Anyway, hi. I’m digging myself out of yet another hole, because the long and short of it is, I miss blogging. Despite the fact that I’m absolutely pants at it. I guess I’ve had a bunch of photos piled up on my hard drive that one day I finally went, enough is enough and finally got around to writing this.

So what have I been up to these days? I’m still in San Francsico, and I hit my one year milestone of becoming a California resident (and a Googler!) in July. I still blatantly refuse to forfeit my New York license, partly out of my love for the state and partly because the amount of patience I have with DMVs is nonexistent. In fact, I went to New York twice — the first time in August to help my brother move into college and the second time just last week, mostly to visit friends, Comic Con, and J.K. Rowling.

Yeah, you heard me. J.K. Rowling.

We’re biffles now. Don’t be jelly.

Backtracking a bit, J.K. Rowling was at Lincoln Center in New York last Tuesday to discuss her new book The Casual Vacancy. Considering I paid $43 for my ticket including all the extraneous convenience charges and I got a free copy of The Casual Vacancy ($35) and she signed autographs for everybody at the event and I got to see her live/in-person with the possibility of projectile fangirling her — the net price for all of this was — what, $8? Real life, what are you even. Get out.

To clear up a few things: yes, J.K. Rowling is a very classy and humble lady, even when she was talking about porn and Fifty Shades of Grey (which may or may not have been my favorite part of the talk). Yes, she is quite nice, even when she spent at least two hours patiently signing autographs for her fans. And yes, I somehow resisted projectile fangirling myself off at her. Somehow, I don’t fancy myself a restraining order.

JKR and Ann Pratchett (of Bel Canto fame)

JKR reading an excerpt of The Casual Vacancy

The interview was more like an insightful back-and-forth dialogue between JKR and Ann Pratchett, as they discussed the book as well as other general topics, such as the editing process of writing a book and children’s literature. (If you’re interested, the full video of the interview is here.) Afterwards, they called up each row to wait to get their book signed, and while I might have waited two hours to get my book signed, the chance to meet JKR in person was so worth it. I feel like I should give myself a congratulatory pat on the back for not being a blubbering mess of emotions like I thought I would be.

The line for autographs. They were really hustling us out there.

I was able to snap this photo right after I had my book signed, as it was my only window of opportunity, but right after the shutter clicked, the security guard waved his hand in front of me and said, “Ma’am, you’re good.” and pointed me to the exit. NO, I GOT A BLURRY PHOTO OF MY FAVORITE AUTHOR WHOM I JUST MET TEN SECONDS AGO DO YOU THINK I’M GOOD.

All capslock aside, though, I’ve made it a new life goal of mine to have a conversation with J.K. Rowling that’s longer than:
ME: I’m a big fan. Thank you.
JKR: Thank you very much!

Hold me to it.

JKR aside, New York was still all kinds of fun, and while I feel like I should be utterly appalled that I’ve already made three visits in the span of five months, I keep staring back at these photos and wishing I was back already. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Despite the ridiculous lines and crowds, I still managed to collect some free Avengers-themed swag at New York Comic Con.

No trip to New York is ever complete without my fix of chicken and rice from the halal cart on 53rd and 6th.

Green apple sorbet at Chikalicious

Pistachio, peanut butter & strawberry, and pumpkin cupcakes from my favorite bakery, Sugar Sweet Sunshine

Meatball sandwich at — where else? — the Meatball Shop

Shrimp and grits at Peels

Biscuits and gravy at Peels

Banana walnut pancakes at Georgio’s Country Grill

Banh mi at Xe May Sandwich Shop

Fig and ricotta tartine at Le Pain Quotidien

Until we meet again, New York.

Fortunately, I didn’t actually have to wait very long, as I was in Boston and Providence for the first week of June: the former to visit my parents (who happened to be on the East Coast), and the latter for work, where I was manning the booth at Google’s Get Your Business Online. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been to either of the two cities in a while — other than random visits to my Harvard friends, my time in Boston is largely defined by the summer after my junior year in high school when I had interned there, and I had last been to Providence seven years ago, when I had briefly considered applying to Brown for college (oh, the days of college visits — how young I was then!) — I mostly skipped out on the standard touristy fare and instead worked at the Google Cambridge office and … ate a lot. As terribly fascinating as working and eating sounds, I’ll spare you the details and convince all of you that I lead an exciting life by providing you with visuals of the contents of my stomach, before they ended up in my stomach. Cool? Cool!

On my second day in Boston, Annie and I went to Mistral, a French bistro in the Back Bay, where I ordered a roasted duck with wild mushroom risotto and Annie ordered the grilled salmon.

Later that week, George and I went to Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, an establishment near Harvard that serves some mighty delicious burgers (surprise) with creative names. Case in point: my burger, which included Boursin cheese and bacon and a side of sweet potato fries, was aptly named the “Mark Zuckerberg”, due to its super-richness.

The above two photos, however, do not qualify under “Things That Inevitably Ended up in Cindy’s Stomach”, but we could all use a nice, cliched beachfront photo or two, right? Anyway, this here is Winthrop Beach, a stone’s throw away from the place my parents were staying and a nice place to walk about.

Nearby is a local ice cream place called Twist & Shake, which I highly recommend after a long day at the beach.

My coffee Oreo ice cream and my mom’s butter pecan ice cream

During the weekend, my parents and I went to Boston proper, where I insisted on taking them to Mike & Patty’s, which is everything a neighborhood sandwich shop should be. The place barely seats six people, but you can instantly tell that it’s one of those really good places based on the number of people sitting outside the steps, waiting for their breakfast sandwich. Yes, it’s a bit secluded in the Bay Village, you have to get there before it closes at 3pm, you will probably end up eating on the steps of a random building, you might have to wait at least fifteen minutes, but I promise you, those minor inconveniences don’t even begin to counter the deliciousness of the sandwich. Plus, this place, from the food to the owners to the phone number (617-423-EGGS), is just downright charming.

My dad got the avocado toast: sea salt, olive oil, arugula/radicchio/lettuce, tomato, avocado, and onion sandwiched beneath two slices of multigrain.

My mom’s turkey avocado sandwich with cheddar, red onion, and mayo.

This beauty above is my order, the North South classic: egg, collard greens, peameal bacon, and cheese on an English muffin. At $5, the price was way too good to be true. Sandwiches that good don’t come that cheap in New York, that’s for sure.

