I came here in the last few weeks, one to catch up with Gaz and Mike on the Easter weekend (yes, I know a long time ago)

And more recently when Mike was in town from Brooklyn.

Sidetip: It’s worth trying the scotch egg if you ever go here. One of the best ever!

In April, I took the yearly weekend trip to Rome to watch Italy play in the Six Nations rugby challenge. This year, they were up against the Irish, and amazingly won. I think it’s only England and Wales that they are left to beat and I’m sure it won’t be too long now.

Luca and I flew into Rome on a Friday night. Toni was supposed to come along, but ditched us along the way due to other committments. He did book our accomodation which was a nice enough bed and breakfast but was a little bit further away from town than what we really should have been. Fortunately the weather that weekend was grand – enough for a light coat in the evenings, blue sky and warm sunshine.

As these weekends tended to go, we got up for a rather lazy breakfast, walked around town for a bit with lots of great photo opportunities around The Vatican. It was particulary busy that weekend because not only had the new pope been voted in, but there was also the Rome Marathon on the Sunday when we left.

We walked around all day, heading out to the stadium. This year’s trek was much nicer in the sunshine compared to last year’s tromping around in freezing snow. We had the perfect seats as well – very close and fortunately in the sunny side of the stadium where I think I even got a little sunburned sitting there all afternoon.

We had a late dinner booked at the wonderful La Carbonara which did not disappoint. It’s the one further away from the centre and you definitely need reservations. We saw numerous people turned away.

When I booked the flights, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to be yet, so I had an early flight back on Sunday. It was a good thing too since I needed to get home, repack before organising my things for the early flight out the next morning.

A lovely weekend all around.

The room that we had was absolutely massive. It had enough space for two beds, a comfortable sitting lounge, a very large bathroom and it also came with a balcony. Free wi-fi (important for us!) was available although the signal was pretty weak from our room. They could use a repeater to get the signal stronger in all the different rooms. Fortunately it worked quite well if you’re sitting in the sitting rooms on either of the two floors, or the lounge room on the main floor that also hosts some evening happy hour drinks.

We played a number of games of pool and table tennis in their games room and they also had a reasonably sized gym that we never really took advantage of. They had both an outdoor and a covered pool but I guess the weather wasn’t warm enough for anyone to use it.

Breakfast was a great spread of lots of different things, and they even do a cooked breakfast with whatever you want as well. I stopped after our second day because there are only so many cooked breakfasts you can have. I’d certainly recommend the hotel although if you want something without a hike up big hill, you may want to look for something further downtown.

Like last time, twelve of us shared a common chalet. I think this year’s one definitely takes the award at being the best ski accommodation of them all. I think it’s also probably set very high expectations for future events. Not only was the building very new, but the wonderful hosts from Mountain Spaces had thought of a lot.

For example, the chalet came equipped with six walkie talkies that we could distribute amongst the group and use on the mountain. Though they didn’t work across mountain ranges, these were quite fun to use and we did use it a fair bit trying to co-ordinate when to meet up for lunch or at the end of the day.

Chalet Le Milan Noir didn’t stop there as well. The place came equipped with a new, modern hot tub, an indoor sauna and the entrance to the lodge had boot warmers, ski hooks to hold the gear and a separate place to hang your ski jackets from the rest of your stuff.

We were definitely spoilt with fresh cakes in the afternoon when we arrived, an amazing breakfast spread (although no nutella) of cereals, croissants, juices, fresh coffee/tea and an egg of the day not to mention an aperitif/snack before the daily three course meal ending with a cheese course and unlimited bottles of wine during dinner. The wine was actually really great as well with two choices of red and white every night.

Like last time, we had really good luck with the skiing conditions. It snowed pretty much every day resulting in a heavy, thick layer of powder – perfect to soften those black runs and make off-piste look even more appealing than the piste. The snow did have side-effects of removing a lot of the visibility but we did end up with two of the six days of skiing super fresh powder and amazingly clear snow.

