Christmas Hampers

It always seems strange just how early the world prepares for Christmas. At least in certain parts of the world, it seems like window displays start promoting Christmas as early as the beginning of the fall season! Have you ever seen a plastic Christmas tree in a store window in October, or heard Christmas carols softly playing in the background at local malls in September? This comes of course on the same day no less than Justin Bieber will turn on the lights at Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush.

It seems that there are two reasons for this ridiculously premature tendency that stores and malls seem to have: first, it is simply exciting to be preparing for Christmas. Who doesn’t look forward to the holiday season, after all? However, early promotion of the Christmas season also encourages people to shop early, and get the hard or tedious parts of the holiday over with in advance. In London, for example, they are already offering products like Marks and Spencer Christmas Hampers to simplify people’s shopping experiences.

Many people who are not from the UK, or who tend to do more hands-on shopping for individual family members and friends over the Christmas season may be wondering what exactly a Christmas Hamper is. Essentially, it is just what it sounds like: a sort of gift basket full of Christmas treats or gifts, and often decorated according to the holiday.

Of course, with this sort of gift, there is a good deal of variety. It is not as if “a Christmas Hamper” is a single item that is suggested as a gift. There are plenty of different types of these Hampers… some full of small gifts, some with foods and treats, some with alcoholic beverages, etc. Ultimately, the selection and style of this gift makes it very easy to purchase in advance, and simplifies not only your shopping experience, but also your decision-making process when trying to figure out what to give people this year.

Overall, it is still almost comical to see such items already available for sale in stores all over the world. In many parts of the world, people are still enjoying the warmth of summer and have not even begun to think about the fall, let alone the wintery holiday season. However, if you are interested in convenience, or even if you just happened to find last holiday season particularly stressful, it might be an appealing option to get the bulk of your shopping done in advance. There is after all a certain appeal in simply stashing Christmas gifts away in a closet so that instead of hitting the crowded stores and shopping malls this December, you need only open a door and send out your gifts.

Happy preparation everybody, and good luck with all your presents!

[Disclaimer. This post was brought to you by M&S.]

So last week was one year I’ve been using Boris Bikes. The reminder did not really come in any sexy format, more of a “remember you need to pay” sort of email. Last year I covered briefly my first impressions after day one and, after some more extensive use, I’ve had some of my initial thoughts confirmed.

#wins

It is safe to say the scheme does its job. Need a short ride in central London? The scheme’s got it covered, and it’s the perfect alternative to the short one-or-two-stops tube journey. At the time of writing the furthest docking stations are at Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel to the East, Kensington Olympia to the West, North of Regent’s Park to the North and in Kennington to the South.

Boris Bikes in central London, September 2011

It’s constantly improving. If not improving, expanding. New docking stations have already been opened, and others have been expanded to accomodate more spaces. There are already rumours of expansion of the scheme, perhaps most notably the one reported in July about further expansion into Tower Hamlets. This would obviously be good news for us, as some of the unofficial locations would serve us well between home and, say, Canary Wharf. Of course criticism is always around the corner, and some of the most frequent arguments highlight how the expansion (do to be carried out some time next year, apparently) does not go near enough to the Olympic Park, perhaps something to do with the fact one of the Olympic sponsors is Lloyds TSB and not Barclays.

(unofficial) future locations of BorisBikes in Tower Hamlets

People are embracing them. It seems like a secondary pint, but were people not to use the bikes, the scheme would be a failure. It is not. On top of that, people seem to have silently agreed upon the sattle-turned-around-equals-bike-does-not-work already in place in Paris (btw, we did not get round to try les Borís Bikes on the other side of the Channel as I originally intended because when we went it just pissed it down).

It’s pretty cheap. £45 a year works out at less than a pound a week, provided you cycle for less than half an hour at the time that’s all you’re going to spend.

#fails, #mehs

Apps are lame-ish. Yep, moved them here from the positives, where they were last year. There’s plenty of apps to chose from if you’re on the techy side, but you would expect them to work properly. Some do not report accurately on availability of bikes or docking spaces, or do not connect to the servers at all. I got to the point where I’m basically not relying on apps at all, and if I’m lucky then fine, otherwise I’ll have better luck somewhere else. The only thing I find myself using apps for is finding stations in locations I’m not really familiar with, but that’s pretty much it. Lost interest in Chromaroma, too.

