london | Arcticterntalk.org

Archive for the tag “london”

09 Jun 2013

Reflections on Milan Part 2

As promised a return visit to Milan was part of the second part of my week, the original visit was a few days before. In summary I remain underwhelmed. Would I go back for a holiday? Never. Would I enjoy a day back there maybe for work? Maybe.

Lets start with the good things. One of the best meals I had for a long time was in a restaurant in the suburbs of Milan called

Refettorio

Via Dell’Orso, 2, 20122 Milan, Italy

There was no menu, although it became apparent after a while that there were maybe 3 menus on offer. The 30 euro menu, a 20 euro menu and maybe a 18 euro menu. We had the largest menu. Food and wine were superb. Nothing was less than 100% here. You may ask what was the menu? Well let me try and describe what we had.

Bowl of salad and separate bowl of mozzarella on the table with oil and excellent bread. We presumed this was the starter. Wrong
Slices of thinly cut veal with a sauce maybe like thousands island? Starter? Wrong again
Dessert type dish full of cold rice salad.
Dinner plate full of excellent risotto, cheese and tomato sauce. At this stage we all asked if this was our main course. All food was excellent but we were getting a little embarassed that we could not finish any of our dishes.
Spaghetti Bolognese. Again excellent.
Chicken and vegetables. Main course! Wrong. This was one of two main courses! We at this stage said enough……we give in…….no fish main course please……
Ice Cream

Wine was also excellent and I could have been fooled into thinking it was a claret.

The meal aside I found nothing to inspire me in Milan. It seemed that every street was being dug up and walking is a supreme hazard as the one place where cars do not stop are pedestrian crossings. The city seemed grubby, dirty and I saw nothing worth photographing, other than maybe standing on the tram track. Cars seemed to have no rules, overtaking,undertaking, speeding, driving up/down one way streets, rarely stopping at pedestrian crossings, just frankly it all looked dangerous. Milan can be added to my list of places that I will not be driving in, ever.

Signs are almost absent and even somewhere like the Milan Convention Centre was not signposted. Roads all seemed designed to confuse. Cars parked at all angles in all places. If there were happy smiling faces then maybe I missed them.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged best meal ever, cheap meal, dangerous driving, driving, holiday, italy, linate, london, meal, milan, milan restaurant, milano, pasta, refettorio, restaurant in milan, tram, trams, vacation, veal | Leave a comment

18 May 2013

Reflections from Portugal

Portugal is not a country that UK folks travel widely to. Maybe a trip to the Algarve or a cruising stop in Lisbon. After a short trip there I must report that this is a great country to visit and remarkably cheap. Arriving at Lisbon airport one is greeted by a slightly run down airport that is undergoing some sort of renovation but this is not Terminal 5. The facilities are a little jaded. Drving out of the airport one is in an industrial hinterland where some familiar and some unfamiliar names can be seen. But it is when one gets 30 kms outside Lisbon that the scenery becomes green and old castles can start to be seen. There are mainly toll roads so driving 130 kms from Lisbon to Batalha will cost around 9 euros. The Portuegese in fact have invented the technology that allows a little electronic tag on the car windscreen that means that queueing at toll booths can be a thing of the past. The striking observations are what a hilly and mountainous country Portugal is. Just all up and down. Everywhere. The people are friendly but not all speak English. Some understand a lot but cannot speak much, but most smile a lot. Most things seem cheap. Around £1 buys you a bottle of water in a hotel room that would be double that in UK. Generally everywhere is more relaxed. On arrival at the hotel there is no interrogation about credit card etc, in fact no-one asked. Another quaint difference is that food is often served lukewarm rather than hot. Scrambled eggs and bacon at breakfast were if I were kind warm. I only got to stay in one hotel Villa Batalha hotel in Batalha. An incredibly good hotel, friendly, comfortable and with nice chairs and furniture all around, so no need to sit in a reception area such as is the norm in UK. The most striking observation however is that there are so few people around, now to put this into context this was 130 kms from Lisbon. But few cars, few people, little noise, nice looking sports facilities and so on. A place that is well worth coming, however one night in Batalha would be enough. Finally back at Lisbon airport, the airport lounges are distinctly not UK. A moany sort of woman asked for some healthy food, the stern girl said “you can have an apple”, and meant it! A woman in Batalha was either dead or sleeping soundly outside presumably her souvenir shop, now that something we do not see in Primark or Costa!