Some of the highlights of the skiing part were definitely heading over to Mont Chery and heading over to Chatel. Mont Chery has only a handful of runs – mostly reds and blacks but this means that it was less busy than many of the other slopes and a great place to push yourself when covered with thick amounts of powder. Our trip to Chatel was also a fantastic day where we headed out early and came back on one of the last slopes having skiing as much as we could.

With great company and great facilities at home, we only headed into town a couple of nights but it was definitely a bigger city than what I remember Les Get being.

A few of us had to try the raclette again (some of us had it twice during the week!) although I’m convinced that we didn’t do enough skiing to really work off all the wonderful food and drink that we indulged in for the week. But, it was a holiday after all.

A really great week of skiing and one that I definitely won’t forget for some time.

I decided to meet early because I don’t like eating too late on a Sunday and this turned out to be a good idea with such a crowd also wanting Chinese food on Chinese New Year. New Fortune Cookie has a great location next to the Queensway tube, so it gets a lot of traffic and it’s good food and reasonable prices with good service (I never feel like they are turning tables like other Chinese restaurants) means you end up with a lot of happy customer coming back. On this evening though, we had about a half hour wait even though we were one of the first people in queue. By the time we sat down, people were starting to stand in between tables, just because there wasn’t enough room. So chaotic, and entertaining.

We had quite the feast for the Chinese New Year, starting off with won ton soup and ensuring that we ordered a noodle dish for long life. Ordering Chinese appropriately for a special event can be quite overwhelming as symbolic nature of foods is complex. We opted for one of

Most of Funchal is nestled on a mountainous island. This means some beautiful hilly views, winding roads and a fascinating set of bridges that connect the island. They also have two of the longest tunnels (as of our visit) in all of Portugal, enabling faster access between different sides of the mountain.

Being an island, the citizens have large access to seafood and strangely steak (which I’m guessing is imported but probably an inherited trait from the Portugese). The local fish to eat is the ugly Scabbard Fish. Long and black like an eel, the white-fleshed fish is often served battered, fried and then accompanied with a banana fritter and passionfruit sauce. It surprisingly works as a good combination.

The other local delicacy is the Bolo do Caco, a heavy dense bread cooked on a flat griddle and often served smothered in garlic butter. Probably very bad for you if you have a lot, but I have to say that it tastes pretty good. They also often sell a smaller, rolled up flat version filled with chorizo or bacon.

In terms of sights to see in Funchal, there’s a district in the downtown area where they are encouraging more artists to demonstrate their skills. The result is an interesting roadside gallery of doors painted, decorated and covered in a multitude of manners, many of them surprisingly intricate and beautiful. Nestled in between the doors, you’ll find some decent restaurants, cafes and other art galleries where you can support the local community. Here’s some of my favourite ones.

The downtown area has a great local market where you can see the fresh seafood, and the multitude of tropical fruits made available. It’s the first time that I had seen so many varieties of passionfruit, and so many other strange looking fruit and vegetables. I liked the fact that you see the results in the juices they served on the street and also reflected the strong fruit-infused rum they sold in the shops and restaurants.

I highly recommend taking at least one bus tour of the island. We took two of these bus tours, one coasting along the east coast, and the other along the west coast. Both were reasonably great value considering it took all day and you got driven around in a small mini-bus with about 8 other people. You get some spectacular scenery, along the coastline and the sea. Lunch wasn’t included (most offer an optional cheap three course lunch with wine).

I wouldn’t say that there was a ton of things to do on the island. Being a mountainous island, there are actually no beaches on Funchal (an expensive ferry ride takes you to an island with a beach), but most of the hotels and resorts offer pools and lounge areas to soak up the sun. We visited the Botanical Gardens, and walked around a lot just to explore the different buildings and city, appreciating the warmth, sun and views in the fresh air.

