Indian Indulgence

Namaste Blogees,

It is a rare Monday treat from me.  I had to post about our incredible Indian dinner that we had last night.  We have certainly enjoyed Indian food since we have been in London.  I was doing some restaurant research yesterday afternoon and discovered an Indian place near us in Kensington called Zaika.  It was Punjab Posh.  I just made that up by the way, but it was the most refined Indian restaurant I have ever seen.

We started at the bar for a glass of wine and had an awesome Pinot Noir from New Zealand.  After being seated, we decided on a 3 course set menu.  We both started with the Hara Murg, which is chicken tikka marinated in mint, basil and green chillies and a small order of Malai Nann, which is Naan filled with Goat and English Cheddar cheese, onions, and chillies.  For our main entree, Ann had Nariyal Gosht, which is diced lamb marinated in coconut milk, and I had Subzi Biryani, which was fresh vegetables cooked in spices and basmati rice served in this flaky pie crust.  Ann's was really good, but mine was culinary magnificence.  We both finished with Rose and Black Cardamon Creme Brulee for dessert after cleansing our palate with Mango infused shaved ice.  Hands down, we both said that this was a top 5 meal for us in our lives.  It was just a great Sunday evening out as well after having been basically stuck in our flat all weekend due to the London monsoon.  By the way, today is the first full day of sun, and more importantly, no rain, in April.

Cheerio
Kevin

Bathing in Budapest

Hiya Everyone,

Happy almost May.  Obviously, I am at least 2 weeks behind on getting this Budapest blog posted, and I simply have no excuse.  Normally, the Sr. Director has been enslaving me with endless self-serving laborious tasks, but even her dictatorial diatribes have been minimal lately!!!  It has been a really relaxing latter part of April for us.  Ann had to make a quick trip to Rome this week for work, but other than that, we have not travelled since Budapest and we have not had any visitors.  We did make a little day trip 2 Saturdays ago out to Windsor to see Queenie's 2nd home.  Last Friday night, we actually went and saw a movie.  It had been a long time since we have done that.  We had a fun night out on Saturday for our friend Beth's b-day.  Great cocktails at the Portobello Star in Notting Hill.  We are here in London again this weekend and then we have some exciting upcoming trips planned to the Cotswolds here in England next weekend and then 10 days in Croatia at the beginning of June.   My parents were supposed to be over here visiting in May and we had planned Scotland and St. Andrews, but my dad sadly had to have back surgery and is recovering.  We are going to miss getting to see them.

Enough already, let's talk about Budapest.  What an incredible city.  It has had a very tumultuous history, most notably being overrun by the Nazi's during WWII and consequently bombed by the allies, and then following the war, the Russkies pulled it behind the Iron Curtain.  Despite all the years of oppression, they have been able to rebuild and re-establish the cultural and architectural fervor of the city.  We were really expecting to see this old Eastern Bloc city with an institutional feel, but it was completely the opposite.  We were shocked at how progressive and cosmopolitan it is.  The diversity in styles of architecture was amazing.  The city itself is divided by the Danube River.  The hilly side is Buda and the flat side is Pest.  We stayed at a great hotel on the Pest side on the Danube almost right at the foot of the famous Szechenyl Bridge.  We had a view of the Buda Castle sitting high above the river.  What we loved about Budapest is that you did not feel like you had to kill yourself making it to all of these different churches, castles, and monuments.  We did take an awesome tour of Parliament though on Saturday afternoon as well as a great river cruise on Saturday evening, but the culture was best taken in just by walking through the different parts of the city and seeing some of the incredible views.  Friday afternoon, we toured around for a couple of hours and then hiked up the large hill to Buda Castle and had an awesome late lunch sitting in this beautiful courtyard at a restaurant called Rivaldi.  The other unique aspect of the city was their traditional Turkish Baths built in the 16th and 17th centuries, a couple of them still being used today.  We made an appointment at the Szechenyi Baths on Saturday morning.  It is one of the largest bathing complexes in all of Europe.  It has 3 outdoor pools and 15 indoor pools.  The strange part was getting in some of these huge pools where the water temp was what you would find in a hot tub.  What a way to start a Saturday morning though, especially after having a late night in a casino near our hotel.  That's right, the Sr. Director found a blackjack table.  We ended up finishing both nights at the casino and had an absolute blast.  Neither of us are really gamblers at all, but Ann loves blackjack and is considerably talented, and I just bet enough to get comped drinks.  Unfortunately, there was no comping in the Hungarian casino!!  I think that we were the entertainment of the casino though.  The dealers loved us and were excited when we came back the 2nd night.  We made friends with some wannabe Hungarian mobsters who ended betting on the back of Ann's hands because she was playing so well.  We also befriended some strange character from Finland at the table.  He would not tell us his name, so I just started calling him "Helsinki."  The other great find of the weekend was this exquisite little restaurant called Tigris.  It was a very quaint restaurant that served traditional Hungarian dishes.  We had a really nice dinner and also discovered a brilliant Hungarian Chardonnay.  It was maybe one of the best bottles of wine I have ever had.  We had such a great weekend in Budapest.  We had so many laughs and enjoyed discovering a really unique place.  It definitely ranks up there as one of my favorite cities that we have been to.

I have to give a shout out to my buddy Gallagher in STL.  He was the proud owner of the Sports Attic, a bar that most of our friends spent more time in than our homes.  I know that a substantial percentage of my Boeing salary went directly to the Attic between 2003-2006.  The Attic sadly burned down 2 weekends ago.  It was an incredible place that held so many memories for me and so many friends.  It will be greatly missed.

What a start for the 2011 Defending Champs!!!  Let's take care of those Brewers at Busch this weekend.
                 

