travelswithalice

September 27, 2014

It's a celebration!

Tuesday, September 9, with Stuart

Sunday, September 14 with Uncle John & Auntie Pat

Tuesday, September 23, with Citibank friends

Thursday, September 25 with STC classmates

Friday, September 26 with Sydney group

No such thing as over-celebrating!

Celebrate good times, come on! ❤️

Labels: Birthday

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 27, 2014

September 20, 2014

London Diary (Part 3)

Saturday, September 13, Stuart's Homecoming, University of Essex.

Sunday, September 14, at Ting.

Lunch with Uncle John & Auntie Pat before heading off to the airport.

Labels: homecoming, London, University of Essex

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 20, 2014

September 19, 2014

London Diary (Part 2)

Monday, September 8, at the ShangriLa at The Shard.

On the south bank of the Thames, the grittier part of town.

The Shard soars incongruously, a full 87 storeys and over 300 meters above London. Reviled as a "shard of glass" piercing through the city's historic skyline, the Renzo Piano design has similarly pierced through the sensibilities of London's outraged heritage groups and environmental planners. No doubt, they are not well pleased with another aspect of the controversial development: The Shard and its surrounds known as the London Bridge Quarter are now owned, at least in part, by the State of Qatar.

Interestingly, "shard of glass" was coined by its detractors as an insult but the contentious building has triumphantly taken it as its official name.

The Shard throws a spiky shadow over HMS Belfast, permanently moored on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite the venerable Tower of London. a short distance from the iconic Tower Bridge

Lunch at Ting. Venue is fabulous, furnished to a very high standard, as is to be expected from a ShangriLa Hotel. Food and waiter service are also very good. However, the restaurant's reception area, a vital part of the whole deal, needs a certain amount of polish. For at least some of the greeters, a smile and a comb would be welcome fixes.

I feast on English artisanal cheeses: Golden Cross Goat Cheese, Montgomery, Applewood Smoked Cheddar, Cornish Yarg, Mature Cheddar. And finally, Waterloo Brie Style and Stilton.

The last two are an added bonus, compliments of the very charming Chief Sommelier Ann who guides me through the parade of unfamiliar cheeses, which in the end serves to completely undo me and my limited cheese tolerance.

Drinks at Gong Bar.

The lovely and gracious Inge finds us a table perfect for super-moon watching.

Tuesday, September 9, my birthday!

The ShangriLa's special celebration dinner is served in our room, complete with champagne, flowers, and our very own waiter, the excellent Maloj. Having been given a room key for the occasion, he sets up the dining table while Stuart and I are away at the bar. And when we sit down to dinner, Maloj just comes and goes with each course, unobtrusively, serving us impeccably in our very own private dining room. Very elegant and indulgent. I'm a happy birthday girl!

Wednesday, September 10, afternoon at Shakespeare's Globe.

Dinner at Ting.

Terrific noise from a shockingly unruly table next to ours. The restaurant tries to make amends by plying us with champagne and birthday sweeties. It works! We leave happy.

Thursday, September 11, at the Southwark Borough Market.

Lunch at Applebee's Fish Restaurant.

Stuart's fish soup is a deep, rich brown colour. My grilled Dover sole is laced with a delicate lemon cream sauce. The aftermath:

Afternoon on Fleet Street again; then a bit of shopping.

Temple Church

Dinner at Polpetto in Soho.

Welcoming, friendly, cheerful staff. Good food. Roast duck in pink sauce of bilberries with pickled walnuts. Pork belly with crackling, greengage and pepperwort leaf. Welsh lamb on lightly creamed pappardelle.

Creative, surprising, fresh-tasting.

Friday, September 12, In Clerkenwell.

Lunch at The Modern Pantry. Memorable dessert of sour cherry brownie with creme fraiche.

"War Horse" at the New London Theatre.

It takes me five and a half years to catch up with the rest of the theatre-going world but I finally get to see it. Fantastic. Energetic. Enthusiastic. Spirited. Creative. Courageous. Mold breaking. Minimal and extravagant all at once.

Dinner at Polpetto again. Two nights in a row. "You like it that much?" one waiter asks. We do, actually.

Labels: Birthday, Borough Market, Clerkenwell, Fleet Street, London, Polpetto, Shangrila, Southwark, Temple Church, The Shard, theatre, War Horse

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 19, 2014

September 18, 2014

London Diary (Part 1)

Monday, September 1, at Gaucho.

Our first dinner in London is with Cristina and Floyd and pretty daughters, Francesca and Frederica. This continues the tradition of dinners with Cristina in the days when Stuart and I regularly came to England to visit Mum and Dad in Devon. That's going back almost ten years now.

Tuesday, September 2, at Grosvenor House.

Singapore friend Emilie joins me for tea. Tea stretches straight through to the cocktail hour as we catch up on several months' worth of stories over several glasses of champagne.

Later, Stuart and I are joined by Mari, the Jones family connection in London. We talk family, career, art, and property.

Wednesday, we leave for Warsaw.

Friday, September 5, back in London, at The Churchill on Portman Square.

Saturday, September 6, on Fleet Street.

I love this part of the city. The High Court, the Old Bailey, Temple, Inns of Court, chambers. Beautiful buildings and gardens. A complicated hierarchical structure for the practice of law.

Pub lunch at Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, with the ghosts of former habitués Samuel Pepys, Doctor Johnson, Charles Dickens, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Cocktails at the Churchill Bar.

