Olympics

The past two weekends have been spent in London at the Olympics. I had an incredible time there, and I am intending to do a full write up in the next few days. In the meanwhile, there is a list of all the events that I went to:

• Women's Football: USA vs France
• Women's Football: North Korea vs Colombia (the North Korean flag controversy game)
• Men's Football: Honduras vs Morocco
• Men's Football: Spain vs Japan (the Japanese fans got the whole stadium singing with them in this upset)
• Men's Basketball: Nigeria vs Tunisia
• Men's Basketball: Brazil vs Australia
• Men's Beach Volleyball: Holland vs Venezuela and Germany vs Latvia
• Women's Beach Volleyball: Germany vs Australia and GB vs Canada
• Women's 200m Freestyle heats (including Missy Franklin)
• Men's 200m Butterfly heats (including Michael Phelps)
• Women's 200m IM heats
• Women's Handball: Brazil vs Montenegro
• Women's Handball: Norway vs Sweden
• Women's Table Tennis QFs
• Women's Marathon
• Women's Volleyball: USA vs Turkey
• Women's Volleyball: Brazil vs Serbia

Turkish Ravioli (Manti)

As some of you know, part of my trips involve writing up the different street foods I try. Istanbul offers several excellent examples of street foods but unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of them. Different kinds of Doner kebabs are the best known examples, but I also had a couple of other things, such as simit, açma and balık ekmek.

While it is not a street food, the one dish I did take a picture of is Manti, which is also known as Turkish ravioli.

Manti (Turkish Ravioli)

Manti are very little pasta dumpling which are served with garlicky yoghurt, tomato sauce, seasonings and melted butter. The manti I had also came with pieces of beef if I remember correctly. Now I am normally not a big fan of yoghurt on other foods, but manti was pretty good. As a word of warning, I had this dish at a restaurant at Istanbul Airport and I got the impression that they did not serve the most traditional versions of Turkish dishes. So if you have manti, it may look different to my pictures.

Istanbul Pictures

At the beginning of June I went to Istanbul for an extended weekend. Here are a couple of pictures from my trip. The rest have been uploaded here.

Hagia Sophia

Sultanahmet Mosque

Amsterdam pictures

Here are some pictures from my trip to Amsterdam. 

Dutch pancakes

Apple and cinnamon Dutch pancake

At the end of March I made an unexpected trip to Amsterdam. My office's leave year ended on 31 March. At the beginning of March I was told that I had too many vacation days left to carry forward and I would have take some before the end of the month or I would lose them. Using British Airways's lowest fare finder I booked a fairly cheap trip to Amsterdam for 4 days.

In addition to some Belgian-style frites which I previously tried in Brussels, one of the foods I tried were Dutch pancakes, known as pannenkoeken in Dutch. I had my pancake with apple slices and cinnamon. This combination was excellent. Dutch pancakes are thinner than American pancakes but thicker than crêpes. They are also a good bit larger than American pancakes, maybe 10 inches to a foot wide. I enjoyed my pancake at a restaurant that had a great view of the Dutch countryside on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Buttons

One thing that I have noticed, and find irritating, is the tendency for British men, predominantly under 30, to button every single button on a shirt or jacket. It is like they feel that since they have paid for all of the buttons, they are therefore hell bent on using every single one, style be damned.

How can anyone think this looks good? 

Even worse is when they button all of the buttons of a suit jacket. I was interviewing people for a job last week and noticed that a number of them kept their jackets all buttoned up even when sitting down. Besides looking incredibly stupid and unflattering, you run the risk of destroying the jacket. Doing this is the perfect way to make a bad first impression.

Welsh Cakes

Up next in my series on street foods are Welsh Cakes. Welsh Cakes are little self-rising cakes which are traditionally cooked on a hot griddle. I bought a half dozen of them from a stall in the Cardiff indoor market. Some of them were plain with some sugar on them and the others were spilt with jam in the middle. One of the good things about Welsh Cakes is that they are pretty cheap. I believe they cost £.30 each.

For a cheap snake, Welsh Cakes are really good. They are a little dense and have a slightly sweet taste.