Still not sure about what to do this Bank Holiday weekend? If you’re coming to or staying in London you might want to head towards the West End and and enjoy a weekend of Caribbean fun at the Notting Hill Carnival.

The Carnival is a tradition that dates back to the Mid-60s, taking place over 2 days (Sunday and Monday) on the August Bank Holiday weekend. It is often (incorrectly) referred to as the Jamaican Carnival, but its roots are in fact to be found in the “Trini” community, which have been populating the area since the 50s.

What to expect

Music and food

Music and food are the two things I’m looking forward to the most. I am hugely into Caribbean sounds, mostly Ska and Rocksteady. There’s going to be plenty of that, as well as Calypso, Soca and some Samba too. There’s going to be plenty of soundsystems around the area, so make sure you “shop around” and find the best one for you.

The food is amazing: you will find plenty of stalls around, with Jerk Chicken being probably the most traditional option. Curried Goat and Rice and Peas are also to be tried, so make sure you taste a bit of everything. Remember, it’s always best to share with friends, you get to try more stuff!

Safety

Yes, there have been a few incidents in the past. No one can guarantee there’s nothing happening this year, so make sure you use some common sense while going to the Carnival. Avoid bringing a lot of cash with you, and do not show off cameras, phones and the usual 2.0 gadgeteria: pickpockets are going to be around, despite the police presence.

Getting there

Make sure you get to Notting Hill by public transport, and take your time because the area is going to be very crowded. Some tube stations immediately surrounding the Carnival are going to be either closed (such as Ladbroke Grove) or will have a reduced service (for example there is not going to be the any changing between the Circle and the Central lines at Notting Hill Gate). Buses serving the area will most likely be diverted. The obvious suggestion is to check the TFL website for the dedicated page. They should know better than me.

If you’re coming from outside London, it’s probably worth staying for the whole weekend, possibly getting to London on the Saturday before the Carnival. Obviously it’s great if you have friends around (and maybe crash at theirs), but if you don’t then check VoucherCodes, they have a discount on Travelodge hotels (Notting Hill Gate tube is about mid-way between 2 of their hotels, so you might give it a go).

Alternatives

On the same weekend, if you’re further North in England, you could go to the Leeds West Indian Carnival, which has also been running for a similar amount of time. Also, there’s the Summer Madness festival at the Isle of Whight: there’s a great lineup and I happen to have two tickets I’m selling.

(edit: check also out my friend Kat’s post over at WeekendNotes)

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I’ve recently been discovering the Green side of the web, and was amazed by the numbers and the quality of such websites and blogs, not only worldwide but also UK-based, as I’ve been doing a bit of work with Tesco lately.

I got to know extremely interesting campaigns, informative websites, real-life-situations blogs, inspirational stories, and cool products.

One of the ideas I liked the most is JugIt, a (guess what?) jug specifically designed to work well with milk bags. Milk bags are particularly clever and “easy” on the environment when compared to the regular milk bottles, as they use 75% less plastic. The jug is very easy to use and it only takes three steps to have your milk ready for your cup. It is now available for purchase at some Tesco and Sainsbury stores (with full list on the JugIt website), as well as Ocado.

Of course, you can only use it if your store sells milk bags, which, again, it’s not as common as it probably should be.

All in all, I think it’s a great idea and above all a very simple one to implement in your dayliy life, as it realy does not change your “behaviour” (you still buy milk, and you still pour it in your cup, only thing you need to do is put the bag in the jug, and wash it between uses). I’ve been using it only for a couple of weeks but I’m very happy with it, and I hope stores find the milk bags worth keeping (as in, I hope they sell) because I’d really like to keep on using it.

(Please note, this is not a paid post, nor it has anything to do with what I’ve been working on lately. I just like the idea)

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East London is anything but the white polished area you may find around Sloan Square, Chelsea or Mayfair, but is getting more and more attention for its vintage markets around Brick Lane, quite popular for its trendy young residents, artists and vibrant night-life. Matteo’s mum came to visit us last week for a couple of days and after her day tour around the city she suggested us where it would be great for us to live: Belgravia ahahah a bit over our budget for the moment but yes, totally different from the Mile End-Stepney Green area where we are now.

