London / Winter Wonderland

The Christmas season has descended on London and boy does the city of shopping love to show it! Today we went over to Winter Wonderland, a festival held every winter in Hyde Park. 

Yup, London really loves Christmas.

Walked by this dealership near Hyde Park that offers Brabus, RUF, and Pagani. This super-rare supercar is the RUF CTR3, essentially is to a Cayman what the Hennessey Venom is to the Lotus Elise. I'd love to see this go against 9ff's GT9-R, another stretched out/monster powered Cayman that was build for more sheer speed. 

And yes, that is an 800hp Brabus G Wagon in the background. #ballerlfe

But as much as I love Porsches, this Zonda what I really ached for. 

Dear Santa...

Meanwhile in the Aston Martin dealer, we have the first Cygnet I've seen. I like it, would be a great little city car, except for one small problem: This is a Scion iQ with a $50,000+ pricetag. Small wonder why Aston Martin stopped making them last year. 

And now to the wonderland!

Unfortunately it was a bit of a rainy night. The walk across the park was not exactly fun, but once inside protected from the wild wind, it wasn't too bad. And of course there was a gigantic ferris wheel. 

Winter Wonderland is considered a festival but it's really just like a county fair to me. Rides, carni food and games are all here, they're just all Christmas themed. 

Mmmmm, mulled wine...

London / Brighton Pt 4

Picking up where we left off, once we finished watching the sunset, we wanted to get out of the freezing wind and head into town to look for a place to grab dinner. 

Everywhere you look you can see that everything in UK has been around for a long, long time. What us Americans think is old (100 or so years) is nothing compared to Europeans who can boast about centuries worth of buildings and landmarks. 

Old churches everywhere you look. 

Wonder if it has any connection to the MM on Fairfax... 

As the sun started setting more, the sky started giving off a very distinct purple light. I'm used to orange/pink and reds (deserts and forest fires) but the only time I remember seeing such purple lighting was in Washington. A northern thing?

The Brighton Royal Pavilion again. 

Now you can really see the purple I'm talking about. Very pretty though, especially on white buildings. 

Found a Japanese place that had a good Yelp rating, but honestly we were a bit disappointed with the food. Still doesn't compare to our local go-to cheap Japanese spot located in Chinatown (of course). 

And so concludes our trip to Brighton. Overall we enjoyed ourselves and I personally like it a lot more than London which at this point is starting to just feel like it's nothing more than one big shopping district. I've been lazy with putting up our trips so I'm on a roll with updating this blog with a backlog of our whereabouts. Look out for more tomorrow!

London / Brighton Pt 3

Now to the pier!

Actually was a pretty nice little pier. I'm sure it gets hectic in the summer, but it seems nicer & more charming than the Santa Monica/Cruz/Barbara piers. 

Yeah, no worries mate. I'm in no rush to get in those waters!

Did I mention the lighting was really nice? Yeah, this was around 12-1pm which normally at home would be pretty harsh but here it's clean and smooooooth. #photogeek

Here's something we weren't expecting! I've long wanted to Jet-Ski off ocean waves, but Seadoos work too! Definitely need those wetsuits though!

Was tempting to ride the bumper cars, but there weren't enough people that'd make it fun. You gotta have a mass of people all out to kill each other, that's when it gets fun!

Anyone wanna hop on?

Here's Michelle with her trademark kitty impression. 

Because Native Americans?

Ah, I miss the ocean. The final part coming up shortly!

London / Brighton Pt 2

And so the exploring begins. But first, breakfast!

Yummy yummy! Poached Eggs with Salmon and full English Breakfast, also with Poached Eggs (not generous amounts of sour cream as I frighteningly thought for a second). You can find good food in any major city nowadays, but you gotta go out of your way to find someplace in UK that doesn't have a good breakfast. 

Not really a fan of DC products, but you gotta admit they have a solid brand image. 

The Brighton Royal Pavilion, definitely stands out thanks to its Eastern style architecture. Apparently build for one of the Edwards, this is actually a Royal landmark and has no religious purposes at all. Weird, but neat. 

Pretty cool military themed beach cruiser my Carhartt. Oddly, despite being an American brand, all of their cool stuff is available only in Europe and Japan. I understand brands offering JDM exclusive products, but come on, if France and UK are buying it, so will LA and NY. 

Finally getting to the coast. Gotta love that clean fresh Northern sunlight! Makes for very "pure" looking lighting, not as warm toned as it is in warmer regions. 

Oh what have we here? The Brits sure love their ferris wheels. 

Looks pretty neat with such a flat environment though. I grew up seeing the Santa Monica ferris wheel so a ferris wheel next to the ocean isn't anything new to me, but I find something about this one so appealing. I think it's isolation from the Brighton pier and other attractions/buildings makes it seem like it's on the edge of the world. 

Skimboarding anyone? 

#selfie

First time encountering the Atlantic. Wasn't as cold as I thought it'd be though. 

More coming up in a bit!

