Loving my Summer holidays 2011
Looking forward to 4 weeks of summer vacation. Started good, having chosen for the first time to fly Finnair to Brussels, which incidentally just started daily flights from SIN-HELSINKI two months ago. I'm satisfied with the flight: good food, pleasant service and the best part must be the small and uncrowded airport to make quick transfers, painlessly.
Landed on a chilly morning in Brussels and we drove to Gent to pick up our Volvo garage. These people at Volvo are so sweet, putting at our disposal a car at very reasonable rates. We arrived exactly 13 hours point to point at Niewpoort, which in the past took about 16hours when we came via CDG Paris with Air France. You can smell the iodium rich crisp air.. aah perfect. We dined on scrumptious north sea shrimp tomato salad with lotsa freshly cut fries. After we unpacked and stopped by the grocers to pick up the essentials. Five days of lazy living punctuated with me getting up early to fetch fresh croissants and danish. I just can't get enough of fresh out of the oven crusty filo pastry smeared with fruity jam. Lunch and dinners were opportunities to tick off my "must-eat" list. It's hard to pass by the local ice cream parlour without buying a scoop of rasperry yoghurt, praline, Belgian chocolate, chocolate chips or just speculoos. It is worth every calorie here!
As the weather turned chiller, it was time we travelled south to meet our buddies at their domain in the Provence. We flew from Brussels to Marseille and hired a car to drive to their house. It was simply breathtaking: the route to the domain and the domain itself. We had 5 fabulous days: dining out and dining in. We met colourful characters like the local wine merchant who's also outfitter of Johnny Depp's wine cellars amongst other famous people. The butcher to the BCBG - Bon Chic Bon Genre translates roughly to the beautiful people. Yes, these beautiful people descend on St Tropez in summer with their monstrous luxury yachts enough to make the mortals weep. At the same time, it was fun people watching. We saw scantily clad model-like girls sashaying their way to the parties held onboard the yachts. Sigh.. the lives of the rich and powerful.
We left the Provence with sweet memories and bagfuls of truffle infused salt and spaghetti.
My next stop was Michigan, off to spent 2 weeks with mom. The outbound flight with Delta was fantastic but it has to be in Business Class and not less. I was fed with copious amount of food and the bread came nicely warm, just like the mixed cocktail nuts. The nice surprise was to wake up in the night and get a piece of warm chocolate chip cookie! Welcome to USA. Good start.
Mom lives in a single level house with a huge basement. Solidly built, it's called a Rancher and it comes with lots of land. Ray bought himself a John Deere lawn mower - one that you ride on. Mom transformed the land into parcels of flowerbeds. 11 in total ! After wearing out Macy's, Steinmart's, JC Penny, Marshall and Kohls clothes racks, I decided to take the Windy City by storm. Mom and me boarded the Amtrak train into Chicago and found ourselves 2.5 hours later at Union Station. Then it was a rush for a taxi to East Ohio where we checked in at the Comfort Inn Hotel. Huge clean rooms and close to Magnificent Mile ( the main shopping street ), the only downside was the breakfast. I didn't enjoy eating out of styro foam plates and cups. And the muffins were too industrial-like, the cornflakes came in tiny boxes and the bacon and eggs didn't look appetising enough for me. So the next morning, it didn't take much to convince Mom to go to the Corner Bakery to eat some proper breakfast foods. We trawled the shops on Magnificent Mile from morning till evening, only stopping to eat lunch or tea. I did some fantastic buys! Never to be had in Singapore, Belgium, France nor London. It was just unbelieveable the discounts that were ringing through the cash registers. Tommy Hilifiger Men's shirts for under SGD15! Calvin Klein dresses for SGD 50. I just went ballistic.
I had my share of Mexican Nachos, Enchilladas, Fajitas. Applebee's soup and salad combo, juicy steaks and hamburgers, Bimbo's to-die-for thin crust pizza, drive-in Coney dogs and Root beer floats, Panera's famous Cornbread, Uno's deep pan Chicago style pizza. And the best part is that after my hols, i still came back home slim and able to fit my size 4 Zara pants and pencilled skirts. How did I do that? Walk it off...all day. Shopping is exercise too.
