Amsterdam pictures!

I went away for a long bank holiday weekend in Amsterdam with one of my friends and her two girl friends. It was a really great time, but I wish I had just one more day there so I could have cycled around the city.

We stayed in a hostel right near everything:

The entrance is right into a bar/club and smoking den. The rooms are on top of all this.

The hostel was really cute. The rooms were clean and had it's own private bathroom.  The only complaint I had was that it was really really loud.  The club/music didnt' die down until around 5am or so, so you can still feel the bass through the floor.  I slept okay as I brought ear plugs but two of the other girls didn't fare so well.

If you like canals and water, Amsterdam is your city.  The entire city is dissected with canals and lakes.  As a result there are a lot of house boats along the water.

 Most all of the people in Amsterdam get around via bikes.  As you can see in the pic above, they are very active.  It puts me to shame!

Here is a pic of their bicycle parking near the train station....

What you can't see is that the bike garage in the background is actually 3 stories tall.  My question is how the heck do you find your bike if you left it there for a while and forgot which area you parked it????

Obviously, when in Amsterdam...um...eat pancakes!  I saw that the Pancake Bakery was one of the most recommended restaurants in Amsterdam, so we went there for brunch

Here is the menu:

So many choices...what could we possibly choose?

I had this:

Boobies and pancakes!

But seriously, I had ham and mushroom pancake, while Ms. boobalicious had banana, whipped cream, and powdered sugar.

My other companions had:

Banana-nutella on the left and plain powdered sugar on the right. Oh and that is the Chocomel drink in the middle. Delicious delicious chocolate milk with the pancakes.  Everything was great but it's more like a crepe rather than a fluffy pancake as most Americans would expect.
Lots of pictures following..

Count down to Chicago - To do list before I leave London

Since the countdown to Chicago is now on - you are probably wondering what I want to do before I leave London. Here is my list of to dos before I go:
1) Visit Portobello road market for antique maps and hummingbird bakery cupcakes
2) Go to the Science Museum
3) Go ice skating at Somerset house
4) Eat at a michelan star restaurant at least one time
5) Go to Brighton with a friend for a day trip at least one more time
6) Go to Wales for a weekend
7) Take a day trip to Lille, France
8) Have a three-four course dinner party
9) Go Retro night bowling
10) Go to the Ministry of Sound night club
11) Have Turkish food at Yildz
12) Go to Borough market for Monmouth coffee and a garlic prawn wrap
13) Overindulge in cheese and desserts at Harrods food hall or at Neals yard
14) Szechwan hot pot with friends
15) Clubbing out at Heaven
16) Charity shopping in Balham
17) Eat at Nobu - expensive celebrity sushi haunt



I'm sure there are a lot more things I want to do in London that I will add to the list once I think of more. Any recommendations?

Update - Moving back to Chicago, Traveling, Thanksgiving...

I haven't updated this in a while! My countdown to moving back to Chicago is on - less than two months until my last day of work and a little over two months before I fly back to my home country - bidding adieu to my lovely London.

A lot has happened in between my Zurich post. I am taking a lot of yoga and dance classes, seeing friends for salsa dancing and eating out. Travel wise I went to Amsterdam with a couple of friends for a long weekend which was a lot more tame than I expected it to be. I will post pictures and a longer post when I can get access to the pictures, but all in all a great time. In summary, I saw things I've never saw before except in movies (weed) and only heard about (red light district). In between there were canal cruises, Anne Frank museum, pancakes, brownies, dancing, creepy men, and a lot of walking. But pictures are worth a thousand words so - will post that very soon.

I went on a day trip to Paris with the boy in September and spent a great week with him in London, even though I had to work. (pictures soon as well!)

After my half marathon, which I completed despite having a cold, pink eye, and a hurt ankle, I also went to Rome and Naples, Italy for a few weeks with David early October. Italy was amazing. I would go back again in a heartbeat. I'll post everything and the pictures soon as well. In short, Rome is great if you are into Roman history, architecture, ruins, and religion. David geeked out pretty hard while he was there. Rome had lovely markets and excellent gelato as well as friendly people. The apartment that we stayed at was wonderful. David developed a love for a Cornetto (sweet croissant) shop that was close to our apartment and wanted to go there daily for their cream stuffed bread and cornettos. mmmmm. The Vatican museum was amazing but we didn't see the pope... Rome is a bit touristy though, I think locals usually stayed away from all the sights, but that also meant that the city was a bit cleaner although still filled with graffiti and cigarette butts everywhere.

