Day 20 - 27: Cascina Papaveri, Piedmont, Italy - Pilates & Cooking!

Linda and I arrived at Cascina Papaveri for our pilates and cooking holiday last Monday!

This place is beautiful, set in Piedmont (kinda half way between Turin and Genoa) surrounded by vineyards and the Swiss Alps - its so peaceful you can hear crickets chirping while lying by the pool reading a book!

There were 2 pilates sessions a day, one generally before breakfast on the mats and then another one in the afternoon on the machines! Fingers crossed I can remember everything I have learnt in the past couple of days!!!

There were then 5 dinner cooking lessons, where we prepared four course dinners each night! My favourite would have to be the mushroom risotto, stuffed zucchini flowers and a form of tempura sardines!

Believe it or not, in this past week, I had to clean and de-bone sardines and quail (!), stuffed rabbit, made ravioli and linguine from scratch as well as making some amazing deserts!

Besides pilates, cooking and relaxing by the pool, we had a couple of excursions to the market town of Asti, Alba and a truffle hunt!

There was one amazing painted church in Alba that really took my breath away! The entire ceiling and walls were painted with frescos!

and we learnt that the Italians use dogs to smell out the truffles (whereas the French use pigs) ... although only black ones are in season at the moment!

Our time here in Piedmont has coming to an end. I'm about to make my way to the airport in order to get myself to Romania via Milan!

Day 13 - 19: London

WOW, in a blink of an eye, my week in London has come to an end!

Not really sure what else I can write about this week except being back in London felt like coming home. It's been a fantastic week catching up with old friends!!! A big THANK YOU to Chun & Kristy for letting me stay and a big thank you to Monica for getting the Harry Potter tix for me, I can't wait for the next movie!!!! And it's such a fantastic feeling to be able to rock up at a box office and get tickets to that nights performance of Les Miserables - these are the bits I Love about London!

Lunch at Borough Market with was amazing! I had a venison burger (Adrian's favourite!), Irene bought some turkish delight and we shared a creme caramel! YUM!

Everytime I walk along the Southbank past the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and County Hall - I am transported back to when I first arrived in London and am in awe all over again that "OMG I am in London!"

Day 11 - 12: Glasgow

Dave and I went up to Glasgow on the weekend to visit Rob, Cat and Cerri.

I am a huge fan of London City Airport! You can get right off the DLR, down the escalators and ready to check in (with no queues!) in less than 2 mins! Glasgow airport is amazing as well .... my bag was already on the carousel even by the I arrived at baggage claim!

The weather was amazing when we arrived, although we were told that it was a freak occurrence!

After our open top bus tour, we had a Nandos BBQ dinner at Rob's!

Day 10: Jersey

Our hotel made a mistake with the booking, so we got free breakfast at St Malo. Unfortunately this meant getting up at 6am in order to catch our ferry to Jersey!

We had brunch at the Wayside cafe ... the food and scenery was amazing!

After brunch we spent a couple of hours at the L'horizon spa, recovering from our 10 days in France!

Day 9: Le Mont Saint Michel - St Malo

The drive from La Rochelle to Mont Saint Michel took abour 4 hours! (Thanks Linda & Elena for driving!)

The view from the top

Foie gras straight from the farm, only a couple of miles down the road from Mont Saint Michel - we couldn't resist stopping for some shopping!

St Malo by night ...

Day 7 - 8: La Rochelle

We took the car ferry from Medoc over to Blaye and drove 2 hours up the coast to La Rochelle.

Had a great lunch of muscels and frits

Managed to get a free botte of wine for telling the wine merchant's friend that it was Linda's birthday!

and stocked up on food, wine and champagne for the birthday celebrtions on the pier (thanks to Irene's creativity in seating arrangements courtesy of our hotel!)