Madrid - City of churros, sunshine and beautiful people

I just returned from a few days visiting my good friend Susie, we've been friends since we've been alive so it was great to catch up with her. She showed me a few highlights of Madrid including Sol and where to find the best churros y chocolate.

The temperature reached 35 degrees which was lovely and I made the most of the cities culinary delights. I even improved my Spanish!

The churros place. First thing I ate in Madrid was these long fried strips of dough dipped in hot thick chocolate!

As shown here. I don't know how I stayed still long enough with a churro in my hand for this photo to be taken, they were so good.

These guys dress up as giant cartoon characters including mickey mouse, bart and even chucky (terrifying).  They shout guappa at the ladies and try and tempt people to pose for a photo for a price or buy a balloon. One day when I was exploring alone alone, a mickey mouse kissed my hand then turned us around presumably looking for my companion to take a picture of us. He was just stood there posing with his arm round me until he realised there was no one there, was pretty funny. Half of the time they walk around with their characters head off, talking to one another. Must be pretty weird for kids to see that.

A nice restaurant where I had these red wine baked clams with oyster mushrooms.  It was incredibly salty . In the middle is octopus, easily the best I've had and we also ordered some queso - local cheese selection.

The salty restaurant. The waitress was pretty mardy. Also me and my friend couldn't stop laughing (happened regularly on my visit) and we were just sat there with tears running down our faces. 

After the restaurant we stopped at this place which was open at 11pm and got a nutella crepe to share

tasty nutella crepe

Back at sol there was a pastry and sweet shop selling a wide variety of tasty food. I ordered some almond tuille type biscuits and an espresso, both were great!

An indoor market that sold horchata, mojitos, fresh fruit and veg, lots of fish and traditional Spanish dishes. You can buy a cocktail stick with quails eggs, anchovy, olive etc on for a euro and they are  good for nibbling on as you are looking round

enjoying an ice cold horchata from the market

A peruvian restaurant. This meal of garlic chicken was ok but the lemon meringue pie was amazing!!

The amazing lemon meringue pie

The thick hot chocolate that I became addicted to and will make any hot chocolate I ever have inferior by comparison...except cocoa on ecclesall road, there's is very good and similar to this. I'm gonna have to go there to get my fix soon

Inside a cafe, trying to escape the heat of the afternoon sun. The chocolate was good, the matcha  yoghurt smoothie and the rude staff not so good.

Went into starbucks and this was the view from the floor to ceiling windows

A nice looking building, there were many of these and I have no idea what actually goes on inside them

I do love this drink, jut sat in the starbucks patio

Quick snap as I enjoyed my ice tea 

Me and Susie

More architecture. 

One of the streets of Sol, filled with ice cream stores, clothing shops and tapas restarants

A rather blurry shot of some alcohol that graced the walls of a tapas restaurant 

Patatas bravas, ridiculously cheap wine and fried green peppers

Delicious!

A lovely spread

Me doing what I enjoy

And again..this time cooling off with some mint chocolate chip ice cream at a parlour

The early evening sky

Some tapas. The tortilla was different to how I've had it in barcelona in that the potato was diced and very soft as opposed to sliced waxy type. I also had calamari which was good and chicken in red wine tomato sauce,

The tapas restarant. I swear I was so spaced out most of the time from lack of sleep and excitement that I mistook these  scary mannequins for real people twice!

A very wide building. This square had lots of restaurants that try to entice you to eat there.

My friend was terrified of this sparkly dancing goat type thing that repeatedly opened and closed his wooden mouth.

Mojitos! They also sold caprinhas, weirdly enough I only drank one glass of wine the whole holiday!  Wasn't feeling the booze really.

So there it is, very photo heavy and words light but hope you enjoy it none the less.
Have any of you been to Madrid, or Spain? If so, what did you do?

Urban Choola Restaurant Review

Urban Choola has been open just three weeks. As soon as I saw the sign I was intrigued. This cosy little spot has been host to many restaurants / cafe's over the years, Amigos and Bohans are the previous two and I enjoyed eating at both of them. Amigos has moved furthur down London road to a bigger and shinier venue. I've no idea what happened to Bohans but their vegetarian breakfast sandwiches rid me of many a hangover.

The theme for this place is Indian street food, once inside you can see this reflected on the exposed brick walls - colourful prints illustrating various people enjoying street food in India.

The menu is short, a good sign and has sections such as "small bites", "all time favourites" and "tandoori and the grill". I order chicken masala dosa, lamb seekh kebab for my mum and masala chicken wings.

A short while later my wings arrived on their own, so me and my mum ended up sharing them. They were accompanied by "khacumber" salad which consisted of chopped carrot, cabbage, lemon, red onion and fresh coriander. This was nice and seen as they'd salted the onions, they weren't too pungent, as raw onions usually are.
There was also a coriander lime dressing and the nine wings were covered in a thick tasty marinade.