Our bellies still full from the eggy sandwichy goodness, we hopped across the Charles River to Cambridge for our final destination: Toscanini’s. Toscanini’s happens to be a bit of a rockstar in the ice cream world; it’s a mainstay on the Best Ice Cream lists of publications and food blogs, up there with Humphry Slocombe (which I highly recommend), Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, Bi-Rite, etc.

And for good reason! The ice cream packs a punch — the burnt caramel (which I didn’t take a photo of, lest you wanted to see a melted puddle of brown in a cup) has a sharp aftertaste that offsets the smoothness you’d expect from regular caramel. For those who aren’t so fond of bitter ice cream flavors, I highly recommend the ginger snap molasses (below), which has crumbs of ginger snap cookies that melt in your mouth and a rich, velvety texture thanks to the molasses.

Later that afternoon, we drove over to Providence, where I was staying for work:

For those who use Google Maps, that pin may look mighty familiar. And no, it’s not shopped. The convention itself was fun, and I did a lot of talking, which is to be expected when you’re helping people set up websites and such!

Later that night, we headed to Local 121, a restaurant in downtown Providence that specializes in dishes made from locally harvested food — as if the name wasn’t a dead giveaway!

To start, we split an appetizer: a fresh English pea crostini!

My entree was a dish of pan-roasted, vanille-scented Bomster scallops that I will forever dream about, because I basically just love scallops.

The next morning, I went to Pastiche, a dessert cafe recommended by Annie, and decided to treat myself with a brownie for the flight back to San Francisco.

Ta-da!

Unfortunately, the food in the airport was not as memorable, but eh, at least I got to catch a bit of the Euro Cup, so I’ll take what I can get.

—–
footnotes:
*It’s actually hilarious, because despite the fact that I definitely have the credentials to become a California resident, I am legally and technically still a New York resident. To get me to forfeit my NY license and retake a written test (WHY, CALIFORNIA, WHY) requires some well-executed coercion, because let’s face it, keeping that driver’s license is my valiant last-ditch attempt to cling to my four years as a New Yorker.

So why Seattle? Well, (a) I wanted to and (b) it was a holiday weekend. I had actually been to Seattle before — the West Coast was always a popular vacay spot for the family back when I was in elementary school — but seeing as I am no longer 9 years old, it doesn’t really count for much. If that doesn’t scream TIME FOR A REVISIT, I don’t know what does.

Besides, if I’m living on the West Coast, I ought to get myself acquainted with cities other than San Francisco, am I right?

Seattle is actually very much like San Francisco; if they were both people, they’d be in the same family — cousins, probably. Maybe even siblings. Actually, no wait. Seattle and Portland would be siblings, and San Francisco would be their cousin. And Bergen would be their Norwegian relative (apparently Bergen and Seattle are sister cities, a fun fact I picked up while walking around Ballard, the Scandinavian neighborhood in Seattle). Anyway, back to San Francisco and Seattle, as I have yet to go to either Bergen or Portland (both are on my list though!): they’re both cities with a residential community vibe, hills for blocks and blocks, a shortage of sunny days, grassy parks made for lazy weekends, and quiet residential neighborhoods that you will definitely not find in, say, New York. Instead of Berkeley, you get Fremont. And in lieu of the Mission, you get Capitol Hill. Coming from a San Francisco standpoint, Seattle is leafier (+1), less touristy (+1), less pedestrian friendly (-1), and its skies more downcast than SF (-1). And surprisingly, I managed to escape the infamous rain while I was here (the weather report told me it was going to rain all weekend. Thank god the weather report lied like a dead bird.), so +938234893 points in its favor.

After dropping off my bags in Fremont on my first day here, I was hungry because my stomach was having none of that wimpy airplane food. And in times of hunger, my stomach waits for literally no one. First stop? Paseo, a sandwich place up the hill famous for their much-beloved Caribbean Roast Sandwich. Juicy, marinated, slow-roasted pork sandwiched between two warm loaves of bread? Yes, please! Word to the wise: it’s ridiculously messy of a sandwich, so be prepared to forego any pretension and load up on the napkins.

Later that afternoon, I went to downtown Seattle, the area most people think about when they think about Seattle: the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the og Starbucks, etc.

The old-school Starbucks — recognize the logo?

The Public Market is one of those things Seattle is super famous for, and for good reason — there are numerous food stalls of fruit, flowers, seafood, etc. and if you live for super cliché moments, you could probably catch some of the vendors tossing fish at each other. I, however, am not one of those people so you just get generic photos of food instead. Yay.

In Post Alley, near the Market, is a wall of gum. Yep. A wall of, you guessed it, ABC gum (already-been-chewed gum, for those of you who missed out on the joke in your childhood days). You thought that wad of gum under your movie theatre seat was nasty? HERE, HAVE AN ENTIRE WALL. Even better, you can experience the very fragrant smell of stale peppermint gum with a note of saliva wafting at least a mile away. The smell that dreams are made of, am I right?

Lake View Cemetery

Bruce Lee’s grave at Lake View Cemetery

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking along Volunteer Park, Lake View Cemetery, and Capitol Hill. Seattle, much like SF, is filled with gorgeous houses that make you wish you were a millionaire so you could move in and live there already, flowers that practically beg for cliched macro shots (…guilty.), and really good graffiti art. It’s not terribly pedestrian friendly; buses come about once every half hour and driving is still vastly preferred, but on a good day, it’s well worth walking about.

English fizz at Tavern Law

The next day, I decided to do a bit of walking (for me, there’s no better way to explore a city than on foot) and ended from Fremont to Queen Anne, a relatively quiet, residential neighborhood.

I started the day off with breakfast at Macrina Bakery & Cafe: buttermilk waffle with lime whipped cream, pineapple, and bacon on the side. Spoiler alert: It’s every bit as good as it looks.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around town by foot (and occasionally bus, when I was lucky enough to catch the bus stop on time), and I managed to hit up a few places along the way:

Like the Olympic Sculpture Garden!

And Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream — the favorite ice cream spot in Seattle, which you can easily tell by the long lines that snake past the corner. For the record, the salted caramel was worth the wait: sweet with a bit of a salty kick for an aftertaste.

A stone’s throw away from Molly Moon’s is the Elliott Bay Book Company, a local bookstore and a bibliophile’s paradise; if Paris has Shakespeare & Co., New York has Strand, San Francisco has City Lights, then Seattle has Elliott Bay. Unlike Shakespeare & Co. and City Lights, which can feel awfully cramped at times, Elliott Bay is more spacious, with aisles and aisles of books that are perfect for a lazy evening of window-shopping.

