Hello hello and yes I'm back and in for a week's worth of updating on the trip. It was superbly a magical, eye opening event with extremes coming from all angles. Absolutely love it and I do highly recommend Zizo and Travel Talk tours altogether if you want to head to Egypt.

Let's start back from Day 1 (28/11-29/11):

We had to wake up early to catch the 9am flight at Heathrow. Checking in online was worthwhile as we manage to get the front seats. All we needed was our boarding pass which we collected at the machine near the luggage counter and check in our bags. As we board the plane, we both were amazed at how much space we got and food and entertainment was also provided during our flight.


As we arrived Cairo at about 4pm, we were greeted by a guy who was holding the Travel talk signboard and a really funky luggage machine where it spits out luggages from 2 sides. It also had some sensors to only shoot the bags when the conveyor is free. Quite cool. We then got on to the van to our hotel. First hotel: Cataract. We were briefed at 6pm from our tour leader, Zizo and I'm starting to like him from the beginning. He spoke fluent english and knew how to break the ice from the start. Well, we all had to introduce ourselves and which country we were from. Heh. It was then off to dinner before we head straight to our room for an early start. Can't complain when you get a buffet breakfast!



Click here to view pictures of Day 1

It was one of those weekends where you just don't want to go outside.

Wind blowing up at about the miles per hour in which you get blown off if you open up your umbrella, in fact even if you didn't open your umbrella up, you get blown away...

Rain pouring in and out, puddles, damp, cold. At times like this I am usually at home either on my laptop or in the kitchen coming up with some special recipe infused or making something from the internet.

But my childhood friend aka next door neighbour was here and was in London over the weekend. I took the opportunity to bring her out to my favourite markets.

So this was the attempted itenary or the previous itenary seeing that the weekend has passed already:

Went to try out spanish tapas food at La Tasca. Yuuuummm, we then headed out to capture a few nice night photo around Westminister area (where Big Ben is). First time I actually was up close to the London Eye. Took really cool pics. Check this one out ;)


Slept in (yahoo!) and didn't wake up till lunch time. When I peaked out of the window, it was pouring and the wind was blowing like craaaazzieee so we took our sweet time leaving. We headed out to the tube, only to find that the station we want to get off was closed! So we had to stop one stop before (where we started heading to the retail shops and had coffee at Starbucks). We only had like half an hour before we arrived and saw Portobello market lol. But yea, it was all good since the shops CY liked didn't close till later.

We went back to the restaurant to grab our forgotten umbrella, only to take a line which didn't pass through Kings Cross! So we had to bus back. We were home early as I needed and early start the next day.

Went to Liverpool Street station, whereby I showed CY 3 different markets in that area. Had my yummy Rainforest Roti Wrap and finally bought this dress I have been eyeing for since last year but didn't bother to buy it because it was £45! That designer was vietnamese though although his clothes looked Japanese to me. I sort of baked some banana cake and sold it at a friend's stall.

Sent CY off in the afternoon, came home and clean the place up before I headed back to the market again to see how things are. Manage to get nice deals at the food stalls towards the end of the day hehe. But gosh, I spent quite abit over the weekend and it has been awhile.

Tonight (Tuesday) am heading to watch a show called Dirty Dancing with my galfriends :). Will write about it next!

Short and sweet re-cap:

• Came straight home, iced my cupcakes went out to Zebrano. Took nice Xmas photos of Carnaby Street. Different one from last year :)

• Went to have supper at our good ole 1997 and came home at 4.30am

• Only woke up in the afternoon, played badminton till 5pm
• Had lasagna before heading out for an engagement party somewhere in Portobello area
• Came home, started writing up my blog entry

• Slept for 10 hours =)
• Walked all the way to Camden to check out a Warehouse looking shop and got carried away in shopping. Bought myself a pair of flats for 75% off (not gona tell you the price :P)
• Headed back for grocery shopping but I bought another dress on the way haha
• Pop by one of the bakery stores that was selling off their sweets and sandwhiches for cheap. Got myself a nice fruit tart (YUM) for 50p and shared it with D.
  
• Came home and we had yummy tortelleni pasta for dinner.
  

Nope, no costume party or nothing. It's not that I didn't want to get involved but dressing up in funny costumes in the cold weather ain't my cup of tea. Yes, I really dislike dressing up against the cold weather. Perhaps I need a new wadrobe (HINT). But hey, all I need is just to snuggle up in bed reading or writing or watching with a cup of tea or hot chocolate by my side. Peaceful. Or maybe I'm growing 'old' lol.

