Celeb Sightings

After months of seeing zero celebs in London, Greg's spotting of Dustin Hoffman has started us on a roll. Last weekend we saw Tracey Ullman in a 'tool cool for school' boutique called Dover Street Market - a hot spot where London's highly eccentric, young wealthy come to shop.

To continue our day of pretending we are young and wealthy, we had dinner with another American couple at a cool restaurant called Sketch followed by drinks at Claridges a beautiful hotel near our flat which is featured daily in London's gossip pages with Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen, Kelly Osbourne and other celebs regularly stumbling out the front door at 3am. We weren't out that late, but we did see the girl who plays Hugh Grant's assistant in Love Actually - okay probably a C level at best, but we were still pleased with the spotting.

Then this weekend it was beautiful and sunny so we headed out for a walk through Regents Park. As we neared the top of Primrose Hill, Greg spotted Helena Bonham Carter and her husband, Tim Burton, enjoying the sunshine with their kids. Not sure if they are in town for the Sweeney Todd premier or if they live in London.

We are now actively seeking out Madonna (okay not stalkers exactly) as she recently purchased two building in our neighborhood, one to live in and one for her gym, but the zoning laws would not allow her to connect the two buildings so the poor girl has to pop outside every time she wants to work out - only to be flooded by the paparazzi.

Return to Ireland

Tiff hasn't traveled for work for a while, but each time she had before we tried to turn it into an excuse to do some travel. So, Thursday rolls around and Tiff confirms she has a meeting in Dublin on Monday. We'd already already covered Dublin, and well, it's no Paris, so we were looking to stay somewhere in the countryside outside of the city. After some intense research we ended up getting the friends and family rate at the Ritz Carlton in County Wicklow. The room was bigger than our flat in London.

As an added bonus, there are two golf courses adjacent to the hotel, one of which was designed by David Kidd - the same guy that designed Bandon Dunes. So, I bit the bullet and got up at 4am to fly out Friday morning to play a round before Tiff arrived later that evening. When I got there, the course was closed due to frost, but it opened at 12:30 and I literally was the only guy out there. Just me, some Ewes and the Sugarloaf Mountain. It was an amazing experience and it got me juiced to play in Scotland with DWT in February so we booked his travel while I was on the course.

Tiff got in late Friday night and I drove our unstable rental car with the icy road warning light on during the two hour drive to Dublin airport and back. We spent the next couple of days exploring the Irish countryside, eating Irish Stew(Tiff), drinking loads of Guiness (Greg) and relaxing at the hotel - enjoying the spa (Tiff), gym (both), NFL on Sky Sports (Greg) and the Gordon Ramsey restaurant. I'm not a huge fan of expensive French restaurants and this one didn't do anything to change my opinion. It was fine, but not worth a car payment.

We headed to Dublin Monday night and it was back to reality. We stayed at the Jurys Inn and the lobby seems nice enough but the room was pretty bad. We went from heated marble floors in the bathroom to mildewy grout throughout. I felt bad for Tiff who had to spend two nights there, but not bad enough to stay the extra night. Plus, I had to get back to the Doodle because our dog-sitters dog had died over the weekend. Very sad. Don't want to end on a downer so I'll throw in a couple more photos.

Tiff - enjoying a "not quite cold enough" champagne cocktail.

The Powerscourt Gardens

UK Fun Fact #457

Okay, I haven't been as good as I had hoped on documenting all the fun quirky things about the UK. But trust us, there have been at least 457 of them.

Here is a great one - they actually still regularly use keys that look like this!

Absolute Fun at the Ice Bar

A few friends/colleagues from Starbucks were in town and we decided to show them a night out on the town. We enjoyed dinner at a gastropub, The Cow, but the main event of the night was a trip to the Absolute (the vodka brand) Ice Bar. It's a bar in central London made entirely of ice. The seats and even your drink glass is made of ice. The adorn you in these posh hooded ponchos with matching gloves to keep you from getting too cold. Anyway, it was another fun and unique experience.