Food adventures

As you guys may know, I am a "foodie". Here in London, there is so much diversity of food and so much quality that I have been eating exceedingly well here. Not in the sense of eating a lot, but in the sense of eating quality again and again. Part of that is due to the markets here in London. I'm not sure why this is but London has a ton of huge open-air markets all over the city. Many sell fresh, authentic food from all over the world and random arts and craftsy sort of stuff. The food part is what interests me which is what this blog post is about.

I'll take you through my experience at 2 of the best-known ones in the city plus some other food stuff:

Camden Market
This is like Queen Street in Toronto on crack. The main Camden Street has tons of crazy stores that sell all sorts of things from weird t-shirts to hookah pipes. Off the actual street is the market. Here are a bunch of stalls selling food from every possible country you could think of- turkish, peruvian, italian, chinese, israeli, etc. Almost every stall gives out free samples so you can get tons of free (and delicious) food which is awesome. Also awesome is that the food you actually can buy is pretty cheap (you can get a fresh pizza for about $5.50!) and also delicious.

At this market is also this shop called "chin chin labs" where they make icecream using liquid nitrogen! The place has a giant liquid nitrogen tank and vats of the liquid component of icecream. What they do is put the liquid icecream component into an icecream mixer followed by some liquid nitrogen pumped out of the liquid nitrogen tank. The ice cream mixer then mixes the 2 together. Because the liquid nitrogen is almost like a gas though, the resulting icecream doesn't have the same texture of normal icecream. It is much smoother, pure and tasty.

Borough Market
My favourite of the 2 markets. Like Camden, there are stalls selling food from everywhere you could imagine. However the stalls look a lot less commercial (and less tacky). They are more open-aired too so you can see more of the authentic food being prepared. For example, at one of the cheese stands, I saw a woman preparing fresh mozzarella balls, right there on the spot! Camden's food stalls sell more meal-type food. Like, you can buy a pad thai dish, a serving of paella, etc. Borough has more of the typical stuff you'd expect in a market. That is, you can buy veggies, olive oils, breads, etc to bring home and use in preparing your own dishes.

That's not to say though, that Borough doesn't have food you can eat on the spot. It is mostly things involving bread and some sort of meat, i.e. a chorizo sandwich, frankfurters, etc. (or you could always buy a block of cheese and eat it on the spot too...) The prices for such stuff run around $6 which is kind of a bummer but whatever, this is not the main purpose of this market anyways!

Top 100 Dishes
Time Out London recently issued its top 100 dishes in the city. (you can find the list here) Some of these dishes are quite expensive. So I am planning to try as many as I can of those that are $6 or less. The list has been an amazing guide. So far my eating experiences have been fantastic. In fact, the chorizo sandwich I at in Borough Market is on the list and did not disappoint (even if it wasn't very filling).

Delicious times in London!

Important Life Lessons About Having London as a Base for Travel

This past weekend we had a 4-day weekend and the weather here has generally sucked. Which meant I was off to Spain. Previously I lived in Amsterdam and getting to the airport from anywhere in the city was the easiest thing in the world. For like 5 EUR, hop on the NS train (the national rail service) and you get dropped off right to the check in counters at Schipol (the Amsterdam airport). Schipol is extremely well designed and efficient as well. And the fact that it is a major hub (along with Heathrow and Frankfurt, I believe for the EU) makes it an amazing base from which to travel. Great for the time and budget-conscious.

Flying from London is for those who care for neither time nor budget.

Timing

Every single airport except for the new London City Airport is extremely, extremely far from the city. Regardless if you take a bus, taxi or train, the trip from the city to airport is an hour or more.

Additionally, every single airport is packed. Always. Allocate enough time for navigating for huge lineups at check-in counters, customs, etc.

The best way to cut into the amount of time you spend getting to the airport is to research which airport you are closest to and fly strictly from there. For example, I live near Regent’s Park and flew from Stantead. Big mistake! My cousin told me that for central-situated people like me, I should be focusing on Heathrow as an airport “base.” East-enders (i.e. where the Olympics will be) should be the ones flying out of Stantead.

If you have plenty of time to kill, none of this is of much concern to you but when your time is limited like mine is- I can only afford being off on weekends (so Friday night to Sunday night)- this makes things pretty tricky!!

Cost

To help welcome you to the expensive world that is London, you start getting ripped off right when you land in the city. That is, in any other city (maybe in the entire world) the express shuttle bus/train one-way might be somewhere between $5 to $20 tops. In London, the cheapest, slowest transit just to get to the airport is about $20. Faster transit costs about $30 and reduces the speed of your journey by maybe 15 mins tops.

To minimize cost it is extremely, extremely important that you bring no checked bags. Every low-cost carrier charges fees for bags but usually it is not that big of a deal- maybe a few extra $$s. However know that Ryan Air MURDERS you for bringing even one checked bag. So ensure you review the TOTAL cost for a flight (after taxes, bags checked, etc) before booking as an alternative carrier will probably be cheaper once all costs are factored in (and less annoying- Ryan Air has a lot of weird quirks that no other airline has).

The other cost-minimizer is to fly (arrive and depart) on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. Any other day and prices are crazy high.

The UK National Rail Service is also extremely expensive without adequate planning. Prices increase exponentially the closer you get to the date of travel. And unlike with air travel, this price growth over time is basically a rule. So as long as you book several weeks in advance, you can rest easy knowing you got the best possible deal. 

So this leads me to some recommendations to people living in London hoping to travel:

·         If you want to go somewhere that is outside of the british isles:

o   Book extremely far in advance- at least 1 month prior to travel, probably more

o   Get out of the country for at least 5 days (or more if you can ;-) since you will lose at 1/2-1 whole day in transit 

o   Ensure your boss is cool with you taking off on weird days of the week (i.e. Tuesday)

·         If you want to go somewhere in the british isles

o   Book extremely far in advance

o   Take the train (or a bus)

o   Go whenever you want…prices don’t vary as much by day as they do with the airlines.