Firsty Friday - Day 2 London

This day we got up at 8am after our waking up at 4:00am and making ourselves stay in bed.  It rained just about the whole day, I was prepared hat and thick wool coat.  Gwen and I shared an umbrella and we made our way around the whole city this morning in the rain.  Out and about at 9:15am and off to breakfast at Giraffe.  I forget that bacon here isn't like our American version, it's not the streaky bacon we're used to, it's more like Canadian bacon.  Simple meal but perfect, and all I wanted was tea, I usually have coffee in the morning, but I'm in England so I wanted tea and Earl Grey it was.

Then despite the rain, oh my oh my, lots of shopping, Harrod's, Selfridges, Fortnum & Mason, Top Shop and anywhere else we could find.  After much shopping we headed back to our hotel to drop off our new purchases and head out again for some pints and more shopping to find SB and proper scarf.  After all that walking we decided our tired feet had had enough so we headed home where we decided to have a Firsty Friday instead of a Wino Wednesday.

This week the wine was provided by our friends Ieuan and Gwen, who we are with and actually picnicking in their hotel room, while listening to lounge music courtesy of SB. Wine picture to come as I'm trying to update my blog from a PC and it won't convert my pictures vertically to share with you.  I'll come back and update when I get on a mac.  On with the story, we ran to a posh grocery store, Waitross, for some snacks. Stilton cheese with cranberries, and a sharp creamy bleu cheese, Carr's crackers, grapes, blackberries, kalamata olives, and green olives stuffed with peppers.  SB had beer, of course, called "Old Crafty Hen."

So here's the Wine of the week:
Savigny Les-Beaune 2002 (Domaine Camus-Bruchon).
A nice red burgundy wine.
First Smell:  Black Currants, Plums, Cedar Smell
First Taste:  Plums and Oak.  Dry and delicious.
Observations:  A woodsy wine, it was light but rich in flavor. Perfect with all our treats.

What a great way to spend Wino Wednesday or Firsty Friday with our friends and in a foreign country.  Loving England.

England - Day 1

After a long horrendous ride in coach on AA, 9 + hours we finally arrived to LHR. Truly sucks not to have cash or miles to fly in business class, at the very least, it would make this trip so much more fun. Exhausted and pretzeled up we met our friend Anne for the painting exchange.  Yes we brought a 40x30 painting with us, surprisingly that was the easy part, I thought it would be difficult.  After that SB and I made our way to the Underground and bought our ticket on the Piccadilly line for South Kensington, where we had to ask for directions as I lapsed into planning this part of our trip.  It was a few blocks down on cobblestone streets, which is always fun to navigate with luggage.  When we arrived to yet another set of stairs SB said "I'll bring the luggage up you open the door." Gladly I ran up the stairs to open the door.  As my friend G will remember all those Underground stairs are back breaking after a long flight.  So I was glad to have SB here with me.  First impressions in the hotel lobby was it was lovely. Full of still life photo's everywhere. The inviting host who checked us in, with all the formality you'd expect in England, yes" Mr. and Mrs. P, or yes Mr and Mrs G have arrived.  Would you like a welcome cocktail".  "OH YES WE WOULD."  We settled into the lobby while they fetched our key and our friends Gwen and Ieuan came down. 

It's been 7 years since we've seen each other and Gwen and I've known each other since we were teenagers.  Lovely welcome and nice relaxing time in the lobby with our G&T and good long time friends.  After a nap and a quick wardrobe change we headed out to Covent Garden where I never it made it last time we checked out a few tea shops and then off to our first proper British pub.  Wellington Pub is what it's called.  We drank our pints and then headed to a Japanese food place called Wagamama, it's a chain restaurant but perfect noodles, ramen and curries for our first night.

Old style radio in eggshell blue, perfect.

Gorgeous chandelier.

 Wing back chair, with some serious wings.  This is me in the chair looking around the entrance way of the hotel lobby.  Loved the books and yet another chandelier.

 Landing on the 2nd floor of our 3 stair case walk to our room.  I would like to sit here and read.

 Lovely bathroom

View from our room.  There is a lady sitting in the room at the top left, we have to watch out for her, I wish I knew what she was doing?  Feels so Rear Window.  Night time came and we passed out at 10:30pm and up at 4:00 a.m. ugh....we made ourselves sleep.

Packing

We're off this week to London, Paris, Cheltenham and Tamworth.  I've been trying to pack.
Packing is for the birds.  I want to take one bag plus my carry-on, but let me tell you this is no easy task.
It's the shoes, they are taking most of the room, and we all know how much I love shoes.
So I have a few more days to weed out the non-essentials.

