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I went along to the Shochu Lounge after the work pub and found it a nice little gem around Goodge Street. It’s located right next to Roka as it’s run by the same set of people. It’s dark, cosy yet they count the number of people going in (both at the top and bottom) to make sure it’s never crowded. When we arrived, most of the tables already had people though they do have plenty of places to sit down with a group.

The crowd was chic, and most people looked liked they had put on some effort to come out here. Unfortunately we sat next to a group of totally drunk Americans who ended up being excessively loud and attention seeking, being asked several times to stop standing up on the low couches. Fortunately the rest of the crowd was much cooler and relaxed.

Of course, their Shochu is definitely one of their “things to have” on the menu, including a decent selection of Shochu cocktails. On top of this, they reserve a number of tables for those people who want to have food, where you can order from its parent restaurant, Roka.

I’d definitely want to go back there again. I enjoyed the atmosphere minus the crammed-in-can-barely-breath nature most other popular London bars tend to have.

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Attempted armed robbery just happened on Marlow high street today… Unfortunately (fortunately?), all we saw was the police questioning afterwards.

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I’m surprised at how fast this week went considering it’s the first full week I’d been back at work. Monday I caught up with Toni, Luca and Mike at The Green. We had some nice tapas there and fantastic that it wasn’t so busy. I’m still commuting to Marlow, so stayed over a couple of nights before coming back.

Friday night headed to drinks at the work pub before checking out the Shochu Lounge. It’s a cool place to hang, nice atmosphere, nice looking people inside without being overly pretentious and mindfully kept at a certain capacity so you don’t have to sqeeuze in and out to breath.

Saturday ended up at Golden Dragon with Mike and Vanessa for dim sum, and then finished the weekend off with brunch with Gerrod and Kristy at the Electric Brasserie before walking home through Hyde Park.

We’ve had some wonderful weather and even though it’s been a little bit rainy, it’s still been quite nice overall.

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With London cold enough for snow to fall instead of rain, it’s perfect conditions for it to host the first London Ice Sculpting Festival. Located just outside the National History Museum near South Kensington tube station, it’s easy to find located right next to the ice skating rink that sits outside.

Calling it a festival seems a little rich, but considering it takes these artisans a while to sculpt a particular block of ice, not to mention time to defrost, they several teams competing definitely need the time to put together their entries to the competition.

It’s fascinating to watch them at work, with either tiny picks, or chisels or when they pick up the mini chainsaw to carve away large chunks of ice. They even have their own assistants to sweep away the shavings so that the artists can focus on their creations.

It’s great to watch them in action and see some of their creations, particularly lit up at night time.

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I’m pretty late with this, looking-back-at-the-whole-year thing, since I’ve been once again been away with not that much time to spare. So here’s the summary in case any one is interested.

In terms of travel…
It feels like I definitely hit less countries last year than I did the year before, instead doing a little bit localised travel, despite starting the year off in The Andaman Islands, and ending it in New York. Whilst in India, I finished up my travelling by visiting Kolkata, before staying in Bangalore a few more days before returning to the UK.

Work needs seemed to shuffle me around a little bit when I first got back, ending up in both Lancaster, Coventry, and a short stint in White City (woo hoo, London!) before ending up in Calgary where I stayed for almost a third of the entire year! Even though I was based outside of Calgary for the, almost four month period, I still ended up visiting Bath, Glastonbury and Wells in a week for a conference, and Limerick for yet another one.

I definitely made the most of staying over in Canada though with trips to lovely Vancouver, the entertainingly named Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, the world’s best dinosaur museum in Drumheller, and Banff for afternoon tea. This isn’t even counting the four times that I managed to go skiing at Lake Louise and Sunshine.

Upon returning to the UK, I ended up in Norwich for Simon and Holly’s Wedding, Marlow on a daily basis for my work project for the rest of the year, and then Preston and Manchester for yet another work conference.

I finished off the year of travelling with trips to Torino (Turin) in Italy for the Slow Food Festival, Aberdeen to visit Stacey and Wes, Frankfurt (Germany) to visit my friend Martin, and Barcelona (Spain) failing to escape to any particularly warmer climate before finishing the year off with a trip to New York and Boston.

In terms of entertainment…
Was very strong musically kicking the year off with The Diamond Hoo Ha Men, closely followed by both Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. Later in the year, I caught Alicia Keys, Xavier Rudd, Finley Quaye, Kaiser Chiefs, Subsonica, Franco Battiato, and finishing the year off with The Kooks, Coheed and Cambria, Ben Kweller, and The Fratellis.

I volunteered for Calgary’s first Virgin Festival, even scoring VIP tickets to see a small, intimate acoustic set of The Fratellis. I also enjoyed hitting the Sled Island Festival, seeing different bands in different venues around Calgary and a nice couple of days laying in the sun chillin’ to plenty of tunes.

In terms of theatre and musicals, I went along to a Cirque de Soleil, the Sound of Music, Gods of Carnage, Cabaret, and 61 circus acts in 60 minutes.

Other notable things:
I enjoyed Calgary’s Stampede (also known as The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth), set out to walk to the farmer’s markets to only end up getting slightly sunburnt on what ended up as a 20km hike around Calgary. Further to the previous split between work and life, I also split my life blog from my food blog (since so many of my posts seem to revolve around them).

Looking back at the year, I realised that all this travel seemed to made it more difficult to catch up with close friends, particularly when they start to leave the country, though it’s created other opportunities of creating new ones.

