The excitement of Christmas is still on for most of us. At least for me it is, as I prepare to celebrate with family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, three days now. Okay, so we don’t have chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at our nose in London, due to unseasonable temperatures for December, but we have laid on a gorgeous spread, from spectacular carol services to fantastic decorations throughout the city to sought after Christmas gifts to delicious food, all on offer right up to Christmas Eve.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But yesterday as I was doing some last minute shopping at a major retailer in Sloane Square, I was shocked to hear at least one of their Christmas trees was being taken down.
There I was in customer collections, a wonderful way to shop, online and then collect it (yeah, it’s that easy) when a young man walked in and said he was sent down from Christmas to take down their Christmas tree. Was it okay?
Christmas, I thought. How contrary, but I guess that it is the name of a department at this time of year. Anyhow, the first sales assistant hunched her shoulders and said you’ll have to ask her, pointing to a lady who might have been the manager.
Nonchalantly, she said, of course.
Honestly! Was I the only one bothered by this, the dismantling of a tree four days before Christmas, with as many shopping days left, too?
Still I kept quiet and thanked my lucky stars that it was there when I walked in, keeping me in the Christmas spirit. I hurried off, unable to bear the tree’s premature departure.
Since then, it has occurred to me that while the rest us might like to take this thing to the last mile, the retailers have decided to wrap it up, rather earlier, evident in lack of stock for the last minute shoppers, and the preparation for the next big thing, the January sales.
Sure there are deals to be had but most of them were done last week when most of the big boys had a 30% off pre-sale because this week, the January sales start–precisely Christmas Eve, even if it is online. What does this mean?
On the news this morning, one expert suggested that maybe they’ve called it too early this time around, participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday and so on and bringing the January sales into December, disappointing their shoppers.
She went on to say it means that some people are finding the last minute bargains already snapped up, out of stock.
You know, I ran into a bit of that, too. But the real point is this: the shopping frenzy has become a part of the holiday festivity, but it was never meant to overshadow and disrespect the celebration, was it?
I always think of gift giving, likely originating from the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus, some time after his birth, as an important part of Christmas as long as it is kept in perspective.
I know I know, I got a little out of hand, but I get the point of Christmas. And as I have years before, I’m keeping it sacred. Hoping that the majority will join in, too. And if they don’t, never mind. Everyone has to take a stand sometimes, if even the stand is alone. On that note, Merry Christmas to all!
We all need relationships, whether they are familiar or romantic. Without them, we feel unhappy and unhealthy. But even with them, specifically when they go wrong, we can feel deprived of a basic need, not to mention when a relationship breaks down altogether.
In my most recent Huff Post blog, I explore the question: Why Relationships Break Down, looking more at familiar relations. Of course, there are a number of reasons that parents and children stop speaking and so on. But could there be something at the crux of such fall outs, something as simple or as complicated as definition or lack thereof?
Friday’s terrorists attacks in Paris painfully remind us of how vulnerable we all are, how fragile life is. On this note, today with bloggers, journalists, people around the world, I mourn the loss of the 129 people who died there and express grief for the many other lives that have been shattered, too.
Also, we mourn the loss of security, as we have known it as a free society, in this great city, at least for a while.
But as atrocities of the past have shaken us, have robbed us of liberties and caused us great pain, also they have connected and strengthened us in our darkest hours, so that we have overcome. So will this one.
As I watched the end of BBC Breakfast this morning, I was so very touched by the show of unanimity around the world, different world cities flying and displaying the tricolour, the French flag, on buildings, in the air, and so on.
Wistfully, I remembered some of my special moments in Paris, a city where people go to celebrate life, soak up youth, and quite frankly run free. Most recently, I was there on Mother’s Day, unable to be in the US, but outside of the Musée d’Orsay, a favourite hangout, I spoke to my mother, soaking up the Parisian atmosphere. How very special.
