Picture the scene. It’s Wednesday evening. Randi and I are sitting on the sofa together under the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights. The night before we were both out at work-related Christmas parties; in my case, a big bash at Freemasons’ Hall organised by Fora (our shared office space provider) and DJed by Annie Mac. Surreptitiously, I’m trying to organise a surprise weekend break for January as a Christmas gift, but I can see in Randi’s eyes that she’s hungry for one thing… a Christmas market, ASAP.
Soon, I’m accelerating my plans into an emergency Christmas trip that very weekend to… *rolls European getaway dice*… Gdańsk!
I’ve always been very curious to visit Gdańsk. Today it’s part of Poland – as it has been many times before in history – but after being invaded by Prussia in 1793, and subsequently becoming part of Germany, Gdańsk (or ‘Danzig’, in German) later spent a remarkable period between 1920 and 1939 as a rare remaining example of a European city state: the Free City of Danzig. My family has a lot of connection with Gdańsk during this period; my great-grandmother was born there. Of course, the reason this independence ended in 1939 was thanks to Nazi invasion, and the entire Jewish population – including my family – either escaped in time or were wiped out. The same is true of many non-Jewish Polish families, and as a result the modern city of Gdańsk, which was almost entirely physically destroyed by 1945, is very much a post-war reconstruction in terms of both its buildings and its people. Still, even though all this means I was never going to find a plaque commemorating my great-grandmother on a wall, you can see how I was primed for a lot of historical resonances.
Our late-night flight from Luton airport was trouble-free, despite being a bit of a trek to get there, but since the moment of booking I’d harboured doubts about whether we really had a room at the Hotel Gdańsk Boutique and when we finally arrived at 1.30am, the subsequent ten minutes of the receptionist’s hardcore keyboard tapping (interrupted only by “can I see your reservation again?”) only confounded my suspicions. Nevertheless, we waited patiently and were eventually rewarded when he finally looked up and handed over the room keys to a much, much bigger room than the one I had booked. Relieved, we hurried to bed before he could change his mind.
Randi also has Polish ancestry, and the next morning she began to experience a growing love for her long-lost motherland when she discovered that the breakfast buffet included both pickles and fish. Having both stuffed ourselves, we walked off our breakfasts on a nature path along one of the branches of the river before turning towards the Old Town for our first foray into the Christmas Fair. Gdańsk is very proud of winning the Best Christmas Market in Europe award for 2025, and if it was ever a ‘hidden gem’ type of place it’s certainly not now! The market is absolutely packed with people, but there are also tons of stalls and we barely had to queue for our latke lunch. (They had a different name, but same thing.) We also tried the delicious little Oscypek dumplings served with cranberry sauce which – I later learnt from Klaudia! – are filled with sheep cheese. Another win for Gdańsk.
You’ll be glad to hear that we took a break from eating in exchange for a two-hour afternoon walking tour, which did get a little chilly as the sun went down. I could have done with a little more historical context from the guide as he was pointing things out, but he redeemed himself at the end with a useful overview of Gdańsk’s history combined with an impassioned defence of Polish democracy against both Putin and the native Law and Justice party. It packs a punch when you’re standing in a courtyard where one of the first battles of the Second World War took place (the Defence of the Post Office); afterwards, the captured Polish prisoners were executed by firing squad.
It is worth saying that, just as in Warsaw, the architecture of the Old Town is truly extraordinary. You’re walking around a medieval city – cobbled streets, protected from cars, flanked on either side by beautiful painted buildings – and yet almost the entire thing has been resurrected from rubble in the 1950s and 60s. As a British person, Poland’s success at recapturing the beauty of its pre-war architecture makes me so envious in comparison to some of the ‘modernisation’ which took place in the UK around the same time. Why?!
