The movie “The Holiday” is a perfect depiction of my adventure this holiday season.
I recently vacationed abroad in the United Kingdom and France. It was a lot of fun, I hung out with Jams and enjoyed a lovely dinner with his friends and family. We also went out for a entertaining night at very interesting wine bar, thank you Jams for all your hospitality. It was a shame I wasn’t able to meet up with Dev, Steve or the ghetto boys; I’ll have catch with you guys next time when I’m in town.
The last time I was in Europe was back when I was in Uni, I was poor and all I could afford for accommodation was either dorms or hostels. During my recent visit, Cody booked us a classy hotel (four stars) in the financial district of London. It was very clean, had amazing room service, was convenient to get from and to.
While in London I continued my quest as a foodie, to try all that London had to offer. I ate at many restaurants, my favorite was Hong Kong Diner in Chinatown. It’s cheap, the food tasty, and the atmosphere is very hip and lively; just the way I like. I also went up scale by paying a visit to the renowned La Poule au Pot. A very romantic French classic bistro. I wouldn’t say the food at La Poule au Pot was amazing but, it was well worth the money.
En-route to Paris was a wild adventure. We originally booked a flight, but it was canceled due to a heavy fog overcast. We were then forced to take a coach service, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We road in a Benz bus with a very hilarious Frenchmen that worked for British Air (I have the video to prove it). It took about 12 hours including a 2 hour ferry ride to get to Paris, but surprisingly time went by extremely fast (maybe because I had Cody with me). We reached Central Paris around 2 am and partied all the way to our awesome Hotel, which can not describable in words. There were French doors that opened to a balcony inside our bedroom, Win!
Paris was yet an another city of randomness activities. We ate food, did the tourist thing, ate more food, had some laughs, and ate some more food. I really had a lot of fun and really enjoyed the hospitality the French has shown us (most notable: our clerk at the front desk of the hotel and the bartender at the cafe across from our hotel.)
For Christmas, I went to see “The Holiday” with a very awesome lady that I fancy very much. We both loved the movie so it was very fitting that we were able to squeeze it in our very busy schedule for Christmas eve. Dinner wasn’t bad either because we both had a craving for Congee Village, which was satisfied with a 30 min speed dinner right before it closed at 2am. Overall a very merry Christmas this year even though it wasn’t spent much with family.
New Years was a bit different from previous years. The day before New Years Eve I had a BYOB dinner with some friends at a low key Chinese restaurant (Phenix Garden – midtown east) and then headed to “PM lounge” for some more partying with Eric and his friends. For New Years eve I had lunch with my Korean buddy in Korean-Town New Jersey, and for the rest of the day I was able to spend time with a very special lady. We didn’t do much, just hung around my corporate apartment, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to have fun.
On New Years day and I got invited to a hot pot event and it was absolutely amazing. I got to meet a whole lot of new people and had a lot of fun eating. We watch movies, ate till we couldn’t walk and played UNO.
And that sums up my holiday, a pretty good one.
Related posts:
