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We are taking a pause from our blog...

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For more information please visit www.focus-info.org

 

The Many Faces of Royal Albert Hall

While normally I like to write about London’s hidden gems I just can’t help myself from focusing this post on one of London’s most recognised gems. I have frequented this amazing venue, Royal Albert Hall, on many occasions throughout my 19 year adventure in London and walk past it nearly everyday when I leave the FOCUS office, but gained a whole new appreciation for it this past month.

With many American family members joining me in London for the holidays it seemed only natural to pay a visit and let them experience Royal Albert Hall (the ‘Hall’) for themselves. As a matter of tradition we used to attend one of the carol services that they offer throughout the month of December, however with older children and new traditions on the rise we have not made an effort in the past 5 years. Having young nieces visiting thankfully put this tradition firmly back on the agenda for this holiday season.

The sing-a-long was everything anyone could want with singing, dancing, a great deal of humour all sprinkled with a magical dose of Christmas spirit. The Hall, already impressive in its unadorned state was indeed splendid, dressed from top to bottom with traditional Christmas decorations. At the close of the performance we exited the building, carol sheet in hand, with the other hundreds of patrons who poured out and most of whom boarded the number 52 bound for Victoria. The sheer volume of people crowded onto the bus on any normal day (I take this bus frequently from the FOCUS office) would have driven me to distraction, but the lively spirit of the Hall seemed to envelop each and every passenger. As Royal Albert Hall faded from my vision into the dark, on the bus the spirit of the event remained very much alive.

So, when I approached the Hall (yes, on the number 52 again) a mere 7 days later the image of the adorned Hall filled with carollers was still very clearly imprinted on my mind. As I made my way inside to take my seat (this time on the opposite side of the Hall) I realised the venue had transformed literally as I slept. Not only were the decorations removed, but where happy families had the week before been seated was a giant mirror of ice lit with snowflakes that seem to fall from the lights above. What followed was a magical production of The Nutcracker on Ice. The manpower necessary, the vision of the set designers and the technicians who bring it all to life is without a doubt awe inspiring. The two hours of skating that followed was so impressive I did not want it to end. Of course, much of this is down to the Imperial Ice Stars who put on the show, but to watch them at Royal Albert Hall was truly exceptional (having seen their performances at two different locations I feel justified in making this statement).

London is a place where there is entertainment at nearly every corner and we are indeed spoiled by the vast choice which includes large venues like Wembley and Royal Albert Hall down to the smallest of cinema’s, pubs and theatres hosting a wide variety of unique events. Don’t forget to take part and marvel at just what these venues can produce!

Oh, and remember to book the carol services at Royal Albert Hall for next winter!

Written by Nancy Dickinson.  Nancy is Deputy Executive Director at FOCUS.

For more information please visit www.focus-info.org

 

Should you wish to share your expat experiences in the UK, please contact us: office@focus-info.org

The Cookie Exchange – A Sweet Celebration of the Season

One of the best ways to celebrate the holidays is to find fun ways to gather friends and family. One idea to do just that is to host a cookie exchange. It's a wonderful and rewarding way to bring together everyone you know who has a (potentially unrequited) interest in creative baking.

Cookies, at their core, are the simplest little creations: delicious, portable sweets with so many varieties that everyone can find something to love. A cookie exchange is simply a party which celebrates the fun behind cookies!

Cookie exchanges can be as simple or complex as you want. My favorite way to host a cookie exchange is to set it up around a coffee morning.  In this scenario, the host provides coffee, tea and cookie-display space. Then she or he invites friends and family to bring a couple dozen of their best, most creative cookies to share. This is when everyone’s hidden baking talents come alive.

Every person invited brings a dozen (or more) cookies which they have baked, bought or decorated and when you have a room full of people and their cookie creations, everyone takes turns filling empty boxes with different kinds of cookies. As a guest, you arrive with a dozen of the same kind of cookies and leave with a pile of variety.

It doesn’t have to be a formal affair. In fact, the more casual and comfortable, the better the cookies taste!

Cookies exchanges give us a way to reconnect with special people and as a bonus, everyone leaves with a variety of delicious treats and in some cases new recipes to try.

For ideas you can always check out Pinterest or one of a dozen other blogs dedicated to the topic.

Happy holidays!


Written by Stephanie Sandoval. Stephanie is FOCUS' Magazine Editor.