The dosa and kebab arrived ten minutes after we'd finished the wings. My mum's masala fries which accompanied her kebab were so good! I could have eaten all those but she wouldn't have been happy about that. My dosa was tangy from the fermented lentils in the batter, with a rich masala filling and chunky chicken breast pieces. The chicken was dry, which is typical of authentic Asian chicken dishes. Some people might object to this overcooking of chicken but I ate chicken like this when I was growing up so this is how I personally prefer it.

 

It doesn't take much persuasion for me to agree to share a gujwa halwa (carrot pudding) with Ma.
Warm, sweet and buttery, with flavours of cardamon and almond, this pudding evokes lovely memories of my childhood. Didn't manage to snap a pic of this as we were almost finished it before I realised. It basically looks like a squishy orange pulp, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream! What it lacks in appearance it makes up for in taste though. I'll be back again for their delicious sounding creme brulee with a twist.
Our meal, with a pepsi, came to £20.20



Food - 8/10
Service - 9/10
Value - 9/10

London Visit - A few pics

Intense chilli chocolate from that amazing chocolate shop near borough market

Happy shoppers at Borough market

Lots of cheese and salami, including scarmoza! My favourite!

Another stall selling cheese

The new "Shard"

My treat for the day- goats milk ice cream in cappucinno and black forest flavours, creamy and stretchy

Nice looking pastries

At Borough market

Stall in Borough market selling liquorice and other sweet treats

A creperie in Camden

Great clothes here, I love the quirky selection

Nutella crepe, delicious!

Camden street

Boats on the canal

Salt and pepper tofu in a Vietnamese restaurant

Colourful vegan breakfast at a wonderful small cafe

Reykjavik - place of mountains, beards and Bjork

I just spent four days in beautiful Iceland. Travelling alone, I explored Reyjavik with plans to see and eat everything but not enough kronas in my wallet. I had an incredible time there.
The main highlight was bumping into one of my lifetime idols - Bjork! She was just strolling down Laugavegur, the main shopping street. I almost fainted and asked her if she was Bjork, even though it was obvious but she ran away across the road! Sadly no photo for me then but still an amazing experience.
The atoms aurora borealis were being lazy and didn't put on a very good display so was rather underwhelmed by that. 
It's not as cold as I expected, the days were between 0-9 degrees. It was actually cooler as I arrived back home. Also the just 5 hours of light took some getting used to.
A welcoming, warm and peppery smelling massive greenhouse was another interesting visit made even better by it's home made tomato soup which was undoubtedly the best I've had, and I'm not a fan of tomatoes normally. Rows of the juicy fruit in various stages of growth were on display and pots of basil and scissors were on tables for you to snip into your soup.
The food was hit and miss. Cafe Loki was incredible , the food was delicate and simple, their rye bread ice cream is just spectacular. Cafe Babalu is quirky and cosy with the best chocolate banana crepes, bulging with thick chocolate sauce. Sushibarinn had wonderful fresh sushi and very delicious salmon tartar with avocado, chilli and black and white sesame. Those three are a must if you visit.
I saw a few geysers and waterfalls too but got very lonely out there, despite being used to travelling alone - at 19 I travelled to Greece on my own for two weeks, saganaki cheese..hello!
Perhaps the loneliness was due to the hotel being a fair walk away from the centre and no one else my age staying there, though I'm pretty sure they were all British, which can be disappointing. 
I'd recommend younger folk (or those young at heart) to stay at the hostel on Laugavegur as the staff are ridiculously friendly and travellers just hang out in the lobby there, enjoying the live music and other activities.

Here are some photos in no particular order.
 

Lovely soja latte at a restaurant that had no name (popular theme in Reykjavik)

Hotel buffet dinner, soup was so salty!

First introduction to Plokkfiskur, Icelandic fish stew..wasn't expecting this and didn't enjoy. Had the texture of tuna on a jacket potato after being chewed for a while. The bread was lovely, very syrupy

Crepe with maple syrup, flaky and light

Some street art that is prevalent across Reykjavik

Had one of those brownies, they were lovely and the girls here were kind and chatty, recommending the best places for nights out.

At the greenhouse

More art

More tomatoes

The tomato cafe

Lovely soup

More salty vegetable soup at a restaurant out near the geysers

This pecan pie was delicious, great pastry and wobbly sweet filling

Wrapped up enjoying the landscape

Salmon tartare at Sushibarinn

Sushi platter at Sushibarinn

Gorgeous generously filled  chocolate and banana crepe at the wonderful Cafe Babalu

Cafe Babalu

The view from the church tower, looks like the edge of the world!

Simple and elegant food at Cafe Loki. Egg and pickled herring on one rye, incredible buttery rich (much better than before) plokkfiskur on the other accompanied by amazing rye bread ice cream

Traditional Icelandic food - Skyr served with cream and sugar. How I didn't get ill I have no idea!

Amazing bakery. Bought some rye bread to take home and it's dense and sour and lovely

Yellow house

Church tower

Seafood coconut soup at Sushi Samba, also had calamari tempura and the most incredible basil aioli

Inside Cafe Babalu

A lovely scene on a beautiful walk