Richmond Park

At almost 2,400 acres in size, Richmond Park is the largest Royal Park in London. Once in the park, one does not feel like they are in London at all, expect for the occasional glimpse of a building.

We walked there from home and then meandered around the park for a ~12-mile walk in beautiful weather.

There are hundreds of wild deer in the park, because it is that big.

It is amazing to be able to get so close to these large animals

Halloween at Vinopolis 2011

Our friends Bender and Katherine were in town for Halloween this year so the 6 of us (Cyndi & Berney also) attended a party at Vinopolis which is a really cool venue in Central London for those who enjoy good wine. The venue is neat on a normal day but they did a fantastic job of decorating for the occasion (wish we had more pics of the decorations but we forgot our camera). Either way we had fun dressing up with friends, doing the tasting tours, eating Toad in the Hole for the first time, and getting our dance on with friends. Also, Olly and I were selected for first place in the Costume Contest. As a result, we were gifted with a nice bottle of Prosecco that the 6 of us proceeded to enjoy :-) Apparently the one pic Vinopolis chose to use in reference to the event is the one of us with the lady who gave us the prize...see here

Us with Katherine and Bender, aren't we just too scary :-)

At least one pic of the interior decorations as the venue

Us with Berney and his scythe in the background and Cyndi behind him in la-la land

Oxford Visit with Friends

We took a quick train over to Oxford one weekend with our friends Cyndi and Berney to visit the universities, architecture, and history that this city is famed for. The day was spent wandering through the cobblestone streets to see the many beautiful campuses which have housed academia for many many many centuries. There were also some great parks to visit while strolling along the rivers. The city also had an excellent covered market where we saw some very delectable options and tried what had to have been some of the best cookies ever. Oxford is definitely worth a visit no matter how much time you have to spare. Here are some pics of our time there....

This campus is where most Hogwarts scenes were filmed for Harry Potter movies

China - Hot Pot in Beijing

I have definitely had the pleasure of eating Hot Pot before, but hot pot in China is (as one should expect) definitely quite an experience. This was in a phenomenal Beijing restaurant.

The table before we got started: the Hot Pot itself is split in half with the regular side on the left and the hot side on the right. Our friendly Beijing hosts spoiled us with a vast assortments of foods: lamb, beef, chicken, shrimp, different kinds of mushrooms, other vegetables whose names I did not get and more. One highlight in this restaurant was the sauce buffet: to go along with the hot pot, you make your own sauce using many ingredients including crushed garlic, sesame oil and paste, mushroom sauce, parsley, chili sauce, etc...

The local beer, Yanjing, is another nice accompaniment with the meal

You are probably looking at this picture thinking "What the hell is this?!?" The answer is "Noodles!" (see video below for live demonstration of noodle making made fresh, right at our table)

China - Shanghai

I got the opportunity to go to China for work, and spend 4-5 days each in Shanghai and Beijing. While most of the time was of course dedicated to work, I was able to see some of the sights during a weekend spent over there. Here are some of the highlights from Shanghai.

The Old City of Shanghai contains many old buildings with pagoda-style roofs. It is also a famous commerce area, where one can find shops selling everything from teas, to jade to counterfeit goods.

This gorgeous building is right next to the Yuyuan Garden in the Old City of Shanghai

Inside the City God Temple of Shanghai (or Chenghuang Miao), this beautiful altar with statues can be found.

An unidentified work of art in the city, right outside the Science and Technology museum

Nanjing Road at night:This shopping street gets extremely busy, as well as entertaining.

Nanjing Road dead-ends into the Bund, a pleasant walking area along the Huangpu River, from which I took this picture of the downtown area at night

While I tried to find some strange food in China, this is probably the oddest I came across: duck tongues. The taste was good, but having to eat around the cartilage was too much work for the little amount of actual meat on them.