On the last day, I went to Ballard, the Scandinavian neighborhood I briefly mentioned at the beginning of this entry. My friend described it as a place for “aging hipsters”, and oh man, I could not agree more. I went to Miro Tea with my laptop in tow, ordered a berry crepe with ricotta and an iced tea, and got a bit of work done.

Later that afternoon, though, I caught up with a friend and got margaritas and nachos just in time for happy hour at The Matador.

Since I had to leave next morning, the last evening was relatively low-key, as I mostly walked around Fremont. The highlight?

TROLL AVENUE.

TROLLOLOLOLOL.

As much as I would love to leave it at that, there actually is a troll though:

Troll! In the dungeons bridge! Man, I love trolls. Probably because I’m sure I’m part troll.

Oh, and have a photo of my mac and cheese pie that I got from an aptly-named placed called Pie. IS IT NOT DELICIOUS-LOOKING.

On a somewhat unrelated aside, now I actually want to visit Portland.

As much I would love to say that the fortuitous timing was pure kismet, I had actually wanted to visit much, much earlier — back in winter, actually. But then I went to Europe and fulfilled my vacay quota. And then friends from New York started flying out to SF to visit me, and these visits would always end in hugs and somewhat baseless promises of, “I’ll definitely come back to New York and visit you!”. Days of should-I-or-shouldn’t-I whenever I started searching for transcontinental flights on Kayak/Priceline/Travelzoo/whathaveyou turned into weeks, which turned into months. Soon it was the beginning of May, where I was dangerously approaching the one-year anniversary of my departure. Giving up any and all pretense, I finally cut the cord of self-restraint, purchased the tickets to New York on a whim, proceeded to email all of my college friends, and started counting down the days until May 16th, the (freakishly early) morning I’d leave for the concrete jungle.

(credit)

Maybe it was serendipitous that I landed in New York and saw the Empire State Building lit up in shades of Columbia blue and white in honor of all of the students who had graduated from my beloved alma mater. It doesn’t exactly help that a certain song always plays in my head every time I arrive in New York. Or the fact that it’s all too easy to believe that coincidences like these will align up so perfectly in this city.

ANYWAY. I don’t want to wax nostalgic and sappy with my 2389483 feelings about New York (and trust me, 2389483 feelings is a lot. Plus East Coast time has messed with my sleep cycle, so I’m not even remotely coherent enough for that.), but I will give you photographic evidence as to why this weekend was easily one of the best weekends ever. And I have been lucky enough to experience some really awesome weekends, so congrats, New York. I owe you one.

REASONS WHY THIS WEEKEND WAS AWESOME:* (also Reasons Why Weekends are Best Spent in New York, Reasons Why Cindy Still Insists on Keeping Her NY Driver’s License Even Though She’s Technically a California Resident, Reasons Why Cindy is a Hopeless Glutton, Reasons Why Cindy Needs to Get Off Instagram, Reasons Why Cindy Just Likes Taking Photos and Blabbing on About Them, among other title substitutions)
*list is not in any specified order

• I got to visit my home away from home. Or, if you want to get all Inception up in this grill, my home away from home away from home. I can’t believe it’s been almost 5 years (August 2007, wow) since I biked across the George Washington bridge without having showered for four days (HAHAHAHA), down Riverside, and through those gates of Columbia, ready and eager to start my college experience.

Seriously, it feels so good to finally look at Butler Library with a pang of nostalgia and not the dread I used to experience during finals week. Time sure does heal all wounds. Even academia-induced wounds.

• SHOPPING. Okay, no. Try as it might, but SF will never hold a candle to New York in this department. SF doesn’t have Uniqlo (…yet), MUJI, Fashion Week, or an abundance of sample sales. Or a legitimate equivalent of Soho.

Needless to say, I came to New York with a 20 pound suitcase and left with a 40 pounder that proved a bitch to lug up the stairs to my apartment.

• There’s no better place to watch football this side of the Atlantic. First off, I’m not going to ramble about the outcome of the Champions League final, because, as a diehard Bayern fan, it hurts. It really does. And I don’t ever want to see another photo of a devastated Bastian Schweinsteiger again (on my Tumblr dash or the news or anywhere), because no football player should ever have to experience that level of pain and heartbreak on their own home field.

All Bayern feelings aside, I will say that football watching in San Francisco just isn’t the same. Games are aired way too early in the morning (why are timezones so cruel to me!) for me to properly function, and I have yet to find a good pub in the Bay Area that airs Bundesliga/Champions League games like the big freaking deal that they are. But, hey, if anybody wants to correct me and introduce me to the football-watching culture in SF that I have obviously been ignorant about, feel free! Because watching the games at stupid o’clock on a low-quality torrent just doesn’t cut it, you know?

Anyway, I’ve sorely missed the feeling of being in a crowd of football enthusiasts. The yelling and cursing and screaming never gets old — and I swear, we’ll get that trophy one day.

• Nothing beats New York for museums. MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Natural History, the Whitney — and the mother of all museums, the Met.

If you’re ever in New York, check out the Impossible Conversations exhibit. The Prada and Schiaparelli displays are phenomenal stuff, and the curation is top-notch. I still drool over the Prada S/S ’08 collection, fyi, and seeing the dresses and shoes in person did not help.

• Koreatown and Karaoke.

Good food and singing at the top of your lungs to those pop songs you secretly, non-ironically love, at the expense of your voice? Hell yeah!

• The Great Googamooga happened.

If you’re not a foodie living in New York, you may be wondering, “The hell is a Googasdjkflasda?” Think of it as a glutton’s paradise, the Burning Man for your taste buds, a festival devoted entirely to food.

There were different food stalls where you could buy food/drinks from some of the best vendors/restaurants/trucks in the area: Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, Colicchio & Sons, Jean Georges, Brooklyn Soda Works, Momofuku, Red Rooster Harlem, Calexico … you name it! I realize that if you do not live in NY, these names probably mean absolutely jackshit to you — just take my word for it when I say that these are all things that are synonymous with mouth-watering, good food. We good? Bacon Flight, as you can see above, was a sampling of different bacon from all the BLT rock stars.

Beer tasting!

Wine tasting!

My friends and I got to the festival on the second day with the singular goal of pigging out. Trust me, I am ashamed at the level of gluttony I unlocked that day. In fact, I am still ashamed to the point where I have been stocking up on veggies to atone for the amount of meat that I had shamelessly devoured that day.

Screw Wheaties — this is the breakfast of champions!

