The Sunday After

J and I were pretty tired when we woke up the next morning, but we got our things together and checked out of the hotel. We knew our other friend was staying at the same hotel, and we asked the front desk about him to make sure he got in all right the previous night. I had received a strange text from him a bit earlier saying that he was massively hungover and that his debit card had been stolen the previous night.

The man at the front desk reported with a small chuckle that our friend hadn't checked out yet and had called downstairs for some milk. We weren't quite sure what to do so we headed over to Patka's flat and while we discussed what we ought to do, the man in question arrived.

He actually looked a lot better than I expected, and we managed to convince him to grab brunch with us. Our friend recovered sufficiently to tell us exactly what happened to him the previous night as we scarfed down our eggs and brioche as he sipped delicately from a Sprite.


He and another guy had decided that kebabs were in order after the club, and they were short a few euro so he made off to the nearest cash machine. On his way there, he spied a wine shop and decided to pop in for some drinks to go with their kebabs. Apparently, some Frenchman chatted him up and started hugging him while hollering "Americano!" and my friend pushed him away. He patted his pockets immediately after and noticed his wallet was missing. He grabbed the Frenchman and threatened to call the police when the Frenchman pointed at the floor. Lo and behold, there was his wallet. He considered it a close call until he noticed that his debit card was missing.

The whole time, our other friend is waiting at the kebab shop holding two giant kebabs up and wondering where in the world he's gone off to and how he's going to pay for the kebabs.

Anyway, we enjoyed the story immensely since no real harm was done and it went down well with our food. We wrapped up our morning with a stroll around the farmer's market that was across the street from the restaurant and then started the long walk back home. In London, most shops are open on Sunday even though they do close early, but in Paris, everything was completely shut and the streets were relatively empty.

We chilled out at Patka's flat, sharing some of our favorite music videos and miscellaneous video clips until it was time for us to leave to catch the Eurostar back home.

I'll miss Patka tons, but the engagement and move is a wonderful thing for her, and I can't wait to visit her in Singapore for her wedding. But until then...

A Farewell in Paris

The last time I saw my friend Patka, it was at her leaving party in London. She had found a fantastic job in Paris, and although we would miss her, we reasoned that Paris was only a few hours away by train. Fast forward ten months, and then she called to drop a bomb - she had gotten engaged and was moving to Singapore!

A bunch of us scrambled to get our Eurostar tickets in order to visit her before she left, and pretty soon, we were all gathered together at Gare du Nord in Paris. I had convinced J to come with me, and we decided to stay at the Best Western Les Theatres in the 2nd arrondisement, which was really cheap and literally right next door to Patka's flat.

Anyway, we were all starving and headed out on the town to hunt down some lunch after dropping off our things. Patka said that it was a surprise, and we just got hungrier and hungrier as our "five minute" walk stretched out to something more like thirty minutes. Finally, we were at Angelina, an upscale restaurant right by the Louvre, and she had brought us here because she promised that they had the best hot chocolate ever. Most of us had a croque madame (a cheese and ham sandwich with an egg on top), and the hot chocolate was to die for. It came in a little jug with a dish of whipped cream on the side, and you got to pour the hot chocolate into your cup and saucer. Seriously, the best hot chocolate ever.

Some of us had arrived the previous night and had a bit too much fun, and the rest of us were pretty tired from waking up early to catch our train so we all decided to take a nap before we went out for dinner. But on our walk back home, we came across a meat shop, and the two guys decided that they needed to buy a whole chicken to snack on before dinner. Did I mention this was on the walk home from lunch?! Boys will be boys. =)

We headed over to Patka's flat to toast her engagement with the champagne we had brought, and then we all piled into two taxis to Chez Janou. As Patka had promised, the food was excellent and reasonably priced with entrees ranging from 15-20 euros. But the service? Let's just say that it's was a very French restaurant. Anyway, it was a fun group of people - around 12 of us from pretty much all over, including the US, England, Poland, Germany, Belgium and a few Parisians thrown in for good measure. I would totally recommend eating at Chez Janou, but be warned that the staff is not the politest and they don't speak any English. They also have this amazing all-you-can-eat chocolate mousse that is ludicrously decadent.

Oh, and a totally random thing happened. An older gentleman had overheard my accent and asked me where I was from and we figured out that we had gone to the same high school in Cupertino, California. What are the chances?! Anyway, he's an American who had been living in Burgundy for the last twelve years, and we exchanged information in case he ever came over to London or in case I was ever in the south of France. =)

After we ate more than our fill, we walked to Barrio Latino to dance the night away. We all paid 20 euro for our cover charge and that also included one drink. The venue was huge (4-5 floors) and the music was Latino but changed to hip hop much later in the evening. Patka warned us to keep an eye on our belongings since pickpocketing was pretty common, and her phone had been stolen the previous week. The dance floor began to fill up and we decided to leave after it got a bit too close for comfort.