London / Brighton Pt 1

A free weekend! FInally, we were actually going to step out of our 5 mile circle and explore outside of London to Brighton. Getting out there with such short daylight (about a mere 6 hours worth nowadays) requires an early morning leave however, so around 7 AM we headed out of our apartment to get on the bus that'll take us to the train that'll bring us to Brighton. Yeah, not as easy as the States.

At least we lucked out with the weather. It was said to be really cloudy but when we awoke there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

If anyone wants to visit us, just look for our local bus stop, haha. 

It's so strange how music is gets popular/released a different times depending on location. This was just put up the day before. Even Awolnation is just now getting posters for their album and is really popular right now, seems like they've been around for a long time already though. 

One of the latest skyscrapers introduced to London, the Shard. Very impressive looking building, though it's pyramid-like shape makes it look taller than what it really is. 

London Bridges looking really good since being rebuilt. Ya know, since it keeps falling down...

A bunch of people staring at the time board is a very common site around here. 

I wonder why West Coast hasn't adopted the train as well as East Coast or Europe/Asia. Seems pretty practical IMO. 

A pretty good visual summary of modern-day London. 

Honestly though, the train ride out wasn't too interesting to watch. I was hoping for more countryside but instead got mostly towns/suburbs. 

So this is a beach town...    Yeah, we're not in Cali anymore. 

Huh, I could have sworn his name was different...

Another badass Defender. I'd take a 110 over a G Wagon any day really. 

Part 2 to be posted soon. 

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone from us 'Muricans stuck in London.

Just because we're not in the States doesn't mean we're gonna miss out on some tasty turkey! Michelle and I never prepared a full bird before so after going over some recipes and tips (Thanks Internet!) we managed to make a pretty tasty, moist and perfectly cooked turkey.

And of course we had plenty of sides as well, including these amazing roasted rosemary/garlic/butter potatoes. 

More food prepping

And of course some "snacks" and desserts. We weren't able to find the traditional pies in time so we substituted with some red velvet cupcakes and ice cream which was perfectly acceptable by me!

A prepped plate to give to our night caretaker. 

And of course our guests! 

We're all thankful for everything we've experienced so far, for what new experiences we still have yet to enjoy, and for all the paper turkeys Michelle made for us. 

London / Getting Our Tourist On Pt. 3

Closing up on our day as London tourists, we went over towards Green Park, Dover Street specifically. As one can imagine, being located just behind Regent Street and Savile Row means it's still a pretty posh area and is full of several high end flagships. 

Of course, with high end shops come high end cars too! This Infinit FX is in fact the limited Vettel edition. Of course, not everyone in the car community was impressed by it, and the staggering price tag of £100k ($160,000!!) certainly didn't help. Is it really worth $60k more than a new Range Rover that's more powerful, more capable, has more features, and holds higher "brand prestige"? Good thing it was limited to just 200 examples...

I'm a big fan of the Sebastian who races for RedBull, just not this one.

Gettin' that Quattro love set in early.

Finally! The first proper classic car I've shot while in the city. I mean, who wouldn't want to take a pic of an XKE? It's just one of those cars everyone can agree on being so pretty. Even Ferrari's proud and egotistical founder Enzo Ferrari was a fan of the Jag, quoted famously by calling it "The most beautiful car ever made". 

I would have shot more pics of it and done a spotlight on it if the rather grouchy-looking owner wasn't sitting in it glaring at me. Be happy man! You have a great car!

BMW's Grand Coupes seem to be a hit over here. I see more of the 4 door variants than the traditional 2 door coupes. Personally, I'd take any version. I'm a big fan of this gen 6er. 

Ok, last car pic. Never cared much about 80s/90s Bentleys (Sorry Jay-Z) but then again I rarely spot them in perfect condition like this. Knowing you can pic one up used for around $20k back home, it's something one can consider for having a timeless luxury car. Gotta be in a dark color though, bright colors make it look a little cheesy IMO. 

AKIRA!!!!  The front pillars of Dover Street Market, which was an interesting boutique to say the least. Unfortunately they were pretty strict with the photography inside, so no pics of that. Afterwards we headed to Regent Street to visit one more shop for Michelle's class project. 

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

Michelle with a few of her classmates.

London / Getting Our Tourist On Pt. 2

Picking up from the last post, we continue our day as tourists. As it would turn out, we couldn't have picked a more appropriate day for our next stop. 

Buckingham Palace! So turns out it was Veteran's Day, but unfortunately we arrived too late to see the parade they had here only an hour or so before we arrived. At this point, the queen was already tucked back into her corgi-filled manor, but there were still several military groups out to pay respects to V-Day. 

Pretty snazzy gates they have here. 

First time we saw these guys and they're as funny to see in person as they are in pictures and cartoons. They all looked so pissed off, though I would be too if I were forced to march around in those hats. 

Pretty day, pretty place. All for the queen of course. 

More fancy gates, thanks to...  Canada?

After a peaceful stroll through the park, we unknowingly made our way over to one of the WWII Veterans memorials. 

As we left the memorials, there was a nearby Vespa meet! It seemed like they're were mostly ridden by older Veterans as most of them were sporting their badges from service on their coats.  Some of them were pretty accessorized out, I think there was a contest to see who can put the most amount of lights on their scooters.