All Star Portugal Extravaganza

Star, the company Bec works for, has a fantastic employee recognition policy which involves selecting 10 people - Star performers, let's call them - and sending them and their partners away on an all expenses paid, 5-star luxury holiday. Last year's trip was to Portugal, the Penha Longa Spa and Golf Resort to be exact. Just outside of Lisbon and close to the beautiful, historic town of Sintra.

Why are we blogging about this, you may ask? Yes, you guessed it, Bec was lucky enough to be selected as one of the winners for 2008! As a result, she and (even luckier) Johnny were whisked away in October for four days of pampering and indulgence.

We truly were treated like royalty. From the welcome drinks and canapés on arrival to the luxurious spa treatments we all enjoyed, no detail had been overlooked. And the food! Each meal had been carefully designed to give us a smorgasbord of Portuguese delicacies, and in various gorgeous settings. The wine and cocktails flowed just as freely, including a private port tasting on our day trip into Lisbon.

But the icing on this mind-blowing cake was the incredible group of people we got to share it with. Everyone was happy, friendly and up for a great time (as can usually be expected when free alcohol is involved) and before long, the "Portugal Posse" had been forged.

2008 - What sucked, what rocked...

About a year ago, we summarised the pros and cons of our first year in the UK. With another year gone and a different, London-centric perspective, here's an updated list for 2008:

Things That Rocked:

• Travelling with friends and family. Really boosts the enjoyment factor! We were lucky enough to meet up in various exciting new places, with both "travelling friends" living in Europe and friends from home on holiday. Who will come and share the fun in 2009, we wonder?
  
• Commuting by Bike. The Langster has well-and-truly paid itself off, and is now a London rarity - an asset gaining in value! Johnny is also a substantially fitter unit than a year ago, and ten kilos lighter!
  
• Concerts. The array of musicians that visit London is astonishing. You could quite easily see a world-famous act every night of the year. While we didn't go that far, we did see Queen, Kylie, Bon Jovi, Scouting For Girls, The V Festival, The Fratellis, The Feeling, and Bec even saw Celine Dion. Johnny wants no association with that one...
  
• London Social Life. So much to do, lots of friends (new and old) to do it with. The contribution www.lastminute.com makes to the possibilities is also noted! It's been great for cheap West End show tickets and restaurant deals.
  
• Parks and Gardens. We've loved seeing them change with the seasons. But really, any time is always a good time to escape the bustle of the city.
• Getting to know "Our Town". London isn't a city you can get to know in a week, or even a month. Perhaps you can never really know all of it, due to its size and diversity. But in the last year, we've enjoyed becoming familiar with life in "Our Town". There's no doubt it can be an intimidating place, but there's a tremendous buzz and huge rewards in uncovering its secrets.
  

Things That Sucked:

• Tube crowding. The Underground is a great system, but is frequently a victim of its own popularity. Johnny avoids it where at all possible.
  
• Crowds in general. The flipside of London's popularity and attractions is the truly staggering number of people that swarm the streets. But we're getting to know ways to beat the crowds...
• Air Travel just gets worse. America is even worse than Europe, but why is the whole palaver so bad? Getting on the plane is now a relief after the shenanigans that precede it! Bec is also becoming more nervous with each and every take-off...
• Job-Hunting got especially challenging as the Credit Crunch loomed. Contract work in London used to be the way to go, but the situation is now definitely reversed. We certainly wouldn't recommend arriving at Heathrow without a locked-in job right now.
  
• Missing Home. If you're reading this, we miss you!
  

Toy Time: Boys will be ... Girls?

Kath's comment in our last post reminded us that many people think it's Johnny who does all the wordy stuff on this blog. Not the case. In fact, that last one was written almost entirely by Bec. Usually they're a one-person effort, with an "editorial" check-over by the other "team member" before we hit the big red button.

