Lake District - A day out or camera club? :S

A day out with the family in the Lakes. Family trips can be a number of things, a chance to catch up, a chance to share time with loved ones or a lot of stress! However, this particular family trip set out as a leisurely stroll through the forest to Aira force waterfall but quickly turned into camera club!

This was not the intention but I had recently bought a new camera to prepare for my impending trips next month to the exotic lands of Indonesia and Bulgaria. Also aided by Rob and Alex's enthusiasm for photography, it was inevitable. My sister Kerry and my Dad has also brought their cameras, so I think my Mum was the only person without one. 

My beautiful sister!

The walk to waterfall was very easy with no steep sections, pretty much a walk in the park. ;). We just strolled along, took photographs, chatted and played fetch with the dogs. The dogs enjoyed eating the snow, so the game of fetch was played with snow balls. :)

Here are a few photographs I took along the walk.

Moss/furry rock!

Stairs.

The woods dusted in snow.

Tree

Diesel, my sister's dog.

Pretty HDR

Rob and my parent's dogs, Max and Miya

After taking many, many photos we made our way to the lake (Ullswater) across a field, this may have been a mistake, as I don't think the route we took was actually a footpath and we all got very muddy! :(

At the Lake we ate a small picnic, the view was quite dramatic. It was nice, relatively tranquil in fact, gazing out on to the lake whilst enjoying some food. Perfect! However, during lunch the temperature dropped and I began to cool down, so we made our way back to the car to find a pub or cafe to warm up in. The going was slow due to Rob and Alex continuously taking photos (Alex lost his lens hood in the process) and my mum's dog Miya walking a little too slowly and had to carried at some points.

Ullswater

We arrived a pub near the town of Glenridding, I don't remember the name but we all got hot drinks or soup to warm us up. This made me happy, but I am so slow at drinking tea, I didn't even get to finish it before we left. Oh well I've drank enough tea in my life anyway.

Also I think we sat in the wrong place in the pub, we were in a bar area, which was relatively small. Maybe if we had entered through the other door it would have been better, but now we will never know. ;)

Whilst we enjoyed our drinks a man and woman entered with a very large Alsatian and Rob couldn't help talking to the guy about his dog, he always has to talk to someone. ;) 

Ullswater

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip. It's great to be out in nature with lovely weather and awesome people. It was a shame my brother and my other sister couldn't make it.
Have a great weekend and enjoy any family trips you may have coming up.

Sam x

London - Visiting friends

The Shard at night time.

The plan for this weekend was to visit some friends in London and this is indeed what we did. Friday evening we left Manchester at little before 6 pm. Rob wanted to drive down as it was cheaper than the train, even though it takes twice as long! :(. Therefore, he was the designated driver and I took the role as navigator aided by our sat nav! (I had the easier job) ;) The journey down was pretty uneventful. We stopped for a coffee/snack break about half way into the journey, and then it took me the rest of the journey to drink my coffee (I am so slow and yes, it was cold by the end) :).
We arrived at Isaac and Emily's house about 4 hours later (around 10 pm). Their house is quaint, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a good sized kitchen/dining room and a modest living room. Their house also boasts a reasonable sized garden and a large attic space, which at the moment seems poorly insulated, as it was freezing up there! But I like it and I can't complain, as I don't even have an attic (sad times!). We hadn't seen Isaac and Emily in a few months, so it was good to catch up and chill out.
We had no real plans for the weekend, so on Saturday we slept in and Isaac made us breakfast. I ate far too much scrambled egg, I should have just stuck with mushrooms on toast. As 6 months ago I became vegetarian and have been trying to eat less animal products too, so haven't really eaten eggs in months! And now I am not really sure I actually like them any more. So next time just mushrooms on toast! Yum! :)

My beautiful Oyster card.

After breakfast we headed in to London, it was nice to be in London again particularly because it meant I could use my oyster card, which has a picture of the queen on it! One of the most exciting transport events of my life! You probably think I'm pretty sad now. :)

Our first stop was the prime meridian, we saw the origin of GMT! Eeeek! A little geeky I know, but it was Isaac's idea and I found it pretty cool anyway!

