I won an Olympic competition

You are reading the blog of someone who has won an official Olympic competition. In each of the daily "Join In" emails LOCOG sent out during the Olympics, they included a contest to win Olympic memorabilia. I won the 11 August contest. My prize was a bunch of stuff signed by John Regis. John Regis is an British sprinter who won a silver medal in Seoul and a bronze in Barcelona plus several medals at the world championships. My prize pack included a signed Team GB t-shirt, a small framed print and an autographed copy of The 100 Greatest Olympians and Paralympians.

Team GB shirt signed by John Regis

Does anyone know what the thing next to his signature is supposed to be?

Olympics Pictures

My pictures from the Olympics have been uploaded here. Some of the more interesting ones have been posted below.

The Olympic Stadium at night

My tickets

The Orbit Tower

Basketball Arena, aka the marshmallow

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.