Thai sausage from DBGB

Pork belly tacos from Colicchio & Sons

M. Wells‘ Horse Bologna and Foie Gras Grilled Cheese

Soft shell crab sandwich at Vinegar Hill House

Foie gras doughnut (YEAH, you heard me!) at Do or Dine

Verdict? Soft-shell crab sandwich was a winner. However, the foie gras offerings made me realize just how much I’ll miss foie gras when the California ban finally takes effect.

• FOOD. Yes, there was Googamooga, but even that doesn’t wholly account for the amount of hedonism my stomach has experienced. Let’s be honest — when I came up with a list of things to do for this visit, all of the items on the list were food related: go eat at Shake Shack, buy macarons at Ladurée, get chicken and rice at 53rd and 6th, etc. So if it’s a surprise to any of you that I spent the good majority of this trip eating, then we have probably never met before.

1. How cute is this Hello Kitty case?
2. MACARONS!!!

You honestly have no idea of the level of jealousy-induced rage I experienced when I left New York back in the summer, only to hear that they were bringing Ladurée to Manhattan. The timing was a slap in the face — I could hear the echoes of New York all the way from California: “HAHAHAHA, this is what you get for leaving us, sucker!”. THE INJUSTICE. THE RAGE. THE UNFAIRNESS OF IT ALL, I seethed.

But if I can’t have the constant presence of Ladurée in my city, surely I can settle for a six-pack of macarons that I can bring home. It’s hardly a consolation prize, but who am I — who have I ever been — to pass up macarons? And if you must know, I got rose, cherry blossom, pistachio, fleur du sel caramel — among other flavors. Pity they didn’t have my all-time favorite flavor: licorice.

Also, another thing that I’ve taken for granted in New York is the fact that everything is open 24/7. In SF, it kind of blows when I’m craving a sandwich at 9pm (a perfectly reasonable dinner hour for a 20-something who tends to work a little late, mind you), only to find that the sandwich places close at 7pm. In NY, it’s never too early or too late to be taking public transportation, you don’t need a map to figure out where you are and how to get from point A to point B, you can hail a cab virtually anywhere without having to stand in a 45-minute queue and yell at the person behind you that you were first in line and therefore you get precedence (ugh, Caltrain), and you can walk down the street during the late night without having to bat a single eye or worrying that you’ll get chased down the street and harassed (ugh, true story). The sad thing is, I never realize how much I miss (or appreciate, even) those things until I’m already across the country.

“They talk about the reasons why they might leave —- there are many and they all are valid — which invariably include the desire to have more space, more bang for your buck, and needing to make healthier lifestyle choices. Maybe they’ll go through with it and leave it all behind. What they talk about when they talk about living in New York will be treated like a valuable faded Polaroid you always keep in your top drawer. Whatever happens with you and the city though, you’ll always regard it with a sense of fondness, and above all, feel lucky you got to experience it at all. Time has a way of removing the blemishes so after a certain point, you’ll have forgotten about the high rents and the lousy jobs and the tears you shed in public spaces, and choose to remember only the creamy delicious frosting on an otherwise stale and overpriced cake.” – What People Talk About When They Talk About Life In New York

So yeah, New York is an egocentric, self-aggrandizing city with an overly inflated sense of self-worth. It’s too crazy and it’s “not for everybody”, say people from the outside looking in. I’m not going to argue with that assessment, since, yes, it is a crazy city, and one that wholeheartedly believes that it’s the center of the universe. But for four years, it was the center of mine, and I think it still is, because even though I’ve lived in California for almost a year now, I still feel that odd sense of displacement whenever somebody brings up that city. I feel it, even now, as I’m typing this entry in the comfort of my apartment, 3,000 miles away.

I, being the jaded veteran to snowy winters, often kanyeshrugged at my friends’ visceral reactions to the first snowflakes on Columbia’s campus (“SNOW!!!!!!!1111″). And, you know, I thought my blasé attitude was totally merited — until this topic of snow was brought up at work several months back. I thought Columbia was strange, but being in the company of people who had lived in California their whole lives was a total eye-opener altogether. However, as I tried to rack up memories of white Christmases in a vain attempt to prove that not everybody has been deprived of snow, I mentally came up with a list of winters past. But then I realized that I couldn’t mention the Christmas before, because I had been sweating bullets and enjoying the sunset at Angkor Wat. Nor could I mention the year before, because I had spent Christmas riding elephants in Bangkok. Or the year before, because I had just arrived in Sydney. Mid-conversation, I found myself at a loss for words, as I had to actually stop and think about the last time I had a holiday season with snow, and I eventually came to the stunning conclusion that I have not had an actual white Christmas since …

… wait for it …

… middle school.

Case in point:
2010: Vietnam, Cambodia
2009: Thailand
2008: Australia
2007: Florida
2006: Mexico
2005: Indianapolis … and it didn’t snow! Hah!
2004: Las Vegas
2003: Mexico
2002 and before: HAHAHA COME ON. All I remember was that I was in middle school and therefore, I was an irritable, pubescent teenager with a crotchety temper, an unhealthy addiction to Neopets, and an alarming tendency to rage over petty middle school drama on her LiveJournal. Anything from this time period will remain forever blotted out in my memory.

That said, if the past 8 years are anything to go by, it’s that I am presumably fated to spend the holidays in a place that Does Not Snow. Luckily, this hasn’t served as a source of bother for me, because (a) warm weather? Bring it! and (b) I don’t really buy into stereotypical holidays anyway. So obviously, it made perfectly logical sense that the 2011 family Christmas trip would take place in Bali, with a bit of time to spare in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

See, since moving to San Francisco, I was essentially in a bit of a rut up until December, travel-wise, seeing as I’m the type of person who demands a temporary change in pace every 3 months or so, lest I go stir-crazy. Besides a two-day work offsite to Monterrey and a visit to my relatives down in San Diego, I had essentially been in the same city (and okay, surrounding area) for nearly six months. And for somebody who thrives on expeditions and excursions, I was going nuts.

Now, enter Bali. Tropical island, lush, green, bursting with fauna — about as far removed from San Francisco as you could get and very much worth the eight hours of flying.

To paint a portrait of Bali requires lots and lots of green paint. No matter where you are on the island, you’re constantly immersed in a thick blanket of greenery, and for somebody who’s so used to urban landscapes and wide open seascapes (none of which are green in the slightest, at least not in a visual sense), it’s a marvel to stare outside your car window just to soak in the scenery. That, and green is my favorite color, so.

