Eventful Weekend- Part 2- Ministry of Sound: Hed Kandi Night

After a few too many drinks after the Boat race- I have a certain friend to blame for that :)- I woke up a little shabby on Easter Sunday!

However this was soon fixed by a lovely aubergine stew (I cooked from Jamie Oliver's cook book), a glass of Moet and some of my flatmates AMAZING sticky toffee pudding with ice cream- YUM.

I am almost a year older now and so I needed a cat nap before my big night out- Ministry of Sound Hed Kandi night!

I have loved Hed Kandi since I was 17 and had been to one of their nights at a Sydney nightclub (a certain blonde friend of mine might remember us getting into the DJ box and dancing on top of the speakers. I think we got in because a) we were cute + 18 and b) because I was wearing the tinniest hot pants in the world- sorry Kylie!)

Anyway I talked my dear workmate/friend into coming with me for a big night out on the long weekend. We started with some champagne and vodka at her place before getting the bus to Elephant and Castle (for the Aussie's out there this is not a nice area to be wandering around in at night).

It took us 15 mins of walking around and speaking to interesting strangers before actually finding the club but this just helped build our excitement.

After chatting to some handsome German men (or were they French?) on the queue we entered the Tokyo themed Hed Kandi venue. The Ministry of Sound is much smaller than I imagined (probably the size of the Empire in Sydney) and there are roughly 4 separate rooms.

After ordering drinks (not as expensive as I thought it would be) we wandered around and settled on the loudest room in the venue- however it was the most packed and had the best music.

As it was the Tokyo album world tour the rooms were themed with oriental paper lanterns and half way through the evening they had Geishas come out and dance on the speakers, they looked fantastic. Of course with most club nights these days they followed this act with a saxophone player who played over the music- I really really hate this. Why feel the need to ruin a perfectly good dance song with this additional sound? I love this instrument but within the confines of a jazz band not with my dance music!

We danced and danced from 11pm-4am to every classic Hed Kandi song I can think of. I have not had such a good night in a long long time- having recently spilt from my boyfriend it was the ultimate therapy.

It took an hour to get home on night buses but it was worth it and the night totally exceeded my expectations.

Any night out or venue you are desperate to go to?

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Eventful weekend- Part 1: Good coffee + Putney Boat Race

Any long weekend is always a welcome break but I was particularly excited about the many events I had lined up for myself this Easter long weekend.

It started with a little shopping trip out to Westfield London (which for all you Aussie readers out there to note this venue feels exactly like Westfield Bondi). Westfield is quite a novelty here, there is only one of them and it’s rare to have actual massive shopping centre’s in London as there is a high street in EVERY suburb you visit.

This Westfield had a lovely NZ coffee stall, Sacred, that was on the Timeout ‘List’. The coffee was delightful, very creamy and satisfying, I will definitely be returning there for future shopping expeditions.

Easter Saturday brought the infamous Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race which is a traditional rowing competition that has been running since 1829. It’s estimated that over a quarter of a million people line the Thames to watch the race and between 7-9 million watch it on the TV- it’s a big deal!

Like any major event in the UK there is copious amounts of booze consumed to really get into the vibe, we started off a little too early (12.30pm) at a pub by the Thames so by the time the race rolled around at 4.30pm we were very merry.

It was madness in Putney, people everywhere, however I did love this as its a true representation of the English spirit which centre’s around everyone getting involved and supporting the fellow man. The actual start of the race is a bit of an anti climax (blink and you will miss it) but the drinking and socializing afterwards is a lot of fun.

Luck would have it that on that day I would meet a man that would help me out with the ultimate mission on the list- find Kylie’s house.
Stay tuned for the result…

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Nb/ I am off on holidays this weekend to Turkey (it’s on ‘The List’) so I might be on hiatus for a week or so, unless I have access to the internet. I look forward to filling you all in on my adventures upon my return (and hopefully be able to show off a tan instead of this pasty white English skin!)

Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition + good coffee!

This lovely Saturday started with a solo trip to the next coffee shop destination on the Timeout list, Kensington Square Kitchen, which is located behind High Street Kensington tube but in quite a tranquil setting.

The café was packed and full of the typical types of people you find in this area in West London- the family next to me were debating whether to go to Hermes or Gucci as the first shopping destination after brunch and the group next to me were debating what constitutes good art! Needless to say I felt very out of place on my own in the corner reading In Style.

