An anniversary staycation

August 25th, 2007: Reading (where it all began!)

August 25th, 2008: Littlehampton.  We spent an anniversary weekend at Bailiffscourt Hotel & Spa venturing into nearby Brighton eating lots of cupcakes and drinking milkshakes!

August 25th, 2009: Koh Tao.  We celebrated our 2nd anniversary in Thailand! in this amazing little hilltop villa overlooking the ocean.

August 25th, 2010: Milton Keynes.  We celebrated with a spot of my favourite food, Mexican, before heading out to the Caribbean a few days later!

August 25th, 2011: London

The 25th August marked 4 years of being married to my favourite person! How 4 years has flown by so fast I have no idea, but I know they have been the most fun and happy of my life and there is no one I'd rather spend time with then Byron! 

So we celebrated by trying out Shaka Zulu, a South African restaurant located inside the Stables Market in Camden.  We had been wanting to try it for a while because of our South African ties but it was a little on the pricey side but thanks to all our generous anniversary gifts from our parents we were able to make it a date! 

It is the most extravagant and ornate restaurant I think I've ever been to and really quite an experience! 

There were statues of Zulu warriors everywhere and all the tables were intricately decorated with mosaic tiles.

We had the most amazing non alcoholic cocktail consisting of caramel, pineapple juice, lemon juice, pomegranate and apple - it was absolutely delish!

and then we move on to the food!! which of course was the whole reason we came and we were certainly not disappointed! I had an amazing starter meat board full of all my favourite South African meats: biltong, droewors and even some chilli snapsticks! I could have just gone home happy right then! 

By, rather daring as usual, had an ostrich carpaccio which he said was pretty tasty too! 

For my main I had boerewors with peri peri fries and By had his favourite, a fillet steak, with triple cooked fries.  They were some fat fries!

and my favourite course of the night, as always, dessert! 

We finished off the night with some very traditional South African desserts.  I had Koeksisters (a fried doughnut covered in lime and lemon syrup) and By had Melktert.  You don't have to speak Afrikaans to understand that one which is basically 'milk tart'.  We grew up being baked those kind of desserts by our grandparents so it was fun to eat them in this snazzy restaurant!!

It was an amazing night, definitely a great pick for a special meal and I just had to snap a pic of this giant Zulu as we left!

The next day we headed down to the Southbank, which has become one of our favourite London spots, and I just had to have a picture of me and the Gherkin in the background.  I love it!

I took By to the viewing deck of the Oxo Tower so he could check out the view from up there too.

It was pretty good despite the clouds! 

As usual the street entertainment was awesome and we found this crazy bubble blower who had the most amazing contraptions for blowing massive amounts of bubbles at once! 

and the most enormous bubbles you've ever seen! 

He was delighting all of the kids!

I had never seen anything like it before! we were mesmerised! 

I found this sign and it was so true! 

We tasted all day long, it's our fave thing to do! and the Southbank has so much amazing food it is kind of criminal not to!

We waited for hours for Pitt Cue Co to open...but it had to be done because every blog or time out article you read they are getting rave reviews! 

and it is easy to see why - this pulled pork was completely amazing! 

We headed to the Real Food Market after, which is just behind the Southbank Centre.

It was buzzing! and the sun came out for a brief while too! 

By opted for a homemade cheese toastie with homemade chutney too!

The smile says it all!

Of course there were plenty of cupcakes and baked goods involved too, you can check them out on my cupcake blog.

and we topped off a lovely bank holiday weekend with an amazing trip to Everyman Cinemas in Hampstead to see One Day.  Can you believe they sold cupcakes that you could take into the cinema!! I think it may just be my favourite cinema ever...

and not only for the cupcakes but because we got our own private sofa to sit on and a foot rest...it was pure luxury! 

A 24 hr snapshot of London: Afternoon Tea's, Southbank Sightseeing and Nightime Cycling!

So last weekend my American friend Charity came to town! She was only going to be in London for less than 24 hours so I knew we had to pack in as much fun stuff as possible! Charity is the most fun and adventurous and enthusiastic person I know! If you don't believe me go check out her blog, her love of life is contagious! and so I knew we were going to have to make our time together count! and man alive (to steal an Eyre family phrase) did we have fun!