Peak hour. Yeah, good luck with that.

Creativity. Went down the drain, after the Braganza bies we’ve not seen any other partnership.

Actually, me. We moved into an area where the closest docking station is about 3 miles away, compared to the previous 8 minutes or so in Whitechapel, so that’s a massive drop in usage on my end, not helped by the fact I got myself a new foldie bike for my new commute, helped by the guys at CycleScheme.

Final-ish verdict

I don’t really seem myself using the scheme much more than I used it in the last year, particularly so if they don’t expand the covered area to where we live.

Andalusia with fields full of grain
I have to see you again and again

So you’ve heard about the wonders of our trip to Andalucia (here you can read about Sevilla, Cordoba, Jaen, Granada, Malaga and Sevilla again), but we’d like to share with you some random bits and tips that helped us a lot.

The preparation

We chose the stops on our trip thanks to the lovely people of the interwebs, with a special mention to @Federchicca and her post on, you might have guessed, Andalusia. We only went to 3 of the 6 places she suggested, but until the very last minute we were thinking of visiting Guadix and Gibraltar too.

Once we had our flights booked, we sorted our accommodation via Hotels.com (which, disclosure, is a client at work) for our stay in Granada and HostelBookers for the other destinations. We booked a car from Sixt, which we’ve used in the past (when we went to Portugal) and never had any problem with, making sure the navigator was there. The one thing we should have done earlier and we didn’t was booking the visit to the Alhambra in Granada: we did manage to visit in the end, but only thanks to an Italian couple who sold us their tickets. So if you’re planning to visit Granada, book the tickets as soon as you know you’re going.

Getting around

To avoid getting lost and also astronomical roaming charges, I downloaded OffMaps 2 before leaving. It’s a nice little app that is well worth the one-off cost of the app itself and the extra map packages. It basically allows you to store offline maps (but you might have guessed it by now) and use them with your GPS (which does not use roaming data). It uses OpenStreetMap maps, which are great, and has layers of information from the likes of Wikipedia and Toptable.

Before leaving we also settled for The Rough Guide to Andalucia. The decision was made against the Lonely Planet guide, mostly because of the Rough Guide being more up to date, as well as having slightly better reviews on Amazon.

Other bits and pieces

Despite having used OffMaps to avoid getting lost in the mostly tiny streets of the main provinces in Andalucia, I still managed to have less than decent roaming charges thanks to the likes of Foursquare and Instagram, which I used relatively extensively to avoid forgetting the names of the places we’ve been to. I even managed to become mayor of a couple of places by being there twice!

And that’s pretty much it for our trip to Andalucia. We hope you’ve enjoyed it and that our trip could help you plan and enjoy yours!

It’s been a while since the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme has launched in London. For the last few weeks the appropriately-renamed Boris Bikes have been populating pretty much extensively the entire Zone 1 and parts of Zone 2 in Central London.

The topic has already been discussed, from many points of view (people who like/dislike the scheme/bikes/fares/whatever), and I’ve been more and more interested in the scheme since its launch. I like cycling in London, it’s no big news: the city is mostly flat (unlike my home town of Trieste) and, despite the crazy traffic, cycling lanes are not that bad imho. I have a bike which serves me well for my daily commute: it’s an old Raleigh Superbe (likely) from the ’60s, with a proper iron frame, a dynamo and the classic style.

But nevertheless I joined the scheme and signed up for an annual subscription to it. Why, I hear you ask? Here are my reasons.

Positive aspects

Easy commute. The closest docking station from where we live is just opposite Whitechapel station: if I’m to take the tube, I am going there anyway, and it only takes me a 7 mins walk! There are docking stations close to my workplace, too, so it’s not too bad for my commute.

The scheme had to work. It works. It will work. There are already many cities in the world with similar schemes, so for London to get it wrong, well, it’s a challenge. The example of Paris (where Vélib’ bikes are hugely popular and grew from 10k bikes docked in 750 stations to 20k bikes and over 1600 stations in just 3 years since its launch in 2007) makes the future look bright: with the Olympics only 2 years away, I hope to see a wider offer in East London.