The service was very slow however the coffee was good and the fruit salad I had for breakfast was very satisfying. After a quick walk around Gloucester road in the sun I met a friend to go and see the Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition.

I had hoped this exhibition was going to be good, but good is an understatement, the images just absolutely blew me away. The visuals of nature in on world wide scale are amazing and some places in the world just seem too good to be true. Not only was the scenery amazing but the way these photographers were able to capture animals in their own habitats was just damn fascinating.

The range of animals was fantastic, from the smallest ants to the largest whales there were images of endangered species, tigers feeding in the wild and monkeys intimate family moments. Really made you stop and think about your place in the world.

If you are interested in seeing some of the images they can be found here: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/index.jsp

I must add some of the photos were taken by people as young as 11 which is even more unbelievable!

I have attached my favourite image from the exhibition and yes it’s a real place!

If you have any amazing images you have seen lately please share!

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Wine tasting at Vinopolis

There are a few vices I have in life. I have already explained my obsession with coffee and magazines. There are a few others I need to add to that list, dessert (of any kind), sweets/lollies (whatever you want to call them), Kylie Minogue and wine.

I went to a winery once in Australia a while ago and I remember the experience being highly enjoyable and very drunken! I was keen (as I am now an avid wine lover) to test out this experience again. Also there is a vast range of wine delivered to the UK that we just don’t receive in Australia and when it comes to buying wine for dinner in the UK I am totally lost.

As there are no wineries in the vicinity of London the next best thing is Vinopolis. This is a venue space where they conduct wine tasting, champagne tasting, whisky tasting, beer tasting, absinthe tasting (why you would want to partake in this is beyond me!) and rum tasting. My lovely friend offered to accompany me to a self guided wine tasting tour on a particularly wet and cold Friday night.

The tour starts with a 15 minute session with an expert who takes you through the process of swirling, smelling, tasting, gurgling and identifying flavours within wines. The flavours thing still gets me as you are supposed to be able to smell fruits, vegetables and some spices, I think I really suck at this process and really it’s a matter of individual taste buds. If anyone is considering going on this tour take notes!!!! 15 minutes goes really fast and it’s hard to take all the information you need in during this time.

You are then lead into a large room that is spilt into 3 different areas: old world, new world and emerging world.

Within the old world room you will find wine from Italy, France etc; within the new world room you will find wines from Australia, NZ etc. The emerging world room is quite a bit smaller and has wine from unusual locations such as Greece and Austria.
We had 5 wine tickets each so we decided to share our wines to extend our experience (we even managed a few freebies!) so in total we tasted 13 wines.

I must say the whole experience took much longer than I was anticipating, my friend and I were really taking our time, swirling, sniffing, gurgling and writing notes on each wine. In total we were there for 3 hours (lucky we had agreed to have dinner beforehand otherwise I think I would have been wasted), however they do have a lovely selection of olives, nuts, cheeses etc if you get peckish during the process.

I was open to trying different sourced wines to the ones I knew however I couldn’t resist a few from home I'd been dying to try for a long time! In total we tried 2 Italian, 1 Argentinean, 1 Chilean, 2 Greek, 1 French, 4 Australian, 1 Spanish, 1 Austrian; 7 red and 6 white.

Not to sound bias or cliché but my favourite wines were the ones from Australia. Maybe my taste buds are that way inclined as I have spent most of my drinking life in this country but it made me appreciate the great produce that comes from my home land. I must mention how amazing the Grant Burge Semillion was and the Merlot wasn’t that bad either :)

You end the experience with a ticket for a Bombay sapphire cocktail in special Bombay Sapphire blue themed room. I had a French martini and it was a welcome sweet taste after all the wine we had drunk.

I had such a fantastic time and I would definitely recommend this experience to anyone else living in London or anyone who loves wine!

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Dine at a UK Masterchef restaurant + Visit all good coffee shops in London

Ok so this is another food post!

Since returning from a trip home in February I have become obsessed with finding good coffee in London because in my opinion the coffee here sucks. There is not really a café culture here like there is in Sydney. London has a love of high street franchise coffee houses and you would really struggle to go to any suburb in London and not find a Starbucks/Costa/Nero which in my opinion is very boring and commercial.

I was delighted when my favourite cultural magazine Timeout London recently ran a feature on the best cafes for good coffee in London (and some amazing treats let me tell you!). I am an avid fan of Timeout London. Being a foreigner this is a fantastic title to give you ideas of things to do, where to eat, drink and find interesting things happening on a weekly basis.

