Monthly Archives: July 2011

Sweden part 1

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Holiday!! Away from work and worries, stress and responsibilities. We arrived in Sweden three days ago at a small cabin by a lake where we’ll stay for a week with my siblings’ families … so far it’s been amazing!

When we first arrived we were welcomed by the kids (the adults too) and managed to catch the last bit of evening sun at the boat house as the sun was melting into the lake.

Since then we’ve had lots of sun (and a bit of wind) and have been playing a lot of football in the garden (which even comes with goals). Yesterday we rowed to a deserted island in the middle of the lake. On the way there we caught a pike from the boat. It wasn’t a big one, but not undersized, and because it had somehow gotten hooked in the back which had injured it, we decided to eat it 😀

We spent half the time having a lovely picnic on the rocks at the end of the little island and the other half picking some of the blueberries that covered almost all the rest of it… today we’re hoping to taste them on a blÃ¥bær kagekone (blueberry cake lady) to celebrate my sister’s birthday last week.

On the way back my brother (aka The Great Fisherman) caught yet another pike. This time it was a big one and it took me a few minutes and three attempts before I managed to pull the beast into the tiny boat where we could only just find room for it and its many teeth next to our bare feet.

So, when we got home we prepared for a feast! Even after all 9 of us filling up on pike the was a whole bowlfull of lovely meat left that we’ll use for fish cakes tomorrow 🙂

This morning my sister rose early to go picking berries for breakfast while we were still asleep. On the walk she found footprints of a lynx! Now we’re off to see them as well.

I’ve bought 20 MB of internet to use here, so I’ll probably post some more again later, but pictures might have to wait until we get back … but there will be pictures! 🙂

Blogging on the move

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Standing in the “no priority” queue for the flight to Oslo. We’ve just had breakfast at Franky and Benny’s, so feeling a bit bloated …

This is the first blog I’ve posted using the WordPress app for Android. It’s quite nice 🙂

Have to board now!!

Hidden treasures of the internet

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It’s amazing how popular (and awesome) things on the internet can be and then still hidden (or undiscovered) by so many. One of my own new discoveries is “The Lonely Island”. They are a group of three musicians from Berkeley, California. They got known by performing some of their material on Saturday Night Live, and since several of their youtube videos have had over 100,000,000 views! And it’s only after this that I’ve discovered them.

I would give a description of what they do, but it’s too hard to do it justice in word. The originality, outrageousness and silliness is just phenomenal and I can only recommend checking it out! 🙂 … it’s free as well! 🙂

My favourites, I think, though it’s hard to choose, are probably “I’m on a boat”, the “Shy Ronnie” series and maybe “Motherlover”…

My favourite pizza place

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Today, we went to London. We do that sometimes. As often as we can 🙂 One of the things we focus most of London trips around is food (and drink). There are so many different kinds of amazing places to eat in London, and even though we’ve hardly scratched the surface yet, we’ve already found some favourites that we keep returning to.

One such is Otto Pizza in Notting Hill. It’s Britain’s first (and as far as I know still only) cornmeal pizza place, started by two guys after they discovered this amazing food on a trip in Oregon. The pizzas are like nothing I’ve ever tried before. The toppings are amazing and the crust is crunchy and tasty. We had this pizza:


It’s the “taster” and includes a selection of six different slices of amazing pizza. If I remember correctly they were: A special salami-meat one (on the plates already), which was lovely and spicy and very tasty, Pepperoni, Sausage, Four Cheese, Pesto and Sweet corn… It wouldn’t be easy (or fair) to pick a favourite, as they were all simply amazing. The specials sounded tempting too, but it seemed this way we got most different tastes of heaven 🙂

To make it all perfect, they also normally serve very nice beer. Today the specials were Flying Dog from Maryland’s “Snake Dog IPA” and The Kernel from London’s “IPA Citra”. It was difficult to choose, so I’m very glad that I didn’t and just had both 🙂 (one at a time, of course)


We also went to one of our favourite chocolate shops, but it’s late now, so that story will have to wait 🙂

Good night!

A Top Five of pubs in Cambridge

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Here is a Top 5 of pubs in Cambridge:
(the order is how I like them-ish, though it’s hard to really rank them as they have different qualities)

  1. The Red Lion, Histon
    This is probably my favourite pub in the whole world 🙂 It’s got Tring Blonde on all the time, which is a very nice beer, and also Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde which is one of my highest ranked non-Tring non-Welsh beers 😛 (I don’t actually have a beer rank. There’s just too many of them and they’re way too different to rank). The staff is very friendly and the landlord (Mark Donachy) is a real character 🙂 ). Only downside is the lack of food in the evening, but then there’s a pub just next door with nice Thai food (Barley Mow), so it’s easy to just pop over there for tea 🙂 The Red Lion has two beer festivals a year: One at Easter and one at Autumn. During the beer festival more food is available.
  2. Kingston Arms, Kingston Street
    This is one of my “old pubs” that I used to frequent particularly much when I lived on only a couple of minutes walk away. It’s got a very wide selection of real ales, and normally at least a few real ciders as well. It’s got a small quiet garden and very nice food. It’s also a friendly place, and you’re always very welcome to taste all the ales before deciding what to go for 😉
  3. The Cambridge Blue, Gwydir Street
    This is another of my “old regulars” in the same area as The Kingston Arms. It also has a wide real ale selection and a web cam where you can almost see which beers they have on just now (and if there’s a lot of people queuing) 🙂 The food is nice, and there’s a lovely large garden with plenty of benches and view over a stone wall of the pretty, idyllic Mill Road Cemetary.
  4. The Live and Let Live, Mawson Road
    This is a newer discovery for me. Even though it’s in the same area as the previous two, it’s on the other side of Mill Road, which caused it to remain hidden to me until this year (or maybe it was a year ago, but still…). The reason I found it was because I was flicking through the Good Beer Guide looking for pubs in Cambridge with Tring regulars, and apart from The Red Lion, this was the only one. It’s got the Jack O’Legs on regularly, though they sometimes run out. Also, they seem to sometimes be shut at random times, but then fortunately the above two pubs aren’t too far away 😉
  5. The Devonshire Arms, Devonshire Road
    There were many pubs contending for this last spot in the top 5. One of the reasons for this one winning, is that it’s the pub of Cambridge’s only really local brewery, Milton Brewery who brew several lovely brews. It’s got a wide selection of those, but also several other small brewery beers on at all times. It’s one of the newest pubs in Cambridge (only a year and a half old) and it’s very nice. My only regret is that I’ve only been there two or three times, and I don’t even know what the food is like… but there’s still time to change both of those 😉

So, that was my top 5 of Cambridge pubs… I might just post some reviews now and again of other pubs I like, since it’s really not fair to rank them, and I’m not completely sure that the order above means very much…

Enjoy! (Please drink responsively!)