A note from Vancouver

From sightseeing, eating well and dancing up a storm in London, I flew to Vancouver - mostly to reacquaint myself with Cathryn and Mike and meet 2-and-a-half-month-old Heath, who just happens to be super cute at the moment.


Baby Buchkins

I wanted to give Cathryn a bit of a hand because when Mike is working, she has very little other support to call on - one of the hazards of moving half-way round the world, but a common theme for those of us who are geologically inclined. And since Vancouver issuch a lovely city in such a beautiful part of the world, it really wasn't hard to go back. And every girl needs a friend to look after her bundle of joy so she can go out and refresh herself with a facial or a haircut. I must say I was a bit nervous about looking after a very young baby, but once I gave Heath his bottle, he was quite happy and relaxed.


Sunset from the Beach Crescent apartment


Pleasure cruiser - Kisses .. - False Creek

So we didn't push ourselves too much, just went with Heath's agenda really and fitted in some eating and shopping where possible. Luckily, I had already had the pleasure of going to Storyeum - the all-singing all-dancing musical history of the settlement of Vancouver - when I visited back in 2005, because it has since shut down (what a complete and utter travesty I hear you say - well, indeed!)

I had an excellent time on the food front - I was visiting the woman who took my education in the area from amateur to total gourmande, after all. And of course I had to make sure I tried a truly local dish, so ...


I tried the hotdog with everything

but that was nothing in comparison to what I got when I chose the mole poblano the night we ordered Mexican take-out!


Yoikes

It's a complete chook chest! As you might imagine this dish, although billed as dinner for one, carried us all over for some time afterwards. Cathryn still managed to cook like a 5-star chef even while looking after Heath - Mike and I leant a hand wherever possible too.

We had a hilarious and also rather evil time with our take-out Thai and a noodle dish that was delicious, but super spicy (although not quite at the ear-wax melting stage), because even though we were all in some kind of severe physical discomfort, we all took just a little more. I think, however, that Cathryn and I would agree that the best meal we had was a late Japanese lunch on 4th in Kitslano the day Mike looked after Heath to give us some girlie time - incredibly fresh and delicate agadashi tofu with a spicy mushroom sauce, a surprisingly refreshing drunken rice noodle salad and very special gyoza - hmmmm....

And what about the shopping? Well, you are aware of my dull and drab Syama collection - Vancouver was a treasure trove of exciting footwear and fabulous clothing, and I had my own lucky charm and stylist with me so I did very well thankyou very much!


New shoes for Paris

And dancing? Well - the Vancouver salsa scene seems to have shrunk, completely. I tried my luck at the Mesa Luna, only to discover it had been shut for a year, so moved onto the next venue, the Howard Johnson Hotel, which looked rather dive-y and sports bar-ish, and not at all cuban salsa-worthy so Mike suggested that he would ask his work colleague who is a champion dancer where I should go. Armed with the info from Carly, I ran the gaunlet of Granville Street at tart-hour on a Friday night, only to discover that salsa at the Law Courts, 12 blocks from Cathryn and Mike's, had been shut for 4 months - and they'd moved to 395 Kingsway - aka the the Howard Johnson Hotel!

So salsa in North America was not to be - nevermind - I had the perfect time catching up with good friends and meeting their expanding family, in fact,


Come with me Heath - Paris is lovely in July ...

Postcard from the UK

Can you believe it Caro - we're here in London!


Caro and Ali hit Piccadilly

And it's raining, no way - they told me it never rains in England in the summer.


In motion...

Did you see that?! It's a police box next to the tube station - just like the tardis!!!

Do you think we can beat the storm front?


Rain approaching

Let's make another plan then ...


Hyde Park Corner

Maybe we should have lunch with a pint? Or a Pimms!


Beef and ale pie and chips


Fish and chips and mushy peas

After that we can get onto some serious tourist business - perhaps have a look at Westminster ...


Big Ben - absolutely!


Turrets of Westminster

And then maybe visit another part of town ...


Tate Modern at Southwark


St Paul's and the Millenium Bridge


Tourist snap - Ali muses over Tower Bridge

I might even head further afield to visit one of the great universities ...


Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

Or maybe a much more ancient and magical site like Avebury.


Standing stone circle

I'm sure one of the few places you are likely to find a ...


Henge shop!

A food festival ... in the UK?

About three weeks before my break came due, I got an email from Trudy asking if I would be in London on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of June because the 'Taste of London' festival was going to be on and she was pretty sure I'd be a likely contender for that ... alas NO! I would not be out of Mali until the 27th - bugger!

However, when I checked the website she sent me, I discovered that that festival was travelling around the UK, and I would have a chance to catch it, in its last week, perhaps. And the awesomely lovely Trudles surprised me with a visit to the 'Taste of Bath' on the Sunday, which she had asked me to keep free, and even the dark ominous rain clouds couldn't keep my excitement contained.

We arrived in a drizzly mist (which I secretly hoped would keep the punters away) and queued for time enough to read through the program and start planning our dégustation for the day, a daunting task given that we had 45 dishes to choose from! I figured that amongst the three of us we would be able to taste just about everything.

So we wandered in and started with a little taste of Gloucester old spot belly pork with caramelised apples and mustard mash - hmmmm, simply delish - the first of at least 5 pork belly dishes on the restaurant menus. And then, we got seriously started ...


An array of taste sensations

... I tried the haloumi and quinoa summer salad (my first taste of borage flowers - interesting), Trude hooked into panfried scallops with Thai puree (?) and lemongrass foam, and a raspberry mousse and jelly combo, and Art tried the Balinese black rice pudding.


Beijing duck roll

I decided to try the Beijing duck rice paper roll as I am typically such a fan, but I'm afraid that I have to report that this was the most uninspiring and flavourless offering I had all day. So instead Trude and I moved up the line for some Devon lamb saddle with herb and garlic puree and tapenade jus.