London calling from Paris to USA
A view of Montmartre
With friends at Parisian resturant
From a balcony in Paris
Memories are precious, for sure. And though intangible, they are safe and well as long as the human mind is so. To this comforting end, surely Paris will be safe and well again, soon and very soon. Until then, may the spirit of freedom reign, not only there but also in other notable world cities, too.
London is a great city full stop, if you ask me. But then I live here and have for nearly 18 years. Admittedly, though I haven’t always counted my home city as a great one. So what is it about London that makes it great?
First, the capital has a vibrant soul, a spirit, which dominates central London but also stretches from east to west, north to south. Sure, different neighbourhoods have different charms, attractions, depending on whom you ask.
And if you ask me, I’ll tell you that most areas share this underpinning of vibrancy, even the areas that are as different as the eye can see, like Camden Town and Knightsbridge, for example. The charm is in the people, the restaurants, and the shops.
Speaking of shops, a plethora of choices contributes to London’s greatness. Jokingly, I am known for saying that if a city doesn’t have a Harvey Nichols or the likes of it, then it can’t be great.
Trendy Shops in London
Admittedly, swank department stores feature big in London. The complexity of course, with some of them, is the word big. Take Harrods, for example, it’s easy to get lost in there, lost in the crowd or just plain old turned around. And then there is Selfridges, covering blocks of the busy Oxford Street. It’s all too much, one tourist admitted recently.
But that’s before she talked to me about navigation. Though it’s true I prefer Liberty and Harvey Nichols to the bigger stores, I can’t imagine London without the big girls. The trick is negotiating them.
Three rules of thumb:
Number 1 – Get there at 10.00 or shortly afterwards to beat the crowds.
Number 2 – Have a plan. In other words, do not try to do the entire store in one go. If you want to buy shoes, go the shoe department. In both places, you will find plenty of choice. But if you want to browse only, go to Toy Kingdom at Harrods. You will see things there you’ve never seen before.
And number 3 – Get your bearings, using an escalator or elevator as your landmark. Also, ask for a map and use it as you would in a busy city.
As for those who don’t want any part of a department store, check out the boutiques, the smaller shops.
“Where are they,” an acquaintance asked recently while visiting London?
“Everywhere I told her, everywhere.”
The trick here is to go neighbourhood browsing, so to speak, to find either locally owned boutiques or flagship designer boutiques.
Take to South Kensington, where Carven has a beautiful store on Pelham Street, for instance, and if you don’t find anything there, head to Fulham Road and feast your eyes on the range of boutiques from Joseph’s to Chanel. There are some reasonably priced ones, too.
Looking for something different, then head to Marylebone High Street, any high
street, really. But Marylebone is one of my favourite’s to nip in and out of trendy shops.
There, what to do now in this great city – pop into one of its many trendy restaurants. Recently, we had the pleasure of dining at two newer ones—Tredwell’s in Covenant Garden and Sea Containers at the Mondrian Hotel. Delicious on both accounts!
There, it is true, …”when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson.
I agree and would venture further to say that even the rain doesn’t dampen the spirit of London. Catch it anywhere, the spirit that is, not the rain, although there is plenty of that around, too.
London has been ready for the football, American pro football, since 2007 when the NFL launched its International Series, hosting three regular season games at Wembley Stadium, home of major football (soccer) matches, including team England’s games and the Football Association’s (FA) Cup Final.
Yesterday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions was a sell-out even it was more like a blitz, instead of a contest, the Chiefs scoring 45 points to the Lions 10.
The point is the two preceding games—the Jacksonville Jaguars versus the Buffalo Bills, final score 37-31 on October 25, and the New York Jets versus Miami Dolphins, final score 27-14 on October 4—sold out, too.
With all of this NFL mania happening on my doorstep for eight years now, I’ve at last caught the excitement, not that I could have ignored last year’s adverts—the Raiders are coming or the high flying NFL flags on Regent’s street, one of London’s most popular tourist streets. Locals like it, too.