If you had to ask me to name my top five animals, monkeys would rank pretty high up there, along with cranes and tigers and dragons (shut up, dragons so count — I will always be proud of my zodiac sign!). So, of course, I was ecstatic when we went to Ubud Monkey Forest, which — surprise, surprise — is populated by a cartload of monkeys. Fun fact: the collective noun for monkeys is indeed “cartload”. Or tribe, troupe, or barrel. I think I prefer cartload.

The forest reminds me a bit of Kenya, in that the monkeys are just right there and in front of you. As cool as zoos are, it sucks that you’re usually separated from the animal by this barrier of glass, whereas in places like Masai Mara and Ubud, there’s no feeling of restriction. There were monkeys literally everywhere that I’m surprised that I didn’t catch some funky monkey disease.

When you’re in Bali, you’ll see these things a lot: tiny, handwoven baskets placed on oversized leaves. These baskets usually contain flowers, money, incense, and the like — and believe me when I say that you’ll see them everywhere: temples, doorsteps, spas, the ground. Balinese families place these spiritual offerings (prepared by the women) every morning on the ground as their way of giving thanks.

Because it’s not a Cindy post until there’s food porn, here you go.

If you ever go to Bali, you must must MUST eat suckling pig. Good suckling pig is roasted to melt-in-your-mouth perfection and the skin fried to a delicious crackle and holy SHIT, is it amazing.

Another dish worthy of note is the Bebek Bengil Crispy Duck at Dirty Duck — it’s different than the duck I’m used to (roasted Peking duck!); think less succulent, but with far more crisp.

Unfortunately, as the Bali leg of our trip was winding down, we finally experienced the true meaning of the rainy season. We had been spared the precipitation for the first few days, but man, when it rains in Bali, it really freaking pours.

A caveat when travelling to Bali: wear pants (I probably shouldn’t have to explain this one) and invest in some good insect repellent and Cortisone. I cannot stress this enough. As somebody who has served as walking, talking bait for mosquitos for well over two decades (years of living in a house shrouded by trees and slumming it in summer camps out in the woods have made me a survivor of countless mosquito bites), I can safely say that you WILL be bitten relentlessly.

Exhibit A: (Please don’t actually click this if you have extremely delicate sensibilities.) my legs after the very first day in Bali. Trust me, it did not get any better after that night. The itching got so unbearable, so I ended up scratching my legs so raw to the point where my ankles swelled to the size of grapefruits and I was limping rather pathetically to my plane from Denpasar to Singapore three days later. Not to mention, I realized that Bali is a hotspot for dengue fever, which is not exactly reassuring.

Bottom line: mosquito bites, thou art a bitch. Also, I do not have dengue fever. The end.

Anyway, one day of being a temporary cripple did little to deter me from exploring Kuala Lumpur. If you’re ever in KL, check out the Butterfly Park and the National Mosque! And wear lots of sunscreen!

There you have it! A Christmas holiday post in the dead of May — ha! In the meantime, I have to go do laundry and pack for my trip to New York. That said, I’m going to be a bit of travelling within the US over the next four weeks, for a variety of reasons that range from work to pleasure to family-related things, so if you’re going to be in the following cities, shoot me an email: New York, Seattle, Providence, Chicago, or Boston.

For those who have no clue what/where Napa is, you should watch The Parent Trap (yes, the Lindsay Lohan redux) and jog your memory.

Anyway! We were hungry (surprise, surprise), so we first grabbed lunch at Bottega:

polenta under glass

butternut squash caramelle with bosc pear, pecorino, crispy sage, brown butter emulsion and amaretti – poppy seed gremolata

This was so amazingly good that you’re going to have to suffer through a second photo. Sorry I’m not sorry.

Am I the only one who finds it kind of hilarious that there’s a Bouchon Bakery in Napa of all places? I had always associated the place with the very shiny Columbus Circle back in New York, so to see it in the middle of Napa was a bit of a pleasant surprise!

Chickens from the French Laundry farms — cluck cluck!

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, I took my friend around the city, where we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown:

…the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, where we got a French toast and a halibut sandwich from Rose Pistola:

…and — of course — In-N-Out. (I still prefer Shake Shack any day, but hey — I’ll take the next best thing if I can’t have my Shackburger-minus-the-tomato.)

Anyway! On a related aside, I will actually be heading back to New York, my favorite city in the history of ever, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, next Wednesday. I’ve missed that place something fierce, and I’ll probably express my nostalgia with my mediums of choice being retail therapy and eating ALL OF THE THINGS. It’s like performance art! Kind of!

And yes, I will be eating Shake Shack.

1. The weather is balls cold. Yeah, you could make the argument that (1) it was smack dab in the middle of February and (2) gosh, what was I even supposed to expect — 70-degree balmy weather? But even London and Edinburgh felt leagues warmer than this, even under my coat and woolly sweaters, and weirdly enough, it felt warmer during the evening than the morning.

   Okay, maybe the fact that I was on a boat during my stay might have contributed to the cold-weather feeling, but. Still.

   COLD.

2. Yes, you can get by just fine with English.

Anyway, unlike the UK, it was my first time in the Netherlands, the country that graced us with many wonderful things in life, such as speculoos, Gouda cheese, Pieter Bruegel, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Van Bommel, Arjen Robben, and Sven Kramer — so I was excited, natch. Even the fact that EasyJet tried to swindle me out of $60 because I had two pieces of hand luggage on the Edinburgh-Amsterdam flight (really, EasyJet, really?!) did little to dampen my excitement. Or the fact that we spent forever and a half trying to find the right train to take to Centraal station, because screw this — I was in Amsterdam, and I was going to enjoy this, damnit.

A train ride and fifteen minutes of lugging our suitcases across a bridge, we arrived at our hostel:

QUESTION: guess how many people can fit into this boat. You’ll see why in a few minutes!

Before you start yelling out Lonely Island lyrics at me (“I’M ON A BOAT! EVERYBODY LOOK AT ME ‘CAUSE I’M SAILING ON A BOAT!”), yes, I was on a boat. A boat that happened to be my hostel. Seriously, how many opportunities do you get to stay on a boat? This ain’t Sea World.

Pop culture references aside, there’s a certain novelty to staying in a houseboat. It’s quieter and far less intrusive than most hostels, and there’s a nice sun deck. And you get bragging rights because chances are, your accommodations are infinitely cooler than the person next to you. However, a 5-star hotel these are not. For one, the rooms are tiny. You thought hostels were cramped? Hahahaha! Try this on for size: think of the smallest dorm room your college had to offer, cut that in half, and add two people. Yep.

Okay, did you guess the number of people that boat can fit? 36, guys. Thirty-six. Kid you not.