Getting our things from the cloakroom was an absolute nightmare since no one was queuing except for us. We nearly got into it with a short African guy, but I still managed to get our things before he did. Hooray! We left the club, some of us worse for the wear, and we all piled into taxis that took us  home. J and I hit the sack, and I received a couple of amusing text messages of people having lost other people, but I figured I'd hear the story the next day.

Another New Year in London

I'm ringing in another new year in London, and it's another one I'll be spending at home in our cosy flat. J and I have big plans to split a beer and a pizza and watch a movie. If you can't tell, New Year's Eve isn't much of a holiday in my books.

However, it is the perfect occasion to look back on the last year and see what I have (and haven't) accomplished. Here were my resolutions from the beginning of the 2011:

1. Enroll in a photography class. FAIL. But I did play with my camera a lot and bought Photoshop and Lightroom.
2. Learn French. FAIL. I think this was a good fail on my part. As pretty as it sounds, it's probably not as useful as one would hope. In any case, the French would be appalled at my atrocious accent.
3. Get back to fighting weight. WIN. I've lost a lot of the extra weight I gained when I first moved to England (thank you, Heathrow Injection), but I'm not as fit as I'd like to be so the fight continues.
4. Visit Bath, England; Paris, France; Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia; hike in New Zealand. WIN. I've visited Bath, Paris (twice!), Barcelona. I haven't gotten to the other side of the world yet, but I think I'll postpone those trips for a while yet since there's still the possibility that J and I may move back to LA and the plane ride to Australia/ NZ will be much more bearable from there.
5. Make more of an effort with my appearance - I probably shouldn't be proud of the fact that I could get ready to leave the house in less than 10 minutes, which usually just entails putting on a long coat over my pajamas. WIN. I suppose it was inevitable with having to go to work without the risk of them sending me home to get dressed properly. As for the coat over pajamas, I'm happy to report I've done that only once this year.

In sum, I think I did alright, and I even did things that were off the list such as:

1. Ran a half-marathon.
2. Visited Formentera and Ibiza (Spain), Zurich and Luzern (Switzerland), Lake District (England), Las Vegas (US).
3. Learned how to shoot a shotgun.
4. Learned how to golf properly.

And now for the upcoming year, I'd like to:

1. Run more half-marathons - I pretty much stopped running after the Royal Parks half marathon in early October and need to start up again.
2. Start weightlifting again - I also gave up weightlifting when I focused on running for the Royal Parks and so need to start this up again.
3. Visit Iceland (August); Seville, Spain (September); Rome, Italy (April); Santorini, Greece (October); Yorkshire, England (March).
4. Be better about keeping in touch with friends back in the US.
5. Learn how to use Photoshop and Lightroom.

I think that's a feasible list of to-dos for the upcoming year and now to see if I actually do it!

Is It Christmas Yet?

No two ways about it, I Love Christmas. Love love love. And to get into the spirit of things, I've done loads of typical Christmas things such as:

Ice skating at Somerset House

Watching an excellent performance of The Nutcracker ballet at the Royal Opera House

Going to an eggnog party and watching Love Actually

Shopping in London with all the twinkling lights

Visiting Christmas markets in Switzerland

Decorating my flat with baubles, homemade gingerbread men, cranberry garlands and poinsettias

But for some reason, the Christmas spirit seems to be eluding me this year.

I think it's probably because I'm still far away from the things that really make Christmas so wonderful - family and old friends. I've also shipped all of my family's gifts to my parents' house in LA, so I haven't wrapped a single gift myself. Sad.

I think I'll finally get into the swing of things when I see how my parents decorated their house this year, add to the presents piled under the tree and feel the warmth of the fire crackling in the fireplace. It'll be Christmas when I get to see my friends and ask how they've fared in the last year and hear about the big news in their lives. I'll be ready to celebrate when I see my cat again and have her curled up by my feet.

I hope Christmas comes soon.

Ice Skating at Somerset House

Okay, so I know I was supposed to write about Zurich and I will, but I went ice skating yesterday and had such a blast that I figure I'll get to Zurich when I get to it.

One of my friends organized a big group of girls to go ice-skating at Somerset House yesterday and we all showed up a little nervous and a lot excited. It had been a while since any of us had gone ice-skating and one of the girls had never gone before!

 

We showed up at the beautiful outdoor ice rink decorated by Tiffany, which also had a tuck shop shaped like a Tiffany jewel box nearby where you could buy candy and jewelry. How perfect is that?! There was also an enormous Christmas tree overlooking the entire rink and holiday music to keep our spirits up.

We checked our things in the cloak room and made our way to the skate room where we traded in our shoes for skates. I think the real fear struck when we were tightly laced into our skates and there was no turning back. Most of the people there were novice skaters and a queue formed to hold onto the railing as we all made our way onto the ice.