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Apparently being someone in the mood for tours, we ended up on another one, this time at Madison Square Gardens for their All Access Tour. Madison Square Gardens is a place with a long rich history with New York, home to the New York Knicks (Knickerbockers), and the New York Rangers. It’s also played host to a lot of great concerts and performances throughout the years, including the famous Marilyn Monroe, “Happy Birthday Mr President” song.

The first part of the tour brings us to one of the handful of restaurants for exclusive (i.e. corporate) members where they forced us to watch a video about the history of Madison Square Garden, considering it’s past all the way up to the current incarnation of the venue. This video truly disappointed me particularly since our tour only lasted about forty minutes and the video took up a good fifteen of them. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a free tour, but considering that it cost US$17 each, it totally wasn’t worth it. I expect a pretty decent tour guide, enthusiastic about it, instead getting a guide that looked like Stephen Merchant (both disappointing not him and not particularly funny) that took us around, gave us the short spiel about an area, and then stood there far too long in awkward silence. We at least got to sit rinkside watching one of the ice hockey games that school kids play before the main players hit the ice for the evening.

Based on our experience, I’d have to recommend people avoid this tour, and instead, simply pay for a ticket to see something worthwhile inside the venue instead. It’ll give you pretty much the same experience, and I’m sure that you can find a video about the history of the square on youtube or something.

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A couple of days ago, my sister and I went along to the NBC Studio Tour (or the NBC Tour Experience). Both of us had never taken it before, so we thought we’d do it while we had a spare day. The tour starts off in second floor of the NBC shop, where we had to pick up our prepurchased tickets from a counter. Since it’s still just after New Years, the entire store was heaving with people, but it’s one of those things you have to get used to.

The first thing that you do on the tour is sit and watch a video about the NBC studios. It felt a little cattle-class-ish, standing in the tiny corrals lining up for the auditorium, but it seemed like the only way they could really keep pumping tours through every fifteen minutes (what a money-spinner it is!). With two tour guides (ours were young girls who apparently work as pages normally), the group is then brought through security and then to different floors around the building to see how some of the NBC shows get put together.

I think we first visited the site of where they do their nightly news, and pointed out some of the more unusual aspects to it, like the refrigerated air pumped into the room to keep the temperature reasonable when all the camera lights are on. We also go to see the set of (currently) Conan O’Brien’s late night show, that is actually tiny and then the set of Saturday Night Live. The tour finished off with a photo opportunity (and more money making opportunity for NBC), behind a news desk, where a couple of people also got to simulate showcasing the weather and telling the news for the evening.

I can’t say that it was the best tour in the world, and I think that it would have been made much more interesting had we been able to meet someone who worked on a show there. For US$23.25 each, I wouldn’t really think about doing it again.

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I have very fond memories of Boston with the last time I went here, now, almost eight years ago. I’m not sure what it was exactly. Perhaps it was the strong college town feel with big names like Havard, MIT, and Boston University located right in the centre, or perhaps the blend of confusing English-style streets that creates hidden pockets of culture to be discovered. Either way, I had another great time visiting all the different sights that Boston has to see, to make a bit of a change to all the attractions New York has.

Eight years ago, I remember taking a Duck Tour (that unfortunately don’t operate in winter), and only got to see the Cambridge side of the river when the bus was operating in boat mode. This time, I made an effort to get over to that side and walk around the campuses of both MIT and Havard. Both have amazing campuses, particularly all their buildings, and we made a special trip to visit the Gehry building, though beautiful on the outside, apparently had some flaws that the institute sued him for. Havard Square was fairly bustling when we arrived, particularly considering it was the holiday season, and in the middle of winter so I can only imagine the life it would have at the height of spring or autumn when the school is in full tilt.

Cambridge isn’t the only side with nice buildings, with the Boston skyline dominated by small high rises, all very different and interesting buildings. With everything from the super reflective mirror windows of the John Hancock tower (pictured above), to the Prudential Tower (pictured below), all of them really stand out when you’re by the water at night time. We paid for the Top of the Hub skywalk, in order to get the views of Boston from above, and complete with audio guide for adults and children, it was fairly great value.

Nearby to the Prudential Tower, was the Mary Baker Eddy Library, home to apparently the world’s only Mapperium, a three story glass sphere containing maps of the world. Though you pay about $US6 for a brief video, tour and admission, it’s definitely strange to stand inside it as it echoes everything almost perfectly. You can hear literally hear a whisper from across the room as the glass and spherical shape echoes it all around. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos, as the inside is a lot more spectacular than the photo shown below, taken from the area you end up waiting in.

One of the better free things to do in Boston is the State House tour, a free guided tour that operates fairly frequently in the building with the only gold leaf gilded domes. The public are welcome at attend, and it is still an active building with all the politicians required to meet, I think it was, at least twice a week. They have some amazing rooms, and plenty of history to talk about and I found it quite fascinating thinking about all the paintings, murals and statues all throughout.

One of my favourite places last time to visit was the bustling area of Quincy Market. Admittedly it caters for the tourist, but it just always seemed to have a busy atmosphere, and decorated with the Christmas lights really shines at night time. It’s also a place where you can grab small bites to eat from all of the different eateries, and indulge in the famous New England Clam Chowder (or Chowda! as a local) served in a sourdough bread bowl.

We were really lucky with the weather that we had, since the day we left it was snowing heavily and combined with the ferocious winds, was difficult to walk around without starting to feel the icy chill. Clear blue skies heralded over all of the hours we walked around, and even though it was cold and windy, having the sun out made a huge difference to us enjoying our time there. Check out the rest of the photos from the trip here.

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