Also – fun bonus Gdańsk fact – the physicist Daniel Fahrenheit was also born here, inventor of the historic also-ran Fahrenheit temperature scale, and to commemorate him they still broadcast the weather forecast in Farenheit here… for one day a year. (Note to the US: this is an appropriately limited usage of the Fahrenheit scale.)
After nipping back to our hotel to warm up, we dined on pierogi and salmon (although it turns out that lard is a step too far for Randi) before returning to the Christmas market for a spot of Secret Santering, dessert and a spin on the ‘Spinning Barrels’ fairground ride on which (a) we were definitely the oldest people not accompanied by any children, (b) Randi wasn’t certain if she was going to make it without throwing up or not. (But she didn’t!) Finally, we returned to our hotel to redeem our free beers from the inhouse brewery (see, there’s a reason they were actually fully booked) and enjoyed the live music before bed.
If I claimed we didn’t spend a hearty chunk of Sunday morning down at the breakfast buffet, I’d be lying. (I mean, c’mon, they had honey from the honeycomb.) But then we marched up to the Góra Gradowa hilltop lookout, through the gorgeous Gdańsk Główny railway station and onto the museum which made it to the top of the museum wishlist: the European Solidarity Centre. This was a close call – yes, the other museums were very tempting! – but here you’re spoiled for choice, as on top of everything else Gdańsk was also the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s. This movement led civil resistance against the Soviet-aligned state, precipitating the imposition of martial law in 1981 in Poland and ultimately contributing to the remarkably peaceful downfall of Communist rule. So, of course we had to see this.
Plus, on the walk there we stumbled across a near-infinite stream of motorised Santas to boot…
I won’t recap the entire history of the Polish trade union movement (stifle your disappointment, please) but suffice to say the exhibition was very immersive, and you could really feel the pride not just in the movement’s ultimate success but in how the transition to democracy unfolded in Poland. As Randi noted, it gave us both a new perspective on how painful the democratic backsliding of the last few years must have been for those who opposed the Law and Justice government. The 1980s was never the period of history I had in mind when visiting Gdańsk – my family were long gone by then – but learning more about this era was an unexpected bonus of our trip.
With our emergency Christmas Market mission achieved, we flew home on Sunday night feeling very satisfied and festive. Over the following week, Randi treated me to dinner in Strangers’ Dining Room at the Houses of Parliament (while the abolition of the last hereditary peers was debated down the hallway). The following night we hopped over to Queen’s Park to see Randi’s colleague Dan play a gig at Worldly Wicked & Wise, which in my day (!) was a trinket-filled gift shop but is now a minimalist art gallery with space for a band to play. This was a super-fun night, my favourite song being the adorably silly cover In Spite of Ourselves, which gives you a sense of the vibe.
Finally – and to complete the circle of my last post being drafted on the Friday night train to Edinburgh – this weekend we were back in Scotland! Many thanks to Katie and James for hosting us and also for Katie’s stellar gingerbread men, which were quickly devoured when we all made it over to Kirsty and Roger’s on Saturday night for a really wonderful evening together. We also met Katie and James’s friend Dan over brunch, who patiently answered my dumb gardening questions without rolling his eyes, and later shared some great growing facts with us at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital’s Community Gardens.
In addition, Katie and I completed not one but two classic Doctor Who stories on this trip: 1987’s Paradise Towers and 1964’s Planet of Giants. The former is the first classic story I’ve ever seen with Mel as the companion – a gap I was keen to fill after her triumphant return in the most recent series. It’s safe to say the writing of this character has improved. Poor Mel: back in the day, more than half of respondents to a BBC audience research survey wished she’d been eaten by the cannibalistic couple in this story! Cannibals aside, Paradise Towers is partly a satire about brutalist housing block disasters. I really should love it, but it made me somewhat depressed, especially since I can all too vividly imagine the Twentieth Century Society fundraising to support the Great Architect Kroagnon’s legal defence fund. In contrast, Planet of Giants is more whimsical and fun: the Doctor and his (original) companions are accidentally shrunk down to be very small, and have to escape terrors such as ‘cat’, ‘matchbox’ and ‘plughole’. What more could you ask for?
