London: Portobello Road and Kensington Palace

First on the agenda today was Portobello Road. Possibly London’s most famous market and one I hadn’t been to in my many London trips.

We caught the bus there and encountered what was possibly London’s crankiest bus driver. We tried to pay with coins and he exaggeratedly gestured at the lack of a hole for us to hand them to him and snidely said ‘It’s 2023, use a card’. Well excuse us, but every bus we’d caught in every other part of the country took coins. What a jerk! Anyhow, apart from a child with the plague sitting right behind us, the bus journey was otherwise uneventful.

When we got there the markets were just setting up so it wasn’t crazy-crowded. We got a coffee and pastry (no point having a boring breakfast at home when there’s market food to be had) then decided to spilt up.

I ended up buying two spoons – I wanted a large one for learning to make rochers (when fancy food comes in a little roll) like this:

I found a really good one and I also found a little teaspoon for Lea because sometimes cafes don’t offer spoons and she likes to eat the foam off her cappuccino before drinking it. Also the little teaspoon would be perfect for making tiny rochers.

Fake flowers around doorways seem to be a big thing here.

One of my highlights of the markets was a laneway next to the vintage end where there was a giant wall of climbing roses. The smell was unbelievable and several people were stopping to take photos. Imagine having this along your fence!

My new cardigan did clash with it somewhat.

After a wander up and down we found the main food section. There was food from all around the world.

I went for a Peruvian arepa, which always reminds me of Charmaine as she taught me how to make them – although so long ago I’ve forgotten. This had plantain in it, which I haven’t had for ages.

The lady making the arepas put all the ingredients on the grill, including a big handful of cheese and cooked them all together. Watching people at stalls work with bbqs makes me realise how limited our use is at home and it makes me want to be more creative.

By the time we’d bought food and walked to both ends the market was getting very busy. We met Lea and Pete again and Lea and I headed to Kensington Palace, a short walk away.

On the way we saw some interesting fashion!

And some very bland fashion. I’ve given up taking photos of people dressed entirely in white as there are so many, so then I was taking photos of couples dressed entirely in white and now I can’t even be bothered doing that. It’s a mysterious trend. Also.. how do they all stay so clean?

On to the palace, which looked pretty dull on the outside (albeit with lovely gardens) but inside was very interesting.

We’d come to see an exhibition on fashion.

Apart from booking tickets I didn’t actually know that much about the building or the exhibition. It turned out to be a combination of iconic modern pieces, such as Met Gala costumes, combined with examples of historic royal gowns and suits that illustrated the origins of modern trends and inspiration.

But first a visit to the toilet and a look at some wallpaper designed to commemorate Diana, who lived here for many years.

I think the wallpaper was one of my favourite items of the day, actually!

Some of the modern items were really amazing art and political statements, such as Dan Levy’s beautiful Met Gala outfit, which celebrated the LGBTQI+ community and used fine embroidery and interesting techniques to create a really joyful and also comfortable outfit. I loved it!

I don’t really know a lot about the Met Gala but some people seem to use it for good, like Billie Eilish collaborating with a designer on the proviso they stop using fur.

Other pieces were funny, such as this piece worn by Katie Perry.

And some were just stupid, like this Beyoncé piece which was designed to make her look like a goddess for her VMA performance (fine, whatever) but has her own face embroidered on the front. If you need to know someone has reached a level of celebrity where they have no one left around them who will tell them the truth, this is an indicator.

Anyhow, as beautiful as many of the old and new pieces were, the exhibition seemed very focused on glamourising fashion and even going so far as it to say the need for specific items enriched communities around the world. No mention of the devastation of animal populations such as beavers for hats or the slave trade that funded/allowed these lifestyles (and still does), no mention of current ills such as the blinding of the children who sew the fine detail in dark workrooms on India, let alone the global impact of fast fashion.

Art like this is beautiful, but only a handful of the displays were ethical in any way. Emma Watson’s dress was fashioned from Oxfam-collected wedding dresses and Tan France’s Indian outfit, that celebrated his immigrant roots, was another favourite.

After all the slow shuffling along with the crowds my feet were aching so we walked in the direction of the nearest tube station and found a pub for a drink. Lea likes lemon, lime and bitters but it has been impossible to find anyone here who will make one so this time I asked if the barmaid had any angostura bitters and could she please add a dash to the lime and soda… voila! Almost as good as the real thing.