This year, however, I’ve had two up close and personal NFL experiences, one directly and the other indirectly. Directly, Paul and I attended the Dolphins game in style, from going to the tailgate party to watching the game in the owner’s suite. And somewhere in between I managed to get the autograph of NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino on a mini Dolphins helmet. And that’s not all. Not only did I rub shoulders with the former quarterback himself, so to speak in the owner’s box, but also had the pleasure of a short conversation with him the next day in the Atlanta airport, having arrived on the same flight.
Though I am the world’s worst groupie—just ask my friend Pam Oliver, Fox NFL side line reporter, who once had to just about drag me to the front of the room to speak to Alice Walker—I managed to strike up the nerves to acknowledge Mr Marino and chat to him on the tram, having been in the same corporate suite/box with him for a good three hours. What was I to do? Pretend like I didn’t know who he was.
Surely, he hadn’t a clue who I was, except we had both been a part of a relatively intimate gathering in the owner’s box and no one else in the room looked like me. And very sadly and unlike me, I had on the same outfit. Argh! Thus, I thought I’d better come out of the box, no pun intended.
Sonja and Pam in London restaurant
Rightly so, my friend Pam agreed, which leads me to my next NFL experience. Though I didn’t make the Chiefs/Lions game, as it was on the same day Paul was travelling home from New York, beforehand I got to hang out with Pam, who was in town to cover it.
From Watford, home of the famous Grove Hotel, where the Lions camped out, to Wembley and many places in between, Pam and the Fox team stayed on form, broadcasting the game back to the US. My dad, for one, caught the blow out.
So what’s the future for the NFL in London? Although pro-football is the most popular sport in the US, can it compete with the beautiful game known as football here?
That’s the big question. Still at least one Uber driver, who had chauffeured one of the Jaguars around during his stay, confessed that though he didn’t really understand the game, he had a great time. He’d get to know it and support it. Others agree. Hence, the full house every time.
Thus, according to the NFL’s international website, American football will be played here for the next five years, at least two games during the regular season at Wembley and possibly two more at the new Tottenham Hotspurs stadium to open in 2018.
It’s a long way to go for a football game, Pam and I agreed, at least for those travelling from the States, including the players. But the series does put American football on the international stage.
And this American, though I am not a major football fan, remains ready, for the football, that is, right here in London.
At last Paul and I took our very good seats at the Barbican to experience Lyndsey Turner’s modern day production of Hamlet, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, aka Sherlock in case there is a person on earth who doesn’t know this.
And though things got off to a slow and strange start–Hamlet sitting on the floor in a dark room in Elsinore Castle (modelled on Kronborg Castle, shown left) lamenting the loss of his father–the play took familiar shape with the scene change to the castle’s dinning room.
There, all the main characters were introduced. From then on, Cumberbatch personified the Danish Prince perfectly, even if he did bring him into a more modern world.
Like most people, I know all too well the tragic storyline of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which the Prince of Denmark discovers that his treacherous uncle Claudius has not only murdered his father to claim his throne but he has also claimed his wife, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet plots revenge.
And like most I know that Hamlet is a long and rather heavy play. But as an English major who minored in British Literature, I rather get this and tend to enjoy traditional Shakespeare word for word, so I didn’t know what to expect.
Thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch, however, my expectations mattered little. Even when the director side-stepped tradition, making Hamlet a bit juvenile at times, Cumberbatch continued to personify the essence of Hamlet.
For reviews, look to the Guardian and The Telegraph for very different takes on the play. Some like it, others don’t. Where do I fall on the play—somewhere in between?
But one thing that we can all agree on is that though there were scenes without Cumberbatch that mattered, it was the ones with him that mattered the most. Even the set, as grand as it was at times and juxtaposedly grime at others, took a back seat to Cumberbatch’s acting.
And that’s what really matters. Hamlet is on at the Barbican until October 31st.