Last Saturday I met a friend for lunch and then decided to take a walk from Bishopsgate to Broadway Market and then back walking randomly to find something cool by serendipity on our way home.

Our “tour” started at Pizza Express: although the Pizza is not amazing, it is nice enough for a quick meal, the service is quick and the prices are quite competitive, especially when you subscribe to their newsletter and get a notification every time there is an offer, such as 2 for 1 meal deals or, as for this time, the second main for 45p. Hurrah!

So check out what’s going on each week…

We walked to Hackney Farm, through Spietalfields market, Hanbury Street (where we visited a vintage market) and Columbia Road, to find out what animals and products we could find at the farm.

Hackney City Farm is not huge, but to be in such a central location it is surprising to find so many animals, such as cows, goats, pigs, a donkey and numerous chickens and ducks. You can also have a tea and cake in their nice restaurant “Frizzante Café”, meet the animals at around 4pm for their feeding time, and I guess you can even buy some fresh eggs if you’d like to.

My friend and I have been impressed by Henrietta the pig, who responded to her owner’s grunts and finally got up for the kids and our pleasure!

We eventually left the farm walking to Broadway Market. The market is similar to Borough Market in terms of food quality and variety, but much smaller in terms of stalls number. If you are looking for fresh vegetables, cheese, bread and cakes this is a nice place to go on a Saturday, close to the canal, combined with a nice mix of vintage clothes and accessories stalls.

We’ve tried a bit of everything within the stalls, including cheese, olives and olive oil products from Italy

We walked back following the canal and came out on Kingsland road, stopping at a Chinese supermarket to take some pictures of colourful noodles packages and find products I’ve never ever heard of in my entire life. Exploring other’s culture’s supermarkets is a trip itself and I strongly recommend it to anyone. Buying it and cooking it is another story… but we’ve seen several people with books and magazines with Chinese recipes looking for ingredients impossible to find anywhere else.

We finished our nice day out hours later with an Italian style aperitivo at the Boundary Rooftop. I’ve heard of this place before but I thought it was too posh or to expensive to try, but since we where in the mood for anything different we gave it a go. I found the Boundary is a very special place and spot in London, nice good quality people and nice décor, although the view I could get sitting on the benches was not as cool as I expected.

I decided to start with an Italian white wine that was served in a normal water glass, and not in a nice wine glass as I was expecting, but I was in good company and sitting in the sunshine at that point sounded just as the perfect place to be. The service was ok, and the prices where more or less the same as any other central bar, 4.50£ for a glass of wine and 3.50£ for a Peroni.

That’s all for me now and I can’t wait to try something new again and tell you more about it.

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• It is not that far from London
• Jane Austen
• The Roman Thermae Spa

Travelling to Bath from London is not that cheap: a return ticket costs in fact about 48£ per person.

This is why we decided to go straight away when we heard about the offer going on with the Oyster Card from the 26th June for a Month: you can travel to lots of different destinations in England from as little as 5£ each way, or get discounts on other activities within London itself.

The main reason for a visit to Bath was indeed my link to the author who spent a couple of years in the city as well as many people’s description of its beauty.

I’m not a Jane Austen person if with this term you think I’m desperately in love with romantic stories at all costs and a very feminist view of life, but I had to spend lots of time studying her works and life at Uni… and since then we’ve never left each other.

Jane is in fact mentioned in most books, sometimes on newspapers and magazines, for some reasons. So after years of hate and love the relationship with Jane has become more peaceful so that we’ve decided to go and visit her for a Tea.

Bath is a beautiful small city not very far from London. It only takes about a hour and a half from Paddington Station. The surroundings are stunning and as you approach the city becomes clear why this place is so beautiful.

From the train station the city centre is just a few minutes walk.

You can purchase a Visitor Card online or from the tourist centre for as little as 3£ we didn’t buy it this time but I’m sure it is convenient for anyone staying a little bit longer than just an afternoon or so.

We went through most of the main attractions in the city, Including the Sally Lunn’s Refreshments House and Museum, The Cathedral, The Roman Thermae, The Jane Austen Museum, The Circus and the park.

