Taste of Bengal
or as Kirsten suggested this post be called "Follow the yellow Brick Lane" (I like mine better but we'll let the readers decide).
It is worth mentioning that there is a new link along the right hand side, as I now officially work for the
Microsoft corporation I thought I should represent.
Today we had no set plans so decided to have a bit of a lie-in and then head over to one of our favorite spots,
Spitalfield's Market. Rather than just do the same old same old walk through we went a bit further afield from the market and checked out Brick Lane and the area surrounding it. We were well rewarded.
Brick Lane is the heart of the Bengal community in London (big shout out to
Imran). It is lined with restaurants, cloth shops and localised (yes I spelled that with an s) supermarkets. After taking the street in we selected one restaurant and sat down to a very filling 2 hour lunch, it's what you do on a sunny Sunday in London. To be honest I'm not sure what the difference is between Indian and Bengali food, but it was good.
After lunch we strolled up Brick Lane past all the fashion shops and individuals selling random wares, some of sellers looked as if they just emptied out a closet and put the stuff on the sidewalk. Needless to say we didn't buy anything. What we didn't find were the Jewish bagel shops that one of my clients promised were there, I guess we'll have to go back at some point, oh well. There's also a S. African BBQ place connected to an outdoor beer garden, somehow I don't think it will be very long until I find myself there, perhaps when one of my brothers comes to visit (ahem).
There is also an indoor market just off Brick Lane. It's like a smaller version of
Spitalfield's - various ethnic food stalls and "up and coming designers". Again, we didn't buy anything, but we've got our eyes on some stuff.
Still waddling from our Bengali lunch we wandered back towards
Spitalfield's for a quick run through. A lot of it is under work so the layout was different than we're used to, but it was just an obligatory visit anyway.
And on home we went, to nap on the couches, make some dinner, watch the Red
Sox beat-up on the Braves and start to switch to work mode.
We'll always have Paris
So now we're back in lovely, overcast rainy London and Paris seems like a distant memory. We really enjoyed our time there and look forward to going back to dive deeper into the many sights that we took in.Saturday we slept in so that we could enjoy Paris and the long walk ahead of us in a well rested state. We started off in Le Marais, a cool little area north of the river. It's an area with lots of small side streets, cafes and boutiques. There is a very strong Jewish influence in the area so there were lots of delicious eats on offer. We settled into one cafe that was a proper Jewish deli and had a pastrami and pickle sandwich on a poppy seed and a sample platter of baba ganoush, spinach and cheese, cous cous salad and tzatziki. The woman at the counter was kind of enough to tolerate Brian's french although she did ask if she could speak in English since she was tired of repeating herself - although after a few sentences she clearly realised that she was in the presence of someone who spent several years under the tutelage of Mme. Kelleher.After lunch we wandered around the area and met up with our friend from London Stef (nice to have contacts the world over) and her friend from Lyon, Sasha. After making plans to meet for dinner we set-off on our tour of London's sites. We started by wandering by the Pompidou Centre on our way to see St. Eustache, a stunning Gothic church. Brian wanted to check out the Tour de Jean Sans Peur (a tower built to protect a royal from assassination - without fear indeed!) - unfortunately it seems they have taken this tourist attraction down for the summer, that or we weren't able to find it...Next stop on the tour was Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. Due to the crowds and our packed agenda we did a quick run through the flower and plant market (feel free to skip this one on your next visit to Paris) and then checked out Notre Dame. As you would expect it was mobbed, so we took some pics and walked around the outside getting some nice views of the spires, flying buttresses, and many gargoyles. Our one last adventure on Ile de la Cite was walking all the way out to the point of the island, where the Seine splits and watched the bateau mouches running up and down the river. Crossing back to the north side of the river via the Pont de Neuf (one of the oldest and most romantic bridges in Paris) the husband took his wife in his arms and planted one on her - when in Paris and all that.Mere mortals would have stopped after having already taken in so much in an afternoon, not us. We only had a weekend and there was much to do. We walked through the arches of the Louvre towards the IM Pei designed pyramid (now Da Vinci code famous). The courtyard and building were impressive, with people everywhere, fountains running and a lone duck floating in one pool and posing for pictures. After a short sit down we continued on into the Tuileries which literally runs right up to the Louvre. This enormous par land of rolling slopes, sculpted shrubs and fountains with children sailing toy boats was a wonderful way to end up our tour of the north bank.We hopped on the metro at Place de la Concorde and shot up to Montmarte to check out one of the least recognised images of Paris but one of the most skyline dominating, Sacre Couer, we popped in and were lucky to catch the end of a choir service by the nuns which really brought the church to life. Finally finished with our tourist duties we found some outdoor seating in the Place du Tertre for some well deserved drinks amidst the