Month: August 2016

Holland Park – Kyoto Garden

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If I weren’t told about there being many Bulbasaurs in Holland Park (which is a few bus stops away from Hyde Park), I don’t think I would have noticed that there are beautiful gardens there.
Mr B, who I have mentioned in this blog before (can’t remember what about, but he’s lurking in my blog), had informed me to go and hunt some Pokémon in Holland Park, in which I did during this summer Bank Holiday Monday. Guess I needed to burn more fat off from the BBQ earlier in the weekend. 

I walked around and around the place and noticed that there were so many people playing Pokémon Go. The game is not dead yet! Those who aren’t playing are just lazy or too busy to go out to hunt… I’ve seen parents play with their children on bus rides and in parks. Hah!

Well, I got to Kyoto Garden. Didn’t know this existed! Oh my! Such a terrible Londoner…

And I saw this… woah… where did this spring from? How long has it been here? Think I might pop into this garden once in a while. 

The koi fish are so big… it just reminded me of the time Miss Pinky and I went to the Palace in Tokyo…
By the way, Miss Pinky and family were supposed to meet me later on this day, but never showed up because of Baby B’s future childcare issues! 😦

As well as the Kyoto Garden, I went around looking at the rest of Holland Park.

People playing gigantic chess… Looks like it was going to be a long game with them thinking so much. LOL!

Spotted a robin on this tree, but it flew away as I was taking a pic…

 This is the Dutch Garden. I wanted to see all of it… but was lazy. >_<"

Address: Ilchester Pl, London W8 6LU

In the end, I headed towards Hyde Park to find some Clefairies… and also to see if Miss Pinky would show up… They didn’t. 😛

Address: there’s none… you just have to find it!

Looks like I’ll be walking around some more parks soon…

Snowy Mini Four Mooncakes 美心冰皮 – Angel and Devil 天使魔鬼 (Part 1)

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Poop. The summer bank holiday started off with a big stomach upset… I ate too much at Mr and Mrs Hen’s BBQ on Saturday. My stomach can’t handle too much food at one time anymore… 😦
But to lighten my stomach the next day I went out to China Town to buy noodles and also a few snacks. ¬_¬”” I’m actually looking for the Doll brand cheese flavoured noodles, so if anyone sees them, bell me! I also went out Pokémon Go hunting from China Town to Covent Garden, all the way up to St Paul’s Cathedral… and from there to Tower Bridge! What a walk it was lugging around a lot of noodles and these mini mooncakes. >.<" 
It’s coming up to the Mid-Autumn Festival! 
I’m surprised these Snowy Mini Four mooncakes 美心冰皮 (Canto: mei sam bing pei; Mando: mei xin bing pi) lasted during my long walk, well I did stop off at Starbucks just to coll down. 美心 mei sam is the name of the company. 冰皮 bing pei literally means “ice skin”. In general these mooncakes are called “snow skin mooncakes”. I had introduced them in an earlier post many years ago.
This year I bought two different boxes, the latter I will blog in another post. First box is called Angel and Devil 天使魔鬼 (Canto: tin si mo gwai; Mando: tian shi mo gui).
I tried out the “Devil” first. In English it’s called “Devil Dark Chocolate Crunch”
I understand why it’s called that. It has an indulgence of dark chocolate moulded into a mochi like sweet. Once opened you can smell the dark chocolate.
The crunch part is a tiny biscuit… The chocolate “paste” part just lingers into the mouth, whereas the skin mochi part sticks to your teeth.
It all tastes like an Oreo melting into my mouth. Yummy!
The “Angel” is called Angel Chocolate Crunch. I assume it’s to resemble white chocolate. The smell of it is not as intense as the Devil but has a soft almond like biscuit smell.
The paste and skin gives off a sweet vanilla sort of taste with a touch of almond. This makes you want to eat the mooncake a little more slowly so that you can try and indulge the flavours bit by bit.
The Devil tastes the best out of the two… if I have any money leftover in the next two weeks, I think I might by a couple more of the Devil ones.
Price: £6.80 at Oriental Delights (they sold in boxes of 2 as well as 4)