Confession time: I might have eaten my entire weight in pancakes when I was in Amsterdam. Number of regrets? Zero.

This ain’t your typical IHOP fare — I had my banana pancake long after breakfast. Dutch pancakes are different in that they don’t have that rich, bloat-inducing fluffiness that you’d usually find in American breakfast fare, but rather a lighter, crispier feel. (In order of ascending thickness, I’d say that crepes < Dutch pancakes < American pancakes.) And they’re usually not soaked in a plate of syrup, so you could eat them straight-up without feeling like you need to chug a gallon of water. To compensate for the thinness though, the pancakes are huge, like the size of a satellite dish. In America, pancakes are rarely ever larger than a Frisbee.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my American pancakes (three guesses as to what I ate this morning, first two don’t count!) as much as the next person, but Dutch pancakes are a different specimen all their own.

Also, I love stroopwafels.

This wasn’t my first time eating a croquette (hi, Barcelona!), but man, does Van Dobben do them well. Croquettes are basically meat and potato (hee, thanks Emma!) encased in deep-fried bread crumbs — which translates to warm, savory goodness that’s a perfect pick-me-up for those cold nights when you’re absolutely starving.

Because our hostel didn’t provide Internet, we had to go to the nearby library for our wifi fix: the Openbare Bibliotheek. This, my friends, is not your run-of-the-mill library. As much as I do adore quaint, storied libraries filled with old books and history for centuries, I do love love love shininess:

Food and sports aside, a huge reason why I wanted to visit Amsterdam was because of the art. There’s like some unwritten law of the universe that wherever art museums are, I will follow. If I couldn’t fulfill my lifelong dream of living in a treehouse, I’d want to live in an art museum. Anyway, I’m kind of obsessed with Flemish painting, because it has a certain modesty, down-to-earth quality to it that translates into charm. It doesn’t overwhelm me; for one, I’ve never been a huge fan of excessively showy art, like that of Mannerism or Rococo — which is probably why I can appreciate the pared-down simplicity that has characterized most of Dutch painting. Granted, Van Gogh is probably the exception to the rule here, but damn, does he have an awesome museum devoted to him. My friend and I went to the Van Gogh Museum, which, sadly, does not allow photography, otherwise I would have spammed this post with enough Van Gogh to make you start seeing things in swirly paintstrokes forever. I did buy this postcard of Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers by Paul Gauguin, because (a) I love Gauguin and (b) I love both Gauguin and Van Gogh.

I’ve noticed with most major cities that museums tend to be clustered together — 5th Avenue/Museum Mile for New York, the Golden Triangle of Art in Madrid, and the Orangerie + Louvre + d’Orsay combo in Paris for starters — and Amsterdam is no exception. If that isn’t good urban planning, I don’t know what is. There’s the Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk (which was closed for renovations, alas!), and the Rijksmuseum, which houses a nice but modestly-sized collection of Dutch art, mostly of the painting variety:

The famous Milkmaid painting by Johannes Vermeer.

The Night Watch by Rembrandt — it’s like my Art Humanities class revisited!

By this point, my stomach was bemoaning the fact that I hadn’t had much to eat besides breakfast from forever ago, so I gave in and got … fries. Somewhere out there, the nutrition gods were shaking their head and sighing. However! These were not just your ordinary greasy fries that you can easily get at McDonald’s or your generic fast food place. These were frites.

We went to Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx to order a helping of oorlog frites: (war) fries with two large dollops of peanut sauce and mayo — a wonderful mix of savory and sweet!

The funny thing about the stand is that they close at 6pm — which, from a business standpoint, makes zero sense. Let’s be real: this is perfect drunk food! Perfect. And — I mean, think about all the money you could make off of all the drunk people at stupid o’clock. The Pommes Frites stand in New York always gets ridiculous lines at 2am, and considering that Dutch nightlife is pretty happening around that time as well, you could earn so much bank. There’s some food for thought.

Anyway, our real lunch-dinner (linner? dunch?) was had at this adorable little cafe, Gartine, where they grow their own veggies and fruits in their local garden:

Even now, more than two months after the trip, I still find myself missing the Europe trip something burning. Not just because it was a fun experience, but more about the fact that I find myself more wanderlustful than ever. The thing about living in San Francisco is that it’s far more expensive to fly outside the country, a fact that I had always taken for granted when I lived in NY. Back when I lived in the East Coast, it was so easy to hunt for a good travel deal that could take you to Europe or South America or whathaveyou, but everything feels so isolated from California (and the West Coast in general). Going to another continent will take you at least 8 hours via plane. Scouring the Internet and the travel section of the bookstore for future trip ideas has become somewhat disheartening, because there are so many more logistics to consider (Are there direct flights from SFO? Should I do a red-eye flight? Do I even have enough vacation days from work?! Does this city have a Google office where I can work remotely and not squander any of my vacation days?!) and finding a good travel deal is worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Basically, I’m not entirely sure about the next time I’ll be able to travel to Western Europe again, but it will be dearly missed!

Welp, until next time!

P.S. Now that I’m finally done blogging about this trip, I realize that I’m grossly backlogged on most of the trips I’ve taken in the past few years (Bali, Italy, Greece, Hong Kong, Korea, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, Egypt — oy vey). I haven’t even edited, let alone opened, the Italy and Greece photos from the trip that I took in June 2011. I’m thinking that my next series of posts will be centered around Bali, and then I’ll (gradually) work my way back. It’ll be a challenge on how far I can overstretch my memory, but we’ll see!

P.P.S. The entire Flickr set of my Amsterdam photos can be viewed here. Clicking on the images also takes you to the full-size page.

Anyway, this past month has been super in that I’ve had quite a few college friends visit me, which means I get to play Tour Guide and shamelessly do touristy things in a very non-ironic fashion. And as much as I do love jetting off to new locales, it’s nice to have a good staycation every now and then! This particular one happened about three weeks ago in early April (see, I’m getting better at this posting-things-on-time business!):

George and I woke up bright and early to brave the hour-long line outside of Mama’s on Washington Square, a cute little brunch place that gets as much notoriety for the long line as it does for the amazing food. We got there around 9am on a Saturday (an extraordinary feat, if you think about it), and we still had to stand outside for a good hour before we were seated.

Spoiler alert: the food is actually REALLY, REALLY GOOD. And yes, worth the wait.

I had the Dungeness Crab Benedict, which is — you guessed it — eggs benedict with dungeness crab. And spinach too! And HOLY SHIT is it good in that mouth-watering, brb-I-can-go-die-happy-now calibre of good. I’m usually not a brunch person (the thought of me waking up early enough to eat brunch is a completely laughable concept), but this? This is downright porn for the taste buds.

