Posts Tagged ‘breakfast’

Food chat

I recently rediscovered this book on my shelf and it’s just too good not to share with you all. It’s called Kitchen Wit and it’s quotes about food from anyone and everyone. 

“Forget love, I’d rather fall in chocolate.” Anonymous

“Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant, and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.” Mark Twain

“Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage.  Lettuce pray.” Anonymous

“I’m the President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” George Bush

“Whosoever says ‘truffle’, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic ans gastronomic ideas…” Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

“Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.” Josh Billings

“Ask not what you can do for your country.  Ask what’s for lunch. ” Orson Welles

“Do not move back and forth on your chair. Doing so gives the impression of constantly breaking, or trying to break, wind.” Erasmus

“It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun.” Ray Kroc, creator of the McDonald’s franchise

“Oil ans potatoes both grow underground so French fries may have eventually produced themselves.” A. J. Esther

“I love Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.” Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn’t try it on.” Billy Connolly

“How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” Julia Child

“I mever see any home cooking.  All I get is fancy stuff.” Prince Phillip

“Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom.” Shirley Conran

“Don’t cook steaks in the toaster, even little ones.” P. J. O’Rourke

“Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things. ” Russian proverb

“Presently, we were aware of an odour gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious, a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them; the truffles were coming.” William Makepeace Thackeray

Potential life-changing stuff here today

Ok, I’m calling today’s post Cop Out Thursday, as I woke up late and am having a friend over for breakfast so haven’t really time to write the post about worms that I was planning to (don’t worry, I don’t mean tapeworm, I mean my actual worms that make compost for me).

So what’s going to happen is this. I’m going to show you a collection of photos which don’t really mean an awful lot to anyone and were picked in a hurry. Are you up for that? Ok, let’s do it.

First up, it’s a dinosaur drinking from a glass….
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Second, we have a quote from a magazine that I’m sharing with you because I feel it is important.
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I’ve always felt the same way about free standing cupboards actually.

Next is a really old recipe with the original spelling of the word ‘apricot’ which made me giggle. Rather like a small child.
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Next up, a Christmas tree made of chocolate slabs. Obviously. (I did say it wouldn’t really mean anything, didn’t I?)
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And now, some tomatoes in my garden.
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And finally, to see off this fabulous, well-thought-out, life-changing, awesome post, a photo of me with some clingfilm stretched over my face.
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O wait, one last one, Yaya with an egg box on his face.

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S is for….

SUN, SEA AND SAND! (actually pebbles, rather than sand but you catch my drift)

Yesterday was fabulous. Breakfast in the hotel was fresh and healthy and typically Mediterranean. We then headed down to the Marina Grande on the funicolare to take a boat trip around the island.

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The boat dipped up and down on the small waves and the water splashed in my face and it felt wonderful. I felt a million miles away from everything familiar. I was on a boat next to an outcrop of rock in the Mediterranean Sea and I could have been anywhere. It felt how you want holidays to feel. Different and exotic and exciting.

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After this, we headed out of tourist central, teeming with day trippers from Napoli, back up the hill on the funicolare to ‘our’ part of town, for some lunch. A panini type thing, with a typical Capri filling – tomato, mozzarella and fresh basil.

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We then headed to the pebble beach at the Marina Piccola to write postcards and lie about pretending we were the only people in the world.

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After a quick stop for cappuccino, we went back to the hotel and went for a quick swim to cool off from our heart-attack-inducing climb back up the hill.

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Staying on a mountain is tough on the legs! I’m very glad we brought walking boots.

We then went for dinner but the evening was rather eventful so I’ll save that for tomorrow’s post.

P.S. We’ve decided that this is our new holiday home, by the way.

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E is for….

EGGS!

Eggs come from chickens, which are the key to my imaginary life. In my imaginary life, I have chickens in my garden. Currently Danda is blocking the acquisition of a chicken for the back garden.

What’s that? My garden’s only the size of a small room and the chicken would have hardly any space to walk around? Yeh, ok. Way to rain on my parade. I’ll never become a farmer if I’m up against such constant negativity.

Anyway, back to chickens and eggs and my alternate universe life where I live on a farm. My day on my farm goes as such….

At 7am I leap out of bed, bright as a daisy and ready for the day ahead. I can’t wait to go and see my beloved cows and chickens and piggywigs.

