Paris: Famous landmarks

Helloooo I finally have the mood to blog again! Yay? :) I know I owe you guys a lot of travel posts! So I shall settle my blog debts before the next trip's photos come in. 

Anyway let's continue with Paris:

After our breakfast at Rue Mouffetard, we navigated our way to the iconic gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris.

As a huge fan of Disney, this is definitely one of my favourite historical sites ever. 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' was one of my favourites (actually I watched & loved all Disney films haha) since young, and I remember myself watching it over and over again. To be able to set foot on this famous architecture, I couldn't hide my excitement at all.

First glimpse!

  

This view definitely gave me a strong 'picture-came-into-real-life' feeling. You could see gargoyles vividly up there from below. It was absolutely stunning!

Paris: Breakfast at Rue Mouffetard

We didn't do much on our first night in Paris. After meeting our host and passing over the keys, we went out to explore the neighbourhood (near Poissoniere metro station). At first we wanted to go for dinner at Chatier (along Rue du Faubourg Montmartre) which is famous for their cheap French cuisine. Unfortunately, we were a little late so by the time we wanted to queue for it the manager said they are done for the night. Oh well. We decided to save it on our list and come back to try our luck the following night. (alas we made it! talk about it next time)

I don't know why but every single time I go for vacation, the first dinner is always super simple and spontaneous. Guess what, we ended up tapao-ing Kebab and Falafel back to our apartment HAHA. The reason was that we saw Glacier Amorino nearby and I think all of us were like..

 

"Screw dinner. Let's just eat this" 

Spring: Let it bloom let it bloom

I'm in love with the weather nowadays. It's not too cold nor is it too warm, which is perfect.

I could just put on a cardigan or a sweater and I'm all good to go out. Sometimes I even complain when the sun is blazing a little too much. Now I doubt I am going to survive the hot weather when I go back to Penang. 

It's takeaway day

Throughout the week I have been catching up with all the episodes I missed in The Big Bang theory TV series. I watched a few episodes long time ago but for some obscure reasons I wasn't interested to continue. I started watching again last week and since then it has become my past time killer.

Since the characters in the drama always have Thai/Chinese takeaway together I was so tempted to get myself one too. (Fyi I don't usually do takeaways, except during exam times when I tapao kebab as a treat for myself)

 

Europe self-guided trip: Train and place to stay

Sorry it took me so long to update. I had been procrastinating once again. And I don't even know what's wrong with me these few days, lacking the will to even upload photos to facebook.

But as promised, here's a new blog post!

Before I start, let me briefly give some details of the trip. Me and my girl friends had planned to go for a long Europe trip and after rounds and rounds of discussions, we finally narrowed down to just 5 cities, 4 countries: Paris > Brussels > Amsterdam > Cologne > Berlin.

After listing out our tentative routes and calculating the costs, we decided to buy the InterRail Global Pass, which allows us to travel in Europe within a consecutive period (in our case, Travel 5 days within 10 days). It basically means that within that 10 days, you get to choose 5 days as your 'travel days' and on those days, you can just hop on any trains connecting cities to cities (unlimited amount of train rides on the same day). A pretty flexible and cost effective package I would say, but will only be worth it if you travel to many places or travel to as far as you can. Like for our case, if we did not plan to go up north to Berlin, we wouldn't have gone for InterRail. So I guess you just have to do some calculations before deciding to whether take up the package or just buy the usual point-to-point train tickets.

I suggest you read up this page it's really informative. My tip is that you should always avoid any high speed trains like Thalys for example because even with a valid InterRail pass you will still need to pay for the reservation fees which is very very expensive and not worth it. Apparently, any train connecting France is always the trouble maker so do check out the best option available. Other than that, in other countries, you can just hop on any IC or ICE trains you like and show your pass to the conductor when being asked to.

Anyway, we went to Paris by boarding the Eurostar from London (excluded from InterRail). The train ride lasted for 2 hours plus and we reached Gare du Nord around dinner time. First thing to do is of course, check in the apartment we have pre-booked online.

Easter Holidayyyy

Just came back from spring trip and now I still have 2 weeks to relax *shakes butt* (well not really, have to do lots of self study) before class starts again. I guess this Spring break has been treating me well, and 2 more months till I finish my first year of uni!

After a few days of hibernation (feeling fatigue after coming back from the trip), I am now determined to update here and share with you my awesome journey to 5 cities in 13 days. Just bear with me a little bit more since I have about 2500 photos in the computer waiting for me to sort out. *inhales*


Meanwhile, a mandatory photo of tonight's dinner:

Stir fried egg noodles with 5 spice beef mince and vegetables.

Man.. after 2 weeks eating out, as vain as it may sound, I have seriously never missed my own cooking so much.

Stay tuned.

Throwback Macau trip Summer 2012

This is really way overdue. But I thought I should still post these up before the upcoming Europe trip's photos start flooding in my iPhoto.

So as you know I went to Hong Kong last August for summer vacation with two of my aunts. While trying to cover as many attractions as possible in such a short period, we still managed to allocate one whole day for Macau. Not that I was interested in gambling at the casinos but because I really wanted to try the famous Portuguese egg tart there.

Guildford Cathedral

Today I am going to show you some pictures of Guildford Cathedral which stands on the Stag hill, overlooking our university campus.

This iconic building of Guildford, Surrey can be seen even from far. Whenever you take the Southwest train from London Waterloo, you will know that you are in Guildford already when you see this cathedral from the railway.

Simple yet unique from the outside, the Guildford Cathedral indeed has its own kind of charm. This Anglican cathedral with its undramatic Curvilinear Gothic architecture will be the venue for University of Surrey's annual convocation.