The bikes are very well done. They got all the basics right: Shimano gears and brakes, extensive use of guards (chain, wiring and mud), bikes are built to last and they are unlikely to suffer “deadly” damage from collisions.

The bikes work well for their pourpose. They are ugly, heavy and very-very-very-recognisable. No one would want to steal them. They are not extemely comfortable but not uncomfortable either, I guess it make sense for the short trips the bikes are designed for.

There’s room for creativity. Yesterday  saw one of these Braganza-designed bikes at a station in Shoreditch. This is only the first example of custom bike, I see a lot more of this coming up in the future, particularly as we get closer to the Olympics.

Braganza-Boris Bike (from BorisBikes.co.uk)

The geeky side. There’s plenty of iPhone apps already, some free, some between the £0.59-£0.99 price range. I am going to try a few in the coming weeks, but so far the one I like the most is called simply “Londond Cycle” and it is free.

Also, it is now possible to link your Cycle Hire account to your Chromaroma one. If you don’t know what Chromaroma is, do check it out. It’s still in Alpha but it’s uber-cool.

What I don’t really like

Barclays all over the place. I understand they sponsored the scheme (as well as the SuperHighways) and therefore want a return on their investment in the form of advertising. But you will agree Vélib’ bikes look like 100 times nicer (despite their colour).

Luckily, there’s a fun side to it:

The first gear. London is mostly flat, I understand not everyone is fit for the Giro d’Italia but, seriously, does it need to be that short?

Time management. A pedal-powered digital clock on the handlebar would probably make the short trips less “worrying”. Lights work in the same way, so why not? It’s just a small clock and some basic wiring.

This s nothing that will realy stop me from using the scheme in the future.

Pending

How I am going to use the scheme. The idea is to use the bikes for those (rare…) days during which the weather changes: I hate it when I leave home on foot or commute with the Tube in the morning, only for the sun to come out at 11 o’clock and then I have to take the Tube on the way back. I also hate to leave in the morning on my bike and then get back home under the pouring rain. Boris Bikes should allow me to cycle more freely in this sense. But let’s see.

Availability of bikes/docking stations at peak hours. I’m still to see how “my stations” are doing on this.

Comparison with the Paris scheme. We’ll be a Paris for a weekend in November, I’ll hopefully see how they are running that and come up with a comparison follow-up to this post.

How do you like Boris Bikes?

Please do tell us your thoughts, feedback and suggestions on the new London cycle hire scheme, comments are more than welcome!

Our good friend Mattia is going to be in London for a week in mid-August, ad he would like to spend as much of his time as he possibly can going around and taking pictures.

Gioia, Mattia and Matteo in Trieste, january 2010

He’d like to shoot “off-the-beaten-track” areas, life and people and, considering I’m not a photographer myself, I thought I could ask you guys for some suggestions. I’d love London-based photographers to tell us (and Mattia) about their favourite spots, so that he can come up with a nice reportage.

You can check his previous work in Peru and Sicily on his Flick page and on his blog, too (so you can get an idea of the kind of things he’s after).

Please leave us a shout in the comments!

Yep, the saga is not over. First chapter is here, if you fancy. We were hoping for the situation to be finally solved. We were wrong.

We were told the TalkTalk account was now in our name, and that we were to be sent a bill on April 18th. We never received it. I got a call from them the following week, but they were not able to tell me what the issue was because I provided “wrong answers” to their questions (as if I didn’t know my address and date of birth…) so I had to go to a Carphone Warehouse shop and call from there, so that the shop assistant could verify it was me. Basically, they wanted me to pay for the last two bills (which I never received because they don;t send them here and the previous tenant is abroad and in the army, so no way of getting in touch with him). I obviously was fine with it, but wanted to see the bill itself before paying, so the lady on the phone confirmed she was going to re-send the bill. Again, never received it, and two weeks have passed.

But, during these two weeks they decided to block our phone and broadband. I had to call them, although I had a feeling I knew the reason. I spoke with their financial services, paid the bills, got everything working again, and asked them to switch from paper billing to online billing. Nice and easy.