Batalha

: Woman Sleeping outside a shop. Presumably not dead

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged algarve, aviation, batalha, car windscreen, cars, dead woman, eletronic tag, holiday, holiday in portugal, hotel villa batalha, lisbon, lisbon airport, london, old castles, portuegese, portugal, portugal cost, scrambled eggs, shop, terminal 5, toll, transportation, unemployment in portugal, vacation, woman sleeping | Leave a comment

06 May 2013

The Best Alien Bookmark in the world

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged alien, alien bookmark, best world, bookmark, craft, hobby, homework, innovation, london, model, vacation, world | Leave a comment

29 Apr 2013

Waterloo Station. No room to build another one.

London is officially full. A few awful I Phone photos today coming into land. How crowded is our city? Hardly room for the Shard.

Shard

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged crowded, crowded city, crowded house, london, shard, waterloo, waterloo station | Leave a comment

29 Apr 2013

Embraer 190 SR

A pleasure to travel on this aircraft today from London City Airport to Glasgow. What actually struck me was that the legroom if you sat in seats 2 C and D was phenomenal. They literally were missing a row of seats. This had another benefit, that the trolley that normally wrecked havoc as it went up the aisle with passengers coming down the aisle, could be parked in there, allowing folks to skip happily into the toilet. The two rules of flying that cannot be broken are that firstly one should carry every item from the household onto the plane and secondly that all passengers must visit the toilet at least once.

What however I did not know was that the aircraft series has been in production since 2002, and 908 have been delivered. They seat between 94 and 114 . My one today seated 98 according to British Airways.

There is however a little safety information to digest according to Wikipaedia.

On 24 August 2010, Henan Airlines Flight 8387, an Embraer E-190 that departed from Harbin, People’s Republic of China, crash landed about 1 km short of the runway at Yichun Lindu Airport, resulting in 42 deaths.
16 September 2011: TAME Flight 148 from Loja, Embraer E-190 with registration HC-CEZ, with 97 passengers and 6 crew on board, slipped off the runway at approximately 19:15 ECT (00:15 UTC) atMariscal Sucre International Airport.
27 February 2012: Shuttle America Flight 5124 from Atlanta, Embraer E-170, with 67 passengers and 4 crew on board, made an emergency landing at Newark Airport after developing nose-gear trouble in the air, authorities said.^[26]
29 June 2012: Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 from Hotan Airport to Ürümqi Diwopu International Airport, an Embraer E-190, passengers and crew members thwarted an attempt to hijack a plane in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Seats 2 CD in Embraer 190

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged british airways, DLR, embraer, embraer 190, embraer safety, flight, flight safety, glasgow, glasgow airport, good legroom, Heathrow, henan airlines, hotan airport, london, london city airport, london travel, seats 2 c and d, summer, TAME flight 148, travel, vacation | Leave a comment

24 Apr 2013

The price of Ice Cream

Walking along the small high street of a surrey town I happened to glance in at a cafe shop that recently started up, selling mainly coffee, cake and a few other items. Few tables outside on the pavement and looks overall quite nice. What however caught my eye was the price of a single scoop of ice cream or ” italian gelato” as it was described, a single scoop was £2.21. When did this happen? Recently Iceland were selling huge packs of white Magnums for 4£ and that got you I recall at least 8. A huge 2 litre tub of a nice ice cream like Kelly’s cornish can often be got on special offer for as little as 2£. Crazy pricing. Let me know the most expensive scoop of ice cream that you know of, outside of central London or other touristy areas.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged cars, cornish ice cream, food, gelato, high street, holiday, ice cream, italian gelato, kelly's cornish, kelly's ice cream, london, price of ice cream, restaurants, surrey, surrey town, transportation, vacation, walls ice cream, white magnum | Leave a comment