Next was a ride in the cable car over the Thames. It seems it is own by Emirates and they are promoting it as a flight. :) Well, it is pretty expensive at £4.90 for a single considering it is suppose be a form of public transport rather than a tourist attraction. Oh well, it is a novelty anyway. :)

Cable car/Emitrates flight! ;)

For lunch we went to borough market but we got there quite late at 3 pm ish, so quite a few of the stores were shutting or had already shut, as an organic salad bar had closed just as we arrived. So we opted for falafel wraps from a small stall at the end of the market. It was a shame that we didn't manage to see the whole market but we took some nice photos of the massive fruit and veg stall there. Fruits and vegetables are so photogenic,they always make beautiful photos. :) 

Veggies! 

I can't really say much else on this market as were didn't stay too long but market stands outside offered a whole host of sweets and treats with many vegetarian and vegan options, which I am always on the look out for. :)
For the rest of the afternoon we pretty much just wandered around doing a few more geeky things (more of Isaac's suggestions). We went to see a sewage powered gas lamp, apparently Isaac took Emily there on a date. Not a usual location for a date but she must have enjoyed it as that was a few years ago and they are still together now.

Later we met with some other friends for a quick cocktail at Madison's (a bar on the roof of a shopping center opposite St Paul cathedral providing great views of the city) http://www.madisonlondon.net/ and then out for a curry at Kolam in Tooting.

Cheeky cocktails!

Considering the restaurant (Kolam) was rather empty it took our food over an hour to come but no one complained. The starters were fun they were like little savoury doughnuts, I would definitely get these again. My tummy and taste buds were very happy with these. My main course on the other hand the same cannot be said. I ordered a vegetable kurma, which was suppose to be sweet and coconuty and nice! Unfortunately it was none of these. It tasty salty and there wasn't much else to the flavour of the dish, this is not what I was expecting. Rob had a chicken Kurma and said his tasty fine, nice and sweet. Everyone else seemed happy with their meals. So, I guess it was just mine. :(.
My recommendation is that if you are to go to Kolam do not get the vegetable kurma and be prepared to wait a long time for your food. I would hate to think what it is like at busy times! But to give them credit the staff were very friendly, so that is a bonus. :)

Coffee break!

Sunday, we discovered hot chocolate milano at Cafe Nero and wow! At £3.15 it is the closest to an Italian hot chocolate you are going to get over here in the UK! It is delish! :D

Have a great week!

Sam x

Winter wonderland - Sunday Fun!

Another lazy Sunday! After spending most of the day at home on Saturday (mainly due to being boring and the fact that Rob was ill), I had to get outside today even if it was absolutely freezing. We decided to check out one of the parks around Manchester, after some snowfall on the surrounding areas of Manchester. As usual there wasn't any snow in the city itself, except for the 20 minute snow flurry on the drive to the park.

Snow on the car windscreen. I thought it looked kind of artistic. 

We ended up going to Lyme park for a wander round in the snow and to take some photographs. Rob wanted to capture a close up of a deer (which I thought would be unlikely), however as it is winter all the deer were locked away and the deer park was closed to the public. Oh well. At least I got some nice shots, which you can see below.

Snow in Lyme park, a pretty looking tree! 

Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and were in Lyme park enjoying the snow. There were loads of people sledging. It was quite funny really, as there was only a couple of inches of snow, so after a few people had sledged down the hill, they'd taken the snow with them so the other people were actually sledging on the mud. Good times!

Selfie in snow, nice and cosy with my fluffy hood! 

Overall, we were only in Lyme park for about two hours. We followed a road at the back of the main car park, as when we have been there in the past we always walk out the front of the car park towards the lake, so I thought we would try something different. We strolled along a path, through a valley with people sledging on either side and ended up in some woods (where we were stalked by a crow - it was a little creepy, until he was scared off by a dog. Hehe!) before coming out onto a snow covered field. It felt like we had walked quite a bit out of the way, so we asked some people which direction the main car park was in. The guy informed us that we could get to it by following the road in front of us. It turned out the car park in question happened to be ten meters down the road. He must have thought we were idiots! Embarrassing or what!

Rob getting in the way of my photo! ;)

Rob contemplating life.

As we had ended up back near the car park we wandered up to the main house, up some really, really muddy stairs and nearly got ran off the path by some little kid just barging past us. I guess he was so excited by the snow he didn't care about anything or anyone for that matter!

Old car outside the house at Lyme park (with a snowman photobombing my shot!)

Lyme Park overall is a nice place for a wander round in both the summer and the winter (it's probably good in spring and autumn too ;) ) and offers special events and things to do in the house, as whilst we were there you could meet the make up artist for a TV show called the village. This was not something that particularly interested me. Parking however is very expensive (£7!) but it is the same with all national trust places. Therefore if you spend most of your time at national trust site you should probably get a membership (surely it must save you money in the long term, :)).