First stop was Portobello Rd, and I'm not too sure we paid that much attention to all the cute little stalls because we were SO busy being chatterboxes and catching up on what's been going on in our lives since we last saw each other 2 years ago! but we did have time to snap this pic in front of those lovely coloured buildings!

Next up we headed to Bea's of Bloomsbury at One New Change, St.Pauls.  Here is Charity being ever so English with her pot of blackcurrant tea! Can you believe she had never experienced an Afternoon Tea before so I wanted to introduce her to this British tradition!

There is nowhere else in England I'd rather have afternoon Tea than at Bea's...because the amount of goodies they bring you on your platter is ridunculous!! Typically an afternoon tea consists of sandwiches, scones with jam and clotted cream and cake.  Here is what we got with ours:

Mini baguettes with goats cheese and ham, and sundried tomatoes

Homemade Scones with lashings of jam and clotted cream

Treats: Carrot cake cupcake, valrhona brownie, belgian blondie, passionfruit meringue, mango marshmallow and my fave of the lot were some giant lime and coconut marshmallows (all homemade to perfection!)

After we were more than sufficiently stuffed, we headed down to the Southbank where we took in this lovely view from the viewing deck at the top of the Oxo tower.

We passed some cute little decorated beach huts along the fake beach front which we thought were rather cool...

and then we found this awesome ride which had to be one of the highlights! I have seen swing rides at fun fairs plenty of times before, but never one that lifts you high into the air and THEN swings you round!! It was really quite an experience!

Especially because of where it was situated!! We were swinging high above the Thames just loving all those sights we were taking in...like the London Eye, and Big Ben that you can see behind Charity in this pic! It even started to go backwards half way round, and let me tell you that was a whole experience in itself!!

We had to take the obligatory shots in front of all the tourist spots!

Luckily for us, the weather actually turned out pretty good and once some of the clouds cleared there was actually some blue sky under there! so that made a nice change from the Irish weather Charity had experienced in the days preceding London!

I loved this shot of all the signs to help the tourists find their way, with the London Eye just peeking into view!

As the sun was setting we wondered over to Buckingham Palace and snapped this pretty pink sky behind this statue just in front of the Palace.

Charity wanted to go check out Hyde Park..so what better way to do it then to hire some of Boris' (our mayor of London) Barclays bikes! It costs £1 to get one out and as long as you just use short journeys and return the bikes to other docks within 30 minute periods it's totally free!

So after cycling around the park for a while we decided to be brave and head down Oxford St!

It was surprisingly less scary than we expected it to be! The buses behaved, and it actually turned out to be alot of fun! Even at gone 9pm London was buzzing and it was so fun to be in the middle of all the hustle and bustle! The pic above is Charity at Oxford Circus.

We finished our bike ride at Picadilly Circus where a nice fellow tourist snapped this pic for us.

We headed to the M&M store to take a few more touristy pics!

Gotta love the M&M guy in his busby!

We returned to the Southbank to take some more shots of Big Ben...this time illuminated!

and here we are with the London Eye in the background, excuse the dodgy pic - I forgot to turn the flash on! Picture taking never runs as smoothly without Byron around!

For our final pic of the night before resting our weary feet, we found a phonebox!

The next morning Byron came and picked us up and we headed south of the river to Borough Market.

It was alot of fun checking out sooo many different food stalls! Charity had never seen such massive meringues before! I took tons more pics but I'm sure you're wondering when this post is going to end so I'll spare you!

We opted for the giant bratwurst, it was seriously delish!

So we bid farewell to Borough Market and to Charity as we dropped her at the station Basingstoke Bound ready for the rest of her U.K tour!

Hopefully next time we see each other it will be on her side of the Atlantic for some California fun!

My future home...Penmaenmawr: full of mountains, a beach...AND an American diner!

So a few weekends ago we returned to Bangor to start our house hunting again.  Around the same time as this last year we went and did the same.  You may remember I was less than enthusiastic about Bangor itself, and the houses we viewed were terrible.  I wondered how I was ever going to live there.  Luckily, my crazy job offer came up in the Caribbean and we managed to put it off for a year! but here we are again nearing September when Byron and I are both going to be back to being students and we needed somewhere to live!