Should you wish to share your expat experiences in the UK, please contact us: office@focus-info.org

London Legal Quarters

As an expat living in London I love to explore what this incredible city has to offer. With a group of like-minded friends in the last few weeks we have ventured into London’s legal quarters.

Located near Aldwich, on the western border of the City of London, the Inns of Court represent the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. Since the 14th Century all barristers must belong to one of the four Inns where they receive training and support for their profession.

What impressed me the most is the sense of stepping back in time  these cobbled lanes, tucked away gardens and tranquil squares offer. Tradition and formality permeates the air and the magnificent Middle Temple Hall represents a unique example of Elizabethan London with its striking double-hammer beam roof which was completed in 1573 and the stained glass windows that were miraculously saved during the blitz in WWII.

Temple Church is a hidden jewel between the Inns built by the Knights Templar, the monks order that was protecting the pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem in the 12th Century. Its carved stone doorways are original from the 11 hundreds. I was so pleased to finally be able to visit it as I have tried a few times in the past but always found it locked. Music is a big part of the church life with a rich programme of organ recitals  and choir concerts. I will definitely go back to experience this music.
 

Our last stop was a tour of the Royal Courts of Justice: our guide was fantastic and took us into a court room where she presented us with the history of the building and the activities run by the Courts. We were able to sit on the barrister benches, the witness stand and in the jury box. Walking around we met barristers and judges dressed in their gowns and wigs; the horsehair wigs and coulourful robes worn by judges can be traced back to medieval times but are now part of the tradition an still worn these days.

There is always something new to discover in London: step out and discover a treasure of your own!



Written by Paola Longobardi. Paola is Resource Manager at FOCUS.


Should you wish to share your expat experiences in the UK, please contact us: office@focus-info.org

Where are you from?

While travelling in the American southwest with my family last summer, I had an odd experience. We had been seated in a restaurant and were discussing the menu, in Italian. The waitress came over and asked if we had any questions, and my husband turned to her and spoke in perfect, albeit heavily accented English. When it came time to take the orders, she started speaking with my husband and asked him what the ‘children’ wanted (the children are teenagers).

Number one son started speaking in ‘the Queen’s English’, and once he finished, his brother immediately followed suit. I then started speaking in American English, and you could see the waitress needed a moment to process that each party in this seemingly normal family had a completely different accent when speaking in English. 

Curiosity got the better of her and she asked, ‘but where are you from?’  Ah, what is normally a simple question to answer for most people, for us becomes incredibly complicated.  I am American but have been living in England for more than 20 years, but I arrived via Brussels.

My husband is half Italian, half German and has
lived in more than six countries throughout his life. Our children, are relatively normal, having been born and raised in London. But then, they aren't really normal, are they?

They have parents from different nationalities, while being raised in a third. They have the major advantage of being brought up in a bilingual household, and as a result, find learning additional languages fairly easy compared to their monolingual friends. And if you ask them which nationality they most identify with, the answer depends on which set of grand parents they have most recently visited and which international sports competitions are currently taking place. 

The only thing that is certain, is that they don't
feel English. But then, we live in London, and if I look around at the friends that we have, our children are absolutely normal.  Many of our friends are mixed nationality couples, with interesting combinations such as Irish/Syrian, German/Chinese and Dutch/ Chilean. London is a multicultural melting pot and no one bats an eyelid when a family is made up of many different nationalities. In fact, it is often the norm.

Written by Eva Stock. Eva is Director of Sponsors Relations at FOCUS.



For more information about FOCUS visit:  www.focus-info.org

Should you wish to share your expat experiences in the UK, please contact us: office@focus-info.org

Queue or Kew? Redefining Hidden Gems

While leading a presentation last week on London’s Hidden Gems for parents at an international school I was reminded of just how familiar and unfamiliar this extraordinary city has become and continues to be since my arrival in 1996!

One of the reasons I have decided to make London my home is that I love that nearly every day I discover or experience something new - a small independent bookstore on Ebury Street, pink flamingos high above Kensington High Street, an extraordinary family run cheese shop on Tachbrook Street or a Rugby World Cup quarter final team training at my local gym. London is always full of surprises! For this same reason I love doing the research behind the Hidden Gems presentation. I, with the FOCUS team, have strived to curate a selection of truly unique London gems and pride ourselves on avoiding the ‘obvious.’