So I get the account login details, access it so that I can check everything and set the direct debit, only to find out that the account was still in the previous tenant’s name!

I wanted to kill them at that point.

I called them again, asking first of all why the account was still in someone else’s name, but more importantly why I was told (twice) that it was in mine. Now, I’m fine with bad news, but I hate people that take the piss. And that was a very borderline situation. I spoke with them for over one hour on the phone last Wednesday, and was told that the account was not changed because I did not provide my bank details for the Direct Debit to be set up. Note that on the form I had to submit there was nothing asking me for those details. I asked why I was not contacted to provide them, and the lady told me they tried to call three times but I never answered. Idiots. How about you don;t answer so I send you details over the post? Too complicated, I guess…

I could not provide the details over the phone, so I had to re-send the form via fax and send my details as well. I was told they would have contacted me shortly after receiving the fax. I never heard from them.

I called them again today, they said they received the form (how about letting me know when you do as you said originally? Nevermind…) and that within 20 days (…) the account should be in my name.

In 20 days, it will be the 1st of June, and it would have taken them only 6 months to complete the Change of Ownership process.

Useless c*nts.

We moved in the flat on December 30th last year. Today is the 12th of April, and the TalkTalk account that was here before and used by the previous tenants *should* be transferred in our name within 48 hours. So let’s assume the 14th of April. Now count.

That’s 106 days.

106 days to complete the “change of ownership” (COO) process.

Let me go through the whole thing with you.

Why we decided to go for it?

TalkTalk offers a decent deal. The broadband works, the 40GB limit is not an issue for the two of us, and we get landline calls to Italy for free on evenings and weekends. So, when we learnt that we could have the already active account transferred in our name from the previous tenants’ we put some numbers together and realised that it was going to be the best option.

The “change of ownership” process

Before they recently introduced the possibility of getting the actual form (Change of Ownership form, COO) online (here, in case you need it) you (the “old” tenant) had to request the form to be sent to your physical address, fill it in, have it filled in by the “new” tenant, send it through the post.

So, what did we do? We did exactly this. We had the account holder to ask the form to be sent. He did not receive it. He chased them again. We moved in, in the meanwhile. We asked for the form to be sent, again. We received it in the end. You want to know why they didn’t send it originally? Because the account holder had cancelled the direct debit. Of course, he didn’t live at the address any more, so not a bad move. Bear in mind that TalkTalk allows anyone to pay for someone else’s account balance, which is exactly what we did for these months, so this is not supposed to really be an issue.

We (the account holder and myself) finally filled in the form and I sent it to them. This was on March 1st. I was expecting some papers to confirm the whole thing was completed successfully. Apparently I was wrong.

I called them today, to find out where we are on this. Their reply stated the form was successfully received but the account was not transferred in my name because I did not provide direct debit details. Now, I was never asked for my bank details during the whole process, and in fact the COO form does not state anywhere that this is a requirement for the successful completion of the process. When I pointed this out, the guy on the phone said the opposite, and confirmed they did not send out any paper and in fact did not change the ownership into my name because I did not provide those details. If you check the form (you can download it in .pdf from the previously linked page) you will see who’s right.

How did we succeed?

The guy on the phone just asked me for my name and surname.

Can you believe it? They already hold this information because I provided it with the COO form, and now he said that within 48 hours the account will be in my name. Nonsense. When I pointed out the fact that they already have this information, he just confirmed what he previously said. I just desisted.

So, what now?

Well, hopefully we’ll have the account in our name within 48 hours, we will receive some papers to illustrate the whole deal, we will receive some information on how to pay the bill. Yes, because I did not provide them with my bank details, but they still confirmed they will get the account in my name.

To me, all this does not make any sense whatsoever.

We’re sticking with them for now because the deal is decent, and switching to another provider would be a (costly) pain in the ass. But that’s the only reason.

Of course, if anyone from TalkTalk would like to explain this, the comment box is just down here.

Hi everyone, this is the first of a series of “catching up” posts. We’ve been quiet on our end despite quite a few things happening in the last months. First things first: we moved house!