“Good morning, dears!” I sing, Julie-Andrews-esque, sailing effortlessly from field to field, greeting my animals, who love me for my Mother Earth qualities. Never mind that when I was actually on a farm, I was mostly tramping through soggy mud and vaguely tried to stroke a cow on it’s nose but it turned its head and licked me instead and its spit was all supergluey and disgusting on my fingers.

But it will be different on my farm. I will be at one with nature and glide around, happy and loving.

After greeting the day and my animals, I will approach the chickens who, rather than clucking frantically and heading in the opposite direction, will swarm around me, cooing affectionately while I make my way to the coop and collect some eggs.

While returning to the farmhouse, I will pass the cows, kneel briefly with a mug and get some milk (cause it’s really easy, right? And only takes a minute or so and there’s no faffing around with buckets or stalls, is there? Good, I thought not). The cows look at me, doe-eyed with love, and moo to send me on my merry way to breakfast.

I arrive in my lovely kitchen with a rustic flagstone floor, shout out to Danda and put the kettle on to make tea. I crack and scramble the eggs and toast some of the seeded bloomer bread I made the night before. Danda and I eat scrambled eggs with toast and drink tea with our fresh milk. Our toast is buttered with the butter I made from churning the fresh cow’s milk yesterday.

The rest of my day is spent as such. I visit the vegetable garden later that morning, to gather asparagus and tomatoes and potatoes and chard, which I will make into some kind of new potato salad for lunch. I also collect leeks and carrots to make soup with.

I visit the little pigs for some fun really, to watch them snuffling about and rolling over in the mud. Ah, my farm life gives me such glee.

I tend to the roses and the lavender and notice, with pleasure, that the bees are swarming around, collecting nectar.

This reminds me to check on the new hives so off I go. Rather than stinging and causing me to swear, the bees buzz a friendly hello and clear out of the hive, hovering politely nearby until I finish and they can return. I find a glut of honey and extract it with ease. None of the honey drips on me and none of the bees are angry.

“Have it,” they buzz, smiles on their little bee faces. “It is a gift.”

I accept their gift, graciously taking it to the kitchen (it comes already in jars, right? That’s what’s in bee hives, isn’t it? Pre-packed jars of honey) and think what to make with it, for I am very Mother Earthy and like to make everything from scratch using the lovely gifts that the earth has presented me with. I make some breakfast muffins for the following day using the honey and I also glaze some apple slices and gently roast them for later this evening.

As there is a deer cull at the moment, the farmer next door has brought me some venison, which I have minced and mixed with lots of herbs and am currently in the process of making into sausages, because I make everything from scratch and am never pressed for time and never burn things and people always rave about my sausage making skills.

Before the sun sets and I start cooking my venison sausages, I skip around the farm saying goodnight to each animal individually. The chickens hug my ankles with their wings and offer me presents of eggs, which I take back to the kitchen to make into custard for having with the apple slices later.

Tired, but fulfilled and relaxed, Danda and I eat our dinner in front of the log fire and listen to the sounds of the cows mooing.

Being a farmer would totally suit me. I’d be ace at it, as is obvious from this post, cause I well know exactly how to be farmer. Isn’t that obvious? I can’t believe Danda won’t let me get a chicken and have eggs in the morning. It’s like he doesn’t realise that this whole post could become a reality, if only I had a chicken.

I’m being stifled here. Stifled.

Interview with a Danda

See what I did there? Interview with a vampire, interview with a Danda… Here are a few basic facts about your favourite Danda before we get started.

1. He likes ice cream.
2. He drives a taxi.

Hello, Danda. How are you feeling on this fine Sunday morning?
Yeh. Alright.

Rumour has it that you recently watched The Sweeney starring Ray Winstone. Was it your opinion of this film?
Unprintable.

What is the silliest thing anyone has ever asked you in your taxi?
I was driving under the Picadilly underpass with some Americans in the back and one of them said to me, “Is this the tunnel where Princess Di was killed?”

Regale us with a story from yesterday’s taxiing.
One of our local colourful characters, Jeannie, was spotted walking down the middle of the road waving her hands at cars to try and stop them. She was walking all shuffly because her knickers had fallen down around her ankles. I did not stop for her, unfortunately.

How do you feel about Laura’s new project in which she aims to live more responsibly?
So far, the cooking’s good.

What is your favourite book in the world?
Well, the books that I can read and re read and still enjoy almost as much as the first time I read them, are the Flashman books.