So it did indeed take me by surprise when, in the
middle of presenting, I had a moment of realisation that I had come a long way in becoming familiar with London and that ‘obvious’ was not always so. I was, at the time of this revelation, speaking about some of the lesser-known gardens in London- Embankment Garden, Mount St Garden, Postman’s Park, Inner Temple, Southwark ‘s Red Cross Garden... I could go on for at least another page but that is another blog altogether. The point is while one participant was granting me every presenters dream of audience participation by sharing an experience of being at Kew Gardens one of the other participants diligently taking notes interrupted wanting to know whether we were talking about Kew with ‘K’ or queue with a ‘Q’.


Inside I was laughing in a most sympathetic

manner, however it was at this stage that I was abruptly reminded of just how many different interpretations of ‘hidden gems’ there might be. I had wrongly taken for granted that the much treasured ‘better known’ cultural destinations now so familiar to me were already discovered by this well educated and well travelled audience of international parents.  However, in my drive to uncover the undiscovered I failed to remember just how daunting the multitude of cultural options can be for someone new to London. After all, I should know well that the possibilities, so vast in number, can be dizzying even for us longer-term expats.


In my hours of research and commitment to 
uncover the most hidden cultural gems I had forgotten what it was like to be so fresh in this great city. What was obvious to me was indeed hidden to many in the audience that day.

In some ways I was quite envious knowing the participant with the Kew/queue question was just embarking on a journey I have now been on for 19 years.  However, I will continue my quest to unearth new treasures daily and have complete faith that London will continue to deliver in spades!

If you like the sound of learning more about FOCUS’ favourite hidden gems keep an eye out for our seminar in early 2016 where we will reveal all!

If you want to hear what some of the parents at the ACS Egham, ICS and the audience at American Women’s Club had to say about this presentation please email office@focus-info.org.

Written by Nancy Dickinson.  Nancy is Deputy Executive Director at FOCUS.

For more information please visit www.focus-info.org

 

Should you wish to share your expat experiences in the UK, please contact us: office@focus-info.org

A jewel in the Crown

It may be National Curry Week until 18th October but not all Indian restaurants are curry houses.

Recently, I was lucky enough to be invited for lunch at Quilon restaurant. This fine Indian restaurant is definitely not your typical local curry house: I quickly understood why it was awarded a Michelin star in 2008 and has retained it since then.

Located between St James’ Park and Victoria, Quilon serves South-West coastal Indian cuisine.  The décor is quite modern and sleek whilst warm and inviting with extensive use of dark wood: you are transported in the warmth and depth of Indian culture and cuisine without being overwhelmed with traditional decorative references.

And this progressive stance is also reflected in 
reflected in the original approach of the award-winning chef to Indian cuisine:  successfully blending the roots and flavours of Indian traditions with modern tastes and cooking techniques, the menu focuses on seafood while also serving excellent meat, poultry and vegetarian dishes.

We had the opportunity to try the tasting menu. What a journey of flavours, herbs and spices! I personally like spices as they add character and depth to a dish but I must admit I am usually not a big fan of very hot food. As soon as the appetisers arrived, I discovered the explosion of
flavours was more about the quality, subtlety

and mix of the spices used than about the strength. In the assortment of dips, some were significantly hotter than what I usually eat, but they were so full of deep and tangy flavours of lemon, mint, coriander, etc., that I could not really stop dipping…

The rest of the menu then brought us from succulent stuffed quail legs (with brown onion, chilli, ginger, spices and served with mustard) to a soft-as-a-feather coconut chicken breast, from a surprisingly light and cleansing spiced lentil broth to a deliciously indulgant layered bread with pure ghee (Indian clarified butter), from an assortment of tasty vegetables to comforting tomato- and lemon-flavoured rice… And not to mention one of their signature dishes, the beautiful melt-in-the-mouth baked black cod!

The desserts did not let us down either: the pistachio cake with melted black sesame fondant, the hot vermicelli kheer (creamy hot vermicelli pudding served with rose ice cream), and the chocolate and hazelnut praliné cake flavoured with cardamom and coconut, are equally delicious and surprising.

I already liked Indian cuisine before, but Quilon has definitely showed me new flavour horizons.

Quilon restaurant
41 Buckingham Gate
London SW1E 6AF
020 7821 1899

For more on Indian cuisine in the UK, read also the ‘East meets West: Britain’s curry quest’ article in the September-October issue of FOCUS Magazine.


Written by Aude Eyraud. Aude is FOCUS Director of Marketing.

For more information about FOCUS, visit: www.focus-info.org