I had gone rollerblading a few times about 5 years earlier, and I think it really helped that ice-skating was actually quite similar. Pretty soon, I was actually skating as opposed to clinging to the rail and trying not to fall. I got confident enough to take the ones who were still nervous around the rink until they asked to be dropped off at a different part of the railing. Everyone started out really nervous but by the end of the hour long session, we were all out on the ice and having fun.

I was actually pretty disappointed when the session ended as I was finally feeling up to speeding up a little bit, but I figured I could always drag J back for a quick session. Oh, and there was a proposal midway through the session where a guy proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of the rink, and we all stood and clapped as they hugged and kissed. It was a great setting for a proposal, and we were just hoping that neither of them would fall on their butt afterwards.

I Say Lucerne, the Swiss Say Luzern

J and I ended up spending Friday night holed up in our hotel room while he did some work while I read Bill Bryson's History of Everything. I could tell J felt bad that we were stuck at the hotel, but he made everything better by sharing some of the chocolate he received from his client. The chocolate was from Confiserie Sprungli, the place to get chocolate in Zurich, and it was amazing.

The next morning, J and I hopped on a train for an hour long ride to Lucerne as I had heard it was a very picturesque and charming town.

We started getting more and more excited as we got closer to town as we caught glimpses of the Alps, which were so beautiful that they almost looked fake.

The first thing we did when we got to Luzern train station was buy some gluhwein for J. He was pretty happy.

Once we left the train station, we wandered around and it wasn't long before we saw the charming part of Lucerne, mostly in part because the entire city was dressed for Christmas!

 

Of course, Lucerne had its share of sights to see.

Chapel Bridge, Europe's oldest wooden footbridge...

The dying lion of Lucerne carved into a cliffside in remembrance of the Swiss Guards that were killed in battle in the Tuileries...

The painted facades of the buildings...

The carved doors of St. Loedegar...

But most beautiful of all were the surrounding mountains and Lake Lucerne. The water was so incredibly clear that we could see the lake floor when we peered over the edge from the quayside. And the air was like none I've ever breathed - remarkably fresh with a hint of pine.

 

 

To be honest, I didn't think much of Lucerne as a city aside from its natural gifts. It was much too touristy, and it seemed like there was a H&M or cheap souvenir shop every time I turned around. I wish we had gotten to the city earlier so that we could've made the trip to Mount Pilatus, where you're able to get a phenomenal view of the Alps. We also wasted too much time walking around looking for the entrance to the Museggmauer, a wall that was part of the fortifications protecting Lucerne in the 13th century, which turned out to be underwhelming and closed for the winter!

I'd say better luck next time, but I doubt that we'll be returning unless I'm in dire need of a cowbell with "Luzern" inscribed on it. We were quite ready to leave by the time the sun started to set and happily got back on the train back to Zurich.

Switzerland? Why Not?

I was still outrageously jealous of J's Sweden trip, and I consoled myself with the thought that I would be tagging along with him to Zurich on his business trip.

We woke up at an ungodly hour on Friday morning and hailed a taxi to London City airport while it was still dark. It's a lot more convenient flying out of City as opposed to Heathrow since there are a lot fewer people and they're usually travel savvy business people who don't hold up the security line arguing with airport security as to why they should be allowed to take their gallon jug of shampoo on the plane.

In any case, J met up with several of his colleagues at the gate, and we all piled onto the plane for the very short and very bumpy flight to Zurich. J and I split up after customs as he and his colleagues were going to jump into a cab and head over to their client's offices whereas I was going to hazard the Swiss railway system into the city. Cabs are very expensive in Zurich (along with everything else, I was to discover), and the public transport system in Switzerland is supposed to be excellent. I bought my ticket from an agent that spoke perfect English and barely made it on the train as the doors were closing.

It was a short ten minute ride to Zurich HB, which is the city's main station, and I hoofed it to our digs for the weekend, the Hotel Continental. I was pretty tired by the time I found my way to the hotel, and I was grateful for early check-in and for the upgrade I didn't even ask for. Excellent!

The hotel was extremely charming and done up in a Swiss chalet style with a Christmas tree in all of the communal areas. A generous bunch of mistletoe hung over the revolving doors, and a barrel by the lifts invited you to take a sip of Swiss apple juice. Fat little Santas were liberally sprinkled around the property, and my equally charming room didn't disappoint.

I was exhausted from waking up so early and getting my bearings in a new city that I took a quick shower and jumped into the very cute bed for a nap.

It wasn't long before I was up and ready to go so I bundled up and grabbed my camera to head into the city to see what Zurich was all about. I had just walked into the city center when my phone rang and it was J telling me that he had finished his meeting and that he would head back to the hotel. So I guess the real sightseeing would have to wait, but I did get to take this one picture that only whetted my appetite to see more of Zurich!