Trying New Things

This weekend was actually a rain free, sunny, and beautiful weekend. We don't get much of those here! It's been incredibly cold...I'm shivering every night and wearing a trench coat, boots, and scarf still!

On this beautiful day, I had to take advantage of the rare appearance of the sun, and I also have been meaning to practice using my new SLR camera I have bought. I've kept it on autofocus for now as the world of photography is completely new to me. I'm hoping that my blog posts can improve with better photography though! I also hope to take quality pictures during my impending Iceland trip!

So I headed to St. James's park for a chance to get acquainted with my camera. I'm not going to guarantee that my pictures are of the highest quality, but hopefully they will get there!

After a hard's day work of photography, I headed to a Mexican restaurant that I have been dying to go to, Wahaca. I have to say, it's still not quite TexMex (sigh). We got a sampler plate that included several "unique" dishes. I think I'm still on Team Cantina Laredo if I have to have my pick in London! They've got the best margaritas and salsa hands down. And I think they're the closest I'm going to get to TexMex. Michael was a good enough sport to help me in my quest to fulfil in my perpetual TexMex cravings...

Spicy chicken tacos of some sort that had a sort of Indian flare to it

New potato taquitos

Broad bean quesadillas

Pork tacos (similar to the ones I had tried at the Jamie Oliver Food Festival)

Some kind of veggie taco

Overall, I have to say that the pork tacos were the best. I honestly wasn't too much of a fan of any of the others. I'm glad I tried it though.

Work Trip

....to ROME!!

Alright, well 20 min cab ride from Rome! I was pleasantly surprised by my hotel room though. Our company basically took up almost the entire hotel, so I was stuck with this room....
Presidential Suite (well not quite) with a huge balcony where you could barely (and I really mean just barely) see the Vatican!

yeah, just barely....

After our three days of training we took an extra day to see things up close.

Colosseum! Always a crowd pleaser... (hope you get that pun).

Quick stop by the Trevi fountain. We had about 24 hours to see the whole city, so pictures helped provide some proof!

Pantheon.

Square outside the Pantheon.

Dinner. I think he's really expressing the fact that he doesn't really like wine!

We did have a pretty nice dinner that night. The waiter brought us free bruschetta that was super delicious and two rounds of lemoncello and biscotti. By the second round I was like, "no no" because I thought he was going to charge us for it (everyone there was asking for money....I think about 12 people came up to our table begging or trying to sell us stuff!). Turns out he didn't charge us for any of it!! He was actually nice. He even told Michael to relax when Michael tried to get the bill for fear of more discretionary charges.

Pantheon at night! This city is so old!

Saint Michael outside of St. Peters

We didn't go inside because the line was absolutely ridiculous!

Inside the Colosseum.

Ciao from Rome!

That's really all we could fit in our 24 hours of Rome. It was just about enough though, Rome is too hectic of a city!

Madrid

I could show you the few scenic pictures I took while in Madrid. But then I thought, let's just skip the formalities because really that was just filler time in between the next meal.

Let me show you what Madrid was all about. Tapas. Bar. Crawl. Fooooood!!!

Churros and Chocolate Sauce

(actually wasn't that great in my opinion)

My favourite spot in Madrid was the San Miguel market. They had tons of food you could buy in small portions for maximum variety!

1st tapas: smoked salmon

Some kind of cheese with apple on bread

Croquetas!!!! (cod, cheese, and spinach)

SUSHI!! This actually was my favourite of everything I ate in Madrid. I checked behind the counter and the chef was actually Japanese. I was dreaming about this the rest of the day, and I made Michael go back the next day (picture to follow).

Spanish wine

(wouldn't recommend)

Beer and cod croquetas at Tetuan 12 (would recommend!)

Sushi round 2 :)

"world famous" tortilla de patata (Spanish omelette) and mozzarella on toast at Juana La Loca

Quesadillas at Juana La Loca

"best mojitos in Madrid" at Delic cafe

We were pretty much sick of croquetas by the end of the weekend. I think we probably had a dozen each!

That pretty much sums up our trip to Madrid! Plus a visit to the Prado and palace. ;)

The Big Feastival

Last weekend I went to the Glee concert here at the O2. It's a huge venue....hopefully you can tell from this dark picture just how far away we were with our £53 tickets!

Unfortunately I don't have any amazing pictures to share from this concert. This is one of my many failed attempts at photographing the cast. I blame it on the purely awesome show effects. Pictures wouldn't do it justice anyway.
The Glee cast was highly entertaining, and they sang very well in person!

I've also been doing a lot of eating lately...
This weekend I also enjoyed more music and food at the Jamie Oliver Feastival! There were tickets on sale through Living Social (just like groupon here) for £18. I think the original price was £35.

However, we managed to spend quite a bit of money despite our discounted entry fee. First, we started with the super fresh bar. Michael had Pimms (classic English fruit punch drink like sangria), and I had some kind of fizzy drink (pictured right). It was really strong and not as tasty as it looks in this picture.
Then we proceeded to the FOOD. I am hitting myself now for not photographing all of the food we ate. This was one of my favourites...pork tacos from Wahaca mmmmMMMMmmmm.
We also had:

• Pit Smoked Barbecue Pulled Pork Shoulder and Slaw from Barbecoa (one of Jamie Oliver's restaurants)
• Okonomi-yaki (Japanese savoury pancake) with Organic Chicken, Organic Cheese, English Asparagus and Konnyaku from Abeno
• Porchetta Mufuletta -The apprentices homemade foccacia with slow roasted Dalgarnock pork ‘Italian style’, crisp fennel and leaf salad at Fifteen (another Jamie Oliver restaurant where he took 15 people without jobs and taught them how to cook...it's expensive though!)

And for dessert, this triple chocolate brownie with marscapone cream.

And, prosecco :)

Later on Jamie spoke, all of the ticket sales went to charity!

And then concerts....!
The headliner Athlete was really good!

This was a very fun London thing to do. I hope you guys have a wonderful 4th of July!! I'll be at work :(