Spoiler alert for anyone who’s still saving the US election night for a streaming binge over Christmas: Trump won. And, as Randi says, if Trump was going to win then we should be glad it was clear and decisive, because it’s always unhealthy when the losing side can sooth itself into passivity because it “won the argument” or wasn’t “really” beaten. There are a million arguments about why the Democrats lost – and I have my favourites! – reasonable people can disagree. What irks me is when people start from the question “…but how could people vote for Trump?”.
The answer to that question is really simple: Donald Trump was the Republican candidate. His voters pulled lever A rather than lever B, and that’s it. It doesn’t work to claim that you’re not allowed to vote for one of the two candidates on the ballot, or that you’re guilty of pathological character flaws if you do. It’s not just that blaming the electorate is a bad idea. It’s also absurd to claim that you’re defending democracy by leaving the voter with only one valid choice. That’s not a vote, it’s a threat.
I know this is disempowering because none of the Democrats chose Donald Trump to be their opponent. So what can they do? Well, one answer is to keep trying to win elections. Political parties which keep getting beaten have a strong incentive to change. But the Democrats do try to win elections, of course. Everyone’s entitled to their own pet theories about how to increase the odds. Here’s my list: Biden announces he won’t seek re-election after the 2022 midterms. An open primary selects a candidate with outsider energy and a popular theme. Internal coalitional groups stop being so self-destructive and weird. You can pick your own list, and it may be completely different to mine. Bernie would have won! Michelle Obama would have won! Taylor Swift would have won!
The point is, believing that Democrats could have done things differently is not the same as believing that victory can ever be guaranteed, especially in a world where all incumbents are losing. ‘Sometimes losing elections’ is really, really normal. I’m not writing this to be sanguine. Trump winning is very bad. But the alternate universe hovering most closely to ours is the one where Democrats lose to someone else, not the one where Democrats always win every election. If you care about a democracy in a two party system, you have to care about the health of both parties, not just your own side. To use an overly British metaphor, they are the neighbouring flat in your terraced house. You should not expect to share their taste in music. A good neighbour is not the same as a good friend! But if they have rising damp, or a leaky roof, it’s going to get you both in the end.
Ranty introduction over! If you made it through all that, I promise I’ll move on to other things too, just after recording how strange my actual 5th November turned out to be. After a day on a stationary boat – for an unrelated work event! – I ended up at a watch party with Randi’s colleagues featuring not just the usual CNN (gotta love John King’s magic wall) but also a dedicated desk of hardcore election analysts just for us. So while CNN cut to commercials, we could just wander over to the number crunchers to get the real story. Sadly, of course, none of this did anything to change the outcome and by the time we got into an Uber home at around 1.30am the trends were starting to become clear. By the end of our ride, it was obvious. Still, I’m grateful for the invite and it was certainly a memorable election-watching experience.
In between all of this Randi and I also did some emergency kitten-sitting for Za’atar at Tash and Cormac’s place in Leyton, where we also enjoyed a very tasty Italian dinner with mum later in the week. That Friday night I was also very excited for a catch-up with Jill at The Island (where I feel like she had to endure an early draft of the opening to this post) and we somehow managed to drag out our last half-pint for nearly two hours.
But, fun things aside, by the end of that week Randi and I were itching to get away somewhere and so we settled on… Bath!
The honest reason why we ended choosing Bath is because at Matt and Rachael’s wedding, several weeks earlier, I had been reunited with ex-Groupon colleague Ben and his wife Steph. When I learnt that Steph runs her own bakery and brunch place – Good Day Cafe in Bath- I sent the menu to Randi as a note for the future, and this seemed like a good time to be sharing some delicious French toast and loaded hash browns. Which we did, for brunch on Sunday, and it was great!