George got the breakfast sandwich, and I might have been tempted to steal a bite off his plate if it weren’t for the fact that I have an extremely irrational dislike of tomatoes.

The weather was so nice that day that it was practically begging us to take advantage (hurr hurr) and do something that didn’t involve being a hermit and staying indoors. Not too hard of a challenge, right? Anyway, we decided to bike across this random bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon. Apparently, this bridge is really famous and tourists dig this shit:

Once we biked downhill to Sausalito, we treated ourselves to ice cream at Lappert’s, where I got a pistachio cone.

Biking to Tiburon was a relatively easy ride, though we were tempted once again by the allure of ice cream (what! It was a nice day!), this time at The Grass Shack Organic Ice Cream, where I got a honey lavender scoop. By the time we caught the ferry back to SF, our energy levels were basically feeding off of two ice cream cones. No lunch — just ice cream and breakfast that we had gotten hours ago. Yep — talk about a balanced diet.

Once we were back in SF, we went to Gigi’s Sotto Mare, mostly because George wanted to try the cioppino, which is rumoured to be the best in the city. He seemed to agree:

Unsurprisingly, we passed out before 11pm that day. Now keep the old geezer jokes to yourself.

The next day was relatively low-key, as our asses hurt from all the biking. Since I live relatively close to Japantown, we walked over to the Japantown Center and grabbed lunch at Maki:

We then took a bus to Chinatown, where we checked out a bunch of the shops and bought some egg tarts, before I went to arguably the best concert of my life: Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel fame. Let’s just say that every single expectation I had was completely blown out of the water and I have been forever ruined into thinking other concerts will be just as great as this one. Hearing your absolute favorite song of all-time (and your absolute favorite album of all-time) live? That’s mind-blowing in and of itself. Also, the fact that he performed April 8th on April 8th? Priceless.

So, yeah. The verdict stands: it was a good weekend.

You’d think a one hour flight would be a relatively painless affair, but in our case, getting from London to Edinburgh turned out to be a bitch and a half. For starters, there was the long train ride to Gatwick airport at butt o’clock in the morning. Actually, it was earlier than any reasonable morning hour, so let’s make that the butt crack of dawn. Annoying, but fair enough, considering we wanted to have the entire day in Scotland. Then, in the middle of our inspecting our luggage and checking our tickets, EasyJet arbitrarily closed check-in earlier than the time listed on our ticket, which meant that only one of us was able to get on the flight. Several WTFs and moments of squabbling and extraneous transfer fees later, they put my friend on a later ticket, so I ended up with a few hours to spare in Edinburgh alone.

Unfortunately, that was not my only horrific experience with EasyJet during this trip (more to come later in Amsterdam), but honestly? At this point, it’s neither here nor there, so moving on! Anyway, I got to Edinburgh, took the bus to Princes Street (the main shopping street in the city), took another bus to the hostel, checked in, dropped off the suitcase, walked through the Meadows and back to Princes Street, and grabbed lunch because I was starving and sleep-deprived at this point.

Lunch was had at Urban Angel, a cute little cafe with an emphasis on seasonal/fresh ingredients. I ordered a mighty delicious pumpkin and butternut squash risotto with mushrooms and topped it off with a warm cup of hot chocolate. The wait took a while, much to the chagrin of my stomach, but it gave me some downtime to find some places to visit while waiting for my friend to fly in.

After walking around for a bit, I decided to check out some of the museums, mainly the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery. The former is a bit hard to describe, as it’s part history museum, part natural science museum, part technology museum, and everything else in between (taxidermy, mummies, and computers — oh my!). A total smörgåsbord as far as museums go, but that’s what makes it interesting!

As for the National Gallery, they’ve got a small but decently-sized collection devoted to portraits. Unfortunately, they don’t allow photography, so no pictures from my end. However! If you’re into art, it’s definitely worth exploring — it’s free, too!

After going shopping on Princes Street, the lack of sleep was starting to kick in (stupid morning flights), so I went back to the hostel and took a nap to rest up — which was good timing, because my friend had flown in. As for the next day, I woke up bright and early with a singular goal in mind: visit The Elephant House.

Before you ask the three obvious questions (“Why?”, “What’s an elephant house?”, “There are elephants in Edinburgh?”), this probably merits a bit of backstory.

Anybody who’s ever known me in good capacity knows that I am a diehard Harry Potter fan. It is the one thing that can turn me into a shameless sap and the one thing where I can stay up for hours during the late night reading a 700-plus page book and the one thing that will convince me to wait an entire day for a midnight premiere. In terms of personal/emotional investment, I owe J.K. Rowling a shit ton, basically. So obviously, I had to make the pilgrimage to the Elephant House, the cafe where JKR wrote Harry Potter way, way back in the day. For any HP fan, this is like Mecca.

As much as I love a good peanut butter and banana toast and a pot of Earl Grey for breakfast, the real highlight for me was going to the bathroom.

…which sounds incredibly disturbing and insulting on so many levels, the more I think about it. (Sorry, Elephant House!) However! The bathroom is actually famous for good reason:

Harry Potter fans like to scrawl their messages of thanks and gratitude to the goddess herself, J.K. Rowling, on the walls of the bathroom. The notes range from the sappy and heartwarming to the downright hilarious to the so-esoteric-only-hardcore-HP-fans-would-understand (“Always.”), but they make for the best bathroom reading ever. Screw magazines and newspapers. If you ever go, be sure to check out the bottom half of the right wall of the girls’ restroom for my humble contribution:

Looking at these photos, I regret not taking a Sharpie with me — alas!

After breakfast, my friend and I went up to Edinburgh Castle, where we got some fantastic views of the city.

And because it’s near impossible to talk about Scotland without at least one mention of haggis, I will say that yes, I ate haggis. And I liked it. (And no, it did not taste like cherry Chapstick.) I mean, I get that it’s not for the faint of heart or the pickiest of eaters (when’s the last time you had a craving for sheep’s stomach?), but then again, you’re talking to somebody who’s eaten fried scorpions and deep-fried grasshoppers without a single fig to give. So needless to say, we ended up ordering a plate at The Amber and finishing the entire thing, along with whisky to boot.

Before we flew to Scotland, I was told by my friend Sabrina to get a deep-fried Mars Bar, and while I’m not one of those deep-fry-happy people, I figured why the hell not. It took a bit of Googling and walking, but we finally found a random fish fry and got our 28 billion calories’ worth of gooey, deep-fried, chocolatey goodness. Much, much better than a deep-fried Twinkie, but as far as deep-frying goes, Oreos still reign supreme for me.

