A long day of meetings is not so bad when your Spanish colleagues take you out afterwards for drinks on the rooftops . . . . . . followed by an incredible dinner of sautéed mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, steak, and melted cheese (all for only 20 euros!) at an old-school madrileno bar. I may however […]
When one misses one’s flight and gets in to Madrid too late for a proper dinner, one makes do with smoked salmon and sparkling water. Life could definitely be harder.
I felt a bit blue tonight. Work has been really intense lately. I closed a major deal on Friday which should have many that I could finally relax a minute this weekend. Only I’m so far behind on a number of other important projects that I had to jump right back in. After working through […]
So apparently in London it’s okay to go to a park and do “martial arts” with flaming swords. And I thought people in Seattle did odd things….
Bank holidays in the UK have a delightful way of sneaking up on an expat and leaving him with an unexpected day off. When I realized that I didn’t need to go in to work on Monday, I cracked open my Rick Steves and Lonely Planet and looked for an easy last minute day trip. […]
Streets full of all the cut flowers and potted plants your heart could desire. Where has this been all my life and why don’t I have more vases? My flat now has traces of all the stalls I stopped at. Well, not all the stalls–just the ones I got to before my cash ran out and […]
I’ve always been drawn to saturated primary colors when decorating. When I did my house in Seattle, blue and red were the dominant colors, with only little pops of yellow. I favored clean, modern lines in my furniture and geometric, tribal patterns in my textiles. It was a fairly masculine look. As I start pulling […]
I went to the department store looking for a set of dishes and was put off by the high price and boring aesthetic. I figured I would just get the basic IKEA set and move on. Then I stepped into In-Residence, the lovely little boutique across the passage from my flat. I met the proprietor, […]
When you’ve just moved in and don’t have dishes, bed linens or toilet paper, the first thing to get is a jar of lilies and a mobile.
On a scale from 0 to Mr Darcy, how English is it to eat crumpets, and does it help if they’re eaten with butter and Nutella for dinner after getting home from work at midnight?
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 