Spring Visitors - Part Deux

Happy Easter Weekend(Past Now),

We are currently in flight to Budapest, so I thought this would be a perfect time to catch up on the blog.  Ann had a great trip to Rome this week and my trip to Warsaw was a success as well.  I had without a doubt the best Foie Gras that I have ever tasted at dinner on Monday evening.  Great start for the 2011 Defending MLB Champions and even beyond the celebration of my immaculate conception every year, this weekend marks my absolute favorite 4 days of the year.  As a good catholic, my obvious answer would be the celebration of the resurrection, however, as a religious golfer, the azaleas are in full bloom, the pimiento cheese sandwiches are being served by the thousands, and the cathedral of golf is on show in Augusta, Ga.  It is Masters weekend!!!!

Enough of the continued anticipation however, I believe that I left off with an epic Sunday Funday with my sister and brother-in-law visiting.  After leading the 2 disheveled looking souls around Notting Hill for a while, the first cocktail began beckoning and they did not stop until the brick wall brought them to an abrupt stop at about 5pm.  As I mentioned, they were staying in a hotel near our flat that first night, so I managed to get them in a taxi and sent on their way.  Apparently, the two of them passed out at 7pm that Sunday evening and did not wake up until 10am on Monday morning.  It must have been the extreme fatigue;)  The entertaining part of it all is that they did not remember on Monday how to get back to our flat and ended up standing in front of Kensington Palace.  Someone noticed them looking at a map and stopped to ask if they could help.  Kelly told him that they were looking for her brother’s flat, and his response was that unless I was extremely wealthy, I probably did not live right there!!!  Luckily, they finally made their way unscathed to our slightly less palatial abode.  They spent the rest of Monday touring London and then the 4 of us had a great dinner at a Gastro Pub near our flat called the Abingdon.  Tuesday, they took their show on a day trip to Oxford.  It was funny because each day Ann and I would start getting texts about lunchtime, which meant that Happy Hour had begun wherever it was that they were.  Wednesday was a bit more of a calm day as they spent their time in London that day and we had dinner in that night.  The calm before the storm certainly proved true as Thursday brought Hurricane Oliver back to Category 5 strength winds.  They had decided to day trip to Bath on Thursday.  As usual, we started getting text messages about 12pm.  We had made reservations at a place in Notting Hill that evening.  Since they missed their first train back after being caught in a pub, we decided to meet at the restaurant.  Let’s just say that we were that table that evening that no one likes.  There is a good chance that they overcooked our food in the hopes that we did not return.  On the brightside, and thanks to some stealthy moves from Officer Oliver, we did walk away with 2 new wine glasses!!!  After dinner, we headed for a few nightcaps at our one of our local haunts, the Prince of Wales.  That pretty much put it over the top for the night.  Friday, the tourists had a fairly calm day with some shopping at Harrods and an attempted but failed visit to the almost newly opened Kensington Palace.  Since we were leaving early Saturday morning for Amsterdam, we decided to have Lebanese takeaway on Friday night and get a good night of sleep.

We left early Saturday morning for Amsterdam.  Not only did Kelly and Michael luck out with beautiful weather in London, but we also had fantastic weather in The Netherlands.  Saturday afternoon, we spent meandering through the streets and various canals and stopping by a few cafes for a beer.  We toured this great gem called the Hidden Church.  It was built in the attic of a home in Amsterdam to help protect its parishioners from persecution.  We also had to check out the Red-light District.  Let’s just say that some of these women in the windows would be intimidating to even some of the most imposing linemen in the NFL.  After another café, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.  We had made reservations at a great little restaurant that was recommended to us called Café Lund.  We had a fantastic dinner and finished the night at our swanky hotel bar.  Sunday morning brought a couple of pretty good hangovers as well as the realization of a missing wallet.  What is great is that Michael is fairly well versed in the procedure after losing personal possessions, so a few quick calls to the appropriate companies, and everything was good.  The funny part is that we figured it had to have been lost at our hotel.  It apparently was found on Monday soon after our departure back to London.  After the hangover fog began to clear, we made our way out of the city to a well-known park called Keukenhoff.  Holland is very well known for its tulips, and Keukenhoff is the greatest display of tulips in the world.  There are more than 6 million tulips planted every year, and they are showcased in this beautiful park between March and June.  It was the very first weekend that the park was opened, so we were perhaps about 2 weeks before the tulips were in full bloom, but it was still nonetheless awesome.  Following Keukenhoff, we made our way back to Central Amsterdam and headed for the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank’s House.  This was where Anne Frank wrote her diary while being hidden from the Nazi’s.  We were able to tour the house where she and her father and sister lived, and where they were ultimately betrayed after 25 straight months in hiding.  As you know, Anne and her sister were killed in the concentration camps, but they were survived by their father who went on to publish Anne’s diary.  It was a very somber and surreal experience.   We finished the night with a little bar/café hopping and had a great dinner at a restaurant near our hotel.  We finished off the trip on Monday morning with an incredible breakfast at one of Amsterdam’s infamous Pancake houses.  It was delicious.  Amsterdam is a beautiful city and unfortunately its international reputation has been predicated on the Red Light District and Coffee Houses(Hash Bars).  There is so much to offer by the city and if you find yourself there, just stay away from the tourist areas and take in the quaint neighbourhoods built around the more than 160 canals. 

Michael and Kelly, we had so many laughs, memories and great experiences.  Scotland Yard is still looking for Officer Oliver for some reserve shifts!!!  I know that it was very hard to be away from the girls for that long, but it meant so much to us that you came to visit.  I am not sure if you were adamant enough in your thoughts about where we should move after London though, so we may need to re-confirm;)

Cheers

Kevin and Ann