Enjoy! Get outside and explore!

Sam x

Smiley!! :)

Date Night

So today was mine and Rob's 9 year anniversary, yay! I didn't really fancy going out for dinner or having a proper evening out, as we had both been the gym, so most of the evening was already gone. We ended up just buying a few bits from the shop on our walk home and had a nice picnic style tea at the coffee table in our living room.

A sample of our anniversary dinner.

It was quite fun, we ate bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (I know it's not the most healthly thing, as oil is pure fat but it was rather enjoyable). We also ate grapes and olives, then had a few onion bhajis, samosas and veggie spring rolls. So, a bit mixed up really.   

After dinner we spent the remainder of the evening eating ice cream at Frederick's ice cream parlour at the Chill Factore, Trafford Centre. Well, I ate sorbet and Rob got Ice cream. Frederick's usually have a few sorbet options to choose from (usually two or three) but they mainly specialise in dairy ice cream. The sorbet options I devoured were a scoop of orange sorbet and one of mojito. The orange one was so juicy, it was amazingly refreshing against the mojito flavour, which was very sweet and sickly, but still good (initially I preferred that one but you just can't eat too much of it). A really good sorbet flavour I have had from here before is the raspberry sorbet, it's just so sweet and juicy, just like real raspberries, yum! 

However, the best sorbet I have ever had was a coconut sorbet, whilst on holiday in Biarritz, France. It was awesome, so sweet, so coconuty, just perfect! :)

A photo of our ice creams! Enjoy!

Take Care!

Sam x

Manchester around and about

Manchester, what can I say? It is conveniently located for travel throughout the country, with good connection links (road and rail). Its geographic position also provides easy access to the Lake district, Peak district and Wales (for those of you that enjoy the outdoors).
Mainly, Manchester is now the place I call home. After living/studying here for 8 years I feel I can say this place is my home, even if it technically does place me in the category of a traitor due to the fact my origins lie somewhat closer to Liverpool.
Manchester offers a range of restaurants, thus providing varied cuisine, with China town in the city centre and the Curry mile just a short bus ride away in Rusholme. A host of appetites can be accommodated for in this city.
However, today's entry consists of how I spent my Sunday. In the general scheme of things it was a pretty lazy one, in which I only left the house to collect my boyfriend from the train station and then a few hours later to enjoy a dinner out at Wasabi (Manchester Printworks branch). http://www.wasabisushi.co.uk/ So I'll give you a brief review of my time and the food we enjoyed here. We arrived at around 6:30 pm, as it was quite early and a Sunday there was no queue and we were seated straight away, with a good seat next to the belt and near the chefs.

Sushi on the belt.

I love the novelty of watching the food being prepared and then observing the different sushi options travelling along the belt. Sometimes not being sure of what to have and then the dish you want passes you by but you're just that bit too slow and it's gone. Leaving you to wait until it has completed another lap of the belt, that's if you are lucky enough for it to return to you and it has not already been snatched up by another diner. The woes of the sushi belt! ;).
Wasabi offers a variety of vegetarian dishes, as well as fish and meat options. The menu can be found here: http://www.wasabisushi.co.uk/offbelt.html. This sushi chain also offers a variety of meal deals, such as the £1 pound a plate lunchtime sushi deal (12-3 pm), which I often enjoy, usually in the company of friends. On one such trip, one of the waiters told us the tail of the guy who ate 50 plates of sushi and drank a lot of diet coke. Apparently, it became a real concern from the staff working that shift that he may suffer death by sushi! But as the tale goes he did in fact survive and thoroughly enjoyed his epic sushi meal, I myself have never been able to manage more that 7 plates. Getting back to Sunday night there were two meal deals to chose from, which are regularly on the menu for £8.95. I chose the miso soup and 6 plates of sushi off the belt meal, whereas Rob (my boyfriend) opted for the 3 plates of sushi and a choice of a rice or noodle dish option (he selected the chicken catsu curry).
My personal favourite are the tofu bags; 1) because they look kinda funny (originally I had no idea what they were, they look like silly little pyramids! ;) ) and 2) they are super sweet and tasty.

My super tasty veggie sushi rolls! 

So, if you want a fairly inexpensive and satisfying meal I would recommended this sushi restaurant but I am sure similar restaurants up and down the country would provide equivalent satisfaction, this restaurant is however 5 minutes walk from my house, so this is another reason why I like it! :)

Enjoy.

Sam x