There was a Waitrose near the tube station and so we popped into to compare it to Booths, the fancy northern supermarket. It wasn’t bad but didn’t have a cheese counter so I’m going to have to say that Booths is still my supermarket of choice, although one of the cheeses we bought there was possibly the meltiest Brie-style cheese I’ve ever tried. For future reference it was:

Despite the rail strikes on the day it was a quick trip home to rest our feet. Pete and Luke were not long in getting back, they’d been to see the most recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

We had planned to go to the pub up the road, The Camden Head, for dinner and their free comedy night. Luke and I got there first and ordered dinner, which was late and unremarkable. What was remarkable was how little the bar staff were doing, particularly one young guy who spent all his time looking at his phone, vaping, drinking and high-fiving the security guard while the female bar staff cleared tables and served customers. My parents would have fired him in minutes if he’d worked at one of their pubs!

Unfortunately it turned out that, although this pub was called the Camden Head and there was comedy on, the free, unticketed comedy was at a different pub, also called The Camden Head, which was in Islington, not Camden. The comedy at the one we were at was ticketed and sold out. Sigh.

We ended up going back to the apartment and eating cheese and playing cards until about 10:30.

Not a bad way to end the day!

19May2023

Keswick Day 1

by Miss Penny Black

First, thanks for your video, Mum!

My phone setup at the moment makes it difficult to communicate directly with my parents, so I haven’t spoken to them directly since I left. My brother recorded Mum sending me a little message, which was very nice to watch!

Also apologies to all the people who get email notifications, I’ve uploaded a few old posts out of order so if yesterday’s updates were confusing, that’s why.

Today we left our cosy apartment in Ambleside and moved to Keswick. I phoned the owners of the property to see if we could be let in early to drop our bags off and she said it was fine.

We caught the bus and Luke and I minded the bags so Lea and Pete could see the view from the top. We’ve taken the route before so we don’t mind not having the best seats.

The bus was a bit delayed and we ended up taking longer than expected, but the walk from the bus stop to our new place wasn’t far.

The place is lovely and very central, with one bedroom and the living area at ground level then two bedrooms and a bathroom below. We access it from a little door in the car park out back but the front is a traditional Lakeland guesthouse.

Not quite as charming as the front… which I’ll take a photo of tomorrow since it’s dark now.

We went for a walk into town while the cleaning was being finished. We looked through a few shops and walked down to the lake.

A somewhat grey day and a somewhat wonky photo.

There were food vans and a start/finish line for a race all being set up, part of the Mountain Festival that is happening this weekend. There are fell races happening tomorrow (where people run over the fells) of between 5k and 50k. If I hadn’t booked us a pub for lunch tomorrow I’d seriously (not) consider joining in.

We stopped at The Wainwright for lunch.

Pickle Pete! (He was sharing Lea’s burger).

Afterwards we had a bit more of a wander through op shops and bought some lemon cake for our afternoon snack.

We had a bit of quiet time in the afternoon before going to Booths to stock up on breakfast food, crackers and alcohol.

We tried a sample of blue cheese at the cheese counter and ended up bringing several cheeses home.

Before we could contemplate cheese we had to have dinner (it feels like all we did today was eat) and after asking for a table in several restaurants, we ended up back at The Wainwright, where we all had the steak and ale pie.

Our accommodation has a little patio so we finished off the evening with cheese and wine outdoors. The sky put on a lovely show for us.

The company and cheeses made up for the car park views.

18Aug2018

Paris: Wine Tasting at Ô Chateau.

by Miss Penny Black

While doing our food tour in Nice we met Sheandra, a lawyer from Atlanta in the US who was great fun and we all got along like the proverbial chateau flambé. We ended up going out for a few glasses of wine after the food tour and then deciding to meet up again in Paris, this time for a Rick Steves-recommended wine tasting lunch at Ô Chateau.

We all arrived a little early and caught up on what we’d done since we’d last seen each other then went downstairs into the stylish cellar where the tasting would take place.

Our instructor for the day was Gerald, a man with excellent English and even better wine knowledge. His presentation not only covered how to taste wine and how to discuss it, but also the history and geography of French wine. If you are an aspiring connoisseur or just interested in wine I’d hugely recommended it. If you already know a lot about wine they have an experts course too.

Some of the things I learned were:

1. How the sediment is removed from champagne bottles without the gas being lost. The neck of the bottle (where the sediment had settled) is frozen, then the plug of ice removed before the bottle is resealed.

2. What ‘brut’ refers to. I’ve always wondered yet never bothered to look and it turns out that it means a minimum of sugar is added to flavour the champagne and sometimes none. So when a champagne is ‘brut’ it means that it is dry. Champagne that is ‘extra brut’ is in fact more sweet because extra sugar is added.