Go Ape & Lighthouse Pub – London Battersea Park

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It was Mr Games’s birthday last weekend and I was invited to his double birthday outing (there was another friend’s birthday at the same time). The outing was at Go Ape in Battersea Park. Didn’t even know this existed!
I ended being the photographer for the afternoon since I didn’t want to climb and cry and think I was going to fall over and die (like that person in the USA – may she RIP). Just too scary!
Almost got lost after entering the gate. I turned right instead of left. Don’t trust Google Maps! There was a big group of a us, a mixture of friends between both Mr Games and our birthday boy.
The equipment they used looked tight. Need protection at all times! I took a lot of pictures, but most were of the group having goes at all three courses… it was windy that day, and it took them around 3-4 hours to complete. ^_^

Mr Games and his cousin doing the wristband pic
It was tough being the photographer… Looking up into the sky doing all the rest of the hard work. LOL!!

Address: Park Offices, Battersea Park, London SW11 4NJ
Telephone: 0333 433 0983

After watching these peeps completing the courses, we headed to the Lighthouse Pub, which wasn’t far from the park. I was with one of the friends who couldn’t complete the course as she didn’t want to do the zip line from the first course (where they fly across from one end to the other). Two of second birthday boy’s friends was already there…! Already drinking!
The pub originally placed us in a corner with a table for 6 people, but there was like 15 of us!!!!!!! How did you book this table Mr Games…? So we asked to be moved before the rest came.
Finally got to try out the third flavour from Old Mout Cider… Passionfruit and Apple. Hm. Still like the strawberry one.

Everyone looked hungry and we all seemed to have ordered burgers… LOL!! 
Burgers needed seasoning… I also wished they offered me the sweet potato fries. 😦 BUT the their tomato sauce with herbs was amazing! Thumbs up for that!!

Desserts were too sweet… Didn’t like my Eton Mess… Bleurgh.

My geeky rating (for the pub): 4/5

Too lazy to point out the good and bad points… but I think you can guess from the scoring that the food was average (apart from their tomato sauce). Presentation was ok. Service was ok but disappointed with the seating arrangements. 

Address: 441 Battersea Park Rd, London SW11 4LR
Phone: 020 7223 7721

Website: http://www.thelighthousebattersea.com/

A good day out it was! I caught Mr Mime (Pokémon Go) that night. Still no signs of Pikachu… need to walk around some school campuses or industrial sites it seems. :p At least I’m keeping up the walking!

Lindt Creation – Irish Coffee and Passion Frappée Chocolate

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In a chocolate mood this month, but being a lazy blogger (it’s just too hot to blog and eat chocolate!). Maybe it’s because I’ve sent some packages to friends last month with loads of chocolates and sweets. Just happy that they’re happy. ^_^

¬_¬” Ok, so don’t kill me. Since coming back from Marseille in March, the only thing I haven’t tried out are these two chocolate bars. I really limited my chocolate shopping this year. Really resisted the temptation to eat them all in one go too. Worth the wait!

It’s a good time to try out this Irish Coffee flavoured chocolate because I’m going on a very short trip to the Republic of Ireland next month. Yay! A holiday!

Unfortunately, taste-wise, this didn’t blow my mind. I was expecting full on whiskey and coffee flavours. All I could taste was chocolate. I’ll have another piece later just to double check I was right about the flavouring. Too bad I can’t get drunk from this. Lol! >_<""

Next up Passion Frappée.

I could taste a tangy fruitiness from this chocolate bar. Passion fruit flavour was definitely there. The chocolate didn’t overpower the fruity, slighty tangy taste. Lindt did well with this one. 
Overall disappointed with the Irish Coffee flavour. 😦 Passion Frappée was ok.

