Viajante, great food in unlikely places

A dark corner of the east end of London is a strange place to find one of London's most interesting  restaurants. Claiming to serve a (very) modern take on Portuguese cuisine Viajante, fittingly for us after our recent excursions, meaning "the traveller", is based in the old Tower Hamlets town hall. The frontage is very impressive and the dining room is quite grand although the chairs do look like they may be ex council stock. The main menu choices you have are whether you want 6 or 9 courses (we obviously went for the more is better plan) however you have no real indication of what the courses are. Once that is sorted the only thing that remains is to decide if you want a matching wine (much better value than buying it by the bottle) then you should sit back relax and enjoy a crazy culinary adventure.

Dinner by Heston? I bet he'll serve snails again!

There is no such thing as a sure thing in life, but you can usually bank on a couple of things at a Heston Blumenthal restaurant, 1) there are going to be snails 2) there is probably going to be a lot of dry ice and 3) I am going to really enjoy my meal there.

Our trip to Dinner by Heston (which shortly after my trip appeared at number 7 on the world's top 50 restaurant list) was a lunch time visit to celebrate our return to London and also the arrival of my soon to be in-laws in London. We booked in on one of the very reasonable lunchtime set menu deals which includes 3 courses for 36 pounds.

The rise and rise of the great British Gastropub

If you're British and you've not been down to your local pub  for a few years chances are it has changed a bit. Since the tightening of drink driving laws pubs have been starting to die out in smaller villages where people used to drive for the beer and the roadside pubs who in there heyday were a stopping point for a refresher on an afternoon jaunt are now all extinct.

The villages near the place where I grew up, on the edge of the Peak District, near Alton Towers are no exception, pubs that used to serve walkers a couple of beers as they trekked through the peaks or Alton Towers guests a swift half while the traffic died down are pretty much gone. In many places the locals were also staying staying at home and drinking cheap booze from the supermarket rather than walking to the pub to get a pint.

6 Days in beautiful Buenos Aires, living it up.

From the moment we set foot in South America I think we had both been looking forward to our last stop, Buenos Aires, quite a lot of the travellers we have bumped into on our way round have told us how great it is although I should counter this by saying that several other people told us it was their least favourite place in South America.

The city itself is fairly modern, especially in the centro area where many of the government buildings and shopping streets reside. At times the buildings could be anywhere in Europe and many of the buildings with their grey slate roof tops would not be out of place in the center of Paris.

Best and worst of South America

Now that we are safely back in the UK I thought I should do a little Q and A with myself, thinking about our time in South America to get an idea of what we both enjoyed and what we would probably do differently if we were doing it again. I got the idea for most of the questions from the things that people have asked since I got back.

1) What was the biggest surprise?
The prices. We were lead to believe that we could survive for 50 quid a day between us but because we chose to shun tourist menus and also because of our fairly hectic schedule, which saw us either travelling or visiting another tourist site, I think we spent close to double that.

Private dining at devils point, Uruguay

The longer you are on the road for the more blasé you become. We've tried hard not to make too many errors on our trip but our arrival at Punto del Diablo, after a 5 hour bus ride from Montevideo, indicated that the plan we came up with while we were hungover in Colombia about 3 weeks ago, may have not been made with access to as much information as we needed.

The first minor issue we were aware of, it is now Autumn here, we noticed it in Buenos Aires, and certainly in Montevideo (where we got caught in a couple of massive downpours) but it was even more apparent in Punto del Diablo as it was cool, cloudy and the wind was gusting strongly. This change in the climate had lead to a more major issue, the tourist season was over. This was starkly indicated to us as we disembarked the bus by a number of the restaurants in the centre of the fishing village being boarded up for the winter!

Buenos Aires, where dollars are king

We arrived at our final stop in South America, Buenos Aires, after a short ferry crossing from Colonia de Sacremento in Uruguay. Watching the city come into view on the far side of the river was definitely a mixed emotions thing, I am not going to miss the endless packing and unpacking but the day to day experiencing new things is definitely going to be a loss.

On the advice of several people we have spoken to on the road we arrived carrying dollars. I was a bit confused/worried about this as no one mentioned this when we were in Mendoza or Salta, and also because if we withdraw dollars we pay an exchange fee and then (in sane parts of the modern world) you pay another fee when you convert the dollars into whatever currency you are using.