3. When a champagne is labeled ‘Blanc de blanc’ it means ‘white of whites’ which means only Chardonnay grapes have been used. The other two grapes used to make champagne are red – Although champagne is never red because the skins are discarded.

4. NVB stands for Non Vintage Brut. This means that grapes from multiple seasons have been mixed to provide a more standard flavour.

5. Champagne glasses are tall with narrow stems because until modern methods were involved, the yeast sediment used to settle in the bottom of the stem.

6. To see if a red wine is aged you can tilt the glass over a white background and note that the pinker the tint of the wine the younger it is and the redder, or browner the colour the more it has aged.

Of course we learned a great deal more but, thanks to drinking about 8 glasses of wine, I seem to have forgotten most of it. C’est la vie!

I found that we knew quite a bit about wine terminology and a bit about production. Where we always fall down is in the actual tasting, although Gerald explained so well and gave us a few hints and so we did pick some of the flavours. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we guessed successfully.

The cheeses were paired nicely and each came from the same region as the wine.

Number three was my favourite pairing and the Sancerre (a Sauvignon Blanc) was my favourite wine, but I was tickled to be trying a Chateauneuf du Pape. Partially because I had just read about there being a pope who chose Avignon as his capital (traveling around Europe is like piecing together an endless historical puzzle) but mainly because it is mentioned in a Beastie Boys song and every time I read it I start singing Body Movin’ to myself.

Anyhoo, we were properly fuzzy when we left and we said goodbye to Sheandra before heading to the Musee d’Orsay.

We had a quick look at some very elegant Art Nouveau furniture and then their impressive collection of Van Gogh works. Van Gogh is always amazing, but seeing his work surrounded by other artists of the period really impresses on you how special he was. So vibrant and expressive. I took a photo of this one for Jess, as it featured in one of my favourite Dr Who episodes.

Last night (a week later) Luke and I had a long discussion about art we liked since we’ve seen so much lately. We both agreed that we thought the very best art (fine or otherwise) was the kind that appealed to many people on many levels. Work that could be enjoyed or be controversial or in some way stimulating for everyone, whether you were trained to appreciate it or not, but which held layers of meaning so that the more you knew the more there was to appreciate. I think this is why I find some modern art so interesting – the more technically skilled but also provocative it is, the better I like it.

I’d be interested in what other people think about so leave a comment if you have thoughts!

9Dec2013

Two Nights in Chicago

by Miss Penny Black

We don’t like to rush our travels, so rather than catch the train from Waukesha to Chicago then go straight to the airport we thought we’d spend two nights in the city before flying to Vegas.

I didn’t really know much about Chicago before went went – Mafia, pizza and cold winters was about it. We booked ourselves a twin room in a hostel which didn’t get great reviews online but turned out to be fine. It was in the Greek District, about a 20 minute walk from downtown.

Downtown lights that had speakers next to them playing music.

Despite getting recommendations from people about what to do and where to go, we didn’t end up doing anything touristy. We walked around the shopping strips and bought a few gifts to take home and some clothes that were on sale. Our main goal was to try a proper deep dish Chicago pizza. In Australia our ‘deep pan’ pizzas are about half the depth of Chicago style ones.

CHEEEEEESE!

The Chicago pizzas have a crust maybe 3 inches high on the edge and the one we had started with a layer of meat and sauce, then about an inch of cheese, then more sauce then meat. It was really good – and despite looking quite different to ‘normal’ pizzas they taste pretty much the same – except you get so much more cheese. I loved it! They aren’t as enormous in circumference as NYC pizzas and because of their depth they retain heat a lot better. I definitely recommend trying them if you get the chance.

Apart from that, our impression of Chicago was that it was super cold, the shopping was great and there were lots of interesting things in the middle of town. We came across a German outdoor market selling lots of hand-made things and delicious food.

We also stopped for a drink at the House of Blues, an interesting folk-art style bar/club that was pretty much deserted mid afternoon but I really loved the decor.

The ladies’ toilets.

I didn’t take a whole lot of photos but it was an interesting city. If I got the chance I’d definitely go back and see the gallery, aquarium and museum.

The only down side was the begging – but that’s pretty typical of cities in the US. All the big cities we’ve been to have had numbers of homeless people that I find hard to comprehend in a developed country. Far beyond anything I’ve seen in Australia, Europe or the UK. In fact even in Asia and most of Africa I wasn’t asked for money as frequently. We’ve had discussions with people we’ve met here about the reasons for it and there seems to be a common conception that many people find begging easier and, in some places, more profitable, than actually getting a job. Whether or not that’s true I have no idea, all I know is that it’s shocking and quite confronting. I’m not sure how long I’d have to live with it to become blase about it.