That brings us to Naples which was the second leg of our trip. David and I almost turned back around to go back when we got off at the Naples central station. It was scary, the people, little kids clinging to your arm, the garbage everywhere...graffeti and people who looked like mafia people.. BUT as the girl at the Hostel said to us - it grows on you. I know that Naples was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip because it felt like real Italy. You see the narrow streets busy with pedestrians and cars and can see how the stereotype of neighbors yelling at each other across the balcony would work - one probably brandishing a rolling pin. Also - the most fantastic pizzas I've ever had. Period. It makes me think of Chicago pizza and go ew...it makes me think of New York pizza and think how it's a sad substitute. But I took pictures of most of my food - so posting those soon! (my goodness I'm behind!)

I was hoping to go to a few more places in Europe before I have to say my goodbyes here but I don't know if I have the time (or the money) to do so. However, I am going to Germany in December. Unfortunetly, I used up all my holidays this year so I couldn't go back to the States for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. My wonderful German friend, Sarah invited me to spend Christmas with her family in Germany, which I readily accepted. So not only will I get to see tiny villages in Germany (her mom lives in a village of less than a thousand people, possibly 500-600) and get to have hearty German food (mmm schneitzel...) I will get to have family time with her welcoming family and not feel alone as I did during Thanksgiving this year. That is really all of my travels thus far!
Thanksgiving dinner for me on the 26th of November consisted of a bowl of porridge (oatmeal to all those Americans out there). I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with a handful of friends (who love food) on Saturday the 28th instead. I bought a ton of groceries, 5 turkey legs, green beans, fresh cranberries, corn meal, pumpkin puree, stuffing mix, etc. The Corn meal and pumpkin puree finding took me all over London. American groceries are so difficult to buy in London. Especially corn meal. Brits don't understand the concept of corn bread. Their first question is why would you want to ruin perfectly good bread with corn? Sweet corn to them is only found in some salads and in some sandwiches. So of course I had to make some Corn bread to prove that it is indeed delicious especially with my home made honey butter.

I started preperation for Thanksgiving on the Tuesday - wet brining the turkey legs, then dry brining them on Thursday, then making corn bread on Thursday and pumpkin pies (2) on Friday before getting everything else done on Saturday. We didn't have that much leftovers among the 5-6 of us so I consider it a success. However, I do have a lot of pumpkin pie left as well as 2 boxes of profiteroles and an entire beautiful french cake that people brought and never even opened because they were chock full of Turkey and other foods. The menu was:
1) Roasted Garlic, Sage, Thyme stuffed Turkey legs
2) Roasted Garlic cheddar mashed potatos (I like Garlic can you tell?)
3) Candied sweet potato with marshmallows
4) Fresh green bean casserole
5) Baked spinach and artichoke dip
6) Fresh cranberry sauce
7) Mixed salad
8) Corn bread
9) Pumpkin pie
10) sage and red onion stuffing with sausage and mushrooms
11) Cornbread stuffing

A lot of food for 5-6 people eh? Especially as each of the turkey legs were almost as big as one of my thighs - and I do have big thighs. I'll post pictures of Thanksgiving before my travel photos.

CAKE OR DEATH!!!

Cake please!!!

This is probably one of my favorite Eddie Izzard comedy skits ever.  Mostly because I love cake.  Mmmm...cake. See Cake or Death here!

My love of cakes probably started as most people's do around their childhood friend's birthdays.  I really didn't get to eat my first cake (that I remember) until around 2nd grade in Happy Hollow elementary school in W. Lafayette, Indiana.  I remember being invited to a friend's birthday party - and at that time and age, everyone in the classroom was invited - and seeing my first birthday cake.  It was decorated with white frosting and colorful icing and lettering.  It may even have been a Disney Character...whatever it was I don't remember.  But what I DO remember is that in the sickenly sweet frosting that covered the large rectangle of cake, was soft, lucious, sweet, airy cake.