So I set myself another mission (as if I didn’t already have enough challenges!) to visit every coffee shop on this Timeout list. There are 25 in total, some I may not get to as it might be a bit hard with public transport but I am going to try my damn hardest.

The first one I ticked off this list was in Richmond, a lovely lush suburb in the south of London, there you can take a lovely walk alongside the Thames and the greeny or simply sit on the grass and watch the boats go by, ive always had a pleasant time in Richmond.

Anyway back to the coffee, the place is called Taylor Street Baristas and its right outside Richmond station. Run by NZ folk and boy do they know their coffee! The Cappuccino was fantastic, bitter enough to taste the right flavours (apparently it’s a complex mixture of seven varieties of coffee beans) and yet creamy enough to be a pleasant drink. Let me tell you it was such a welcome break from the Caramel Macchiato that I have been relying on from Starbucks.

I followed this experience with a meal at the new restaurant/café in Putney opened by the UK masterchef Gregg Wallace. The place is very welcoming, all wooden with organic food products in the window and most importantly the staff were very polite.

To start I ordered the Spinach, apple, beetroot and smocked mackerel. I don’t normally like fruit in my salad however this mix was very refreshing and tasty.

For my main I had hot smoked salmon, cucumber and shallot salad with horseradish, the meal was lovely, not exceptional but yummy enough. On the side we ordered a serving of broccoli as Mr Wallace is known for his exceptional vegetable cooking skills and let me tell you it wasn’t all that. The broccoli was under cooked and covered in butter, it was still enjoyable but I expected a lot more from what I had read.

However the meal was redeemed with the amazing chocolate brownie that I inhaled for desert, it was heaven in a bowl heated with ice cream, yum yum yum.

All in all a lovely follow up to my first 'List' eating experience and im very excited about all the coffee shops I have left to visit.

Have you got one food/drink that you are obsessed with? Please share your own…

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Go to a movie premiere- The Bounty Hunter

This was something I put on the list after the event as I thought it was a pretty damn unusual event that I wouldn’t be able to experience in my homeland.

So I’m sure everyone in media will probably laugh at my excitement however I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of walking down a red carpet.

It is very surreal walking literally one metre from famous people that I read about in magazines on a weekly basis. I must say that Jennifer Aniston is absolutely STUNNING in the flesh and she has the most enviable legs I have ever seen. Much to my surprise I actually found her face cute and attractive which I think is not reflected in the images you see in the press.

I was so gob smacked by seeing one of the world’s most recognized figures that I didn’t get much time to gawk at Gerard Butler, not that that bothered me as he isn’t really my type, all the same he is an attractive man.

It is very strange walking down the carpet and seeing the hoards of screaming fans, I mean some girls were literally crying for Gerard and others were surging against the barriers. As much as you want to soak up the moment you are ushered along the carpet quickly as to not distract from the real celebrities.

Once in the cinema you are provided with movie branded toffee flavoured popcorn and water. You have to wait a super long time for the stars to walk the carpet and finish signing autographs.

Before the film started we had the honour of having the director, Jen and Gerard come into the cinema and introduce the film and discuss their time on set. I thought Gerard was very funny, charismatic and down to earth. After the film started he even came to join his friends in the audience.

I thought the film was fun and light hearted, I know it’s been panned a lot but honestly its Jennifer Aniston movie where she plays Rachel from Friends so if you like that kind of thing and enjoy a rom com I would recommend you see it.

Is there anyone famous you would love to see/meet?

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Dine at a UK Masterchef café + Visit the Gavin Bond Exhibition