Watching ladies of the night at work and at play.

Sunday, at The Tate Modern.

Matisse, The Cutouts.

Just made it on the last day of the exhibit. Finally making sense of Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.

This is not the best way to see art though. Too many people (this has been the Tate's most visited exhibit), too many children much too young (infants even) to benefit from the experience.

We escape to the Members Room for drinks and the great view.

Dinner at the Chuchill's restaurant, Montagu.

A bit too open and too noisy, plus an unwelcome singer at the piano.

Food is good though. But had to ask waiter to chill the champagne glasses. Nobody here seems to do that; maybe it's only important in the tropics?

Labels: Fleet Street, Grosvenor House, Hyatt Regency's Churchill, London, Matisse, restaurants, Tate Modern

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 18, 2014

September 11, 2014

London, Thursday

The city has reverted into character.

A dishwater sky and a weak-tea river. This picture bears very little resemblance to the glorious- though admittedly surprising- London of previous days.

Labels: London, weather

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 11, 2014

September 09, 2014

An evening in Warsaw

Dinner at Rozana Restaurant was a delight. Shrubs and climbers and beautiful roses immediately put me in a garden mood as I walked through the path and up a few short steps onto a small porch and into a foyer filled with beautiful piano music and masses of fresh flowers in tall vases.

In the dining room, I felt like a dinner guest at somebody's quietly elegant family home. The room is furnished in pretty chintzes, linens, lace and lovely old furniture.

When the waiter brought in a basket of fresh cèpes and set it down at our table so that we could make our selection, I knew dinner would be good. I was right. The food was excellent- unfussy, unpretentious, and delicious.

Ewa, the lone local in our party, told us of joyful moments spent with family picking mushrooms in the forest. They dried freshly picked mushrooms in low oven heat and stored them in cloth bags where they stayed good for years.

After dinner, Ewa took us for drinks at wonderfully trendy Bar Na Lato. The crowd was young, cheerful, and too well-behaved for a bar.

Blankets were thoughtfully provided for guests, so I sipped my Vodka Sour, which my host insisted I have, thank goodness for that, snuggled happily under a blanket. Some people lounged on deck chairs on the lawn, savouring the unseasonably warm September evening. Well, it wasn't really that warm. Note the blankets. Even the locals were using them. (Interesting note: the bar's name, "Na Lato," means "for the summer.")

Labels: bar, restaurant, Warsaw

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 09, 2014

September 06, 2014

"F*ck history, let's have a beer!"

When the new owners of the former Forum Hotel, now Novotel, asked the locals why they disliked the building which after all has the distinction of being only the second high-rise in Warsaw to surpass the 100-meter mark, they were told in no uncertain terms that it looked like a big block of shit. The new owners promptly repainted over the hated yellow-brown colour before putting up the new NOVOTEL signage.

Anya tells me that her people have a dark sense of humour. She gleefully describes a welcome sign at the 2012 EuroCup saying "Welcome to Warsaw! F*ck history! Let's have a beer!"

Anya is my tour guide. She and driver Daniel were a bit uncertain at the start of the tour because my list of places to see were not on their usual route. Anya hit her stride though soon after our first stop at the Polytechnic University.

There are several original pre-war buildings near the university, some of them still bearing bullet hole marks from the war. Anya lives in a renovated one and she takes me inside for a look.

There are also several residential buildings providing cheap accommodation for students for as low as 500 zloty (about 120 euros) per month for a bed.

At the other end of the scale is a Daniel Libeeskind-designed apartment building, the tallest in Europe, that is struggling to find buyers for its very expensive units. Anya says two years' salary would probably net her just one square foot.

Old photographs and camera obscura-aided highly detailed paintings by Canaletto (a nephew of the more renowned Venetian namesake) enabled faithful reconstruction of the Old Town, proof of the city's determination to prevent the total annihilation of a people, their culture, and their history.

There are several memorials to the departed citizenry, heroes of the uprising.

The main cathedral is presently undergoing renovations to repair damage to its foundation sustained when the bridge beside it was built. Already a veteran of numerous other renovations, the building is now Gothic in back, neo-classical in front, and sports a total of five different architectural styles throughout.

There seems to be a church every 100 yards or so in the Old Town, so I ask my guide why there are no Orthodox churches in this city which has a long association with Russian influence. Apparently, most of the city's Catholic churches that had been converted into Orthodox by the occupying Russians have subsequently been turned back into Catholic churches. Warsaw's church builders had turned to Gothic architecture specifically because these structures did not lend easily to conversion into Russian Orthodox.

And why only one synagogue? In a city where Jews constituted a third of the pre-war population, there are now only 600 registered Jews.

We head to Wedel's for their famous chocolate.

I have a cup of hot chocolate- thick, rich, and creamy, of which I could only manage three slow sips. Anya has a tall glass of chocolate with raspberry ice cream. She says she only has hot chocolate in the winter.

I suppose a beautiful sunny day like this is so far removed from any thoughts of hot drinks. Warsaw has long and deeply oppressive winters. The 2012 winter lasted six months, with three months of bitter cold, averaging minus 20 degrees, and over six feet of snow in most parts.

Which is probably why, on days like this, they party. This weekend, pianos are to be rolled out into the streets of the Old Town for a celebration of the music of Frederyk Chopin, beloved home boy of Warsaw. Sadly, I won't be here for it.

Labels: Warsaw

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 06, 2014