I am one of those people that unless the frosting/icing is light to medium sweet buttercream or whipped cream icing, I scrape it all off.  My sweet tolerance (for a cake lover) is low.

My mother was never a baking kind of person.  She can make amazing food but she doesn't really do the whole baking cookies and cakes and tarts thing.  That is - as Austin Powers would say - not her bag, baby.  So for me, I could only really get cake at birthday parties and every now and then, Jewel-Osco (a Grocery store chain) when I really whined.

I started baking when I was in High School.  I knew that other people's parents baked and figured that I could do it too.  I begged and pleaded with my parents to buy me a Betty Crocker cookbook.  In fact I probably still have it some where at my parents house.  Anyways, Betty Crocker cookbook showed me all the cakes and candies that I could be making.  I made a yellow cake as my first cake, followed by a sponge cake, and then I progressed onto caramels and toffees after my parents complained cakes were fattening.  An addition of a very old old Muffins/breads/and baked goods book ignited me into making bagels, croissants, and challah bread from scratch.

Cake was still one of my favorites.  But only if I put in half the sugar that the recipe asked for - I found that out quickly. :)

Then came the cupcakes.  It seemed perfect - mini cakes and are easy to hold and that you didn't need a fork to eat!  I started baking those in College once I moved out of my parents house I believe. mmm.

I'm happy with the addition of the new gourmet cupcakes shops that are springing up all over Chicago (my home town) and London (my host town).  While a lot of them are delicious, some of them are really just really bad cake topped with way too colorful and too sweet icing. 

Favorites in London:
Crumbs and Doilies - Lovely flavors and nice people!
 Bea's of Bloomsbury - known for their infamous Cookie Monster cupcake!
Hummingbird Bakery - Lucious red velvet with cream cheese icing

I have this thought that when i retire, that I would open up a cafe/cupcake bakery that is attached to an independent bookshop.  We'll see how well it works.

(Found on a fanpop website)

So cute!!!

So yes...cake.  Who doesn't love it!

Zoo-Reesh - whey soda, chocolates, mountains

- as my boyfriend likes to call it.

I got back from a long weekend away in Zurich, Switzerland on the 31st of August with one of my fellow travel loving friends.  (I have a visit 30 countries before I am 30 goal and I believe this country is number 16)   Monday was a bank holiday in the UK so I didn't have to go to work - so we flew out on Saturday morning and flew back Monday night really late.

On the trip we had a few goals: drink the soda made from milk serum  ( Drink me! I'm cheese excrement!), eat fondue, eat chocolate, climb mountains/hike, eat pretzels filled with stuff, relax, and buy chocolates.

So we pretty much checked everything off of that list.

Day one (September 29, 2009) :
-  Drink Rivella:  Check!  I found out about this drink while reading various Swiss blogs on things to try in Switzerland.  It intrigued me due to the fact that it is made from whey.

Once my friend and I got off the train to Zurich from the Zurich International Airport, we ducked into one of the large grocery chains that was attached to the train station called Migros where we found the Rivella soft drink.  Rivella (according to the Rivella website and Wikipedia) is:
"a soft drink from Switzerland, created by Robert Barth in 1952, which is produced from milk whey, and therefore includes ingredients such as lactose, lactic acid and minerals. It comes in four varieties:

• Red Rivella, the original version
• Blue Rivella, a low calorie version of Red Rivella
• Green Rivella, which is flavoured with green tea extract
• Yellow Rivella, which is made with soya rather than dairy milk extracts"

Here is the Rivella that we shared - the original version.  It is actually quite nice.  Wasn't much of a shocker for us as in Asian supermarkets, there are always a lot of yogurt and milk derived soft drinks.  This was sweet, fizzy, and with an aftertaste of slight tangyness that comes from the whey.  An overall winner!

-  Eat Fondue:  Being good foodies, we (mainly my friend) did some good research into the best fondue places  in Zurich.  Alder's Swiss Chuchi kept popping up

We basically hung around the area for a good hour to wait for the restaurant to open for lunch at 11am - as we were starving.  Thankfully our hunger was saved a little by ducking into a shop near the restaurant that only sold gummy candies of all flavors and sizes (and without additives and artificial flavors!).  The man running the shop was more than happy to share pretty much everything with us (this was by no means a small quantity of samples) and we ended up leaving with bags of spicy fruit gummy hearts.