It is all worth a visit but most of all the Thermae are a must. The ticket is not cheap. It costs about 11£ pp but it couldn’t be avoided… is like going to Rome and not visiting the Colosseum I guess.

Before visiting Jane Austen we stopped at a nice café opened for lunch so we dined al fresco with nice panini and a small jug of Pimm’s to share. How British are we becoming?

The Jane Austen museum wasn’t as good as I did imagine: the ticket costs about 6.50£. Every 20 minutes or so you can enter a room where a very nice lady tells you more about life and works of the dear author, but apart from that you can have access at the museum which can be visited in 5 minutes, with general reproductions of portraits and clothes of that time. Then you can sit down and watch a very quick video… and then leave, but not before greeting Jane Austen at the door!

We also decided to stay a bit longer for the experience of having a tea in the Regency tea room, which unfortunately doesn’t have a terrace and is very tiny, so it’s a shame a so pricey museum doesn’t offer as much as it maybe could.

The real house where Jane Austen lived is on the same street at 25 Gay Street where at the moment there’s a dentist.

It was a beautiful warm and sunny day in Bath so we decided to spend the last hour or so at the Park.

Altogether Bath is definitely one of the most charming cities in England we’ve visited so far and we are very looking forward to go back again… maybe for a SPA weekend?

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Gioia, Mattia and Matteo in Trieste, january 2010

He’d like to shoot “off-the-beaten-track” areas, life and people and, considering I’m not a photographer myself, I thought I could ask you guys for some suggestions. I’d love London-based photographers to tell us (and Mattia) about their favourite spots, so that he can come up with a nice reportage.

You can check his previous work in Peru and Sicily on his Flick page and on his blog, too (so you can get an idea of the kind of things he’s after).

Please leave us a shout in the comments!

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We have recently been included in a comprehensive list of 50+ Europe Travel blogs.

We are of course very proud about being included but, at the same time, extremely happy about discovering other blogs we did not know about and we can now follow and “steal” tips from!

Thanks to the guys at GuideToOnlineSchools for including us!

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Gower, May 2010 in a larger map

Friday

It’s been a refreshing and much needed weekend. We left London on the Friday morning before the last Bank Holiday, with our friend Andrea, who was visiting us from Italy, and my cousin Diego, who lives in London. We hired a car from Heathrow, to avoid the mess of exiting central London, and drove some 180 miles along the M4. As we left the car hire to almost the very last minute, the company “only” had an estate Volvo V50 2.0 diesel, which suited us really nicely and made the motorway trip very enjoyable thanks to the cruise control.

We stopped at a Sainsbuy’s in Swansea to do some shopping for the next couple of days, and for some petrol as well. Unfortunately we got a flat tyre right there but were lucky enough to find a Kwik-Fit just round the corner, so we were off as if nothing had happened! The last few miles were a great drive along A and tiny B roads, often requiring slow speed and even stopping at wider spots to allow for cars coming in the opposite direction to get through. It’s been like that for the following two days!

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the beach at Port Eynon.

In the evening we went for dinner at a nearby pub, where we had fantastic pies, “a few” drinks and some games of pool. Gioia became friends with a loon from Swansea and eventually we spent the evening with her, her boyfriend an another friend of theirs. We also sneaked into the landlady’s 60th bithday party!

Saturday

The following day the weather was the most horrible we could possibly find, but we knew it and weren’t stopped by it. We spent the morning at the Rosshili bay, a fantastic place that I am sure would be much nicer on a sunny day.

We then went for lunch by a nearby farm, where we tried a Welsh breakfast (with cockles and some black-ish algae, I think) and a typical Gower Breakfast, with local bacon, sausages, chips, everything much needed after the previous night drinks.

In the afternoon we started our castles tour, visiting the ruins of Weobley castle, towards the northern coast of the peninsula.

We got a bit lost later in the afternoon, and were not able to find another castle (shame on us) so we ended up at Tesco to sort the desserts for the evening, and on our way back we stopped at Mumbles to check out Oystemouth castle.