Would you say you have become “reliant” on tea, much as one would on drugs?
Yes.

What is your favourite thing Laura has cooked?
Oo, so many to choose from. Er. Thai chicken curry.

Why won’t you let Laura have a chicken in the garden?
Cause I’m mean.

What is your opinion of Laura’s blog and is it your favourite blog in the world?
Laura does a blog?!

How do you feel about breakfast?
Don’t eat breakfast.

And now, the question that stumped Gordon Brown in the incident now known as BiscuitGate…. What is your favourite biscuit?
Chocolate digestives. No problem with that one.

…Cor, is that it, Laura? Not exactly Jeremy Paxman, are you? There was no really hard questions at all was there.

And that, my friends is the end of this interview with Danda. I feel we can all learn something from the things we’ve read here.

A day in Bath

Yesterday, Danda and I went to Bath for the day. I had a day off work and neither of us have ever been so it seemed like a fun day out. We had a minor panic when one of the tube lines we needed to use wasn’t operating but we found another way without a problem.

After arriving in Bath, we just kind of wandered up a road in front of us, looking at stuff. There is lovely Georgian brickwork on all the buildings and there are an awful lot of shops. We stopped off briefly to get me a hat as it was pretty cold then came unexpectedly across this….

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It is the building containing the new outdoor pool which uses the hot water from the thermal springs. It reminded me a bit of being in Rome, where the buildings and streets are beautiful and grand and you stumble upon fabulous things round every corner.

We decided to come back to the Thermae Bath Spa, which was opposite the outdoor pool, in the afternoon. For now, we wanted breakfast, which we found nearby, and the Roman Baths. We knew the Roman Baths were near Bath Abbey so we wandered down some side roads looking for the Abbey. After a little while, we found a tourist map and spent a few minutes looking on it trying to work out where we were and where the Abbey was.

“It’s just up the road,” declared Danda, having used his manly skills to deduce the correct direction. Then we looked out from behind the map and realised…

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…we were practically standing in front of the rather large Abbey, looking at a map, trying to work out how to get to the Abbey … Fail.

Inside Bath Abbey is spectacular.

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It is large and covered in carved stones memorialising Bath’s lost loved ones. Some were young men leading Indian regiments into battle against opposition in Afghanistan. It’s quite an odd concept to get my head around, these young men dying in such far flung corners of the worlds in wars that are long forgotten now.

Then there was this stone which challenged my existing ideas about what makes love so special…

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As we left, I saw a sign saying the Abbey coats £2000 a day to run! Crazy.

Second stop, Roman Baths. Amazing amazing amazing. They are the UK’s only natural spa and literally steamed as we watched them…..

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It was a work of engineering genius to see. My awe at the achievements of these people grows with each new thing I learn. The stones and coins and carvings on display here are fantastic. So many and so well explained. There was even a skeleton of a Syrian man found here.

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Whilst at the main pool, I had a little feel of the water for a photo ..

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…then noticed a sign sternly informing visitors that touching of the water is not allowed! Don’t tell!

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After dawdling about here for ages being amazed, we decided to head for the spa and have a dip. On the way we stopped to watch a street performer display possibly the strongest arms I have ever seen.

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We then headed to the spa and got in the queue. It was 3.15pm. We were still in the queue at half three and had our hearts set on a relaxing swim and sauna. 3.45pm arrived. 4pm. We were getting closer but veeerrry slowly. 4.15pm. We’d been in the queue an hour. It suddenly sped up and we had hope. Then it slowed and we lost hope. But we were so close by this point. It would have been silly to give up. 4.30pm. 4.45pm. Slowly. Slowly. Then suddenly a little flurry and it was our turn. Finally. At 4.50pm. An hour and 35 minutes after joining the queue. My toes were extremely cold by now and I just needed some hot water to defrost them.

We practically ran in, threw our clothes at the lockers and ran off to the rooftop pool. Plunging into it, the icy toes and nose and fingers melted immediately. Although we were outside, on the top of a four storey building, with a view of Bath for miles around, we were in a huge lovely hot bath. It was awesome. We swam to the edges and looked through the glass sides at the town and the beautiful Georgian architecture and the hills behind. It was surreal.