With everything checked off our proverbial to-do list, we did a lot more walking around with a bit of time to kill before our flight. My friend (the politics geek) took us to the Scottish Parliament where we got to sit in on a parliamentary debate, before we got reminded of our days in high school forensics. While exploring Edinburgh’s many closes (I wish the US had these!), we stopped by the Writers’ Museum, which is focused on Burns, Scott, and Stevenson. After a bit of window shopping, we repacked our bags for the next (and sadly, the last!) leg of our trip — Amsterdam!

Also, as a sidenote, all of my Edinburgh photos can be viewed here! You can also view all my UK photos here.

Such was my dilemma the night before London, when I tried to rack up a to-do list of sorts. But aside from Stonehenge, the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Tate Modern, and London Fashion Week, nothing really jumped out at me. I mean, sure, I could go museum hopping (British Museum! V&A! Tate Britain! Oh my!), revisit places like Buckingham Palace, and/or do lots of walking around the city, as I’m usually wont to do, but for the sake of time constraints and the soles of my feet, I took it easy this time around. That’s what I love about London: the way the city generously expands and contracts to fit your schedule, whether you want to stuff your itinerary with every tourist destination known to man and Lonely Planet or throw caution to the wind and just amble around to your heart’s content. In short, this translates to a lack of touristy things in this post (if that’s what you’re interested in, I’ve got photos from my first trip here for your perusal!) — save for the photo below of this totally random clock and Stonehenge (more later on that!).

Getting to Stonehenge was tricky (for me, at least!), as living in New York, San Francisco, and Shanghai has spoiled me into thinking that visiting any tourist destination is easy as taking a subway and boom, you’re there. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case with Stonehenge. Googling “how to get to stonehenge from london” the night before resulted in lots of head-scratching and “Sooooo, I take the train from London to Salisbury, but how the hell do I get from Salisbury to Stonehenge?!” and inevitable confusion on my part. And if you’re anything of a late sleeper like I am, chances are, you’re probably going to miss the last Stonehenge tour bus by the time you even arrive in Salisbury. Bummer.

But fear not! I ran into a few people at the train station who were in the same boat as I was (tourists who barely had an inkling of what they were doing, save for the fact that they wanted to visit Stonehenge), and we split a cab, which was actually a good move on our part, seeing as a) it’s faster, b) the driver gives you 30 min at Stonehenge and drives you back to the station (trust me, you’ll hardly need more than half an hour), and c) you don’t feel obligated to go on those guided tours. So! For future tourists to Stonehenge, that’s your answer to your Google query: take a cab from Salisbury.

Right! Stonehenge! Basically, it’s set up so that you’re walking in a circle around the stones — pretty straightforward stuff. The stones aren’t quite as monolithic as I’d expected them to be — either that, or I’ve just been raised on too many travel features that give me unrealistic expectations of manmade wonders. It’s kind of like that feeling when you see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre for the first time, where your brain automatically makes the connection between greatness and size and thus believes that the most talked about painting in the world is this giant ass canvas, but you finally get to the painting, only to find that it’s about as average-sized as any old painting could be, and you go, “Wait, what.” because you expected to be physically floored by this masterpiece, and you’re … not. Still, though, Stonehenge is a masterpiece, and it’s interesting to frame it in its historical context and imagine the crazy mechanics that must have taken place for any person to have created it. Either that, or I’ve spent way too much time in engineering school.

Other noteworthy things include visiting the Tate Modern (I could spend forever and a half at the Poetry and Dream exhibit, but for your sake, I’ll spare you all of the fluttery feelings I have for de Chirico.) …

… and catching the shows at London Fashion Week! The perfect place to people watch and pretend that you’re a credible photographer, hah! I saw Kanye at Mark Fast, which was all kinds of crazy for the fashion photogs, but unfortunately, I only managed to walk away with a blurred snapshot of the back of his head. This, my friends, is why I would fail as a member of the paparazzi.

And of course, there is no such thing as a proper travel post unless there’s at least one gratuitous food photo. We all know the bad rep British food gets (so bland! so uninspired! &c.), but let’s be real — when I’m hungry, I honestly can’t be arsed to care less.

Ironically, my first meal at Wagamama was actually in Boston (shhh!), but I’ll always associate it with London. Say what you want about chain restaurants, but Wagamama has a special place reserved in my heart for their Ginger White Chocolate Cheesecake alone. I was spectacularly hungry that night (to frame this in context, it was around 10pm and my stomach was crying tears of anguish by that point, which translated into the most unattractive stomach growling in the history of ever), so I got the Yasai Katsu curry, which is eggplant, butternut squash, and sweet potato encrusted in katsu and glazed in curry. Even as I type this entry at like, 9am, I now have a ridiculous craving for sweet poatoes that I never knew I had before. Hrrrm.

And scoff all you want, but I love Pret A Manger. Now this is interesting, because I associate Pret with New York, despite its British roots. Back when I used to intern in Midtown in 2009, I used to grab a Chicken Avocado sandwich, Blueberry Yogurt Parfait, and a LOVE bar from one of the many Prets scattered acrossed the neighborhood before I’d have to knuckle down for work in the afternoon. Ahh, nostalgia! Since moving to California, I’ve had a gaping Pret-shaped hole in my heart that I feared would never be filled — until I went on this trip and was reunited with my favorite grab-and-go sandwich and ultra-cute packaging! The one downside is that the British version of the Chicken Avocado contains yogurt dressing instead of Balsamic, but pahhh, a Pret sandwich is a Pret sandiwch is a Pret sandwich. Also, it makes for good food to bring along the train ride, am I right?

You know, now that I think about it, I think I used London as a way to experience all the things that I miss about New York: Pret, Fashion Week, MUJI — yes, MUJI! My favorite favorite favorite store — I could seriously live in a MUJI world where all the furniture is made of light beech wood and everything is written with a .5mm pen and everything is either clear or white or light brown and I could die happy.

I ended up tagging along with my friend to go to Fortnum & Mason, and the visit was worth it for the packaging alone — a lovely juxtaposition of old-fashioned and modern!

On our last day in London, my friend and I went to Sheba in Brick Lane for some good ol’ Indian food, as evidenced by this photo of naan. For those who have never had naan before, it is like the god of all carbs.

…and of course, I couldn’t leave England without having an actual scone with clotted cream!