Once Swiss Chuchi finally opened, we ran right in and asked for the Lamb Raclette, the Half and Half Fondue and bottles of sparkling apple juice.

Ah isn't it beautiful?  A bag of baked new potatoes to crush, then topped with bubbling, melted cheese, onions, and grilled lamb for our racelette and a huge basket of freshly torn bread for our very strong fondue (half mild cheese and half Swiss Appenller(sp?) cheese that is intensely strong).

We both enjoyed the raclette the best as everything with the raclette just went together so nicely.  The only issue was that we were sitting outside on a slightly chilly day so our bubbling melted cheese hardened within about two minutes on the potatoes.  Didn't stop up from devouring it though!  Our thoughts on the fondue was that the half half was probably too much.  I would recommend that unless you love love love really strong (to the point of slightly bitter) cheese, i would go for the cheapest and therefore mildest, cheese fondue on the menu.  The Swiss also add alcohol (and I'm not talking wine here) to the fondue.  It was so strong that I actually coughed upon  my first bite of my cheese fondue drenched bread.  So yes - delicious - but the next time I'd get the milder cheese and ask that they hold the alcohol for the cheese.

- The rest of the day:  After the initial gummy candy shopping followed by the gigantic lunch, we went to drop off our bags at the hotel and head out.  We ended up at Zurich's Chinese Gardens with Koi ponds, bridge to walk over the pond, stone sculptures and Chinese temple architechture.  It was a lot of fun running around in there and pretending to be a panda in the bamboo garden.  I mean um act normally.   The Chinese Gardens are actually really close to the water and a lovely park - so we sat down to rest a bit, soak in the gorgeous sun and dip our toes in the crystal clear water.  Another thing we noticed about Zurich was that there were fountains everywhere around the city that contained fresh drinking water.  As long as the fountain had a water spout (like the ones you see to fill a water bottle) coming out of it - you could get drinking water from it.  It was so nice as I probably drink more than 2 ltrs every day. 

Zurich has areas all over the city that allows you to rent a bike for the day for a 20CHF deposit (in case of no return or damage)  you can return it to any bike rental station in the city.  Of course we took advantage of this fantastic deal by buying a picnic dinner of Brioche bread, Wasabi chips, cheese, tomatos, and apples and then renting the bikes to ride around the city. 

 

Sun setting as we biked by the lake - a perfect end to a great first day in Zurich

Day 2 (September 30, 2009):
-  Climb Mountains and Hike:  On the second day that we were in Zurich, we decided to take a trip to Lucerne to see the top of Mt Pilatus (Mt Pilatus Website).  We had heard there were breathtaking views and if you bought the "Golden Ticket" to get there - there would be a 90 minute ferry ride to the town on the bottom of the mountain, then a cog train up the mountain for another 40 minutes, and then two Gondola trips down to the bottom of the mountain, and a bus to take the traveller back to Lucerne.  It wasn't cheap at around 89 CHFs per ticket - but it was so worth it.

The ferry ride was absolutely breathtaking.  Lucerne is a beautiful city much like Zurich with all the bodies of water, surrounded by mountains and trees. I kept getting scenery like this:

The ferry led to the cog train which is the steepest in the world I believe.  We had to wait a really long time to get on it - but the view from that going up the mountain were beautiful.  At the top of the mountain, we grabbed some quick eats (sausages and bread) and hiked about and took pictures.  After a while all the photos look the same because they are of gorgeous mountains so I won't bore you with more mountain scenery aside form this one:

 

Sings " The hiiillls are alliiiiiiiive...with the sound of muuuussiiiiiiccc"  I know wrong country but doesn't this just make you want to twirl around and yodel?  No? No?  Just me then?

It suffices to say that it was breathtaking up there.  The Gondola down stopped half way where we got to get off and play around on one of the luges that lets you jet down the mountain on the metal tube as fast as possible before being pulled back up.  The smaller Gondola down the mountain after that passed by lovely Swiss cows wearing bells on their neck.  I didn't have any beef while in Switzerland...:)

- Eat Pretzels:  Oh did I mention that before we went on the ferry, we obtained a lovely soft pretzel from Bretzelkonig?  Oh oh so so delicious.  I am drooling thinking of that delicious pretzel right now.