We had to run out of here as the fresh cold air hit us and we descended the stairs to the steam rooms. Inside there was a massive forceful power shower in the centre and four round glass rooms. You could enter any one of them and sit on the benches inside. They each had a different smell in the steam. There was lemongrass and ginger, lotus flower, eucalyptus and mint and sandalwood. I liked the lemongrass the best. In between each room, we power showered to wake ourselves up. Lastly, we went down to a pool where the water was warm and welcoming and had a jacuzzi in one corner and a little corridor with power jets pushing you through from one end to other. It was a little crowded but still lovely. After a second visit to the steam room, we then had to change out of our swimming gear and into outdoor clothes as our train was leaving in half an hour, hence the massive rush.

We got to the station in plenty of time and I finished the day sitting by the cafe drinking lemon and ginger tea, eating a flapjack and reading Wonderpedia, my new favourite magazine.
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All in all, a wonderful day. I can fully recommend it.

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Off on a day out!

Today, Danda and I are going to Bath. I’m not just informing you of my plan to stay clean. For those of you not based in the UK and perhaps unaware of this fact, there is in fact a town called Bath Spa in England. It is where the Romans built lots of baths, once upon a time. Hence the name. (The Romans called it aqua sulis. Don’t ask me what that means.) There are also, predictably, lots of spa retreat type places to visit.

The plan for the day is as follows:

Arrive
Have breakfast
Find some Roman bath ruins to look at
Have lunch
Find the thermal spa place we looked up online and spent some time swimming and lolling about in the warm spring water plunge pools
Have dinner
Get the train home

So as you can see, it is a day of baths in Bath. The weather is chilly and I probably don’t have enough layers on. I have a chai latte warming my cold fingers and Danda is looking out the window all hyped cause he loves trains and planes and engines and boys things. He’s just said, “They’re amazing, trains. Aren’t they? Absolutely amazing.”

And so, to Bath! I will report back tomorrow. 

A review of Christmas

It’s been pretty nice really. Christmas morning was present opening time and I got, among other things, Michel Roux Sr’s latest cookbook, The Collection. It is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I have ever seen.
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The other life-changing present I got was a hairdryer! These things re amazing! I can go from wet hair to dry hair in a matter of minutes! I had heard good things about hairdryers and I think, once upon a time, I have owned one. But now I have one again and it is very exciting.

Christmas lunch was eaten here…
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…and was great because we just sat around blowing up balloons….
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…while the staff brought us our dinner. It was lovely and fuss free.

There was mass present opening with Yaya and the other children for a while and then we all went to a sofa filled room on the grounds of the hotel with a big TV showing Christmas films and sat around feeling full. It was lovely.

Breakfast the next morning consisted of my favourite 5 year old putting on her best make-up artist face and rubbing bubble bath into everyone’s necks and faces, telling us it was perfume.
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After we had all left and gone back home, Danda and I found an amaretti panettone in the kitchen and spent approximately twelve hours sitting on the sofa eating it, drinking cups of tea, reading books and watching TV. We didn’t even have lunch or dinner. We just picked at this panettone until we had finished it….!

All in all, a fabulous few days. How was yours?

What happened when I tried to fix the coffee machine

Yesterday, in work, a customer mentioned that the coffee tasted a bit different recently and that they had preferred it how it used to taste. I had a little think on the problem and thought it might be to do with the grind of the coffee. So I reset the grinder, made an espresso and tasted it, reset it again, made an espresso, tasted it. It went on like so until it reached a point I was happy with. To understand what happened to me during this time, let’s get inside my head, which sounded something like this.

“This coffee does taste different. Ok. I’ll change the grind just a little bit. O, there’s a coffee order. I hope they like it. Right, it’s a latte. Done. Let me run myself a coffee. Ummmm. I think it still needs tweaking. O, a customer. Hi! HI! HELLO! What can I get for you? God, I’m really shouting. Reign it in a bit, Laura. They’ve ordered a coffee. I’ll change the grind a little bit again and make myself one at the same time. Sip, sip, it’s still not great. Ok, more customers, loads of them. The coffee’s kicking in. HI! CAN I HELP ANYONE? A SANDWICH? YEP, WHICH ONE? OK. AND WHICH BREAD? ALRIGHT, TAKE A SEAT AND I’LL BRING IT TO YOU! Try to bring it down a few decibels, Laura. Take the order to the kitchen. I’VE GOT A SANDWICH ORDER FOR IN! HE’S ON TABLE 2! Woah, no need to shout. But I can’t help it. I’m still worried about the coffee. Let me try to finish fixing it. Everything’s happening quite quickly now. Another espresso, run it and drink it. O, a customer. HIHOWCANIHELPYOUYESOFCOURSEYOUCANHAVEACAPPUCCINOREGULARORLARGEANYSUGARS? Why are people looking at me funny? God, I’m so efficient right now. I am super coffee machine fixer. Has there ever been anyone as speedy and amazing as me? HERE’SYOURCOFFEELARGECAPPUCCINOWITHONESUGARTHANKSHAVEAGREATDAY! Gosh, my eyes feel really wide and staring. Another customer. HIWHATCANIGETFORYOU?ABREAKFASTYESWHATBREADWOULDYOULIKEFORYOURTOAST?ANDACOFFEEYESANAMERICANOOKI’LLBRINGITOVERTOYOU! Wow, time’s moving fast. O goodness, and now it’s sloooowingggg riiiiight down. My limbs are all really sluggish. I was supposed to leave work at 4pm and I’m still dawdling around in the kitchen at 4.15pm doing not much. Knackered.
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Damn that coffee machine…..”

