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.