Of course the first thing I ticked off ‘The List’ had to do with food!
Now I must say I don’t think food has been a high point of my time in London. Compared to my home land of Australia I must say that the UK sucks at fresh food (although they do have amazing strawberries in the summer time). However I will admit in my time here and maybe this has been the influence of my lovely flat mates, but I have become intrigued with cooking shows. I never would have thought 2 years ago that I would be excited to leave work to come home to watch everyday people compete on a cooking competition show but now I am hooked!
However I do get the feeling that I am not alone. A lovely friend of mine has her own cooking blog (http://www.whatdeliciousness.blogspot.com/) and food was one of the main focuses of a recent girly weekend away. Food seems to be a salient subject!
With this new obsession in mind I thought it would be appropriate that I dined at a place that was associated with the most popular cooking show in the UK, Masterchef.
The first place I visited in early March was Smiths of Smithfield. The café was nothing like I expected, I was thinking it would be super posh and my friends and I would look completely out of place. However I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a warehouse type establishment in the trendy area of Farringdon. My main gripe about Sunday Brunch at this café is that you can’t make a reservation so we had to wait over an hour to be seated. However they do have a drinks bar for consumers to suck down a bloody mary for their hangovers (they looked lovely) or a much needed pick me up coffee- mine was the second for the day!
The menu is extensive and it was super hard to pick one meal but in the end I chose the delightful pancakes with maple syrup and bananas. The meal, as you can see below, was very tasty and worth the wait. I washed this down with a yummy Booster juice and lots of great conversation. Overall the experience was very enjoyable and worth the wait.
After brunch I walked most of the way to the Gavin Bond exhibition off Shoreditch High Street. The exhibition was impressive although sadly I had seen most of the images within the pages of Q magazine (one of my absolute favourite magazines in London, it sits in third place behind Grazia and Elle). That said it is always a thrill to see professional photos in high quality print, especially photos of music artists I like/admire.

All in all a great first experience ticked off the list. Have you visited any restaurants recently that you have been dying to go to for a long time? If so please share

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The actual list

After much persuasion I have been convinced to publish the list. Originally I didnt want to for two reasons:

1) I wanted to keep everything a surprise
2) I guess I was scared of committing in case I failed to complete the list (I am absolutely terrified of failure and I have come to realise I am a control freak!)

However its important in life to put yourself out there and perhaps it will be more motivating for me knowing that you all know the goals I have set for myself. I may amend this list as I go along with additions and perhaps I will need to remove things I will not get to for various reasons. There are also travel destinations on 'The List' as these are places in my head I must visit in my lifetime.

Without futher ado here is 'The List':

1) Wine tasting at vinipolis
2) Disco roller skating
3) Visit Bath
4) Visit Berlin
5) See a play at Shakespeare’s globe
6) Go to a Jamie Oliver restaurant
7) Visit the Deep sea exhibition at the Natural History Museum
8) Visit Turkey
9) Go to a UK festival
10) Go to a Hed Kandi tour at Ministry of sound nightclub
11) Go to a jazz club
12) Visit Whisky Mist Night Club
13) Tea and scones at a fancy hotel
14) Bowling at old school bowling lanes
15) Go to the Rihanna concert
16) Dine at a UK Masterchef restaurant/café
17) See the Irving Penn portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
18) Visit the Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition
19) Visit the Gavin Bond exhibition
20) See Florence
21) See Rome
22) See Milan
23) See Ireland
24) See some Banksy art
25) Visit the Michelangelo exhibition- Somerset house
26) Visit Buckingham palace
27) Go to a UK football game
28) Go Punting
29) Visit Little Venice
30) Visit all good coffee shops in London – as voted by Timeout magazine
31) Visit Brown’s department store
32) Go to the horse races
33) Visit Versailles
34) Go to a movie premiere
35) Wimbledon
36) Visit Kylie’s house
37) See the Grace Kelly Exhibition at the V&A
38) Visit more vintages clothes stores in London
39) Have a picnic in Hampstead Heath
40) Visit the British Library
41) Visit the Dali universe museum
42) Attend a Fashion Marketing Course

Let me know if you think there is anything missing that is unusual that I must see. Nb/ I have done all the typical touristy things in London already, these are the more quirky and interesting things I want to do.

I hope that you are individually inspired to maybe complete some things from my list or have started to collate your own!

The setting

Never did I think I would succumb and create my own blog but recent events have lead me to come to the realisation that for personal reasons I should document all the exciting things I am getting up to in my dream destination London.

Whilst I do complain alot about the weather here (its so much colder than what I was prepared for!) there are many amazing things to do in London and I am determined to make the most of this amazing city.

A very dear friend of mine suggested that I write a list of things that I would like to do to ensure that I am living my life here to the fullest. It has been fun putting this list together and very motivating for me and the people in my life.

This blog will document all my experiences that I have put on 'The List' as a diary for me to reflect and for my friends and family to see what I am up to!

I will have to back date some experiences as I have ticked a fair bit off the list but its an ongoing project.

Perhaps you could write a list of your own and share, it may inspire me and many other people!