If you are visiting London and have even a passing interest in art you might like to hop on a bus, leap onto a skateboard or jump on a magic carpet and whizz on down to picture sellers Abbott and Holder. You will find Abbott and Holder in a charming four storey period townhouse in Bloomsbury a stone’s throw away from the British Museum.
Category Archives: Travel
London: Abbott and Holder
Coffee in London: Ottolenghi
Ottolenghi is by now a bit of a culinary cliché. I don’t mean that in any bad way – just that it has been so talked and written about that it seems as familiar as soft falling rain. In case you haven’t heard of it, the phenomena that is Ottolenghi is a set of four food shops in central London run by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The shops are in Islington, Belgravia, Notting Hill and Kensington; the Islington branch is also a full restaurant, the Belgravia and Notting Hill branches have small communal eating-in areas at the back of the shops and Kensington which is the smallest shop serves take-out food only.
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Tall Ships Festival
I am smitten by the sea and I especially love the way the ever-changing seascape reflects the annual onward inexorably march of the seasons. I also like looking at boats bobbing in the bay and if I am passing Dublin port enjoy spotting the cargo ships and cruise liners docked there. It was therefore a racing certainty that I would go to look at the tall ships which arrived in Dublin recently for the Tall Ships Festival (August 23 to August 26th).
Cambridge Lunch: Hôtel du Vin
The Hôtel du Vin on Cambridge’s Trumpington Street is a stone’s throw from the Fitzwilliam Museum and from the city’s many dizzingly magnificent college buildings. As you may know the Hôtel du Vin is a small boutique hotel chain with hotels in twelve other UK cities (Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Henley-on-Thames, Newcastle, Poole, Tunbridge Wells, Winchester and York)
Filed under Food/Wine, Hotels, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Cambridge
I was in Cambridge briefly earlier this week. Very briefly. It is so long since I was last there that time had misted my memories of the city. So it was nice, this visit, to be reminded of the beauty and elegance of the place. The night before I travelled when I was safely ensconced indoors listening to heavy rain hopping off my windows I half expected, so heavy was the downpour, to see a later day Noah scooting down the street gathering up a cacophonous collection of animals. Thankfully I checked the online weather forecast as otherwise I would have arrived in a sun drenched Cambridge, which was overhung by a cheering bright blue sky, muffled in a rain mac and toting a large umbrella.
Filed under Travel
Coffee in London: Orrery Epicerie
I have no idea how many establishments there actually are in London where it is possible to buy a coffee. However I suspect if they were all slammed together into one linear-mile-long street that to fit them all in the buildings on the imaginary street would, like a miniature version of Manhattan, be sky-high. When I was in London recently, despite the plethora of choice for a caffeine fix, I ended up returning to the Orrery Epiciere on Marylebone High Street, partly because I was in the area but mainly because the last time I was there the coffee was a model of perfect velvet-y smoothness.
Filed under Coffee, London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Marylebone High Street
Aeons ago I lived in London. In the arc of my life thus far it was for a relatively short period – a mere seven years. I loved living there but paradoxically only truly appreciated all London has to offer after my return to Ireland when world-class major museums, great art collections, a slew of shops, and a plethora of theatres were no longer a short tube or bus ride away. Not of course that Dublin doesn’t have a humongous amount to offer but the relative sizes of the two cities (Greater London population nearly eight million: Greater Dublin population not yet two million) means that Dublin is never going to provide the same vast array of choices that London does.
Filed under London, Shops/Shopping, Travel
O’Brien Chop House
Tempus fugit at an undeniably scary speed, like a spry sprinter dashing furiously towards a finishing line. Time tethers us to the present while allowing us to glance backwards and to idly wonder about an uncertain and not foretold future. Time has a way of blurring and misting its own empirical chronological lines so that what happened just a few short days past often seems like centuries ago. A case in point is my recent fleeting trip to Lismore and the lunch I had in the O’ Brien Chop House while I was there; it was only three weeks ago yet seems to belong to a time out of mind in a far distant long forgotten temporal realm.
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Filed under Food/Wine, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Lismore
I am going to stick my head above the parapet and declare that Lismore is quite simply the loveliest town in Ireland. Of course, I should say that I haven’t seen absolutely every town in Ireland and of course I should let you know that when I saw Lismore, for the first time, a few weeks ago it was on what was probably the nicest day, meteorologically-wise we have had in a slew of summers. Still I feel that Lismore would be equally alluring even on the dullest of dull days.
Greenan Farm
I recently picked up a leaflet about Greenan Farm and its museums and mazes in a coffee shop. As I was idly flicking through it I had a light-bulb moment and suddenly thought it is exactly the sort of place that I would like to visit. And so it was that I found myself travelling the highways and byways to get there yesterday. Well actually I am exaggerating a tad because Greenan farm, in the beautiful Glenmalure valley, is actually very accessible being a mere hour’s drive from Dublin.
Filed under Ireland, Sustainable/Green, Travel
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 