Monthly Archives: May 2012

Short Runs in Strange Places

Posted on by

The first in an occasional series, whereby I try not get myself mugged while vainly trying to keep fit on the road and simultaneously confuse my iphone satnav. File this first post under future nostalgia – a reminder of runs at home, where there were shops selling ice-cold mineral water and chocolate bars every two hundred yards.

London: my favorite run – across the river from our old office. Running East down the South Bank of the Thames is like running back in time, as you slowly peel back the successive layers of gentrification spreading out from the City. I once ran a half marathon along this route by accident, but that is another story.

St Paul's

St Paul's across the Millenium Bridge

New York: West from our apartment to the Hudson River, then down the West Side Highway to Battery Park. An hour of trying not to appear too competitive among the crowds of hyper-fit New Yorkers, rewarded by a distant but wonderful view of Lady Liberty at half time.

Lady Liberty

Lady Liberty (freedom through a long lens)

Goodbye to NYC Cocktails

Posted on by

Tonight we decided to start our extended goodbye to New York by revisiting a couple of our favourite cocktail bars, one uptown and one downtown, with the obligatory white knuckle taxi ride between the two.

Salon de Ning

Perched on top of the Peninsula Hotel on 55th Street, the Salon de Ning comes complete with Shanghai madam portraits hung flat on the ceiling, a mid-level view through the forest of skyscrapers down to Central Park and a semi-serious cocktail list. There are occasional traces of cigar-chomping-mid-town-macho, however, so try to go off peak (and try not to order a single malt on the rocks with a cocktail straw). If you ever find yourself living as happy expats in New York and trying to impress out of towners, this is the place; we are thoroughly looking forward to bookending our trip as out of towners in Felix’s at the top of the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong (hi Kean!). The Passion Martini is short, sweet and deceptively fierce. They also do beautiful things with cucumbers and orchids, although fortunately not at the same time.

Soho Grand

We have history at the Soho Grand. Although I like to think that I eventually got the hang of business New York-style, my first serious attempt at hard-ball negotiation in the USA got Lucy and me thrown out of our first – admittedly temporary – apartment on Bleecker Street. We took our suitcases and the remnants of our dignity and checked into the Soho Grand. We had stayed here while we were apartment hunting, and with our second visit added to a growing number of difficult life decisions that were rendered surprisingly simple by the addition of a “Grand Margarita” (think a normal margarita but three times the size and with a healthy slug of Grand Marnier).

New York, we’re going to miss you.

Goodbye to skydiving … for now

Posted on by

The category “heavy things I want to carry around the world” includes:

  1. My rucksack: clothes, boots, medical kit, laptop, clean linen handkerchiefs etc.
  2. My parachute
  3. Er, that’s it

Unless we come across a particularly fine drop zone that is (i) somewhere utterly spectacular, (ii) happy to lend me a 170 sq. ft. piece of ripstop nylon and (iii) accept a scanned copy of my log book, I probably won’t be jumping over the next eight months. Sniff.

I am desperately going to miss the camaraderie, the speed, the views, the sunshine, the hanging off the outside of planes, the playing with hi-tech kit, the exercise and the drop zone food (OK, maybe not the food). Fortunately, before we headed off Mirko had the sense to have the world’s best bachelor party down at the drop zone at Cross Keys.

Guys, I’m going to miss you. See you when we get back.