Some things are easier said than done, most of them have to do with kicking a bad habit, such as swearing, overeating, smoking or enabling. Yes enabling – contributing continuously to an unhealthy/dysfunctional situation in the name of love, religion, support, family secrecy, and so on.
Guilty as charged for enabling, that is. Never have I been guilty of any of the other vices – okay, so I might have indulged in at least one of them. Never mind.
Anyhow, since enabling can be as counterproductive as the addiction or dysfunction in question, it is time to toughen up and practise tough love. I know, I know. That’s easier said than done.
Read more in my September Huffington Post blog, Getting Tough On Enabling. And do have your say on the matter, too.
Thank you to the nearly 350 people who played my travel game, What City Is This, and the high percentage (approx. 50%) who shared it or liked it for an opportunity to win one of five scratch globes to map their travels.
Scratch that, the scratch globe that is (I am still assembling mine) and replace it with a scratch map, equally as novel but less fiddly, offering instant mapping.
The winners are: Bubuth Suarez, Naveen Jonathan, Nisha Trichinda, Evan Denuevo Sudario and Anna Summer.
Congratulations to each of them. Shortly after this post, each winner will receive a direct message from me with instructions on how to claim their map. If not claimed within a week of messaging, I will select alternate (s).
Again thanks to everyone who played for a chance to win the prize. And though the contest is over, the game is still available to play. Click here. So why not test your travel knowledge or just play for fun. In the meantime, What City Is This?
I’ve been travelling internationally for years now, long before I moved to London some seventeen years ago. My first stop might very well have been London, or was it Manila, if you don’t count Mexico City. But I do! So never mind where it was.
Anyhow, after returning from Scandinavia earlier this summer, I found myself browsing my photographs over the years and wondered had I truly become a globetrotter. Quickly, I disqualified myself, knowing full well that I have many more miles to travel.
Still I have seen a few places and gained so much for it, so I thought it would be fun and also a tad bit eye opening to share some of the photographs via a game. Thus, I created ‘What City Is it?’.
Click here to play the game and share with your fiends on social media to enter the draw to win a scratch globe to map your own travels. So go on get guessing.
Though it was a month ago that we returned from Scandinavia, memories of our time there hang over me like a refreshing morning mist, even if I have rushed off to the US somewhere in between, encountering a very different world. But that’s another story. For now, I bring you the final blog in the three part series on our tour of three of the Nordic states. Off to Denmark, we go!
Twenty minutes on a ferry and Sweden was behind us once again, as we had stopped over in its second city, Gothenburg, after leaving Oslo, Norway’s capital. But this time we were in Denmark, home of Kronborg Castle, aka Shakespeare’s Elsinore Castle, Hamlet’s home.
As anxious as I was to visit the castle, we took a stroll around the town of Helsingor, actually more like a trot to find some food. You see, after a near bust up over whether we would eat food on the ferry or not, I knew that time was of the essence.
Thus, we dashed into a charming restaurant that served smorrebord only, traditional open Scandinavian sandwiches. The manager explained that they offered one plate only with three kinds of sandwiches—fried fish, shrimp and egg, and a meat—alongside beer and a shot, all for less than 10 pound sterling. Before I dared to say no, never having acquired a taste for beer, he offered soft drinks or a small bottle of wine in lieu of the beer and the shot.
Secretly, I dreaded yet more bread and what I presumed would be cheap wine. I haven’t had a soft drink for well over a year, but I couldn’t risk tipping our relationship over the edge. And at that stage wine was welcome, although water would have been wiser.
‘We’ll stay, ‘ I said and opted for the red wine, while settling down at the sturdy wooden table. Paul followed my lead. Though he appreciates beer, he did not fancy a shot in the middle of the day. Wonder why?
Surprisingly to both of us, the food was delicious, though I only ate the toppings and left the rye bread. And I enjoyed the wine, too. Thank goodness, we got off to a good start in the land of Danes. And after lunch despite the sporadic rain we took a stroll around the pretty tourist town.