It is true that in general however, Johnny does the words and Bec the pretty pictures. And here's the proof, courtesy of the really-quite-nifty GenderAnalyzer.com - point it at somebody's blog and it'll use clever computery stuff (the internet is on computers now!) to work out whether the author is male or female. Here's our result:



Nice! Johnny is pleased to have his masculinity noted :-) Especially as almost all of our travelling-friend blogs (on the right) seem to be filled with girly-girly girl-germs - some highlights:

Andy is a woman, albeit right on the fence at 50%

Brett and Belinda (is?/are?) all woman with 60% confidence. Must ... resist ... commenting ... :-)

Dave and Kristy is written, as far as we know, entirely by Kristy, and this tallies with a 52% certainty.

GenderAnalyzer nails it again with Krista And Mike's Blog which is almost all Krista-powered - 53%.

Cool huh?

A Look At London: Winter Wonderland

London must have read our previous blog posts about how much we adored Canada's snow-covered beauty, and thought: "I can beat that!" Here's what we woke up to this morning:

Unlike a large proportion of Londoners we actually did make it into the office, albeit a little later than usual. The delay was caused partly by the near collapse of London's public transport system under the weight of the heaviest snow fall in 18 years, and partly due to the slight detour we couldn't resist taking through a gorgeous, snow white Hyde Park:

The fun didn't stop there though - here's what Bec found across the road when she finally arrived at work:

Happy Holidays! Skiing In The New Year

A mere 130 kilometres north of Montréal lies Mont Tremblant, "Eastern North America's Premier Ski Resort" and a destination Johnny had been drooling over ever since landing in gorgeously snow-covered Canada. The Twixmas-New Year period is Mont Tremblant's most popular time, and it had been tricky and expensive to book a couple of nights over the 2008-09 join, so we had very high expectations.

The drive up from Montréal was both ridiculously easy and gorgeous, with stunning wood cabins sitting in picture-perfect glades of snow-frosted pine and fir trees:


Driver Johnny had expected some twisting mountain roads but they never eventuated - we were now so far north that no altitude is necessary to guarantee good snow. We drove past several other resorts where slopes were so close to the road that the skiers actually passed under the highway in a tunnel!

After only a couple of gentle hours we had arrived in a wonderland. The entire resort village has been constructed to look like the perfect European alpine township, and the effect is very convincing. Yes it's fake, and most of the buildings were all built by the same company at exactly the same time (about 5 years ago), but it sure is perdy:

A major advantage of staying at a resort where the one company owns almost everything, is the level of connectedness everything has. When we checked in, we were handed our lift tickets, and later that evening, a lovely guy from the ski rental shop called in to fit us for our gear. The next morning, our equipment was magically waiting for us in our locker in the changing rooms. Slick.

Of course all of it would come to nothing if the skiing was rubbish, and Johnny was nervous that the slopes would be choked with most of Eastern North America. The reality was, this puny 850m pimple-on-the-base-of-an-Alp had so many trails that for long periods we felt like the only people on the mountain. We never waited more than 30 seconds for a lift, and the snow was deep. And crisp. And eeeeven. Check it out for yourself:


John apologises to the snowboard police for having arms flailing everywhere - this was a very icy black diamond! (Bec would like it noted that she completed said run several times with some aplomb, albeit at a slightly lower speed).

We love Mont Tremblant and would recommend it to any snow-fans out there, with one proviso. It is cold. Colder than we had ever experienced before. -25° Celsius-plus-significant-windchill cold. Some examples:

• It took 5 minutes to regain any feeling in John's hand after filming the video on the left barehanded.
• Bec was wearing two pairs of gloves and still had painfully cold hands at the summit.
• Johnny had a sliver of earlobe peeking out from under his hat for a couple of hours. Frostnip caused it to swell up to twice its normal size and it hurt for the next week.

But if you can deal with the cold (and all it takes is appropriate clothing), just look at the rewards:




What a perfect place to ski in the new year.