Anyway, weekend was packed with FOOD again. Haha, can't run away from it and it sticks by my side when the cold and dark weather kicks in. There was a last minute gathering occasion and so I took the opportunity to make something again and I made Kuih Serimuka for the first time as well as to get rid of the pandan leaves that is taking up alotta space in the freezer. I too decided to practice on my 'photography' skillz.

Apparently food photos are the hardest of them all so if you master this, you can master anything. Cheh wah. Here's my 'attempt'. I briefly read on some tips online and see how it worked. More info here on my experiences making this Kuih.


Was also focusing alot on my cupcakes for Monday. My first batch sunk, which made my hard sunk 10x more. Sigh, it tasted good regardless so I'm gald I didn't have to throw it away. So I decided to try them again. I know, more you make mistakes, more you learn. But I did feel like I went round in circles by not following instructions but then again, it does clarify things much more just like life. Can't be too perfect, have to try something you don't want to in order to know what you want to do in life. Heh.

Anyway, Friday night was serimuka, sat day was cupcakes and Saturday evening was gathering at friend's place. Ate lotsa KFC and carrot cupcakes made by a friend and played Wii. Coming home was quite scary as I was surrounded by people all dressed up in costumes. Feels really eerie as everyone is hiding their identity that night, brings a good chance for someone to take the advantage and do something evil. Either that, I am getting paranoid these days of watching too much tv and movies.

Sunday was cupcakes again and headed out to dinner at the York & Albany (one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurant) with my group of girlfriends. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience even walk to the restaurant as it was a whole different atmosphere altogether as you get off the touristy streets.I bumped into an organic shop where they sold proper organic fruits and veges. The apples were 3 times larger than normal and the chocolate bars were way cheaper than anywhere else I found. Apparently celebreties hang out in this area too since it's very close to Regent's Park (one of the largest in London town).

Hey ho! In this times of keeping low and quiet, not much highlight has been happening besides shopping for gifts, checking out the markets (in which I went to the same one again and again) and setting up my other blog. Am contemplating on whether to combine them....as it does gets tough when it comes to traveling and having 'food' involved.

Hmm...anyway, am perfecting the other blog regardless. As well as that one is more publicized and this is rather for family and updating about my trips = ). I will try with 2 blogs regardless and perhaps link the both of them in a way so that my blog snippits could perhaps be 'summarised' instead (i.e. if you want to find out more, 'click here' or something like that).

Weekend has come and gone, here's what I have been up to:

Went out and met up with friends and made a quick decision to go watch a movie with them. We ate at one of our usual restaurants where we keep ordering the same meal that is not on the menu list. It had like 8 chinese words for the dish so I keep forgetting the name of the dish. But the dish consisted of fried rice, topped with the 'ying yong' sauce and pork ribs covered in curry powder. Mmm, nice to have for winter. Went to watch 'Couples Retreat' after that and I find the show quite nice in the sense of reminding married couples who are on the verge of breaking down what love is again.

I couldn't sleep last night so I went home and did some decoration on the lemon cake...only to suffer abit from 'writer's block' haha. I bought a few decorative ingredients and asked myself 'if I only had these to create something wonderful, what would I do?'. But it turned out great at the end. See here for the results :)

Woke up rather late, contemplated to check out the Farmer's market (they have a few branches) and see whether we could set up a cupcake stall, only to receive an email today that they don't do that but more on 'cakes' instead. Guess cupcakes may be abit commercialised? Before you know it, it was time to come home, shower and change for yummy dinner tonight. We had lovely 3 course meal at Pearl set up by a celebrity chef called Jun Tanaka. Friend's birthday and she was his fan hehe.


We went to a place called Buddha Bar after that (apparently celebrities come here alot) which was decent but they didn't allow the cake to be cut and distributed =(  . Oh well. I went home early anyway to recover from the late night before.

Woke up really late today bout lunchtime, so I just went up the road to shop for groceries at the usual Sainsbury, passing by Chapel market before coming back and realising it's time to leave the house if I were to walk to the badminton hall (which I did). Played a friendly league in which I wasn't mentally into the competition mode until the last 2 games (in which I won haha). Came back and overdone my hip flexes. Again. Gosh, the old habits just don't die!

And yes, it is really getting colder over here. Thermals are out, heaters are on. I wake up to a cold studio as the heater doesn't have a timer function which sucks! Nevertheless, am awaiting for a nice portable heater coming...soon...