A Lady in London

After spending Christmas in Singapore, the next stop on my winter sun adventure was Malaysia. It wasn’t just any part of Malaysia, though. It was Langkawi. Located off the west coast of the country near the border with Thailand, Langkawi is an archipelago of 99 islands. The largest, called Langkawi, is where I spent the past three days.

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I don’t often spend Christmas at home. This tradition started when I was eight years old and my grandmother began taking my entire extended family to Maui at Christmastime. Once that tradition expired, my immediate family spent Christmases in places like Costa Rica and Kona. But no matter where I spent Christmas, there was always one thing that every destination had in common: warm weather.

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The final week before Christmas has been a stressful one for Londoners. The city’s airports have all but shut down due to snow. Thousands of people across London have been stranded, and many have had to cancel their holiday travel plans.

I have not been immune to this stress. I have been nervous all week in anticipation of my flight to Singapore, and as such I have been seeking comfort food in London again. This time it took the form of a new gastropub in Marble Arch called the Grazing Goat.

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Two weeks ago I wrote about my quest to find comfort food in London. Since then the weather has only gotten colder, and the arrival of freezing wind and several inches of snow has convinced me to redouble my efforts to find good winter culinary options in the city. Last week this took the form of dinner at Tempo, a new Italian restaurant in Mayfair that invited me to come for dinner.

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Afternoon tea is one of my favorite British traditions. Hotels across London vie for the Tea Guild’s prestigious Top London Afternoon Tea award, and residents and visitors alike benefit from their constant efforts to outdo one another.

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I want a pet. I would love to get a dog or some other sort of canine. For a long time I tried unsuccessfully to convince my neighborhood fox to be a part-time pet, foxes being quite an anomaly to San Franciscans like me. Sadly, the fox wasn’t as thrilled about the idea as I was.

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I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the holidays stress me out. Christmas shopping for family members is difficult enough, but figuring out how to ship the gifts overseas presents another layer of complication. Add to that the massive seasonal shopping crowds on Oxford Street and the steady stream of holiday parties that make waking up in the morning a difficult task, and I always find myself in need of some relaxation and purification before my actual Christmas vacation starts.

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Winter came early to London this year. November was the coldest on record in over 20 years, and December has started off on a rather snowy note. Today’s weather is overcast with temperatures below freezing. All of this means that I have one thing on my mind: comfort food.

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My last trip to Austria was seven years ago. I hate to admit it, but many of my memories of sightseeing in Vienna have faded since then. I remember little of Schoenbrunn Palace, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and the State Opera House, and even less of the museums and galleries I visited. I needed a trip back to to the city to create some new memories. Coincidentally, I was recently invited on a press trip to visit the city.

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