Banana Tree - Soho, London

I've probably walked passed this restaurant over 50 times when I am in Soho and didn't think twice about going in. That is until I saw an Instagram post (which is not an ad) posted about how good the food was. 

So when James wanted to meet up for dinner, this place popped into my head. 

We managed to arrive before 7pm on a Thursday so we managed to get some good 2 for 1 cocktails. 

We were all famish when we arrived so we trusted James to order almost EVERYTHING. And we loved it. Everything was spot on. Even J and James liked it. So I know it is not because my expectations has lowered since I've moved here. Lol

We ordered so much that the waitress had to ask us to stop. 😂

If you are in London and fancy some Asian fusion, I would recommend this place.

See you soon James! 

What to do in Bucharest for 36 hours

It was definitely a whirlwind of a weekend of sightseeing, laughing and above it all, eating.

Over the years, my passion for food has slowly topped my passion for just travelling. When I was younger, all I care about is going to see as many places as possible but after being with J for so long, he has definitely influenced me to appreciate good food more (and movies!).

So now, food and travel goes hand in hand. Without good food, I will probably feel unsatisfied with my holidays. How #FOMO of me. Wahahaha.

Anyway, our trip. Bucharest may not be on many people's travel list but it was definitely mine. I love to see and soak up different cultures. So it was an ideal destination for a city break for me.

Flights

Our trip started off by flying with Wizzair. Many thanks to Celeste who made all the plans and bookings for us. Apart from the usual slight delay, everything went perfectly. None of us wanted to take time off work, so we travelled after work on a Friday. Oh, also thanks to Jo for driving me to laugh so hard that my belly hurts! 😂

Flight faces!

We touched down at 5am and Emilia came to the airport to get us. Sad to say, I couldn't sleep on the plane so I self-entertained with a lot of Hell's Kitchen that I've downloaded. It felt like a really short flight and I was more awake than ever. 

Accommodation

Emilia picked the quaintest apartment for us. It's a Pintrest/Instagram dream. 

Tad bit dark in this one. But you can see more photos here: Luxury Dream Apartment

I had about 2.5 hours nap time before it was time for breakfast and to go out for sightseeing.

What an awesome breakfast spread. The only way we knew how. 😋

I think the fact that we once worked together made us a pretty good team. I think being friends with workmates can be really beneficial...first of all, you still want to be friends after seeing them everyday at work. 😂

Food and Coffee

First stop was an obvious one. We needed some strong coffee to help us get through the post breakfast coma and the lack of sleep.

Chocalat Creatuer De Gout

This place serve some serious fancy coffee and cakes.

We liked it a lot and it definitely fueled us to start our walking tour with our favourite local. 😅

I wasn't kidding..these were just some of their selections.

After our coffee, we just went for a big walk to see where Emilia hangout usually.

Not going to bore you with sightseeing photos. 

Ahahaah maybe just one. We didn't dined here but this is kinda funny since Romanian most famous vampire is Count Dracula. 😄

After a few hours of walking, we were very ready for an early dinner.

We voted for some serious traditional Romanian cuisine and Emilia really delivered.

Caru' cu Bere

Link: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-d739896?m=19905

This place is truly amazing. According to Wikipedia,Caru' cu Bere means "the beer wagon". This building is a gothic revival building built in 1899. This majestic building is clearly still standing strong today, though there were come renovation happening outside the building.

Famous pork knuckle. Must order this. The pickled cabbage was to die for and the melt in your mouth pork is...omg. I am hungry just reimagining that feeling of that in my mouth.

Not a big fan of lamb chops and we all agreed that it was pretty standard lamb chops, so I don't recommend this unless you really want lamb.

I am sooo not a fan of beans but this, omg it was amazing. Beans and pork. You will not regret this.

Emilia's top tip is to order the garlic sauce as they won't readily bring this to you.

Try this place, please. It was amazing but remember to make reservation. Most good restaurants in Bucharest get booked out quickly so best to plan ahead unless you are dining outside lunch and dinner rush.