We also arrived with enough time for a long Saturday afternoon walk, which we both found invigorating even when Randi made a rare slip-up in her directions and we had to climb under some barbed wire to avoid a 25 minute walk through a long, dark tunnel. (Which, to be fair, looked really cool. It just wasn’t the outside-in-nature experience we were looking for.)
That evening, we met up with Randi’s friends Will and Zoë for dinner at an excellent pizza place, followed by drinks elsewhere, followed by an oh-my-god-we-can’t-get-rid-of-them walk back to their house for even more drinks around the kitchen counter. They’re both super fun to hang out with, and when we eventually took ourselves back to our BnB (by phone torchlight) we were both suitably uplifted about the world.
After brunch at Steph’s café we thought it would be silly not to visit the Roman Baths of Bath, which (I later learnt) I apparently visited as a child but have no memory of. There have been no swimmers here since a child was killed by a waterborne infection in 1978, but there is a decent audio guide which guides you through the Roman development of this hot spring into a full-blown leisure complex featuring hot baths, cold baths, gyms, wine and poolside snack vendors.
The best part are the curse tablets: bitchy notes inscribed into metal by ordinary people asking the goddess Sulis Minerva to curse someone else, usually after a theft. For example: Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’ temple. (Very level-headed, Docimedis.) Our absolute favourite author wasn’t actually sure who had stolen his property, but named about eight potential suspects like a stressed-out supply teacher. It’s wild to still have access to this bottled-up rage nearly 2000 years later.
On the way home on Sunday night we had some engineering works on our Overground and did what any normal couple would do: split up to race home via two completely different routes. Sadly, I don’t think this record will last 2000 years, but here’s a teaser in case I can somehow fool the far future into thinking that everyone did this:
Finally, while Randi is in Wales for the weekend, I met up with Josh, Anna and Cora for lunch and a stomp around Golders Hill Park . A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon, even after being magically transformed into a rabbit-frog-tree.
Last week I returned to Amsterdam for Booking.com’s annual Travel Tech conference for software partners. The event itself was great, and this year I was super happy to be joined by Kira who (a) could split the technical roundtable sessions with me, (b) was willing to indulge my late night craving for pizza. Thank you!
Since the conference finished on a Friday, we took advantage of the weekend by having Randi fly out to meet me in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon and then catching the train tother to Haarlem, a nearby city which Randi’s parents had really enjoyed on their recent trip to the Netherlands. (And when I say ‘nearby’ city I mean really, really nearby – this is a small country and nothing is far apart.) Anyway, Haarlem is lovely! As it happens, Randi had just upgraded her phone so you can appreciate it through some artfully refined photos which I have stolen for this post.
After an evening stroll along the canal to the local windmill and a great Italian meal, we retired to our boutique hotel suite (the ‘sardine’ suite – probably not the name I’d use for any hotel room but actually very spacious) and slept soundly before waking up for an early-morning run into the countryside and\or sleeping some more.
Later that morning we enjoyed some tasty savoury crepes from a café on a pretty little side street while watching the cyclists go by. The centre of Haarlem follows the typical Dutch street layout where the ‘road’ and ‘pavement’ aren’t sharply delineated from each other, which sounds scary but works because the cars have been completely tamed. Sure, there are a few going by, but for the most part everyone is on their bikes, with many kids either cycling alongside their parents or sitting happily in a trailer. It’s both beautiful and a little infuriating. This isn’t a fantasy utopia! It’s just the Netherlands!
Afterwards we took the bus to the beach resort of Zandvoort, admired the plaques commemorating the great and good of Zandvoort (often with local notes along the lines of “his uncle still lives in Zandvoort”) and took a stroll along the sandy beach. We got very lucky with the weather this whole weekend, and despite it being October could enjoy cocktails at a beach bar as if we were on some tropical island (with jumpers).
