lounged about for a few hours.

Nude sunbathing isn't uncommon here so it didn't faze me much when I saw the topless women, but I did get a slight surprise when some people were running around in their birthday suits. Definitely wouldn't see that in LA, but it didn't seem as weird in Formentera for some reason.

Anyway, we hung out for a few hours before the sun looked like it was finished for the day, and we hopped back on our bikes to head back to the marina. It was a much shorter 2 mile ride back, but my butt was hurting the entire time.

Returning our bikes was super painless, and we hopped on the ferry to head back to Ibiza. The ferry this time was so big that we were sure that it was going to some other destination like Valencia so J and I went around asking people again and again to make sure that this was going to Ibiza. Paranoid much?

Thirty minutes later, we were back in Ibiza and we walked back to our hotel and showered before heading out to dinner at the Jackpot Restaurant, which is one of the restaurants on our hotel premises and is connected to the casino (hence the name).

We arrived right when it opened at 8:30pm, and the place was completely empty. We got our choice of tables, and since it was a bit cool outside, we sat in this entry type area that was between the outside and inside parts of the restaurant.

The Mediterranean menu had a heavy emphasis on seafood and was very reasonably priced for that kind of restaurant. And to our great surprise and delight, the portion sizes were epic! After snacking on the olives and bread and the cream of zucchini aperitif, I was pretty much done before my starter even arrived.  Luckily, I had a very helpful assistant in J.

 However, I think even he got a bit scared when the server showed up with the dessert tray. She had an array of different cakes, and J got a slice of almond cake while I decided to go native and ordered a local dessert called flao, which is similar to a cheesecake made with aniseed, lemon and fresh cheese. I think both our eyes nearly popped out of our heads when we saw the huge slices she was doling out. She proceeded to plate it in front of us with careful daubs and swirls of different fruit and chocolate sauces. It was pretty amazing to watch it done and almost too pretty to eat. But we did. All of it. Cause that's how we roll.

We finally staggered out of there 2 hours later, when the restaurant began to fill up. Apparently 10:30pm is a perfectly reasonable hour to have dinner.


As for J and I, it's bedtime and our stomachs can start a long night's work of digesting the enormous meal we just had.

Hello Ibiza, Goodbye Twenties

I never thought I'd see the day, but here I am on the eve of entering my thirties. I should've paid more attention to the clock because I can't figure out where the time went!

But I can figure out that the twenties ought to go out with a bang, rather than a whimper, so J and I planned a weekend away in Ibiza, Spain to celebrate.

I've heard of Ibiza before and its crazy party scene, but I was much more excited about the surf and sun since it's gotten downright freezing in London in the last week.

J and I woke up ridiculously early on Friday morning to catch a minicab to London City airport, where we boarded our 2 hour flight to Ibiza. In a few short hours, we were touching down on the island and I could see that it would be clear, blue skies and warm sun for the day. Hooray!

We hopped into a taxi and arrived at our hotel for the weekend. Since a girl doesn't turn 30 every day, we decided to splurge a bit on the Ibiza Gran Hotel, a five star hotel, which was close to both the airport and to Ibiza Town.

The hotel lobby was absolutely enormous in comparison to the hotels I've gotten used to in Europe, and I was just amazed by the design of the hotel. It's only four years old, and it's got a very modern and minimalist feel to it. A really clean scent was being pumped throughout the hotel, and the place smelled just like how I would imagine heaven to smell.

Which made sense because our hotel room was pretty heavenly. It was a deluxe suite, and some of the features included a jacuzzi on the terrace, a whirlpool tub, two plasma TVs and a view of both the pool area and the marina.

 

 

The hotel was so amazing and we were pretty tired from getting up so early that I made the executive decision that we would be lounging about the hotel all day and taking some time to enjoy the pool.

Although the entire hotel was fully booked, there were only a few people out in the pool area. J and I took advantage to splash around in the adult pool and generally cause a ruckus when we weren't napping on the giant daybed. It was great - it's been way too long since I've cannonballed.

All the horseplay made us pretty hungry, and we went in search of food, but to our surprise, none of the restaurants were open. Apparently, the onsite restaurant wouldn't open until 8:30pm, and we were way to hungry to wait 2 hours for dinner.

Have I mentioned that room service is a godsend? J and I always love ordering room service, and this trip was no exception. We had ordered room service for lunch, and we ordered it again for dinner. It looked like we were collecting trolleys or something in our suite.

We ended the night with J watching BBC World News, which was the only English speaking channel the hotel had, and I was re-reading Bill Bryson's At Home.

All in all, it was a really nice way of easing into a relaxing holiday.

Some More Half-Marathon Moments

And for the finish (I'm on the left hand side)...

I Ran a Half-Marathon!

The Royal Parks Half-Marathon was today, and it was finally time for all of my training to pay off.

I've been training for the last three months, but I haven't been training as hard as I would like what with working full-time and taking care of household chores. According to my training plan, I was supposed to do 33 runs, but I only did 17 runs or so. Epic fail on following the plan, but I was pretty confident that I would at least finish after completing two 11 mile runs in the last two weeks.

Ready or not, race day finally arrived, and strangely enough, I wasn't nervous at all. I had no problem falling asleep last night at a decent hour, and this morning felt like any other morning as I ate my oatmeal and drank my coffee.

We were supposed to arrive at the running area to meet my other running teammates for a group photo, but the tube ride took much longer than anticipated what with all the people heading towards the half-marathon. Then I had to stop by the porta-loos, which had a huge queue, so we basically missed out on the group photo altogether. Sad.

I found my corral, which was completely packed with people. I felt a bit like cattle as they guided us closer and closer to the start line, but we were moving so slowly that J was following along on the spectator side and acting as my own personal paparazzo.

 

Why am I always the smallest person anywhere I go?

We finally got the go ahead to start running, and that's just what I did.

I was careful to watch my pace since I had to keep it up for about 2 hours or so, and I enjoyed looking around as I ran through the streets of London. It was a bit surreal running past Big Ben, and it was at this moment I felt like a true Londoner.

There weren't many spectators out, and I just chugged along with my music blasting. It was a beautiful course even though there were a bit too many slow inclines for my taste. There were lots of water stations, and I had Gu (energy gels) at miles 5 and 9 to keep me going. My only complaint about the course is that it was much too crowded. I was never able to find my groove and just sink into my running - I had to weave and dodge a lot even though there wasn't much room to manuever.

It was also kind of scary seeing people who had pushed themselves too hard and were being tended to by paramedics on the side of the course. One guy was completely laid out and unconscious with an oxygen mask on and a blanket covering his body. Yikes.

My right calf started to cramp up around mile 11, and I took a few walking breaks to see if I could walk it off, but it seemed like the cramp was here to stay so I decided to just keep on running. I also realized that I wasn't going to meet my time goal of under 2 hours so I decided to slow down the pace and just enjoy the rest of the run.

I finished hard and with a smile on my face, and I gave a two thumbs up to the race photographer at the finish. I'm such a nerd.

In any case, my Garmin tells me it took me 2:04 to run 13.3 miles. Where did the extra 0.2 miles come from?! I thought it was supposed to be only 13.1! In any case, I won't know my official time for a few more days, but it was a good first half-marathon, and I'm definitely tempted to sign up for another one.

What's next on the horizon? A Runaway Bride 5k towards the end of November that I'm running for fun with some of my friends. I can't wait.