The reason

We wanted to leave the previous flat for quite some time, for a series of reasons. First of all, we wanted to move from a studio flat to a one bed. But also, we wanted to leave the flat because of the noise (it faced a main road, with a bis stop right below the windows) and the fact that the entrance was on a cul-de-sac which wasn’t exactly nice. We had to extend the stay there because the 12 months rent would have ended on a busy time for us, but we gave the notice as soon as we could.

The hunt

We had two months to find a flat after we gave the notice. This is a strange period of time as some agents only require one month, so we struggled the very first days to find something suitable. We used Nestoria (yes, of course, I work there!) as primary search tool, as well as Globrix and Gumtree. I also took some time to go around on my bicycle on a nice day to “inspect” potential areas where we thought we could have moved to, particularly old Shoreditch, So-Da, South Hackney and London Fields.

We eventually decided for the third flat we saw, after one we didn’t particularly like and one we did but seemed a bit dodgy, as it was going to be with a private landlord, who we had not met, who would have had to “approve” us (hello?!). We found the flat through the agent’s website, after we noticed that their flats were on average, nicer than the others.

We managed to spend pretty much what we were paying before, and we have one additional room, without moving too far away (from Bethnal Green to Stepney Green).

The move

We had quite a few things we had to move from the old flat to the new one. On top of “the usual” clothes, kitchen stuff and books, we had to carry (well, we wanted to) a few items of furniture. We left the bed behind (and eventually handed it over to my cousin) because the landlord didn’t want to get rid of the one that was (and still is) here, but brought with us a sofa-bed, a bookshelf (adapted and used as a wardrobe), another bookshelf and a cd-dvd tower. This meant that we had to dismount all these items first (they’re all from Ikea), and then re-assemble them once on the new flat. I know, not ideal, but at the end of the day it’s stuff we “need”.

Last time we moved we had far fewer items to carry with us, and eventually moved on foot (distance was much smaller then) in an afternoon or so. This time, we hired a small van from Sixt (we’ve used them in the past, in the UK and abroad, and we’ve always been happy with them) for a day and had 4 or 5 journeys to move everything.

The flat

Well, first of all it’s a one bedroom flat, which is an improvement from the previous flat. It’s on a nice rear alley, so it’s much more quiet than the previous one (we actually get to sleep nicely now!), in a 19th century building. It’s not a mansion, of course, nor it is a fantastic flat in itself: the kitchen is smaller than it seemed initially, and there’s not much storage space. But it’s got two separate rooms, which is what we wanted both for ourselves and for having guests without them being in the same room where we sleep all the time.

We were very lucky in finding nice tenants moving out: they helped us a lot in getting utilities sorted out, finding out which items of furniture were going to stay, they had us around for tea as well!

What we learnt from all this

One of the most important things we have now learnt is the fewer things you carry with you, the easier the move. We had to buy items of furniture for the previous flat, and this of course gets in the way when you move. Try to look for furnished flats, and if you really can’t avoid buying furniture, try to arrange for it to be left behind (either sold or just left) in the flat you’re moving out of. Unfortunately, we could not do this as the flat was not let yet when we moved out, and we had to leave it as we found it. Lame, I know.

Another thing, try to avoid moving around Christmas. We did so because we wanted to move out as soon as possible while still respecting the contract, but we also knew we were going to be home in Italy for some 10 days. This made us want to secure a flat before we went, putting additional pressure on us for a task that is already delicate in itself.

One of the things we will look for in the next flat is a shorter contract. You don’t know if a flat is ideal for you until you move in, and if it’s not ideal and you are on a long term contract this can be a serious problem. Now, we’re now on a 14 months contract (18 months really, but it ends up being 12+2) and if we want to move out before that term we need to make sure we find new tenants. Not ideal.

What about you? Do you have any “moving” story you would like to share with us? Please do so by leaving us a comment!

As we had anticipated, we took some 5 days in Stockholm, taking advantage of some seriously cheap Ryanair flights.

So what are our suggestions to fellow travellers to the Swedish capital city? Here they come.

Money

Bear in mind, Stockholm is overall more expensive than London, thus likely more expensive than anywhere you are. But if you are a bit careful, you might be able to avoid splashing your cash. The two most expensive things you will notice are drinks and accommodation: 11£ for a pint and a half of lager is clearly a bit too much, in the same way about £60 for a room in the city hostel. But, while you will need a place to stay, you can surely do without a few pints for a couple of days, can’t you?

