Monday, September 8, 2014

The day we almost "punted"


If the question "What the hell is punted?" populates your mind right now, you are just like me a week ago. Actually, that might be kind of a trick question because punted does not exist. But punting does! And I had no idea of what that was until I started making questions about Cambridge.
Punting is basically the art of moving your canoe down a (shallow) river with a long stick. Something that Cambridge inhabitants have been doing for some time. It's a bit like what they do in Venice but without the gondolas and the funny hats.
For me, one of the most curious aspects of punting is the platform where the punter is. As you can see in the picture below, it is a flat piece of wood almost always completely wet. The interesting aspect of it, for me, is how slippery it must get on those really damp days and how I didn't see anyone fall into the river!!

Punting! You can almost see from this who are the pros and who are the newbies
!
Oh Sole Mio... oh no, wrong boats, wrong city!
Ready to go...

So, we went to Cambridge and one of the things we really wanted to do was try (highlighting the try) some punting ourselves. On our first (of two days) the weather was good and we even got to witness and mock (just a bit) the amateur punters that would not leave the same place imagining ourselves doing exactly the same thing. But then we decided to do it next morning. We would have more time and maybe it would be less busy!
Next morning... it was, indeed, less busy!... But it was also raining non stop! Looking at the weather forecasts, things didn't look promising. So, a bit sad but not defeated we decided to walk our way through Grantchester, a village nearby. That same walk had been advised by a couple of people so we thought it would be a great alternative to punt our way down the river. Under a small umbrella (the two of us) and with a non water proof clothing (me) we launched ourselves to the path that proved to be really worth it. Even with the rain that allowed us to have the path only for ourselves, an occasional runner, an occasional biker, an occasional dog walker and a lot of cows!

Us trying to fit under the umbrella AND take a picture AND do funny faces! Ufff...
The path


The cows...
The river!

But Cambridge is something more than punting and walks by the river. So here are some photos of the rest.

Enjoying a free coffee while the life goes on on the other side

Cambridge and books! This is what came to mind when I heard of Cambridge. Well, this and rowing, of course! 

Bikes bikes bikes... they're everywhere in London and they're definitely everywhere in Cambridge

A (n old) sweet shop that even has candies for the diabetics!

Me and Cambridge
Andre and Cambridge's animals  (of course!)

Part of the Cambridge University  - Kings College entrance
"These lines on the grass were hard work. Please don't destroy our hard work"

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Ice cream in London

If you told me three weeks ago that I would write a post with these 2 words on the title I would think they would be there with an ironic tone. But actually, something strange has happened (maybe it's global warming!) and the summer has been great in the city!

First of all, some news... London is not just a city that fills my traveller's dreams, is the city that fills my days! We (the A&As) moved to the UK's capital at the beginning of this month. This means that now I'm a true foreigner, not just a tourist any more.

But this post is about the ice cream's experiences in London!

Last week we heard about this "event", a place where we could go to do our own personalized Magnum! Of course my reaction was something like "I want to go, I want to go, I want to go! :D". And this Tuesday, after work, there we were, at Oxford St. (right in the centre of the city), in line to do our own Magnum.
With some time to feel the Magnum vibe (30 minutes of waiting!!) we got immersed in the Magnum lush all around.


Our imagination had to follow certain steps to reach its whole glory.

The available toppings were this incredible mix of edible rose petals, silver pearls, mint flavoured crunchy stuff and a lot of other ones that I can't remember right now!

Inspired as we were, these were the works of art that came out of our instructions
Mine is the one on the left and Andre's is the one on the right
They were... interesting :P! We both agreed that the best choice would be a vanilla filling with dark chocolate on the outside that would let the toppings do their magic! The truth is that it felt like this crazy mix of flavours in our mouth! My even had a mouth popping topping and sea salt! But it was a great experience, one we'd recommend vividly :)!

And later these week, strolling around the shelves of the supermarket, the gluttony in me was craving for something sweet and it got fixated on this box of Oreo Ice cream cones! And they had a great price... The hedonist in me own and the box came home with us! And after the first bite, I was a fan!! It's this really creamy thing with bits of Oreo chocolate cookie here and there! It's DELICIOUS!
I'll just show you a picture of it, but with the wrapping still on so you won't drool on your keyboards (or so I won't drool on mine :P)


I'm sure there will be many other experiences, even ice cream experiences, in London worthy of being told in this blog. And I'll be here to tell them to you. Especially now, that I became a true Foreign! :)

Monday, March 10, 2014

It's Coffee time!

That was one of the big mottoes of our trip to London.
Dividing our time between visiting some areas where we would like to work or live looking for inspiration and putting that inspiration into practice by working in any coffee place we would see fit (e.g. somewhere where we could sit for some time and with wifi), there was plenty of caffeine to go around! :P


And if I think photos from the work time wouldn't be that interesting, there are some others that illustrate what gave us the kick to keep moving and, mostly importantly, that put a smile on our faces! :D

Liverpool Street Station (a possible usual stop in the future)
Old and Modern!
Only in (rainy) London we could find a store dedicated to Umbrellas!
Lego Movie + Toy Store = Cool!! :)
The Tube
Getting local with local street food
A huge M&M store! It always melts my heart (or tasting buds :P)
The horses follow us everywhere we go :P
Look at the Selfie us! :)

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Miles and pounds

With no notice, we (me and André, the A&A team) came to London. Because we are planning to move here and being in the city always helps, because we wanted to get an English number and, most importantly, because we needed it!
This is not exactly tourism so the posts about this trip might be a bit different.
For now, I'll leave you with a photo taken yesterday with the mobile (still discovering the new phone camera skills :) ). Can you guess where it was taken (this is an easy one!)?