A Quick Update

Last Saturday, we went on a trip organized by NYUL to go visit Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is one of the Queen's many castles and is actually the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. The castle is beautiful inside and out, and even though we technically weren't allowed to take pictures inside, we all snuck some with our sneaky snapping skills. Some photos:

St. George's Hall, a large hall with shields painted all over the ceiling

outside the castle in the garden

group photo

Queen Mary's Dolls' House.. apparently even the toilets in this huge dollhouse work

This past Tuesday, Charine and I had to head to London's City Hall near the Tower Bridge to meet with our class to visit the Fashion Textile Museum and the Design Museum. Unfortunately, we left our dorm a tad bit late and ended up not meeting with our class for the first half of the visit. We finally met them at the Design Museum and there were some pretty cool pieces in their, though apparently one of the interactive works was not on exhibition that day, which is quite unfortunate.

Designs of the Year 2011

an interesting array of LED panels

that fold up in reaction to motion

charine rolling around on an interesting-looking chair

And finally, yesterday's weather was pretty nice as well, around high 50's, so Charine, Lynn and I decided to pay a visit to J+A Cafe, a quaint little restaurant that one of our suitemates raves about. I have to say, I was not crazy about the Irish soda bread they had (personally, I like the ones that my mom used to buy from the supermarket better), but the soup I ordered was pretty good and the cafe was cute, so no complaints.

cute, huh?

my latte

chicken soup with vegetables

buttered Irish soda bread

After our little lunch, Charine headed over to Oxford Circus for some shopping and Lynn and I decided to walk around a bit and enjoy the nice weather. We went to Bunhill Fields and there was a burial grounds, in which we saw William Blake's grave, among some other peoples' graves whose names sounded a bit familiar... kind of cool.

William Blake, the poet/painter

the cupcakes Lynn and I got from J+A

On the way back to the dorm, Lynn and I decided to get out at King's Cross Station to find the 9 3/4 platform from Harry Potter. Unfortunately, they had a lot of construction going on and all of the walls were lined with construction panels, so they must have created a temporary fake brick wall and attached the cart to this makeshift "platform." Oh well, I'm not that big of a Harry Potter fan anyway...

Overall, it was a great day and I'll have to create another post for my adventure today!

Birthday Weekend

I'm officially a week behind on updating this blog. I'm going to blame it on midterms again because I had two tests this past week, one of which was suddenly moved up a week so I was really unprepared for that. Anyway, prepare for an extremely long post:

Since it was Charine's birthday on the 10th and my birthday on the 11th, we planned a whole lot of festivities for the weekend. It started off with surprise cakes from the boys of room G04, who claimed they baked them but actually bought them from Tesco. They were good nonetheless!

group photo :)

On Thursday night, the night of Charine's birthday, we decided to try a contemporary dim sum teahouse restaurant called Yauatcha in Soho. It was a really nice place filled with adults sipping on wine and chatting. Good thing we dressed up for it, or else we would have stuck out like a sore thumb. At first we went just to try the desserts, since everything on the menu was pretty expensive, but after glancing at the dim sum dishes they had, we decided to order some salty food as well. Lynn and I shared the prawn cheung fun and the pan-fried turnip cake (our favoriate dim sum dish of all time!).

turnip cake

prawn cheung fun

we also ordered fruit martinis

After the dim sum came the much awaited desserts, which were super sweet but super delicious.

I forgot the one on the bottom left, but after that (counter-clockwise) is the caramel pannacotta, chocolate raspberry delice, and milk chocolate praline

... and a group picture! it was a great meal

On Friday night, we decided to book a table at a club called Cafe de Paris, which had a burlesque show that night along with some live music and whatnot. Although the music wasn't exactly what we would normally dance to, we made the most of it and at least we had a table, so the dance floor wasn't the only option. There was also a pretty cool show of this lady doing acrobatic moves on a ring hanging from the ceiling. We went with a bunch of people, and two friends visiting from New York came straight from the airport to the club to celebrate with Charine and me! Here are some pictures of this unforgettable night:

at the entrance

John holding the reserved sign

our waitress bringing the champagne with sparklers

group picture again with champagne :)

Of course, we ended the night at McDonald's. Not surprising at all...

The next day, Saturday, Kathryn and I decided to head to Brunswick Centre for some food at Hare & Tortoise. After ordering, we realized that there was a market in the centre on Saturdays with a bunch of food stands offering all kinds of cuisines from churros to paella. There was a stand for Japanese octopus balls which smelled really good so Kathryn and I decided to try them and they were really hot at first but really tasty.

8 octopus balls covered in dried seaweed and "Japanese sauce"

That night, we decided to go to dinner at a restaurant called Belgo, which specializes in Belgium food. Unfortunately, some peoples' plans changed so it only ended up being Charine, Kathryn, Jocelyn and me. I ordered the Florentine mussels and we just couldn't resist ordering a Belgian waffle for dessert. Good thing Charine and I shared, though! The mussels were delicious and the waffle definitely hit the spot.

Florentine mussels

Belgian waffle with chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream on the side

Derek also stopped by to drop off something for Charine and I for our birthdays, which was really sweet of him. Charine got chocolate and I got cupcakes from Bea's Bloomsbury, a tea and pastry shop nearby that I've been wanting to try for a while. Of course, we shared the cupcakes, which were really yummy and they looked cute too. Dan and Yan also dropped off these salt and pepper shakers that they bought for us from Paris.

cupcakes from Bea's Bloomsbury

the cute cupcakes packaging and the shakers

And that concludes my post on our birthday weekend, which was filled with good memories and good food, always a great combination! :P I'll have to do a separate post on what I did this weekend sometime this week. Now that all my midterms are over, I just have one marketing presentation to do this week and then I'll be done for a month!