Food

We did our homework and studied beforehand the best places to go and have proper Swedish food. We basically only left 2 meals to chance in the 4 days, and got fairly lucky, too. Our suggestion is, no matter where you are staying, do check out the City Backpackers hostel suggestions page for your stay. Their tips are awesome overall, not only for the food, but what we enjoyed the most was:

• Tennstopet, the oldest pub in Stockholm, with very good value for money and “local” atmosphere
• Pelikan, apparently the best meatballs in town. Meatballs are indeed awesome but heavy as hell! They come in portions of 4 and they are about 4 times larger than the Ikea meatballs, so keep this in mind!
• Östermalms korvspecialist, amazing sausages booth, fantastic for a meal on the go. Strömming is another booth where they mostly do fried herring sandwiches, which we strongly recommend.

We also happened to have lunch at the restaurant within the Nordiska Museet, which is a good option if you wish to spend your  morning in Skansen as it’s very close.

Museums

There’s plenty of things to see in Stockholm, and a good selection of museums, too. The most popular tourist attraction is Skansen: bit of a park, bit of a museum, bit of a zoo. Originally intended as a open-air museum to showcase life in Sweden pre-industrial era, it is also home to several Scandinavian animals, such as moose, bears, reindeer and many others.

The Nordiska Museet, on Djugarden, is the museum of Swedish cultural history. It is well worth a visit on the way back from Skansen and it has a nice restaurant. Exhibitions include interior design and trends throughout the centuries, as well as fantastic samples of Nordic textiles.

On Gamla Stan (the Old Town) you have the Nobel Museet, which showcases the history of Alfred Nobel and the prize that he set in his will. They seem to regularly have pretty good temporary exhibitions too: we got to see one about Galileo’s telescope, in its 400th “birthday”, which is on until January 17th.

There’s also the Historiska Museet, of course, which has very rich exhibitions on Scandinavian prehistories, the Viking period, textiles and golden artefacts.

Public transport

Buses and the Metro work very smoothly and are an affordable and reliable way to get around town. I’m not sure whether they run overnight or till a certain hour but I highly recommend them. Bear in mind Stockholm is not a huge city: the city centre is perfectly walkable and mostly flat, so keep this option in mind, if you want to save some cash (although prices are reasonable).

The overall feeling

Stockholm is a beautiful city. I think it could give different impressions depending on when you visit in the year, specially considering the daylight: we visited in late November, and at about 3pm it started getting dark, and eventually got dark by 4.30pm. But, even in the morning, the sun is never high so it always seemed like it was setting… Weird…

And, last but not least, a big thanks to Melina who suggested Chokladkoppen, on Stortorget.

We are joining Blog Action Day 2009 to help raise awareness on climate change. It might seem weird, given that this has been talked about for decades now, but there’s an awful lot to do to help our future children and their children live in a better world, and give ourselves a decent chance for some healthier years ahead, too.

What are we doing to help stop climate change?

Personally, we do not travel with private transport. Within London, we commute either on foot or by bicycle and, if we need to go somewhere further than usual, then buses or tube. Green or public transport. It is not easy to see the immediate effect of this of course, but London is a pretty “cycling city” (not at the Dutch or Danish levels, but better than most big cities in Italy…) and more and more people are cycling, so please consider switching to a bike rather than driving to work. Many companies offer schemes to help you buy a bike and spread its cost on 6 or 12 months.

Unfortunately recycling is a bit of a mess round where we live, and people seem to throw away stuff any day of the week without any apparent logic, but we’ll soon be moving (more on this to follow) and will get back to recycling in a proper way. Also, recycling seem to work differently borough by borough, so make sure you check with your local authority to avoid surprises.

Also, water plays big part in our life, right? So make sure you don’t waste it. Limit as much as possible the flow of water whern you don’t need it: washing-up and brushing your theeth are obvious examples, but think about your toilet flush, too. You can place a solid body within your box so that it gets filled with less water, thus reducing the waste.

What about you? Are you doing enough?

Tell us about your efforts towards a hopefully better future, we’d love to hear them, as there’s never too much greenness in one’s life.