On Saturday we also admired the interior of the local church, popped into a board game café and had dinner at Kokkie Londo, a Javanese restaurant with a set menu, delicious food and a very cheerful chef who tours the tables to talk about his food with an infectious laugh. Finally, back at our hotel, we curled up on the sofa with some complimentary wine and chocolate to watch a Norwegian police procedural (with Dutch subtitles) and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (which still throws me with the new lifelines). It makes me a bit sad that enjoying random TV from another country is now archaic, and I don’t suppose anyone younger than us would ever think to do it. Still, Google Translate was very helpful for translating the quiz questions, even if we still didn’t know whose cabinet was brought down by the Night of Schmelzer in 1966.
We spent most of Sunday at the nearby Zuid-Kennemerland National Park and decided to rent bikes from the visitor centre. Despite several staff members reminding us that helmets aren’t compulsory in the Netherlands – and basically nobody thinks to wear them – we insisted on paying extra so that all the other cyclists would see that we were stupid tourists.
While I definitely got quite sore by the end, riding around the park was so lovely and peaceful, and the occasional detours out of the park onto nearby roads only underlined how exceptional the cycling infrastructure is here. For any main road there’s just always a dedicated cycle lane, with no awkward missing gaps or theatrening car traffic. It felt completely safe, and quite magical.
The price for such a relaxed Sunday was a very late flight back from Amsterdam and then a taxi from Heathrow, but it was a price worth paying for such a full and enjoyable weekend in Haarlem. A final word of appreciation goes to the German-themed Wurst & Schnitzelhaus near the station before we left, with some fine German beer and the staff all complete in dirndl and lederhosen. In fact, the Dutch seem to be particularly fond of dressing up in restaurants, with everyone in Indonesian outfits on Saturday night at our Javanese place. It feels vaguely inappropriate, but is obviously considered to be a critical part of the theming.
In retrospect, flying back to London on Sunday night was a stupid plan because on Tuesday morning I was back out again on a stupidly early Eurostar to Paris for a work event. In mitigation, Eric was over from the States so it was great to see him in person again and catch-up as we caffined ourselves up to being fully awake. The event itself was fantastic – always excellent to meet some of our customers in person, share what we’re working on and gather feedback – and in the evening we all went to the famous (and joyously French) Moulin Rouge cabaret show.
Back in London again, on Thursday we gathered almost all of eviivo’s R&D department in person for an offsite meeting, roadmap kick-off and pub evening together. It’s always a bit surreal when this happens, as seeing everyone from Zoom in person feels a bit like a reunion with characters from a computer game. But I really enjoyed chatting to everyone – too many to name here! Finally, this weekend Randi and I congratulated Caroline and Josh at their pre-baby bash, before joining Reema at a nearby pub in Streatham for a catch-up and general work\life updates. Sadly, we could not cycle home afterwards. But if we were Dutch, we would have cycled home. Sigh.
This post is dedicated to the Lazy Chef café outside Forest Hill station.
Randi and I used to go for brunch at the weekend, but the last few times she’s been in Scotland.
The staff clearly believe we’ve broken up because they no longer ask how she’s doing.
We went to Norway! It was a relatively last-minute decision to spend a long Easter weekend in Bergen, but it’s such a quick hop from London that it seemed irresistible once we’d thought of it. It wouldn’t be your first choice to escape a rainy British bank holiday, since Bergen (or “Bergen?”, as the playful sign outside the airport puts it) is even more famous for rain, but as it turned out we got lucky with plenty of sun and only tiny smatterings of rain.
As a politics nerd, the joke about Scandinavian countries is that they’re all little social democratic utopias which those on the left will always reach for as the league-table-topping exemplar of what we should do. (“In Finland, all children learn quantum physics through outdoor play! In Denmark, prisoners produce award-winning plays about restorative justice! In Sweden, there are more weekend days than weekdays!”) Of course, all of these places are not mystical fantasy lands but actual real places which you can always just go and visit. But with all that said, things do seem pretty great in Norway. The country’s rich, everyone seems to be out jogging all the time, and the walls of the tram tunnels have been decorated with brightly-coloured party lights seemingly just for the hell of it. Let’s all move to Norway!