Japanese Kit Kat – Sake and Sakura Matcha flavours

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Oooo. I bought these Kit Kat directly from Japan on eBay many moons ago – and haven’t expired yet.
Finally I have taken the time to eat some chockies (plus it’s my week off for the summer). Time out with the diet which is not going so well this week – but at least I’m eating healthily and my weight is stable ^_^ ! Mr Games is on my back to walk more, especially since I’m playing Pokémon Go!! Yes Boss! … But taking the bus to play the game is so much easier… :p (I actually walked around this week to St James’s Park, Westminster and all of Southbank up to Tower Bridge until my battery went down to 1% – LOL).
So the flavours I bought were Japanese Sake and Sakura Matcha. 

Tried out the Sakura Matcha 桜抹茶first. I originally ordered this with the Sake flavour but the sender failed to send me that and was sold out! 😦 Got a refund! Always get your money back for things you don’t get… :p

There’s 3 in this box.

The white chocolate is turned to a matcha green colour.

It has a very sweet matcha green tea flavour with a hint of floweriness. Can I say that? I don’t know how to describe it really.

This cost me £3.99 on eBay. I chose the cheapest one.
Was so disappointed not receiving the Sake flavour 日本酒 (Nihon Sake – which is the alcoholic one by 0.8%), so a couple of months later I received this in the post.

Still 3 in the box.

It’s all white chocolate here.

It seems they soaked the white chocolate in the sake before moulding this into the chocolate bar. There’s a slight hint of sake smell and it tastes like sweet, very sweet sake. You won’t get drunk on this, but you may feel a slight affect of alcoholism… :p

This cost me £6.17 including postage and packaging. Expensive!

If you get a chance to try these out, let me know what you think. ^_^

Old Mout Cider – The Real Stuff

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So I’ve seen many of Old Mout Cider’s posters around London, and now it was time to try out the real stuff. The drinks itself.

It’s going to be a short post… because I’m too lazy to think and type and also watch The Walking Dead at the same time (the show is so gross!).

Bought these two bottle of ciders in Tesco. Looks like there are three flavours available but only saw two in the fridge.

This is the Pomegranate and Strawberry flavour. This was nice and sweet with a stawberry kick to it. It’s like drinking strawberry soda but with some alcoholic elements in it. Quite liked this one.

This was very limey than kiwi, it was also sweet, very mellow in taste like drinking a fairly sweet fizzy white wine. 

The favourite so far is the Pomegranate and Strawberry. Look forward to finding the third flavour. ^_^

Website: http://www.oldmoutcider.com/

Spitalfields City Farm – London Buxton Street

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Are you all Pokémon Go ready? The game has been out for over 3-4 weeks now and I’ve seen lots and lots of people go out and play trying to capture all the Pokémon. So far I have 58 types, but still need to get Pikachu. Where are you Pikachu?! It’s made me watch the old Pokémon anime – the Japanese version. LOL!! Luckily after my exam I can still understand Japanese. Heheheh.
Whilst Pokémon hunting in the Spitalfields area (as I heard Pikachu was spotted around the area) I headed towards the City Farm to see if it was opened, and it was!
Wasn’t really sure if it was actually opened so I kind of went in anyway. And took some pictures on my phone (which meant I had to stop playing Pokémon and look at live animals >_<).

Live chicken! No doubt to lay loads of eggs. ^_^

A cafe area…

And lots of plants and other livestock…

My finger got in the way of this picture, but can you read the sign made with bottle caps?

Looks like Stik was in the area ^_^

And finally I left to find somewhere to sit to charge my phone coz Pokémon Go really drained my battery that day… I also learnt how to aircharge in McDonald’s!

Clet Abraham Street art
If you decide to go Pokémon hunting or looking at some street art in the Spitalfields area (Brick Lane), don’t forget to visit the farm! ^_^

Address: Buxton Street, London, E1 5AR

Telephone: 0207 247 8762