My Lovely Blogaki

The major objective of our travel to Wales last week was to find good food. We did eat nice things there, but we also bought and brought back goodies. This is one of them.


Welsh beef sirloin steak. Does not it look nice?

I fell in love once I saw it and asked butcher to give me a piece.

Surprisingly this fairly big chank costed only £3.50.




Returned home, I cooked it as simple steak.

The meat did not shrink at all during the cooking, and it was as large as before cooking. This does not happen when I buy cheap cuts from supermarket (and that is why I don't buy cheap meat from supermarkets ).






The first thing that struck me was its softness. It did not need any effort to chew, and just meaty juice came out of the bite.

It was so so nice. I need to go back to buy it again when I happen to be in that part of Wales!







These are the animals that provided us the meat. Thank you all!

Returned from trip to Wales yesterday. Here is summary.


A girl friend of mine has a car and invited me and another girl friend for a short trip to Wales.

In UK, the train ticket price is very expensive. If it is a long trip and you travel in 3 or 4 people, you'd fare much better to rent a car than to go by train.

We first went to Ross-on-Wye, then passing Swansea, had lunch in Mumbles, and went to see Rhossili (right), which was astonishingly beautiful.



Afterwards we went to Oxwich and climb up a mountain into a forest (left). It was beautiful and unusual for us, as where we live in England, the terrain is very flat.

Then we went to B&B in a place called Burry and slept over. It was a farm house having only 2 rooms to rent. The landlady cultivates many types of really gorgeous Dahlias (I assume she sells them).



Day after we headed for Brecon Beacons (mountainous area of central Wales, national park). This is the ice cream I had in the town of Brecon. Really delicious.

Finally we went to Hay-on-Wye and had a late lunch (almost dinner).

We saw marvelous things, had delicious food, met nice people and above all we had many good laughs.

It was very sunny and hot yesterday in Birmingham. So we tried to find where we can have lunch in the sun. First we thought of a gustropub with outside tables in Arcadian Centre of the Chinatown, where we ate had a nice sandwich a couple of weekends ago.


But when we went to the Arcadian Centre, the shutter was down and could not enter. Wondering what happened, we went to the other side of the Arcadian where the gastropub is.

Then we saw all these fire engines gathering aroud the pub. Evidently there was a fire in a club next to the pub where we wanted to go, and as precautionary measure, all the Arcadian was closed and cordoned off.



So we ventured further into the Gay town of Birmingham.

Birmingham Gay town is adjacent to Chinatown and somehow overlapping. It is a weird situation, but they seem to be happy neighbours.



We found this club+restaurant. It was pretty full, partly because of the wonderful weather, partly because of the Arcadian's closure, but we managed to find a table.

The decor is stylish and there were more tables than we thought looking from the outside. There is a open air garden, too.


It offers both pub food and more decent main courses.

We ordered a chicken fillet burger for 6.95 pounds with two glasses of coke (I ate already something at home and was not very hungry).

It came not with a burger bun, but with an unusual triangular bread, which was nice. Chips were also abundant.




In the bread were two slices of chicken breast fillet, one thick beacon, and melting cheese. Chicken was average battery chicken without flavour (no, I did not expect free range chicken for this price), but the burger itself was rich and satisfying. As pub food, it was on a good standard.

So we find a new place to go.

On St. Mary's day, Ferragosto for the Italians, 15 August for anybody, we went to Warwick, 30 min. travel from Birmingham by train. The rain made me hesitated to go out, but Dim wanted to go to somewhere, so I took him there.


Warwick is famous for this: Warwick castle . It looks beautiful and impressive, but we did not go in, because the entrance fee is too expensive. It is now whopping 18.75 pounds! (Which is US$37.34).

I remember it used to be less than 10 pounds, but my friends told me that some time ago Madame Tassauds (not a person but a company) bought it, filled it with famous wax figures, and increased the entrance fee.

I am interested in historical heritage, but not really in wax dolls; for people like me 19 pounds should be too much.


But there are other interesting to see, like this St. Mary's Church.

Entrance is free (you are invited to donate, but no one make you to) and there is plenty of things to see.

There are also two museums which are absolutely free (again what you have to do is just donation), which is really generous. There also is a garden for a small fee. So you can have a decent and enjoyable visit of the town without entering the Castle.








View of the interior of the church; it is ample and imposing.









This is a chapel (Chapel of Our Lady) inside where some aristocrats of the area lie.


At the centre is the coffin of Robert Dudley, favourite of Queen Elisabeth.

See my album for more photos.

http://my.opera.com/tabatakayoko/albums/show.dml?id=340460



I did not spend 19 pounds for the caslte, but I paid as much for lunch for two (oops ). This is my chargrilled beef sandwich with vegetable crisps and green salad. The portion was rather small, but the quality was high.


All in all it was an interesting excursion.

Sunday yesterday, we had a very nice day. It was sunny and reasonably hot without being unpleasantly hot.

After having gone to the church, it Dim and I decided to lunch al fresco.



We went to a gastro-pub in B'ham city centre, and had drinks and sandwich.

Weirdly this pub sells beer in a half pint glass, or 2 or 4 pints pitcher. It is why Dim had only a half pint.

Mine is usual diet coke.

British people do not eat al fresco as often as the people in the Continent, but on rare nice summer days they do with great pleasure.



Here is the sandwich. As we had already eaten a bit in the church, we had only one plate and shared it.

It is difficult see in this photo, but it was quite big in quantity. There is no way I could eat the whole plate, even when I am hungry.

Bread was fresh, and the tuna mayo and spring onion filling was successful. Chips also were well made, even though frozen variety.

It was a nice lazy afternoon.