We joined a walking tour on Saturday morning to get acquainted with our new home, and benefitted from a great guide who had moved from southern Italy to Norway during a quarter-life crisis and massively confused her parents in the process. A lot of the tour focused on Bryggen – the area of Bergen where colourful warehouses owned by the medieval Hanseatic League sit up against the harbour – and it felt like a good sequel to all of the prime Hanseatic League content from our walking tour of Gotland in Sweden last year.
For more recent Bergen history, we also visited the (free!) Bergenhus Fortress Museum which focuses on the city’s local resistance movement against Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1945. It’s obviously very moving to see the faces of ordinary people who were arrested and sent to camps, and you wonder – in a place as relatively small as this – how many local visitors would still be able to recognise family members in these photographs.
The most accessible mountain in Bergen is Fløyen, which can be reached via a couple of different walking routes starting just behind the city centre. There’s also a funicular, which runs frequently, although the first time we just chose to walk through the fairytale-esque mossy green forest. Near the top sits some kind of nursery/daycare centre, which seems excessively idyllic, while the summit itself is a busy and popular gathering place with your standard café, playground and troll garden. (There are lot of trolls in Norway.)
We waited until Monday to do our proper hike from Fløyen: the 13km Vidden Trail, which runs along the mountain plateau to neighbouring Mount Ulriken. We weren’t 100% sure whether we were going to be able to do this, since it’s only ‘recommended’ to tourists between May and October, and our walking tour guide (who self-described as absolutely not a hiker) wasn’t encouraging. Fortunately, we got talking to a solo Norwegian tourist from Oslo at dinner one night and he confirmed that all of the ice on the route had indeed melted, leaving only snow, and that it was perfectly manageable in hiking boots. Thank you, random Norwegian man!
After some debate, we also chose to walk from Fløyen to Ulriken rather than the other way around. This meant going slightly more uphill than downhill, but to be honest – on a sunny day with no wind! – it didn’t make a great deal of difference as there isn’t a lot of elevation change either way. As always, the hike proved to be the highlight of the whole trip, even though towards the end I was grumbling about the combination of snow and rocks which result in some very, very tired legs. It’s worth noting that although Bergen itself is full of English-speaking tourists, we passed almost no-one on the Vidden Trail speaking English. Instead, they all seemed to be Scandinavians making everything look absurdly easy: jogging up and down rockfaces without a care in the world. We got to Ulriken in a perfectly reasonable time, but I don’t normally feel like I’m part of the absolute slowest group on a hike!
From Ulriken we took the cable car back down to Bergen and headed to a Thai restaurant for a much-needed warm dinner. In general, as you’d expect, eating out in Norway is incredibly expensive – with variable results – but the three places which really made me happy were:
- Fjellskaal, an amazing fish restaurant by the harbour where everything tasted delicious. I had the smoked salmon starter and the salty pickled herring Spekesild for main, but Randi’s soup was also incredible. This was also where the helpful Norwegian hiker encouraged us to pursue our Vidden dreams.
- Trekroneren, the internationally-renowned Bergen hot dog stand. One prime reason to move to Bergen is so that I can complete my exhaustive journey through the menu.
- The Godt Brød bakery chain, which is everywhere, meaning that tasty cardamom buns are also everywhere.
We also spent a fair amount of time just chilling in our delightful Airbnb, which was within easy walking distance of everything and made impressively efficient use of all available space. Bizarrely, I stumbled across a channel devoted exclusively to classic episodes of Robot Wars, so I had the unexpected joy of reliving great childhood moments like Panic Attack flipping Matilda, competitors messing up the pinball challenge, and a hyped-up crowd chanting PIT PIT PIT. We also used this opportunity to finish Season 2 of the The Bear, which was great, so now Randi and I are in the unusual situation of being fully up-to-date and just waiting for the next season to come out like everybody else!