Cremeria Emilia Romania

Wanted to include this even though I only tried a tiny bit of ice cream but it is incredibly popular whenever we passed the shop and I had a little taste of Emilia's pistachios ice cream. Definitely think it is one you can give a go. It is a chain, so you will see it at most malls.

Emilia outside Emilia.

Caju by Joseph Hadad

Another place I'd like to recommend is Caju by Joseph Hadad. He is a celebrity chef in Romania. Friendly dude. We caught him on the way in the restaurant and exchanged hello.

Trendy location.

You can't miss him. This place is pretty upmarket but a cocktail cost around £3, so it is really cheap.

Butternut Squash Risotto with Calamari

Fettucine with fresh veg and calamari - this was my choice and it was amazing. Handmade pasta. 😋

Apparently Joseph Hadad is half Lebanese so we could definitely see it in his cooking. This is a Kofta dish.

Beautifully plated salmon dish.

The food was once again, amazing. I feel like I repeated the word amazing so many times but that is the only way I can describe everything I ate.

One for the road.

French Revolution

Last recommendation for my short but sweet trip are these lovely eclairs.

It was one of the best eclairs I've tried. I think the Romanians really nailed the whole dessert and cakes thing.

Spoilt with choices but at the end we picked what we can manage after a big lunch.

Last group photo before we left this beautiful city. What a great group of ladies to be going on a holiday with. 

Hope to see you in another country soon, Em!

One Twenty One Two - The Royal Horseguards, London.

This was definitely a good throwback for me. This was one of the first ever date night for us after I obtained my spouse visa. I started my first job in UK and we were going to celebrate.

He wanted to surprise me and arranged for everything. All I had to do was to meet him at Embankment.

Turns out, we were going to dine at the One Twenty One Two at The Royal Horseguards. Such a mouthful eh? Haha.

So many good reviews at this place.

Great ambience too. The restaurant is situated in th hotel, so you can expect a very private and quiet environment. But not in an uncomfortable way.

We started off with a bottle of prosseco which we didn't finish. (It was a work night..else, we will never let a good bottle of wine go to waste!)

Good hair day and skinny face. 

I swear one automatically put on 4-8 kgs after their wedding. How can that be normal? 😞😞😞

The menu.

The starter for him: Duck terrine.

The starter for me: Cornish scallop.

Mains for him: Lamb cutlet

The main for me: Halibut

The food was really very good and fresh. We really enjoyed it.

The waiting staff were very warm and attentive as well. I would really recommend this place.

Dessert for him: Almond and lemon tart.

Dessert for me: Gateaux Marcel

By dessert, we were both super duper full. We managed to eat half of each desserts. And it was very very good.
There were definitely regrets for not finishing the desserts. 

Find out more: One Twenty One Two - The Royal Horseguards

Address: London SW1A 2EJ

Phone: 020 7451 9333

El Bodegon - Barcelona, Spain.

First meal in Barcelona at El Bodegon. I suspected that this was a restaurant chain but I found out later on that it was not. I thought so because of the setting of the restaurant but we were so hungry and everything looked so good on the menu. So, we settled for this restaurant as J literally couldn't wait any longer to eat. I'm glad we did because I only managed to see the reviews after dining there and the reviews were very good.

We wanted good tapas. Although the regular tapas in Spain was not the nice little gourmet tapas that we were used to outside of Spain, everything was lovely except for the Spicy Fried Potatoes with Chipotle Mayo. It was really just chips drowning in mayo...

I wasn't lying right???? 😂😂😂

Okay here's a snippet of the menu, in case you find yourself about to dine here.

We ended up ordering only tapas as we didn't want to ruin our appetites for dinner. (We ruined our appetites for dinner.)

One of the best Iberian ham I've ever tasted.

Can never resist ordering any squid and octopus dishes. So greasy...so good.

I know I've mentioned this before but as we grew older, we found the joy in eating good food. It doesn't have to be expensive. It just gotta be worth the calories we are intaking.

These days I would literally be sulking if I had a bad meal. Such a brat. I know.

Chisstora sausages. Some damn good sausages. But everything was in such a big portion that we ended up doggy bagging some of it and take it back to the hotel before heading out again.