In the meantime, my blog has been driving me crazy so I'm once again attempting a new look.
I have someone that is helping me design a header, logo etc...in the meantime I'm trying this for the next couple of weeks while we travel.  Please bare with me.

Father's Office

No Wino Wednesday this week.  It's Beer Friday instead.  But before I get into my trip to Father's Office I cannot neglect the weird day.

Forgive this long, run on sentence to come.  I need to get it all out at once:
It was a super weird day in fact, our family, well my family, from NM called this morning at the ungodly hour, you know when your in a deep sleep, to tell us there was tsunami coming our way and to evacuate, so we got up and turned on the L.A. News, the trite, non-alarming L.A. news, with it's over fascination with Charlie Sheen, to find out that in fact their was an advisory for Southern California to be hit by a tsunami. Bleary eye'd and all we got it, we found out that their was an earthquake in Japan, and then a devastating tsunami and then the advisory. The waves were suppose to hit Santa Monica at 8:30 a.m., they said 3-4 ft, but none of the experts were sure if it would get bigger as 3 or 4 waves had already hit Hawaii, but weren't as big as they thought.  Our friends who live in the tsunami area at sea-level, in Venice and MDR, left to higher ground or their offices inland. Some went on with their usual days.  However all the piers were closed and helicopters circled the area all day.

So SB and I had one of those silly conversations, or dumb, however you want to look at it. Yes he surfs, yes he wanted to go see the waves at the ocean, yes everyone he called on to check if they were ok asked him NOT to go surfing.  Here's our conversation:

SB:  Let's get dressed and go to the Palisades bluff and look at the waves.
Me:  Uuuh NO.
SB:  Come on we'll be on the bluffs, let's check it out.
Me:  Seriously haven't you and I watched every disaster movie and said "how stupid are those people who go out to the beach and watch the tsunami wave come it."  Yeah duh.
SB:  FINES

So what did we do, we waited till 9:15 and then made our way to the tsunami area, Venice & MDR.  Seriously I'm thinking to myself, we are so NOT smart, but the beach cams all showed less then stellar waves and no need for alarm and the tsunami sirens did not go off.  So we went on with our usual day. I found all this alarming that we are so L.A. you should see us when we get a little trembler, we just sit there and ride it out and then go on with our business.

Finally now that I got this out of the way it brings me to Father's Office.  This week we feature beer in Culver City along with their scrumptious food.  They tout themselves as a Gastropub, which we intend on visiting many of in England.

Now I've been to the original Father's office in Santa Monica, and though they have the same thing as the one in Culver City, CC is definitely without the pretensions of the original.  Santa Monica is small and ridiculous.  I never feel any bar is worth standing in line to get in and then standing in another line to get beer.  Their food is gourmet, they are known for their "office burger" which is a kobe beef burger with bleu cheese, it's rich and juicy.  I personally love their cheese platter and sweet potato fries, served with a bleu cheese dressing.  They do not serve anything with ketchup, and don't ask for it, it's not in the building.  If you want ketchup, bring your own bottle in your coat pocket, like our friend Eric did once.  This evening we said goodbye to a great work-mate, moving to NY.  Very sad to see him leave, he is a SUPER STAR.

The bar has over 36 beers on tap and serves artisan wines and some spirits, only in Culver City.  No vodka in the building.  When my friend asked for a vodka tonic, they told him they didn't have that so they gave him what they thought was an equivalent.  Ginger Ale with a high-end tequila.  He wasn't impressed.

The rest drank Pinot Noir and beer.  They serve a great Alagash and I had a Chateau Blanc beer, well it sounded like that's what the bartender said, Chateau, but he did definitely say Blanc.  It was tasty.  Light with a lemony aftertaste.

Here's the oyster, lovely and delish, at least that was what I was told.  It's a texture thing for me and I need to feel 100% healthy before I'll start eating that.

I love this location, it's easy to park and easy to get in before 8PM.  The crowds start by that time and it's pick-up season all over the place.  For a much more detailed story of this great Gastropub at the Helms Bakery in Culver City go here, a fantastic post at eatdrinknbmerry.

Father's Office - Culver City
3229 Helms Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 815-9820

Saturday Turnovers

What do you do on a Saturday when you don't feel very well and your husband asked if we could go to the store and buy puffed pastry dough for the left-over apples.  Seriously just hearing SB say puffed pastry was exciting enough.  So, though I've posted about this before here, I thought I'd share again these lovely little things.  Super delicious and easy to make. I believe he ate 4 of them in one day.

Oh and you'll love this, ironically since I've been posting about wine, only 3 Wino Wednesday's so far, I get to do some research for a work assignment on....you guessed it Wine.  Seriously how great is that.