portraitists; while waiting for Stef and Sasha to join us for dinner.The end of the evening brought a fabulous meal at a "local" spot discovered by Stef followed by several aperitifs at a bar with live music. Brian proceeded to make a lot of friends at the bar even though the topic of conversation turned to politics. Apparently the Parisians appreciate a guy who's brother finds Segolene Royal "foxy" - it's like a secret hand shake. Obviously it was well into the evening so the intrepid couple hopped into a taxi and made their way home set on using all the time that remained to get the most out of Paris.Our train back to London wasn't until 9 at night so we got some sleep and made our way out to Versailles. It is important to note that Kirsten had the brilliant idea to get crepes (chocolate and banana for her, ham and cheese for him) to ward off the creeping hangovers (we only had a few, seriously, no really, not kidding here...). Arriving at Versailles on a blue sky beautiful day (foreshadowing) we walked up to the Palace and entered for an audio guided tour. It is an incredible place, enormous and lushly decorated throughout. It's nice to know that during times of financial crisis they were able to melt down some chairs for sale of the materials - god forbid they should have to lay off the gardener! About mid-way through the tour we looked out the window and saw a terrific storm of wind and rain, a good thing we decided to do the indoor part first. After finishing with seeing how the other half lived we went outside to explore the absolutely enormous garden grounds and other "estates" on the property. There are 1,700 working fountains at Versailles and we must have seen the all of them. We got some nice pictures (damn blog won't let me post them) throughout to remind us of our time at Versailles (5 hours). Our favorite learning was that you had the main palace, the king's mistress' house, and the Queen's retreat - everyone wins I guess.We were both ready to head back to London after a marathon tour of Paris. So we made out (that should be "our" - thank you for pointing that out anonymous commenter) way back to the city, picked up our bags and jumped on the first class (high rolling don't you know) carriage back to our adopted home. The trip really rejuvenated us and re-infected us with the travel bug, now if only Kirsten would stop treating it with anti-biotics...
Bon chance Publius
Congratulations to my big brother for earning his degree in architecture. Believe me when I tell you he earned it. As far as I'm concerned he's the Roger Clemens of architecture school, without the $28m salary...so far.
This is a first for the blog in that it's being updated almost as soon as the events are happening. Kirsten and I are in Paris for the weekend and we spent a wonderful afternoon getting our paws into the City of Lights.
I came down for work on Thursday and Kirsten arrived today. After polishing off the last of my responsibilities we headed out for a stroll down the Champs
Elysees (as you do). So after taking in
L'Arc de Triomphe and sauntering down France's most famous street we took a
reggie on FDR blvd. and crossed the Seine. Seeing both sides of the river and the traffic going up and down it makes one realise what special property a river can be in a city (for the opposite see Philly). As one of my favorite things in any city is to visit the tallest structure and take in the city, we made our way over to Le Tour Eiffel to see how long the line was.
We'd been warned that waiting in line could be several hours. Thankfully at 7PM the only significant hold up was all the people jumping the
queue because they had dinner reservations at the restaurant on the 1st level. After an hour we finally we made it to the top (after 2 elevator rides) and was it ever impressive. To think from one spot we could see
Notre Dame,
L'Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre,
Sacre Coeur, Place
de la Concorde and so many other sites that are so well known. The only down side was London weather followed us to Paris so the clouds, wind and rain made standing at the top of the tower a little less than enjoyable/romantic.
After finally reaching the ground again (30 minutes) we took the Metro to the Saint-Germain area to find some eats. We found some back roads lined with place after place; passing up such global
favs as
Japanese,
Italian and
Greek we settled on a lovely corner French bar/bistro. Kirsten was in search of steak
frites and I had to celebrate
someones graduation by eating his favorite treat. Polishing of a bottle of wine,
foie gras, steak
frites and
filet de canard we were well satisfied with our first hours in Paris.
Now back at the hotel we head to bed ready to use the whole day to further explore what is a most enjoyable city (and practice the language a little more).
8 Germans and 2 Americans go to dinner
So we've discovered another slice of English life that is delicious...a proper British pie shop. To be honest it's actually a pub with a (tiny) pie restaurant upstairs, best of all it's just around the corner from Brian's office.
We had our first pie experience there with Brian's workmate,
Stef, and 7 of her German friends. The company was good even if we couldn't understand the conversation all the time, it was especially distressing when Kirsten joined in, leaving Brian feeling as if he was in a restaurant in Germany. Although, good prep for the end of May when we head to Munich for a wedding.
The pies on offer included Steak and
Guinness, Chicken, Gammon and Leek, as well as daily specials such as Fisherman's pie. They're all made on site and it is quite a refined experience, considering the tiny pub is just down the stairs. Add this to the growing list of places that are on the
Hennigan Tour of London.