Sunday

The following day was already time for us to leave, so we packed and headed towards nearby Oxwich, to visit the castle and the beach.

From there we drove to Southgate, where we parked the car and walked across the Pennard Golf Club (with a high risk of being hit by flying golf balls and one gentleman’s club as well, as we apparently left the “marked” path) to reach Pennard Castle and the stunning view you get from the top of the hill where its ruins stand.

It was great to stop at Mumbles again to walk along the seaside area towards the Mumbles Pier, where we stoppeed for an icecream, and the lighthouse, before heading back to the M4.

The journey back to Heatrow on Sunday afternoon was as smooth as the way there, with no significant traffic on the M4 and with the car that allowed us to drive over 450 miles in three days with a single full tank, which didn’t seem bad at all.

Highly recommended

We do recommend the area for a short break. The Gower Peninsula is a lovely rural place, with some great beaches and a lot of history. For a longer period, like a week or so, I’m sure it’s a great place for cycling and walking around, too. There are many camping areas for tents, campers and so on, as well as many bungalow complexes (like the one we stayed at) that are all reasonably affordable. It all adds up for a fantastic break.

For all sorts of info, please do ask us, and the best website to check out is Gower Holidays.

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So we picked somewhere close enough to London so we didn’t have to take any day off. The reason for choosing Dublin was definitely not the weather so the description we had from friends of a city that looks like London… but wetter was kind of what we were expecting before visiting! Travelling to Dublin with Ryanair was the cheapest option, just 50 minutes on the plane, the airport is only 30 minutes by bus far from the city centre and it was really easy for us to find the buses at the airport just outside the arrivals.

Before travelling we organised our short break through Visit Dublin, where a very handy tool allowed me to save in myDublin what I wanted to do, storing my items all in one place. Another useful website was myGuideIreland, where they suggest a perfect guide for a tour around Dublin in a day.

Once at the airport, we bought the Dublin pass for 45€ each, for 2 days. It included not only a one way ticket with the bus (from the airport to the city, only) worth 7 euros each, but also the prepaid entrance to most of the monuments, discounts in restaurants and many more advantages. If you think that most of the museums and monuments in Dublin cost around 7 to 15€ per person, at the end of the day if you manage to see everything in that short time is practical and you may save some money, so we do recommend it.

Of course a day is probably not enough to see everything, but it gave us an idea of what the most important things are in terms of culture, literature, music and of course drinking! We arrived at the hotel around noon and we left immediately to take the most of our first half day in the city. On our way to the city centre we bumped into the James Connelly statue, and as perfect tourists we didn’t know anything about it, but we knew he was quite important for the Irish history… and he definitely is. We then started from the Trinity College (not included with the pass, but a must), probably the most important university in Ireland, and it was worth paying the ticket to see the old library alone, which is the most amazing library I’ve ever seen, despite not being incredibly huge.

We then headed to the Guinness Storehouse: 7 floors of Guinness everywhere in a museum that reproduces the shape of the famous tulip glass so as you reach the top imagine you are on the top of your cold Irish pint. At the factory we learnt everything about the drink and the museum itself where we were encouraged to taste and touch all the ingredients while proceeding to the top floor where we finally got our well deserved full pint of Guinness looking at the amazing landscape over the city. If you don’t manage to buy any gadget within the museum no worries, you’ll find hundred of other places in the city and at the airport itself where you can buy original Guinness items anyway.

We stopped at the Queen of Tarts, one of the best patisseries in Ireland, for some nice cakes before heading to the Duke Pub to start our tour. Before starting our night with a Literary Pub Crawl, we bumped into some young Dubliners who our Irish friend Niamh describes as “knackers” or chavs as they would be called in UK!! They usually walk the streets wearing pyjamas! Every city have some, we all know that very well.

As we arrived at the pub we found ourselves surrounded by a nice bunch of octogenarians waiting for the show to start, while enjoying their pints and other sort of alcoholic drinks, of course. The actors started with a scene from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket:it was great! And it was a very entertaining way to know more about the lives and habits of the most famous Irish authors. We also met some very nice people within our group and we really recommend this tour to anyone new to the city. It only takes 2 hours or so, so even if you’re staying just one night in Dublin it’s great, and they do it 7 days a week.