Theatres, baths and lunch on the Tiber

The last day of the trip was my favourite. That is possibly something to do with the fact that I started it by eating tiramisu. Maybe. We packed our bags ready to leave and left them in the apartment til later.

We started out with coffee, obviously. I was doing a great job at attempting to develop a coffee habit. Their cappuccinos don’t come hot, which confused me. I think it could be to do with the fact that coffee is very functional there. People don’t walk around with huge coffees in takeaway cups. You have a small cup standing at a bar or sitting in a cafe and you drink it quickly before going to work in the morning, hence it comes lukewarm, instead of hot. Anyone know anything about how Italians drink coffee who can prove or disprove my theory?

Anyway, after coffee and tiramisu, we headed around the Colossuem to the Palatine Hill, where all the rich people and emperors lived.

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The weather was beautiful and I think the area surrounding it is still quite upmarket. Something about it felt different, nicer. There was a sports ground near the ruins on Palatine Hill where tanned older gentlemen ran around the track in pairs, looking like retired film stars.

We went to the Baths of Caracalla, the ruins of the world’s largest leisure centre. It is so immense, you can’t quite take in what you are seeing.

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The entire thing was for bathing. It had all those cold rooms and hot rooms and parts where you swim and parts where you plunge before going into a different room, etc. The complex was on two floors and also had shops and other things in the building.

Entire sections of the mosaic floor are still in place and there are huge chunks of mosaics from the second floor dotted around from when the upstairs sections collapsed.

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After this, we kept following the Palatine Hill down to the Circus Maximus, where the chariot races used to take place. It was the world’s largest arena. (There are lots of ‘world’s largest’ things in Rome.)

Both ends have building work going on, which looks a bit like reconstruction work on the ruins of the seating area but we couldn’t see for definite. This is what the chariot race scene in Ben Hur is based on, if any of you have seen it.

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After this, we headed through Roman Holiday territory, past the Mouth of Truth that Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn go to, and to the Teatro Di Marcellus. This might have been the thing that I liked the most, in terms of old and new Rome meeting. The two thousand year old building has a new section built on top if it, two floors of apartments.

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I really REALLY want to live there. How amazing would that be?

Once we had spent a while wandering around the old porticos, we were in what had once been decreed a Jewish Ghetto and the Jewish people who lived there had all their rights as citizens taken away from them. There didn’t seem to be a reason apart from that the emperor at that time had decided it.

We were right next to the Tiber by this point so we stopped for a quick espresso and ice cream break. I had tiramisu flavoured ice cream. Danda had an ice cream who’s flavour we couldn’t read on the label and that he loved. He said it was the best ice cream he had ever tasted.

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We headed to Tiber Island next, which has always had a connection with medicine. Even now, it still has a hospital run by nuns. On the other side of the river is Trastevere, where we had lunch. Friends had recommended the restaurants in this part of town so we stopped in the first place we saw, Ristorante “la Cornucopia”.

We shared a tomato and mozzarella salad then had a sea bass dish, which looked a bit normal but tasted phenomenal.

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There we were, the sun was shining, we were surrounded by greenery, street musicians were serenading the diners and my lunch was amazing. That was probably my favourite moment of the trip. I was just revelling in the luxury of being able to do nothing for a while.

Soon after this, we had to think about making our way to the airport so we walked back to the apartment to get our bags and headed to the tube station next to the Colossuem.