13 Apr 2013

1 Comment

Portsmouth Fans at Brentford v Portsmouth

The behaviour of the Portsmouth fans was not impressive today. They arrived at the game knowing that the Supporters trust would most likely be able to buy the club and essentially they could consider themselves as shareholders. They were in good voice but then their chanting became foul mouthed and abusive for no good reason. At the end of the game they invaded the pitch and some then went on to start fighting. Just to put this simply, they are the worst set of fans that I have personally seen in League 1 for many years and no doubt will continue to grace League 2 next season. The sympathies I held for them have vanished totally.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged brentford, brentford fc, brentford v Portsmouth, football, football club, gaming, good reason, league 1, london, no doubt, portsmouth, portsmouth fc, relegation, soccer, sports, travel, vacation, videogames

10 Apr 2013

1 Comment

Nick Hamann. Trialist goalkeeper at Brentford

A good keeper that I have watched the last 2-3 years at Carshalton in Ryman Premier. Played for Chelsea as a youth and German by birth. 25 years old. Has been given a game in the development squad this week.

Nick Hamann

anyone needs a drink if they are in goal for Carshalton!

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged brentford, brentford fc, brentford trialist, carshalton, carshalton fc, chelsea, chelsea youth, community, gaming, germany, london, nick hamann, ryman, ryman legaue, ryman premier, soccer, sports, super-bowl, vacation

07 Apr 2013

Woking 2 Wrexham 0

The nearer one gets to the end of the season the more certain matches matter. Woking are safe in the conference and in fact are the most successful part-time club in the UK. Wrexham are a full-time club striving to be back in the football league where they belong. The reality before this game was that their most likely channel would be the playoffs and after this game this is now a certainty. However it is worth just thinking how much football needs to be played by the better sides that are successful in the cup competitions and in fact Wrexham won at Wembley the FA Trohpy a few weeks ago. They looked tired and most likely were tired having played 48 hours before. Woking were on top for most of the game and always looked the likelier team to score and they duly did twice in the second half in front of 1500 supporters. Jayden Stockley scored both goals and missed a simple chance for his hat-trick. He was the best player on the pitch. The other player to impress, mostly in the first-half was Dele Adebola, who is still a physical handful at this level.

LOOKING WORRIED

chris Maxwell

Dele Adebola

CHRIS MAXWELL BEATEN FOR THE FIRST GOAL

Jayden Stockley scores his second goal versus Wrexham

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged blue square, blue square conference, chris maxwell, community, conference, dele adebola, elvijs putnins, FA trophy, final, gaming, jayden stockley, latvia, latvian goalkeeper, london, non league football, non-league day, nonleague, opinion, play offs, soccer, sports, super-bowl, surrey, wales, Wembley, woking, woking fc, woking football club, wrexham | Leave a comment

04 Apr 2013

Lucinda Belle Orchestra at The Pheasantry Chelsea London

Right upfront I will admit my bias that I have been listening to and watching LBO for around 2 years now and have seen them play in decent size auditoria and in smaller venues. On this occasion it was a tiny venue a Pizza Express Music Club in the King’s Road. This venue is maybe even although intimate a little too small. Having said that the acoustics were fine and the concert was great. LBO have it seems been in the studio a lot of late creating a second album which will be due out later this year and it will be a little different from the first but nothing to detract affictionados from buying it. The album production is being funded by a system of pledges for either buying the album, even singing on the album, or more realistically wathcing the band in the studio. It must be working as 74% of the money has already been pledged. To learn more try here

http://www.pledgemusic.com/blog/522-lucinda-belle-ushers-in-rockabilly-gypsy-jazz

Lets be brief and summarise, great concert, two hours went quick, great guitar work from Sheldon Conrich ( who co-writes and vocals on a few songs), the new music is superb. My only complaints? Minor ones, that a few of my favourite tracks did not get played including SlideShow.

Anyway take a look at some photos here. The lighting was miserable ( as it should be of course), so working without flash was nigh on impossible even at high ISO speeds ( dont like going much over 5000, even though the camera goes to 24,000), such that a little post-production magic was needed. So enjoy these and if you search on my blog you will find 2-3 other photographic sets too.