The likes of Windsor with a castle as its backdrop, Helsingor was bustling with people. Most noticeably, even there, was the country’s international flavour alongside the traditional foods and designs. But in the interest of time, we didn’t tarry; we headed to the castle.
Kronborg Castle is a perfect place for the imagination to wander. Built from 1574 to 1585 by Frederick II, the lavish castle was a symbol of power in those days but tragically burned down in 1629.
Christian IV rebuilt the castle and though it was captured by the Swedes some thirty years later and plundered and then used as a military defence for years, in the early 20th century, the Danes restored it to its original glory and proudly open it to the public as a World Heritage site.
After rushing through our tour, we headed to the capital. The approach to Copenhagen is similar to driving into London, not literally, but unless you come from the East, where the London’s skyline is amazing, you might be disappointed until you are in the belly of the city. Not that everything in between is totally unattractive in either metropolis, but the modest houses, dreary shops and neighbourhoods, don’t represent the heart of the world- class cities at all.
At last in the Danish capital, we got what we expected—a vibrant capital with much to see and do. Though much smaller in population (approx 562,000) than London, for example, its shopping is on par with most cosmopolitan cities and its sightseeing and culture are competitive, too.
Though we enjoyed touring the city by boat, soaking up the atmosphere from the water, we walked around its pretty streets, too. Favourites sights and activities were glimpsing The Little Mermaidand then checking out the Hans Christian Andersen exhibition.
Kronborg from behind the windows of the ferry
On the waters of Copenhagen
At the center of Copenhagen
Little Mermaid Statue
The first night we would have the crème de la crème of the holiday meals booked well in advance at Era Ora, Copenhagen’s oldest Michelin star restaurant, after not being able to secure a place at Noma, which has two Michelin stars and has been voted the world’s best restaurant three times.
Also the only Italian restaurant in Scandinavia to hold a Michelin star, however, Era Ora did not disappoint in food or atmosphere. After struggling to select a bottle of wine for less than £100, Paul leaned over and asked a very important question.
‘Do you have any idea what this is going to cost?’
Houston, we have a problem, I thought to myself, suddenly realising that we could be in for a very big conversation as well as the most expensive meal that we’d ever paid for, just for the two us!
And we were (the latter, that is) but after inconspicuously agreeing that it was no one’s fault, we enjoyed the moment and wrote it off as an investment in our marriage.
Still, we opted for a lesser meal in courses and in price the next night, having been referred by a shop assistant to a new trendy place, owned by former sous chefs of Noma. That’s where we discovered organic wine – the new thing in Denmark and apparently in London, too.
Would we go back to Copenhagen? Of course, it is a world class city and though I had been warned that racial issues might crop up in Denmark more so than any other place, I found its capital the most diverse in character and in population of all the three capitals that we visited on the tour—the other two, Oslo and Stockholm.
Admittedly, we only tasted the flavour of Denmark and Copenhagen might not be representative of the country, but there, if not anywhere else in the country, there is a ubiquitous feeling in the air that one whiffs in cities such as Paris, London and New York. This is a place with both heart and soul, which brings its varied people together to a similar rhythm, if you will.
Like other world cities it has its problems, but even underneath its cloudy skies, one thing is clear–Copenhagen is youthful and vibrant, even in its old age, and by design, is leading the way to a more eclectic Scandinavia.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Food – Unpretentious Michelin star restaurants galore! We loved Era Ora!
Shopping – The Stroget has both high-end and high street shopping – something for everyone!
Copenhagen – A capital city with a fantastic atmosphere. Nice to tour, even in the rain.
Krongborg Castle – Historical and magical!
LOWLIGHTS:
Laid back shop assistants – Though I made friends with the person I actually bought from, very nice, others were less than interested!
Tacky touristy restaurants – The food capital of the world has some undesirables, too. Don’t they all.
Limited Parking – Not just in Copenhagen but also in Helsingor, one is best to ditch the car.