On Sunday the city gave us the time to recover, with most museums opening not earlier than 11am, so plenty of time for a full Irish Breakfast at the hotel before heading to the Writers Museum, James Joyce’s Center and the Jamesons Distillery. The Jamesons Museum it is not as exciting as the Guinnes one, which is more entertaining, but if you are a wiskey lover or just curious, as we were, it’s definitely worth a visit as part of the Irish culture.

In a bit of a rush we managed to enter the Beatty Library after visiting Dublin Castle, which doesn’t look like a Castle anymore from outsite but it’s beautiful to visit. Temple Bar was our last stop before going back to the airport, and were lucky enough to finally listen to some great Irish music to end up the trip.

If you are used to walk in London Dublin can be easily visited on foot, as everything important is quite closed to the centre and it makes it easier for short breaks tourist like us. Drinks and food are quite pricey, although you cannot miss the drinking experience visiting some of its 700 pubs. The general impression was that Dublin is not as multicultural as London, that there’s always at least an old man drinking his pint of Guinness outside each pub and that apparently flights from Spain are really cheap and frequent, as most of the tourists were Spanish, and I guess this is almost the only foreign language we could hear around the city.

Overall, as we were told before visiting, Dublin is not stunning itself and it is not so much different to some English cities. However Dubliners’ pride, their history and culture can be perceived and this is what makes Dublin such a special place to visit. I left with the desire of reading millions of books, to become a writer (which is not going to happen), to study at Trinity college and listen to as much Irish music as I can. We had a great time in Ireland and I can’t wait to go back and visit more.

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Yep, the saga is not over. First chapter is here, if you fancy. We were hoping for the situation to be finally solved. We were wrong.

We were told the TalkTalk account was now in our name, and that we were to be sent a bill on April 18th. We never received it. I got a call from them the following week, but they were not able to tell me what the issue was because I provided “wrong answers” to their questions (as if I didn’t know my address and date of birth…) so I had to go to a Carphone Warehouse shop and call from there, so that the shop assistant could verify it was me. Basically, they wanted me to pay for the last two bills (which I never received because they don;t send them here and the previous tenant is abroad and in the army, so no way of getting in touch with him). I obviously was fine with it, but wanted to see the bill itself before paying, so the lady on the phone confirmed she was going to re-send the bill. Again, never received it, and two weeks have passed.

But, during these two weeks they decided to block our phone and broadband. I had to call them, although I had a feeling I knew the reason. I spoke with their financial services, paid the bills, got everything working again, and asked them to switch from paper billing to online billing. Nice and easy.

So I get the account login details, access it so that I can check everything and set the direct debit, only to find out that the account was still in the previous tenant’s name!

I wanted to kill them at that point.

I called them again, asking first of all why the account was still in someone else’s name, but more importantly why I was told (twice) that it was in mine. Now, I’m fine with bad news, but I hate people that take the piss. And that was a very borderline situation. I spoke with them for over one hour on the phone last Wednesday, and was told that the account was not changed because I did not provide my bank details for the Direct Debit to be set up. Note that on the form I had to submit there was nothing asking me for those details. I asked why I was not contacted to provide them, and the lady told me they tried to call three times but I never answered. Idiots. How about you don;t answer so I send you details over the post? Too complicated, I guess…

I could not provide the details over the phone, so I had to re-send the form via fax and send my details as well. I was told they would have contacted me shortly after receiving the fax. I never heard from them.

I called them again today, they said they received the form (how about letting me know when you do as you said originally? Nevermind…) and that within 20 days (…) the account should be in my name.

In 20 days, it will be the 1st of June, and it would have taken them only 6 months to complete the Change of Ownership process.

Useless c*nts.

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Anyways, enough with the chit-chat. We wanted to share with you this amazing video produced by the guys at ITO World (our friend Chris aka @osbornec works there): it’s “a visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash”.

Visualisation by ITO World and Ideasintransit, flight data by FlightRadar24 and map data by the awesome OpenStreetMap.

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