Lovely lamb

And this dish made everyone truly happy. I really didn't want to be so happy though, because loving lamb is such an Aussie-girl cliché, I thought I was so much more international and sophisticated - clearly I am wrong.

How hot are the Brits on their purees, by the way?

From that point forward we decided that it might be wise to stick with dishes that are in the traditional British food lexicon ...


Beef Wellington with foie gras

... and tasted the most divine beef Wellington, drizzled with a madeira jus. (How do I spell that warm little giggle of satisfaction?)

Not to mention the desserts - starting with,


Gooseberry shortcake with elderflower parfait

- which was very delicately flavoured (perhaps too delicate really). We moved on to a layered dessert of peach marscapone, raspberry blancmange, vanilla foam (the molecular cooks are at it again) sprinkled with crackling crystals (just sugar crystals, as it turned out).


New-wave trifle

All of which sounded pretty good, but was disappointingly dull. So it was back to the prince of berries for a second, third and fourth go! Yessir, when the raspberries are in season it's hard to eat anything else.


Hmmm, the ultimate berry

Oddly enough however, as sensational and luscious as the raspberry dish was, it was totally surpassed by ...


The dish of the day!

... vindaloo ice-cream (!) with mangoes and mint in a pappadum cone! Outstanding! (Another weird ice-cream combo, much better than the salt-flavoured ice-cream in Japan and equally as interesting, but more morish than the blue cheese ice-cream in Barcelona).

In the end, we voted that the three dishes presented by the vindaloo ice-cream makers (chef Christopher Wicks from Bells Diner, Bristol) - which also included an oyster shooter in strawberry gaspacho with serrano ham dust, and slow cooked pork with truffle and macaroni cheese - were the best all around. Definitely the pick of pork dishes.

As Bath turned on some traditional English summer weather for us, Trude and Art and I settled in for some light entertainment and Pimms, and declared the day a roaring success (and the rain did keep the crowds small, ensuring that the queues for feasting were short, and keeping me NICE!)


Ali, Art and Trudy

On the move ... almost

My EPIC journey from Syama to London began last Wednesday morning - I left site at 8:30 am with Dao in the blue/navy/grey toyota armed with a couple of snooushes, a couple of cokes and a tonne of reggae music, for the 6 hour road trip to Bamako. I was still feeling somewhat tentative as we left because I had been informed at 4:30 pm the day before that there were STRIKING ground crews at Bamako airport, meaning that several international flights had been cancelled - I know - casting my whole London/Vancouver/Paris experience into doubt!

By the time we finally arrived at the Bamako office in Hippodrome and sorted out how we were going to ensure I got on my flight, Dao and I had just enough time to take a super-express tour of the parliamentary area, and a 3 minute stop at the point de vue de Bamako before rushing over to the Air France office to put my bags through manual check-in. That is, handwritten tickets, boarding passes etc. What a drama!

Epic journey phase two started when I actually got to the airport - it seemed to take forever to board the plane, but fortunately Olivier managed to organise things so that I got to see Marcus briefly as he arrived back on the flight I was going out on! I filled him in on the latest news from site and he filled me in on his holidays - gee he looked refreshed, which made me wonder how haggard I must have looked going out.

Flight out finally left about 23:40 - scheduled for 22:50 and getting on board was MAD! Malians who travel (i.e. the very wealthy ones) all seem to be anxious to be the first on, despite having been given a seat allocation in advance. I had a seat next to a completely shambolic small French doctor (in his mid-forties) who I had seen at Air France earlier in the day trying to take 4 steel trunks plus his two suitcases on the flight with him! He spent the whole flight accidentally sleeping on me - not brilliant.

Arrived at Charles De Gaulle and had been waiting for my bag for 15-20 mins when it was announced that there was a grève (a strike) by baggage handlers at CDG! MAN! Anyway by about 9 am (I arrived at 6:30), after a round of Chemical Brothers on my iPod, I had my bags in hand and headed over to the priority lounge that Resolute have issued me a pass for, only to discover that it only works if your flight is leaving from that particular terminal ... or terminal hall! Foiled again - because I had 4 hrs till my London flight - which was departing from Terminal 3. Have you ever been to Terminal 3 at CDG? It is just a shed! I am sure it's an old hangar they've converted - pretty unappealing place to lounge about in, and even more uncomfortably, all the chairs are made of punched steel - no soft padded upholstery in this budget version of an airport terminal.

I was so sleepy that I managed to get a few winks, before sourcing some lunch from the lone takeaway food vendor - I had a wildly delicious chicken and mayonnaise baguette (on multi-grain bread!), OJ (freshly squeezed!) and an escargot scroll - really beautiful after 9 weeks of Syama dining. As you all know, food is a rather central focus for my general state of happiness, and although the food at Syama is outstanding for an African minesite, it is still minesite food.

My flight out of Terminal 3 was delayed too - so I spent my time people-watching in the gate lounges all the while suffering from that weird oversleepyness you get from hanging out on planes and in airports. Once I landed in the UK, England looked lush, green and fabulous ... and sunny ... and there were people everywhere! Got the train into London and then had to negotiate my way through the tube to Belsize Park where I'm staying with Trudy and Arthur - but, I forgot about the stairs!

I had no way to cope with both bags on my own, and I was just contemplating that from the top of a staircase in Kings Cross station when a lovely young skinhead junkie offered to help me - which he did, and then told me to have a nice day! Another man and his young son helped me at my next impass, and heaps of people helped me to get my cases on and off the trains, including a lady in her eighties - how nice are Londoners?! Thus, I finally managed to get all the way here 31 hours after I started my journey.

So look out London, I have arrived ...