Wine Tasting in Paris

Jen (the other American in the Marketing Department) mentioned a great wine tasting event in Paris to me a few months back that a friend of theirs attended last. We don’t need much of an excuse to go to Paris, so we all ventured to Paris for the weekend.

We took the Eurostar over and checked out it's fancy new home in the £800 million renovated St. Pancras Station, it had been departing from Waterloo, much to the French's chagrin! We started off the trip with a glass of champagne at the 'world's longest champagne bar' in the station prior to the 2 hour and fifteen minute trip. We checked into our hotel and headed out for a light dinner. They guy at the hotel Eiffel Seine (would not necessarily recommend the hotel...teeny, tiny rooms but nice to stay in a different, more neighboorhoodish part of Paris - in the 15th near the Eiffel Tower) tried to find a restaurant for us that was still open. We ended up with at Grand Cobert at midnight and there was still a wait. The service was dreadful (right out of a bad movie about Paris which is surprising as most of our experiences have been very positive with the French), but it was a fun spot full of Parisian smoking like chimneys and where they filmed the last scene in ''Something's Gotta Give'.

The event, Vigneron Independant , was truly amazing – kind of a bargain Disneyland for wine enthusiasts. It was €6 (about $9) to enter a convention center full of nearly 1000 independent French wine producers. Each producer had 5-10 wines you could try and most of them spoke enough English that we were able to chat with them a bit. They were organized by wine growing region, so it was a great educational experience as well. While we only attended for one day, it lasted four days, but even if you went everyday you couldn't’t possibly have covered even 25% of the wine (not even you, Karen!). We, along with everyone else, purchased a luggage cart to wheel our bounty home, as the prices were extremely reasonable. That night we had dinner at Bistrot Vivienne, a spot we found last time we were in Paris but never had any luck eating there. It was worth the wait as the food was delicious and we were surrounded by Parisians.

The next day we wandered around the city and stumbled upon a great outdoor market under the train tracks next to our hotel. It was really a great experience to see all the locals buying their cheese, veggies, meat, etc. These photos don't really do it justice.

We had a pretty tasty lunch at Fontaine de Mars and then walked off lunch strolling along the Seine looking for a piece of art to take home. It was a great trip and we are already planning on next year's wine tasting adventure!

Thanksgiving

I have another American in my Department, Jen, and we decided to host a Thanksgiving coffee tasting for our team. Jen brought pumpkin pie and I brought cranberry bread. We explained the tradition of Thanksgiving and asked everyone to share what they were thankful for. People really got into it and a few of them got emotional. It was really touching and a perfect way to celebrate the day.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we have an amazing cheese shop in my neighborhood called La Fromagerie that has become one of my favorite spots in London. They not only have hundreds of different cheeses, but a great little café where you can sit and enjoy a glass of wine and some cheese or a nice brunch on the weekends. They also host events from time to time including Thanksgiving dinner.

Now it may sound obvious, but Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the UK - you’d be surprised how many Americans get confused about this. So after a full day of working, I wasn’t really up for cooking a huge meal, so dinner at La Fromagerie was a great way to celebrate fairly effortlessly and we invited our friends Jason and Sarah who recently moved to London from Seattle (and who have a Doodle, Hank, they are bringing over) to join us.

The shop was lit entirely by white Christmas lights and it smelled like a cross between turkey, cheese and pine trees. It was really nice. We had a delicious dinner of turkey, stuffing, cranberries and more, but what made it really special was our two “communities” coming together – our American community and our neighborhood community.

It was a really special and memorable evening.

Nicole's Visit

My sister, Nicole, arrived for a ten day visit. It was a great excuse to do tons of touristy things that I’ve been dying to do. We started the visit off with my first official English Tea at the Brown Hotel. We were served crust less cucumber sandwiches, scones and so much more while we sat near the fire an caught up. It was really lovely.

Next up on the list was the Jack the Ripper tour which we went on with a few of my Starbucks colleagues. It was a cold, damp night – perfect for spooky stories and gruesome photos. We warmed up with a “curry” at London’s famous Brick Lane which was fun time.

After a trip to Marrakech (see separate post) we came back to London where we headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum for the afternoon to see the Couture exhibit. We never made it to the official exhibit as there was too much to see along the way! It’s a great museum and had a pretty spectacular Chihuly piece (a little taste of home :-) ). The next day we set out to check out Spitlefields Market which was mainly under construction, but still had a few cool clothing stalls. I will definitely be back when it re-opens and wrapped up the day with bit of theater when we saw the Lion King. The show was amazing – the costumes and choreography in particular were like no other show I’ve seen. We wrapped up her trip with a quick visit to the Tate Modern (my favorite museum so far) and a delicious dinner at the city’s reported best gastropub, The Anchor and Hope.

It was really fun having Nicole visit and exploring London together.