Funchal is the sort of place you could spend a few days at. You want to spend more than a weekend because it’s quite a long flight away from England but unless you just want to lie around, four days is probably just enough to appreciate all the island has to offer.

Our lunch was a Borough Market inspired one where I reassembled the famous Brindisa Chorizo sandwiches. We start with grilling the sausages in a pan. I like the extra piccante for the heat, and I like the side rather crispy. It’s also a good way to draw out a lot of the fat – it’s amazing to see just how much there is!

I bought a bottle of Piquillo peppers (not cheap with a small bottle costing £5) but they were sweet and perfect for building the importance essentials.

The rest of the sandwich is pretty easy to assemble. Buy some ciabatta bread (it’s good because it crisps up nicely). I can imagine a good alternative would be a turkish bread as that seems to also have the magical property of getting crisper without burning. Peppery rocket is essential to provide a distinct contrast, to cut through the fat and the heat of the chorizo. Avoid watery lettuce as that will ruin the dish. Pretty perfect.

We took time out – in between watching a number of movies and walking towards Covent Garden a bit more to see the final unveiling of the Lego advent calendar, before returning to gorge ourselves (like everyone else around the world) on their Christmas feast. Our menu, this year revolved around a little bit of a simpler menu – Fig, goats cheese and honey bruschetta, roast pork belly with goose fat roasted potatoes, truffle mac and cheese (because we simply didn’t have enough carbs!) and then some honey glazed parsnips and carrots.

A decadent meal for the holiday period.

The year of being healthy meant I kept to two days of eating fully vegetarian food, and having a fairly regular schedule at the gym meant that I could have a pretty good routine for most of the year when I wasn’t travelling. A work colleague of mine got me addicted to body pump that got me down to my lowest body fat percentage ever (6.7% according to the machine at the gym) and put back on the weight that I lost when running a lot last year but with leaner muscle. This means that I’ve been able to keep my 30″ waist which basically is better health. I ran a 10k to support my sister but held back on any more half-marathons because my knees are pretty knackered now. I have still kept my general routine of a 10k run every week if I wasn’t flying in on a Sunday getting up at 6:10am for the hour run.

Other significant things that happened include becoming a British citizen and self-publishing my first book, The Retrospective Handbook. I’m even quite glad that I’ve managed to break even.

I also had some wonderful culinary experiences including Eleven Madison Park, The French Laundry, Launceston Place, Frontera Grill, Galvin at Windows and Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet.

I also visited Turin again for the Salone de Gusto, the slow food festival that I went to four years ago. I went with the same Italian friends (and my American friend Ajit) that I went before and we had a fantastic weekend despite the heavy, wet weather. Lots of cheese, wine and meats were consumed along with plenty of espresso and just chilling out.

A quick trip to Berlin for a conference (although technically it was in Potsdam) and a fantastic Christmas meal at St John’s restaurant where we tucked into a very festive Christmas pig. One Christmas/farewell part at the newly opened ping-pong bar/restaurant called Bounce that also happens to be the place where the British invented the sport. We also had a company Christmas party that left me with a bit of a sore head on a Saturday.

A lot of it is obviously very detailed in an attempt to be as true-to-life as possible. Short clips from the huge assortment of movies play at certain times, adding to the atmosphere and wonder of the Bond persona. Being an extremely popular event, each of the sessions were timed to stagger the entrance of people. I went for a late lunch session in the hope that I could turn up and buy a ticket (which I did) and it didn’t turn out to be so crowded.

The exhibition was split into three different areas – the first being the most comprehensive and where I spent the most detail. The second area was focusing on the villans of Bond which was pretty interesting to see the variety and the third, well underground representing the intricacies of shooting films in snowy regions and dubbed the “ice palace”.

Bond wouldn’t be Bond without his drink, and the Barbican was well into the whole theme by setting up a Martini bar. It offered the classic Bond drink as well as a number of other drinks. A really fun exhibit that I was glad to see.