Snow in Surrey

The first thing I usually do after waking up every morning during Winter here: Get out of the bed. Look out of the window with a slightly excitable mood to check if the trees and pathways outside were blanketed by snow.

Like this:

 Winter, mid January 2013

I don't know why but it has eventually become a habit (it feels rather paranoid) that I still subconsciously practice up till today.

It's almost the end of February now and there were already hints of Spring earlier this month. 2 weeks ago, I finally got the chance to embrace the warmth and bright sunshine by just wearing a T shirt plus jacket/hoodie. Besides enthusiastically starting my research on the Spring Summer 2013 fashion online, I thought I could finally get rid of all the thick,bulky coats and scarfs etc. Just when I thought Spring is around the corner already...

10 years of Love for Harry Potter

I remember being skeptical at first when my aunt recommended me to read about Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone a decade ago. All I knew about Harry Potter that time was that there's this young boy who lived in a small storeroom under the staircase and later discovered his magical abilities.

To be honest, I was more of a movie fan initially. This is because the day I fell in love with this brilliant imaginary wizarding world was the day I first watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone. It was one of the longest movie that I had ever watched at that age and believe it or not, I was truly absorbed into the story.

Piqued by curiosity and some igniting sparks of interest, I began reading the books one after another. Then I discovered more fun reading the detailed version and that, marked the beginning of my addiction/obsession for Harry Potter ever since.

I knew about the Leavesden Studio of Harry Potter even before coming to England. It was just opened to public last year and this had been on my list of things-to-do.

After buying tickets online for me and my group of KTJ friends (who were all also dieheart fans of Harry Potter), the next thing we knew was that we were already riding on the special shuttle bus from Watford Junction to the Warner Bros. Studio.

 

Collected our tickets at the counter and look, how cool the tickets were! We were 'fighting' over our most preferred creature, with Dobby being the most demanded one. Oh well I got Fawkes :)

The Tea Terrace, Guildford

We had been planning long ago to go for an afternoon high tea session. The last time we went shopping at House of Fraser, Guildford, Ika and me discovered this cute English tea house situated on the building's rooftop.

 

 

What intrigued us most was obviously, its beautiful, cosy interior tinged with a little rather posh ambiance. They have got a lot of colourful well-cushioned chairs, pastel colours painted wall with framed paintings and quotes on it. There are even some comfy sofas provided, which is perfect after a long day of shopping. (House of Fraser just downstairs)

It's Friday

Curry Rice

Finally woke up before 9am today and I am pretty proud of myself for not snoozing the alarms one after one like I used to do for the past few days.

I find that whenever I say something it'll always get jinxed. Like for instance, I just mentioned in my previous post that the weather here had been quite warm at this time of Winter and suddenly there has been a drastic temperature drop.

Apparently everywhere across the country will be blanketed with either sleet or snow this weekend, according to the weather forecast. There will be no more luxury of having 6-10 degrees during the day. The negatives are hitting in again soon.

Headed to the student union this morning in hope to stock up some bubble milk tea but sadly the stall wasn't set up today! You won't understand my pain here because it's not that easy to find bubble milk tea outside London (whereas you can even have Chatime there!) so when I first found out that there will be a pop up stall outside my uni's student union every Thursday, I was so so so excited.

Anyway since I came out already I thought of getting some fresh vegetables and fruits from the union market. Stocked up a little and decided to cook myself a good dinner. I just have to feed my demanding stomach well.

 

Dinner tonight わ カレー ライス! (Japanese Style Curry Rice)

I thought I cooked quite a small portion but it seems enough for tomorrow's breakfast too! Yummy :)

The texture is almost the same as my mother's home-cooked Kurma Ayam but this is the Japanese version heh. A bit sweeter and less spicy I would say.

Other than that I've been progressing well i guess for my papers next week, keep it up Grace!

Hungry

It's already way past midnight but I'm still wide awake here, thanks to the revision week where most people's biological clock has gone totally upside down. I tried to sleep earlier so that I can wake up and study more under the sunlight but still to no avail. Just couldn't stop tossing here and there last night until almost 4am i think.

And in this darn Winter, though not very cold (sometimes even warmer than in Autumn) I find myself constantly feeling hungry. Seriously why is my digestive system/ metabolism so efficient? and not me myself who in fact, should be?!  When my stomach started growling again (so loud that it broke the silence in my room when i was trying to revise), I just couldn't help not questioning myself what did i fed myself just now and was it because the amount was too little?

Sometimes I believe that I should put all the blame on this cold season but sometimes I thought it might be my PMS as well. This isn't good. At this crucial time when I should be concentrating fully on my revision for the upcoming end-of-semester exams, can't just my stomach be a little considerate and not be fussy about what I feed it? It's so annoying because I would suddenly google recipes of Malaysian food. I was so desperate I really wanted to make Penang curry mee the other day, just that I don't know where to get my favourite tau-poks (tofu puffs?).

Was preparing some roasted ham sandwich just now to cure my bizarre midnight hunger pang and then suddenly my Cypriot housemate came in to make something as well. Had a good chat with him and realised that I'm not the only person suffering. He sleeps at 6am and wakes up at 4 something in the afternoon, which is when it's getting dark already LOL like a vampire!

Ah well we'll worry about that later I'll just eat more rice in the mean time i guess. I just hope I can have a productive week and may I excel in both modules next week.

I'll probably blog something in between those study breaks? (not like I'm gonna study non-stop the whole day) and update more often after exams for sure.

Oh before I forget, happy new year people!
P.S I owe you a lengthy blogpost about my 2012 review/ 2013 resolutions :)