Beautiful Bruges

After missing our train on Friday evening (a good story you should definitely ask Greg about after he’s had a few Guinness’s) we departed Saturday morning via the Eurostar to meet up with my Dad in Jan in Bruges, Belgium for the weekend.

If you’ve never been, I would highly recommend it for a weekend. It is a quaint, picturesque little European town that my dad says looks like a more authentic version of Disneyland’s European village. After struggling to find an available hotel, we ended up staying at the Hotel Ter Duinen, which had a great breakfast and super service (If you go, be sure to ask for the carriage room on the first floor).

We spent the weekend wandering around, shopping and enjoying mussels, frites, beer, waffles and chocolate. Not bad! It was pretty chilly, but we braved a boat ride through the canals and a few nice long walks including windmills. All the leaves had changed color so it was really beautiful.

All in al a really lovely weekend spent with family.

Our First Visitors

My Dad and his wife, Jan, are our first official visitors. We have been eagerly anticipating their visit for months now and really looked forward to showing them some of our favorite spots in London and enjoying some sight seening together.

After a nice birthday celebration at one of our favorite spots, The Providores, we decided to check out Windsor Castle on Saturday. It was pretty cool. Apparently it's the Queen's favorite weekend spot, but lucky for us she wasn't there that weekend (according to US Weekly she was in Balmoral meeting Kate Middleton :-) ) so we were able to see some of the living quarters as well. I was watching the movie Elizabeth (great flick, if you haven't seen it, you should) this weekend and it was really cool to recognize the castle in much of the film.

Dad and Jan had already seen most of what they were interested in seeing in London already, so Sunday we spent wandering around Regents Park, Camden Town and Covent Garden with the Dood. We had a proper pub lunch in a slightly dodgy local, and then walked ourselves to the point of total exhaustion. Generally a really nice day showing off our city.

Dad and Jan flew off to Dublin on Monday morning and we will meet up withe them in Brugge, Belgium in two weeks. It was really fun to have visitors and they even were graciously enough to tell us how great they slept despite the air mattress, the 4am and 6am delivery trucks to the Starbucks below and general hassle and bustle of living in the heart of the city. Must have had some serious jet lag!

Another tragic stereotype rings true...

This article reinforces Greg's favorite statement about the UK being the most advanced 3rd world country on the globe...

English 'pull own teeth' as dental service decays
Mon Oct 15, 7:19 AM ET

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.
Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.
Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers.

More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment.
"This is an uncomfortable read for all of us, and poses serious questions to politicians from patients," said Sharon Grant of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health.
Overall, six percent of patients had resorted to self-treatment, according to the survey of 5,000 patients in England, which found that one in five had decided against dental work because of the cost.

One researcher involved in compiling the study -- carried out by members of England's Patient and Public Involvement Forums -- came across three people in one morning who had pulled out teeth themselves.

Dentists are also concerned about the trend.

Fifty-eight percent said new dentists' contracts introduced last year had made the quality of care worse, while 84 percent thought they had failed to make it easier for patients to find care.
Almost half of all dentists -- 45 percent -- said they no longer take NHS patients, while 41 percent said they had an "excessive" workload. Twenty-nine percent said their clinic had problems recruiting or retaining dentists.
"These findings indicate that the NHS dental system is letting many patients down very badly," said Grant.
"It appears many are being forced to go private because they don't want to lose their current trusted and respected dentist or because they just can't find a local NHS dentist."

Doodle Update

I think we’ve mentioned it before, but to set the stage, Oxford St. is one of the busiest shopping streets in London (probably in the world). Oxford St. divides the Marylebone (north) and Mayfair (south) neighborhoods, and we live just north of Oxford St. – technically in Marylebone. Walking on or across Oxford St. can be quite painful, so we rarely venture south into Mayfair. Anyway, I mention all of this because this weekend we took the Dood to one of our favourite lunch spots – Rocket (where they have outside seating in a hard-to-find little alley). I had a work call in the middle of the day, so we were killing some time exploring Mayfair when we stumbled upon a small off leash park that’s 3 blocks from our flat (as another side note, as bad as the summer weather was, the fall has been really nice – except for a few days of very heavy rain). Tiff omitted it from the Italy post, but we came home to find that our roof had sprung a leak (again). I guess we had torrential rain and there was even a tornado that touched down somewhere. Our current solution is buckets and towels. Tiff said the dripping is like sleeping in a rainforest – my first thought was that it was like living in the projects.

Back to the park - I was very excited, Tiff was embarrassed that it took us 10 weeks to find it. Anyway, should be life changing for us – plus it’s right next to the U.S. Embassy so we now know where to go in case of an emergency.

Morgan made fast friends with a couple of pug puppies.

You could tell she was excited because that night she was acting rather impish – flipping her ear over her head and posing.

Smile!

I said SMILE!