It was an interesting day, pouring with rain...and I'd left behind a very hot and Sunny London! the first two properties we looked at were uninhabitable - literally! Things were not looking good, and then we stumbled upon Penmaenmawr.  It's a cute little seaside town just 10 minutes outside of Bangor.  It has just a handful of shops...but would you believe it, an American diner called Perry Higgins is one of them!!

I believe it was meant to be! It's probably the only American diner in the whole of North Wales and what are the chances of it ending up in the little village where we were going to view our final property! Lucky for us it was an absolute beaut, with sea views out the front and mountain views to the back! I did want to take pictures and share them with you but Byron suggested since our blogging content might be a bit thin on the ground come September, since North Wales isn't the most hip and happening place, that perhaps I should save that for when we actually move! So for now I'll share with you the awesome diner that we ate at!

It was called the lazy dollar and everything was super bright and shiny - I loved it!

Somewhere along the line someone decided serving milkshakes without ice cream would be a good idea! It's not, certainly not for an American diner so that was slightly disappointing! and certainly not for a milkshake enthusiast like myself...

but the food was amazing! We had these chilli bean and cheese paninis.  Again, a rather odd thing about the diner was that it was vegetarian! A rather new concept to me for an American diner, no burgers or hot dogs etc...! but we enjoyed our food all the same!

The highlight of course, as always with me, was dessert! You may or may not know that I'm the biggest Key Lime Pie fan ever, possibly only 2nd to my mom!! and so I was pretty excited when they saw they had this on the menu! It couldn't quite compete with the best key lime pie ever that I had whilst in the Caribbean! but for North Wales it wasn't too bad at all!

I had to snap a patrotic pic with the flag! whilst thinking of my sisters who were enjoying the real deal over in California!

So if you ever happen to find yourself in Penmaenmwar, and you pass this funny little antiqute shop with a diner attached on the side be sure to stop by!

We snapped this awesome view as we were leaving the village, I'm not sure that little ice cream man was going to get too many customers that day, it was kind of chilly! but By liked how funny it looked out there in the middle of nowhere! and we are excited for all the mountain walks/walks on the beach we are going to get involved with!

Less than 4 weeks to go! So I'm making the most of the shops and restaurants in London and I also shared a super fun touristy weekend with my American friend...photos coming soon!

I wish they all could be California...diners!

You may have noticed there's been a break in all the Mexican eating around here.  For the past few weeks I have turned my attention to the other cuisine I love: American - in an attempt to make up for the fact I'm not in California right now with my sisters eating the real deal!

Last week we hit Bodean's for some pulled pork and A&W and also Lucky 7 for some double thick milkshakes.  This week I arranged to meet up with two of my uni friends, Nicola and Leanne, for some diner fun at Ed's.

I haven't been to an Ed's diner since I was about 10 so it's been a while! I feel like so many other slightly 'cooler' diners have popped up in London over the last few years that I sometimes forget about Ed's so it was nice to go back.  If you're looking for the classic red bar stools, red booths and jukeboxes at every table then Ed's is a fun pick...plus I totally LOVED that the majority of songs we heard all night were Beach Boys! However, it is worth noting it would have been even more fun if the individual juke boxes actually worked, rather than just being for aesthetics. 

One of my biggest dilemma's of the night was whether to go for a milkshake or a root beer float as I'm such a fan of both!! Leanne and Nicole are big Oreo lovers so it was a no brainer for them and Oreo milkshakes it was, for me I decided at the last second to go for a root beer float...since you can't find A&W on just any restaurant menu I always feel like it would be wrong not to order it when it presents itself! I made a good choice!It was a very generous helping of ice cream and it brought me that little bit closer to California!

For the main course I ordered a chilli dog with fries.  It was pretty good, but not the best I've ever had...but all in all the root beer float made up for it! and a great night was had by all!I'd probably be more inclined to go back to places like The Diner, Lucky 7 or Eagle Bar Diner in the future over Ed's especially since we went to the one by the Trocadero in Picadilly Circus and The Diner and Eagle Bar are both within walking distance from there.

Also, last week I spotted the Big Easy while on a bus going down the Kings Road.  It definitely looks like somewhere I want to try very soon!