We walked around Lucerne until dark and took some photos of the city.  It was lovely and only about a 45 minute journey back to Zurich. Here is one of my favorite shots:

Day 3 (September 31, 2009):

-  Eat Chocolate:  Oh and was there amazing chocolate to be had in Zurich. I mean we are in Switzerland and Swiss chocolates are some of the best in the world.  Unfortunetly I was too busy eating to take pictures of the chocolates.  The chocolate aisles in Zurich Grocery stores had your typical Lindt (which tasted better there - go figure) as well as a lot of other brands.  My friend and I went into one of the most famous chocolate and pastry shops in Zurich called Sprungli (Sprungli - so delicious!) and got an assortment of items to share.  That was an amazing breakfast - let me tell you!

The last day was defintely relaxing.  We knew we had a flight to catch around 8pm and knew we had the whole day to wander around - so I bought some Swatch watches, bought chocolates to take to coworkers and friends, went to the Zurich Zoo to see funny animals and to feed goats at the petting zoo, and took in as much smog free air (CoughLondonCough do something!) as we could before heading back to London.  

Bye Zurich!  See you next time!

Yay! First post!

I've been wanting to create one of these blogs for a while and for some reason never got around to it. Maybe it was laziness, maybe it was trying to integrate into the new city I moved to - either way - I'm here now!

A quick summary about me, where I am, what I'm doing, and so on.  It'll be really boring, so if you want to skip over this, I completely understand.

Who are you?
A pretty normal(ish) girl who was born in the largest central city in China (cookies for you if you guess where this is!) and moved to the United States when quite young. I am fluent in Mandarin as well as English.  Every now and then I remember the four years of French I've taken - but most of the time - not so much.

I've lived mostly in the Midwest Region of the US - which for me means Illinois or Indiana.  I prefer Illinois, but then again that's just me.  I went to University at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign and graduated with a major in Management Information Systems (Combo Business and Computer Science/Theory).  Began work for a large firm in Chicago when I graduated in 2004 and am currently working for the same firm in London, UK.

I guess the most distinguishing feature about me is the fact that I'm quite tall (5'10") and Chinese.  My parents and little sister are all tall. I think I grew up thinking I was average height and that everyone else must just not have been eating well or something.  Little did I know it was ME that was above average height. Whoops!

What makes this blog interesting?
Well, no guarantee this blog will BE interesting.  I just thought that I'd put some of my thoughts in writing and have some fun in the mean time filling it with a lot of random crap, pictures I've taken, things I've eaten and places I've been to.

I love travelling and have a goal of making it to 30 countries before I am 30, I'm currently at around 15 or 16 - so I really need to get on it if I have a chance in making it.  In addition to travel, I am a bit of a bookworm.  I read a lot of fiction and have a bit of a soft spot for mysteries and vampire/werewolf fiction (hey! at least I admitted it!) but I also read quite a bit of non fiction and biographical books as well.  I love food. LOVE food. Eating it, cooking it, trying new food.  I've eaten a lot of random and odd/exotic type of food and am also on a mission to eat around the world - even if it is in a restaurant with that cuisine in the same city as me.   In fact if I'm not careful I'm sure I'll be gigantic.   I've been known to bake quite a bit - although there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day for that nowadays - so I have to choose between cooking/baking or running (to burn off the baked goods consumed of course!)

This is a caricature of me drawn by a manga (anime) artist:

 

It looks nothing like me

Here is another one drawn by another manga artist:

 

This one also looks nothing like me.  I mean maybe the hair - if it was a tad shorter

This is the last one that was drawn by yet another manga artist. As you can see - none of the three look remotely similar:

 Also - why am I wearing a hat?

Well I guess if I had to choose. The first caricature was the most similar.  It captured my high cheekbones and my non existant nose and the charcoal trenchcoat I had on that day.  The rest...well?  I suppose 2 and 3 were cute too but they must have been looking at someone else that day.  :)