We did not regret it because we were so full from this meal, we couldn't eat dinner. By the time we were done sightseeing and back in the hotel, we were starving and ate the rest of it.

Man, them fried potatoes I was complaining about earlier was so goooood.

Mr. Husband.

400 hams were hung on the ceiling!

Service was good here. I would say overall it was a good experience. Mainly because of the good and very yummy Iberian Ham.

J love eating ham so I ended up having the opportunity to try different ones too. And the reason I thought this was good was because it doesn't leave that porky aftertaste. Just super smooth and tasty.

We managed to taste other ones during this trip and yup, none was better than this even though we probably paid more for the others.

Man vs. Ham.

Find out more here: El Bodegon - Tripadvisor

Address: Torrent de l'Olla, 38, 08012 Barcelona, Spain
Phone Number: +34 933 48 28 54

Where to stay in Barcelona: Aparthotel Mariano Cubi

So many travel post to write and so little time! 2016 is nothing short of amazing. We ate at a lot of good places as well as travelled loads. I think 9 countries for me and 10 for him. Oh yeah, we also got married last Feb! 😁

I might have to work my way backwards for my memory power sake. Which is poor, which is also why I took photos of everything. Thank god for good camera mobile phones (although I really need a better one for travelling). So year 9 countries with multiple places to review.

Where are my manners??? Happy New Year guys!!! I do realize that I don't have a strong following because of my lack of updates but for those who stumbled upon my blog, welcome! And know that I make fake resolutions every year to update this blog regularly. 😦 I take it very seriously but I have to juggle a full time job and being a full time wife/mom to Dug and all my Netflix series.

The struggle is real.

Instead of rambling on and making excuses, I am just going to blog abt our latest trip!

 Barcelona, Spain! 

This was our final trip of 2016. We did a lot of city breaks last year and I think what I learned from that is that I need a good mix of both nature/scenic holiday and city breaks. By the time we went to Barcelona, I was all city out. 

That doesn't mean we didn't have fun though! The weather was milder than the UK but it wasn't warm warm. I quite like it as the last 2 times I went to Barcelona, it was hot. Toooo hot in fact and I didn't explore it like I did with my hubs.

We stayed in Aparthotel Mariano Cubi. I recommend it to a certain extend as it forces you to explore both directions away from the hotel to the closest 2 subway stations which are complete opposites. One side towards Fortuna is more ghetto while the other side towards Diagonal was much more upper class. 

We booked via booking.com and they said that it was very accessible to the subway. I can say that it is not if you have huge luggage. It is at least 15-20 mins walk. That's long with luggage.

Source: Google

I didn't take photos of the outside of the hotel.

Upon arrival, the service on the front desk was good. In fact, the service was good throughout our stay.

I think the only issue I had was the distance from the subway. 15-20 mins walk is not an issue as I walk a lot in UK anyway. It was just that I didn't expect that distance when we arrived.

The lobby. We didn't go for their breakfast because we wanted to explore local eateries as we always do whenever we go on a city break.

This was really welcoming. They gave us a handwritten note, champagne and chocolates to start our trip. That was a very nice touch.

Fooled around with my new selfie stick but something wrong with my front camera..or so I thought at that time.

When the trip was over, I found out that it was my screen protector that caused the cloudy effect. Ffs.

So we used his phone..which was better. I would normally argue that Samsung Note series has better camera but not that day. 

Not. That. Day.

Cape life. 

I can't find it after our holiday. I wonder if J secretly threw it away since I kept banging on about being Batman...

Outside view of our balcony.

Would I recommend others to stay here? Yes. But make sure you are not travelling with a big luggage if you are taking public transportation.

We only had a hand carry and it wasn't so bad but being a traveller, you need to consider all possible obstacles. It wasn't Summer so it is definitely bearable but comes Summer, that walk would be a tough one with big luggage.

Get a taxi from the airport. We did that on the way home.

"Address: Carrer Mariano Cubi, 62-64, 08006, Barcelona, Spain

Phone: +34 932099699"