On our last day we had time for one final, beautiful walk from Mount Fløyen – much more gentle, no rocks or snow this time – before grabbing a hot chocolate from Fjåk and realising that, oh no, they actually have a huge range of different hot chocolate options and we’ll just have to come back to Norway again to try more. And then, sadly, it was time to come back home. Bergen was such a perfect Easter break and just what we both needed during a busy time at work. In short: highly recommended if you’re looking for astounding views and tasty fish.
Finally, I popped over to Carolyn’s yesterday for Austin’s Peppa Pig-themed birthday party – happy birthday Austin! – which was really lovely. On the way I listened to a lot of silly AI-generated music courtesy of Suno, which is finally a generative AI tool which seems actually useful to me personally. And yes, I define “actually useful” as the ability to instantly produce catchy tunes on very niche topics – like some 90s Europop about the evils of Daylight Savings Time, a Broadway ode to the Waterlink Way or an upbeat rap anthem for our Ops team at work – because deep down all I’ve ever wanted is to live inside that musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…
Finally: Portugal! Last weekend, Randi and I popped down to Lisbon to join Mike and Melissa for our first trip of 2024, and – given the comparative warmth and sunshine compared to London – treated it as a summer holiday even though all of the Portuguese locals were walking around in heavy duty coats as if it was cold. (Seriously, the receptionist at our hotel was genuinely concerned about my welfare in a short-sleeved shirt and asked her colleague to check up on my welfare/sanity the next day.) From our perspective it was lovely and sunny!
After arriving on Friday night – and admiring the efficient metro ride from the airport, naturally – we spent Saturday morning wandering through Lisbon’s gorgeous cobbled streets in the vague direction of the Alfama district. In the same vein as London’s double-decker buses, Lisbon is clearly very proud of their little yellow trams which manage to weave up and down the narrow hilly streets. Later, after coming close to passing ourselves off as Mike and Melissa to their Airbnb host, the four of us took a less magical (but still very good) modern tram to a fancy restaurant for dinner, at which I very much enjoyed my ‘private pie’ in addition to duck rice.
As an aside, we also became very fond of the ‘intern’ working at our hotel whose duties included staffing the little rooftop bar. He didn’t seem entirely comfortable with his duties – most notably asking Melissa if she wouldn’t mind opening our bottle of wine as he didn’t know how to – but he won us over with his apologetic charm and constant refrain about his difficult internship. Wisely, he was not trusted to run the hotel’s breakfast.
The next day we took the train to Sintra, a town about 45 minutes away which is a major tourist destination thanks to multiple palaces and natural parks. We were there for the hike to the Moorish Castle, originally built in the 8th and 9th centuries and later taken by the Christians during the Reconquista. It felt like the absolute perfect time to be there – great weather for exploring and beautiful views, but not so hot or crowded that it was ever uncomfortable. At one point someone behind me did complain about the lack of a railing, but I wasn’t brave enough to suggest that she take this oversight up with the Moors.
Rather than heading straight home at the end of the weekend I had already had the glorious revelation that a fair few of my colleagues at work are based in Porto, so it was of course totally legitimate for me to take the train up there on Sunday night and invite myself over to work from their office for a couple of days. Huge thanks to the team there for hosting me and generously acceding to my eccentric requests, including asking Vitor to record the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter R at the beginning of words to confirm Randi’s mind-blowing discovery of how different it is to the Spanish R. (R is a tricky letter anyway. Honestly it’s best to avoid pronouncing it at all where you can.)
My journey to Porto was incredibly smooth – both the long-distance train and the impressive Porto Metro once I arrived – and I was only momentarily thrown by the weirdness of the ticket inspection on the Portuguese railways whereby they aren’t interested in seeing your ticket at all, but rather your ID (in my case, my passport!) under which you booked. It’s a little odd that you can travel across the entire Schengen area from country to country without any border checks, and yet it’s harder to be incognito on a train from Lisbon to Porto!
