Sunday Morning

Brunch at Jones the Grocer, my favourite place in Singapore because I love breakfasts and I love dining alfresco. And although I do acknowledge the fact that it's the most important meal of the day, I still skip breakfast every day. Which means that if I do have breakfast, it's got to be big. Daddy's full English Breakfast. Ah which brings back memories of the UK.
Mum's BLT on toasted Focaccia. The tomatoes were ginormous.
My Banana & Pecan bread with fruit compote. Weakness for bread with nuts and grains in them!
They ran out of white chocolate hazelnut ice blended coffee ): So I settled for dark chocolate mocha, which was so-so.
Wow wow my technophobe of a mother knows how to take photos with a DSLR so steady. She couldn't even find the shutter button. But at least she knows how to look into the viewfinder. Not like some people. "Eh your camara is off?"
And the thing I love most about this place, it provides some sort of escapism. Like for two hours we could just pretend that we're anywhere but here.

My Favourite Colour Is ...

When I'm not scraping melted cheese stains of plates, chopping onions with a vengeance, mashing hard-boiled eggs, ridding canned tuna and defrosted chicken of their juices, slicing swiss cheese and cleaning the kitchen like there's no tomorrow ( henceforth the venerable title of "Shanghai Maria" )

Final Destinaion : Cambridge

Couldn't upload photos onto blogger the past few days, so pardon the long absence. Anyway nothing fantastico about Cambridge because it's just another university town. Although I really hope I'll get a chance to study there, always wanted to study abroad ( I'm so jealous of Cheng and Chans ). I think the University of Cambridge has a really conducive studying environment. Who wouldn't want to walk through the same halls that brainiacs all over the world flock to?
King's College. Maaaaaaaaaaaan. Make me smarter so I can study there! Too beautiful.
And then after weeks of ploughing through the books, summer comes along and I can spend hours on the green one lazy afternoon, reading a good book and eating a sandwich....A girl can only dream.After looking around, we had lunch at a small cafe, I had scones! I remember I wasn't feeling too good that day cause I was desperately craving noodle soup and my cold was getting worse. But thank goodness the weather was gorgeous, a real summer's day, so that cheered me up a bit. Auntie Bee Bee told us that Christopher was working at Subway in Cambridge so we went to visit him, but his shift wasn't due to start till 4. Haven't seen him in a long long time. I doubt I'd be able to recognise him though I heard he's got dreadlocks now hahaha. So we left word that "Your Uncle Jackie Chan from Singapore came to find you" with the nice Subway girl and went back to Long Sutton.
Back to the streets of London on our last day since our flight was scheduled for nine-ish later that night. There's heaps of people on Oxford Street especially on weekends, it's no wonder the number of cases of the H1N1 in the UK is in the thousands.
This is the last photo of our trip to the UK; a parade of cycling nudists! Daddy kept asking me to take out the camara but I didn't want to cause I felt like I was being rude so he started taking photos. And he took a lot. This is one of the more decent ones, the rest there're people bits hanging all over. But I gotta admire their guts, and they were actually doing this for a cause. Something to do with cycling instead of taking the public transport in a bid to conserve the environment. I don't know why they had to be naked though.

Chester
This little critter came up to us really close while we were taking photos in the park, hoping we'd feed him scraps of food.
River Dee
Mum loves the Victorian architecture, but I might have been slightly distracted by the shops to fully appreciate its beauty...

Peak District
Lake District was picturesque, but Peak District was a different kind of beauty. The kind where you feel like you're on top of the world, and the cars on the small, twisting roads are far and few. And when you're driving on a particularly steep section of the road, all you can see through the windscreen is the vast, grey sky. I don't think I've ever seen any other place like this before.

Buxton
Stopped over for lunch at the town's gardens. Clearly their definition of "light snacks" is different from ours.
Some shots taken on the way to Auntie Bee Bee's house. Even the wild flowers are pretty, unlike the small boring bougainvilleas we have in Singapore.
Angteck House, Long Sutton, Lincolnshire
Finally got to Auntie BB's house with the help of our GPS because co-driver aka navigator aka me fell asleep. On the outside it looks exactly the same as I remember it from the last time I visited, but the moment I stepped through her front door, I was confused with what was there before, and what was not.
The backyard and the swimming pool. I never tried swimming in it because I hear stories of how cold it is despite it being heated. Even in the summer.
Orson! Who likes tummy tickles (: I think all dogs like being stroked on their tummies. I can think of one other dog who likes that ):
We had dinner in the conservatory (which was still cold though it's supposed to keep the heat in). And it was mostly from Tesco again. My aunt had dinner ready in under 20 minutes. The perks of convenience food.
Aunt's trying to grow her own strawberries.
Angteck House, and our rented Ford Focus.

En Route to Chester

Morecambe Bay
And the mud-flats behind.
Blackpool
Blackpool Tower
The weather was really bad, not only was it raining, but it was colder as a result of the downpour as well. Which meant really lousy photos (because I always believe photos turn out nicer when it's sunny), and we didn't have a chance to walk down the pier where all the games and rides were. The town was pretty much dead much to my dismay. It was afterall summer, and Blackpool is a seaside resort.
The weather did not improve when we arrived in Chester in the late afternoon, so we whiled our time away in the hotel lobby, then after 20 minutes decided that the rain would not cease to fall, and went out to get dinner anyway. No photos again, which left me hoping that the weather would cooperate the next morning ( it did!) We had our dinner in the comfort of our warm hotel room; instant noodles, coleslaw, cold chicken breast, fresh greens, yogurt and cut fruit (courtesy of Tesco). Cause British food was getting to us, and we were craving something soupy. I rarely eat instant noodles cause there's too much junk in it, but what choice did we have?