Landed on a chilly morning in Brussels and we drove to Gent to pick up our Volvo garage. These people at Volvo are so sweet, putting at our disposal a car at very reasonable rates. We arrived exactly 13 hours point to point at Niewpoort, which in the past took about 16hours when we came via CDG Paris with Air France. You can smell the iodium rich crisp air.. aah perfect. We dined on scrumptious north sea shrimp tomato salad with lotsa freshly cut fries. After we unpacked and stopped by the grocers to pick up the essentials. Five days of lazy living punctuated with me getting up early to fetch fresh croissants and danish. I just can't get enough of fresh out of the oven crusty filo pastry smeared with fruity jam. Lunch and dinners were opportunities to tick off my "must-eat" list. It's hard to pass by the local ice cream parlour without buying a scoop of rasperry yoghurt, praline, Belgian chocolate, chocolate chips or just speculoos. It is worth every calorie here!
As the weather turned chiller, it was time we travelled south to meet our buddies at their domain in the Provence. We flew from Brussels to Marseille and hired a car to drive to their house. It was simply breathtaking: the route to the domain and the domain itself. We had 5 fabulous days: dining out and dining in. We met colourful characters like the local wine merchant who's also outfitter of Johnny Depp's wine cellars amongst other famous people. The butcher to the BCBG - Bon Chic Bon Genre translates roughly to the beautiful people. Yes, these beautiful people descend on St Tropez in summer with their monstrous luxury yachts enough to make the mortals weep. At the same time, it was fun people watching. We saw scantily clad model-like girls sashaying their way to the parties held onboard the yachts. Sigh.. the lives of the rich and powerful. We left the Provence with sweet memories and bagfuls of truffle infused salt and spaghetti.
My next stop was Michigan, off to spent 2 weeks with mom. The outbound flight with Delta was fantastic but it has to be in Business Class and not less. I was fed with copious amount of food and the bread came nicely warm, just like the mixed cocktail nuts. The nice surprise was to wake up in the night and get a piece of warm chocolate chip cookie! Welcome to USA. Good start.
Mom lives in a single level house with a huge basement. Solidly built, it's called a Rancher and it comes with lots of land. Ray bought himself a John Deere lawn mower - one that you ride on. Mom transformed the land into parcels of flowerbeds. 11 in total ! After wearing out Macy's, Steinmart's, JC Penny, Marshall and Kohls clothes racks, I decided to take the Windy City by storm. Mom and me boarded the Amtrak train into Chicago and found ourselves 2.5 hours later at Union Station. Then it was a rush for a taxi to East Ohio where we checked in at the Comfort Inn Hotel. Huge clean rooms and close to Magnificent Mile ( the main shopping street ), the only downside was the breakfast. I didn't enjoy eating out of styro foam plates and cups. And the muffins were too industrial-like, the cornflakes came in tiny boxes and the bacon and eggs didn't look appetising enough for me. So the next morning, it didn't take much to convince Mom to go to the Corner Bakery to eat some proper breakfast foods. We trawled the shops on Magnificent Mile from morning till evening, only stopping to eat lunch or tea. I did some fantastic buys! Never to be had in Singapore, Belgium, France nor London. It was just unbelieveable the discounts that were ringing through the cash registers. Tommy Hilifiger Men's shirts for under SGD15! Calvin Klein dresses for SGD 50. I just went ballistic.
I had my share of Mexican Nachos, Enchilladas, Fajitas. Applebee's soup and salad combo, juicy steaks and hamburgers, Bimbo's to-die-for thin crust pizza, drive-in Coney dogs and Root beer floats, Panera's famous Cornbread, Uno's deep pan Chicago style pizza. And the best part is that after my hols, i still came back home slim and able to fit my size 4 Zara pants and pencilled skirts. How did I do that? Walk it off...all day. Shopping is exercise too.
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