O Visconde – Funchal, Madeira

Last November, when London was cold and grey, Monsieur and I sunned ourselves at lunch in Funchal, Madeira. It was warm enough to take an outdoor table at O Visconde Restaurante, a complete find of an eatery, tucked away down a little alley near the centre of town but far from the cruise ship crowds. There…

Drive By ‘Shooting’ – MAUI

For my friend, Pat Coakley, of Singleforareason For those of you who haven’t yet come across Pat or her photography and philosophy blog, Singleforareason, you should visit it right NOW. If I ever finish writing my foodie memoir, I’d love Pat to illustrate it – her photos of plants and fruit and vegetables and other…

Dining Success at Borgnefesse!

The Blind-in-one-eye Bum is an interesting name for a food establishment, and that’s the rough English translation for a Saint Malo restaurant named Borgnefesse. Borgne means blind in one eye (how efficient of the French to have one word for this affliction instead of four in English) and fesse means bum, buttock or bottom, whichever…

Virgin Atlantic’s new ad

Went to see Gordon Gecko’s latest incarnation in Wall Street 2 recently and just about spat out my water in giggles at this ad in the cinema.  Don’t worry – Monsieur didn’t get too wet, he’d brought his brolly. In particular I really dig the pole dancers. It’s even funnier because it’s total fiction – Monsieur…

Moules on Market Day – Honfleur

I can’t say I really knew much about Normandy until recently. Admittedly, the closest I’d come to getting to know the place would be waving at it from moving vehicles or watching Band of Brothers. So how much Norman knowledge did my grey matter actually hold? Astonishingly little: Normandy is a place in France with English weather and lots and lots of…

How to Run a Motel 101 – Motel Les Bleuets, Honfleur

We hadn’t even slept a night in France but Monsieur and I were already having adventures on our French Road Trip. We’d been caught in traffic, were nearly run off the road by a nasty red-faced man in an evil orange car, missed our ferry by a mile, had to wait forever for another berth and…

London to Honfleur in Ten Sleepy Hours

Boring is definitely not a word in my vocabulary and, for better or worse, it certainly doesn’t apply to my travels with Monsieur. Invariably, be it on the first day of our time away or the last, something will go wrong. For instance, on honeymoon I got food poisoning, on our way to Venice we…

The Price of Eggs at Mont Saint-Michel

Ever since I first set eyes on an image of Mont Saint Michel in a school French textbook I’ve dreamed of visiting the famed island abbey and recently that dream came true. At last Monsieur and I were able to see Mont Saint Michel for ourselves, but that experience is a whole different blog post….

I like to MO-GETTE MO-GETTE

All the talk about beans on the London Bloggers network recently made me do some odd things. Well, odd for most people but probably quite normal for me. This includes taking photographs of BEANS in a French supermarket, planning extra beans into our weekly diet (they’re very good for you – slow energy release), checking…

The BeanBlogger’s A to Z Guide to Beans

Recently on the London Bloggers’ Meetup Group website I noticed a competition about BEANS. The prize is a lovely luxury bean bag from Ambient Lounge and all the entrants have to do is write a short (Epicurienne? Short? That’ll  be the hard part…) post about BEANS. This made me think. Hard. I love beans, so I decided to create…

Where Epic finds she cannot bear her seatmate/s on Eva Air

When Monsieur booked our flights to Bangkok a couple of years ago, he chose Eva Air. “Eva who?” I asked, somewhat concerned that there existed an airline I hadn’t yet heard of. “They’re Taiwan’s national carrier,” he explained, as if it were common knowledge, which it probably was to everyone else in the world, but…

To Segway or not to Segway; That is the question

Some time back my friend, Razzbuffnik, posted a photo of people touring about Bruges on Segways. Like Razz, I don’t really understand why a Segway might be preferred to simply donning your walking shoes and getting some exercise as you explore a new place, although plenty of people seem to be keen to take a…