I’m hesitant to say too much about Porto because I was just working from an office most of the time, and so I had to demur when eager Porto residents asked me to compare it to the capital. I was very excited when the team agreed to take me to have Francesinha for lunch: a “strange cheesy bread cheesy cheese thing” which Steve at work issued as a warning but I took as an absolute must-do. A dish native to Porto, the name means ‘little French woman’ for some reason and is clearly a hangover cure, served with chips and an optional egg. It was delicious.
On Monday night my teammates Vitor and Paulo kindly took me down to the historic centre so I could get a little flavour of the historical tourist bits, although being authentic residents they didn’t actually know the names of the famous buildings we walked past. I did love the amazing walls of the central train station, but was not as much of a fan of the scary Dom Luís I Bridge which I refused to venture very far along. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine bridge, but I was maybe starting to identify with the woman back in Sintra who wanted more railings.) After surviving the bridge we did the obvious thing while in Porto and shared some glasses of port together, which I wasn’t sure about but very much enjoyed. Perhaps this will finally move along the bottle of port which has been sitting in our kitchen ever since Beth and Stewart lifted it from a hotel room in Cambridge.
My final reflection on Portugal – other than that I loved it, and would definitely go back – is that I quickly formed a deep affection for the café owner on the route between my hotel and the office. Randi had already admired the Portuguese culture of standing together socially at the bar, sharing a morning coffee, and after coming to terms with my need for tea he seemed genuinely concerned that I wanted it ‘tomar’ – to go – in a lonely Anglo way 😉
But wait- we’re nearly a month into 2024, so let’s quickly catch-up on pre-Portugal events. Similar to last year, Randi spent New Year with Catherine and AJ in Chicago, while this time I hosted Oliver and Abi at mine for New Year’s Eve along with Sarah and Kat. Kat turns out to be a massive fireworks fan, so after watching the central London display on TV there was a sweet moment when everyone came up to our loft bedroom and took turns standing on the bed and sticking their heads out of our loft windows into the night air to try and catch a glimpse of other fireworks nearby. We also played more Cobra Paw and Bonanza, a bean-themed card game which was delightful.
After a respectful number of bottles had been drunk, and successfully convinced Oliver & Abi to stay overnight before going home in the morning, I spent most of New Year’s Day up in North London with Andy and Bonnie. After a hearty pub lunch, we enjoyed a muddy walk through Highgate Wood during which I was genuinely shocked by Bonnie’s ability to instantly recall intricate plot points from any Agatha Christie novel. Definitely a Mastermind specialist subject.
Other January adventures included a wonderful Saturday in West Hamstead with Josh, Anna and Cora (after which I accidentally stole Cora’s cat – sorry!) and the successful execution of a paid deep-clean for our flat. I mention the latter because, embarrassingly, it took so much longer than expected that the company ended up calling me with a tone of “we haven’t heard from our cleaner in hours… is she alive?”. But she did an amazing job, and our taps were so shiny that I sent Randi a photo of my face reflected in them before ordering a pizza, eating it straight from the pizza box while sitting on the floor of the living room (too terrified of touching any surfaces in case I ruined them) and then going straight to bed so that Randi could still enjoy the results of the deep clean when she arrived back the next day.
Randi and I also had an impromptu walking day one weekend through Wandsworth Common and on to Battersea Park, finishing at the reopened Battersea Power Station luxury shopping centre thing (I expect they don’t like it being called a ‘shopping centre’) which I hadn’t seen inside yet. It is very cool, although we just admired the architecture and didn’t actually buy anything. We also had a very fun pasta-based outing with Reema and Esther and have also officially started watching our next series – The Bear – so I look forward to telling you what I think about it in 2028 when we finish. (I joke: we’ll try to move faster, since Randi has a temporary Disney+ subscription just for this.)
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
