food Archives - Page 7 of 8

May 17, 2016 by Gary

Ye Olde Mitre Pub

Ye Olde Mitre is a pub in the Holborn district of London, hidden at the end of an alley that extends from a gated laneway near the Chancery Lane tube stop. It’s closed on weekends.

One of the oldest in London, this pub dates to the time of Queen Elizabeth I. “Built in 1546 and extended in 1782” says the website. Rather than a single room, the pub is more like a warren of small cozy rooms, with two levels and a courtyard.

The other customers mostly seemed to be suited regulars on their lunch breaks.

Read the full post »

May 16, 2016 by Gary

Arriving in London

We are staying in the Southwark/Bankside area of London, which is on the southern side of the Thames, about a ten-minute walk east of Waterloo Station. It’s a former industrial area that’s become trendy over the past few decades, but many signs of its grittier past remain, including numerous arched brick railway overpasses.

We are staying at the CitizenM hotel, the London offshoot of an Amsterdam-based chain.

The hotel is very hip and modern with hi-tech rooms where all the lights, television, blinds, heat, wake-up alarms and other things are controlled via tablet app. There is a distinct lack of stuffiness, with efficient friendly service and minibar fridges stocked with free (non-alcoholic) beverages and snacks that are replenished each day.

Read the full post »

May 15, 2016 by Gary

Around Reykjavik

Our Reykjavik layover was short, so we only had a few hours on our last evening to explore the downtown area.

This was the colourful corner of Klapparstigur, Týsgata and Njálsgata near our hotel.

As in most cold-weather countries, Icelanders consume a lot of coffee. We visited Reykjavik Roasters, one of the city’s most serious coffee places, where I enjoyed a very nice and very hot $6 Americano.

Read the full post »

May 15, 2016 by Gary

Around the Golden Circle

Since we only had two full days in Iceland on our layover, we made the most of it by booking a six-hour bus tour of the Golden Circle with Reykjavik Excursions. A bus driver and friendly guide took us efficiently around the loop to see the most popular natural sites within a few hours of Reykjavik.

The first stop on the tour was Gullfoss. It’s hard to express the vast scale of these falls in photos, but the size of the tiny people walking on the path on the left helps.

We started with high, distant vantages and then walked all the way around until we were being soaked by the spray. Gullfoss is the “golden waterfall” and it lived up to that name and made good on our guidebook’s promise of frequent rainbows.

Read the full post »

May 14, 2016 by Gary

Layover in Iceland

On our way to London, we took advantage of the Icelandair stopover option, which lets you extend a short changeover at the Reykjavik airport into a stay of up to 7 days for no extra airfare. We took two full days, spending the first day in Reykjavik, then taking a Golden Circle bus tour on the second day.

Our overnight flight landed very early, so we dropped our bags at the hotel and headed out to explore drizzly Reykjavik in a haze of jetlag. Impossible to miss almost anywhere in the city is Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland. It took 41 years to build, with construction starting in 1945 and ending in 1986.

It cost 900 ISK (about $9) to go up the tower in an elevator, where we were rewarded with photogenic views of otherwise low-rise Reykjavik.

Read the full post »

October 31, 2015 by Gary