Art and Culture, Fun, Travel

Lisbon – Mecca of Street Art

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When researching my trip to Lisbon, I came across the local street art pretty early on. Other bloggers and travel sites were reporting an incredibly vital scene and it did not take me long to decide to book a tour. I followed the advice of various travel sites who all recommended Lisbon Street Art Tours (we do not receive any favours for recommending them here). Our guide, can’t remember her name (I’m pretty sure it started with a ‘V’), sorry, was a young lady from Belgium, who studies street art at the local uni and is currently working on her thesis on Lisbon street art. Not only was she pleasant to listen to, with her shy, enthusiastic, bubbly nature, but most of all she obviously had to hold herself back on a constant basis in order not to overwhelm us with the vast knowledge she has accrued about her area […]

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Art and Culture, Fitness & Health, Food, Fun, Travel

Lisbon in a Day

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I flew into Lisbon last Friday night and had until the next evening, when my train for Porto (more about Porto here) left at 8pm. I was on my own, as I was only going to be joined in Porto by (first) an old friend of mine and (later) by my wife. Unlike me, my wife had already been to Lisbon, loved it, but preferred to stay in London that weekend and party with her girlfriends. I arrived at the hotel at around midnight and gobbled down a rather rare, but very tasty cheese burger at a nearby bar, before logging off. The next morning I got up at 6am, got myself a sandwich and a coffee to go, then explored the street art near Teatro Maria Vitória, which happened to be walking distance from my hotel. More about Lisbon street art here. Then I took a cab to the […]

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Art and Culture, Fun, London

Magical Lantern Festival, Chiswick

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We visited the Magical Lantern Festival in Chiswick, West London, yesterday evening, and it was an incredible experience. Hundreds of lanterns, the biggest ones several storeys high and several dozen meters long! It took us more than two hours to walk to follow the path through the park and stop every other minute to take photos. This year’s show is themed “Explore the Silk Road”, so you’ve got plenty of camels and Aladdins, but also a gigantic Chinese palace, the center piece of the festival, that can be seen from nearly everywhere else in the park. Considering how cold it was it was a blessing that they serve hot chocolate (and mulled wine, hot whiskey, and spiced hot cider) on three or four locations. We also had a lovely pulled-pork sandwich for £5.50 right behind the 2nd entrance (the one where they check your tickets). The festival is taking place […]

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Food, Fun, London

Bloomsbury Club Bar hosts BlackTail Residency

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We checked out the BlackTail Residency at the Bloomsbury Club Bar (BCB, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London) today and were very impressed. New York’s BlackTail has been created by the team behind the Dead Rabbit, which regularly gets ranked as the best or one of the best cocktail bars in the world. BlackTail itself is generally considered to have been the most anticipated and successful bar opening in the U.S. during the past year (it opened a few months ago). It emulates the American bars that sprang up in Havana during the 1920s Prohibition (not sure why some reviewers call the bar a speakeasy, which would be the improvised U.S. underground bootlegging version of the time, and quite the opposite in some ways, ultimate luxury versus greasy, badly-lit basements). The Irish duo behind the BlackTail, Dead Rabit’s co-founders Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry, were inspired by the distinctive black tail […]

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Fitness & Health, Food, Fun, London

Pisqu, recent Peruvian Opening, Fitzrovia

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[Pisco Sour feature photo by Pisco Trail piscotrail.com] We recently visited Pisqu (23 Rathbone Place), named after the eponymous birthplace of the national drink, for a quick Pisco Sour with a Peruvian friend of ours, who recommended the place as his favourite Peruvian restaurant and bar in London, in particular because – he says – the cuisine prepared by the Peruvian-Japanese team is authentic, not watered down for the Western palate. He might be slightly biased, because the bar manager is from his home town and the first twenty minutes were spent on our friend talking with his buddy about their village and what had changed in recent years, who left and who returned. It is only four months since the restaurant was opened (and is now run) by chef William Ortiz, the younger brother of the chef at Michelin-starred Lima, literally just across the street, which is why Pisqu […]

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