Our next destination was the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The museum is an impressive building from 1881. But the exhibits are even more remarkable. You can view fossils of dinosaurs and other extinct animals and even the enormous 30 metre long skeleton of a blue whale. As the museum is much too large to see everything during a single visit we will definitely have to go back there.

Our last stop was the cafe and restaurant The Wolseley where Silke and I planned to have our first Wiener Schnitzel in years. While our dinner there was a tad on the pricey side it was well worth it as the food from starters to dessert was delicious. And the Schnitzel was one of the best I ever had.

Well fed (or perhaps too well fed) and happy after a day full of discoveries we skipped a couple of tube stations before finally hopping on and then taking the train home to Cambridge.

Restaurant 22 is a nice cosy restaurant with a relaxing atmosphere, excellent service and exquisite food. The most demanding part of dinner is to compile your own 4 to 5 course meal from the monthly menu while enjoying the amuse-bouche and the complementary bread. During the next two hours you will be served all the delicious courses one by one, with ample time to enjoy both the food and the conversation with your charming companion.

After a nice relaxing dinner you will leave Restaurant 22 well-fed and satisfied with all the delicacies you were served.

After visiting the Hadrian: Empire and Conflict exhibition in London yesterday we were looking for a nice place to have dinner. Just around the corner from the British Museum we found a greek restaurant called Konaki which we hadn’t noticed before. We took a quick look at the menu and decided to give it a try.

We were lucky and got a table because the restaurant was full about half an hour later. After we tried our food we knew why. Our meals were delicious and the portions generous, just like in the greek restaurants we remembered. I suspect Konaki hasn’t seen us for the last time.

Silke und I both ordered a Toffee White-Chocolate Pecan muffin and Earl Grey tea. The tea was nice but the muffins were just fantastic. They are probably the best muffins besides Silke’s home-made ones that I have ever eaten. They had a crunchy top decorated with a pecan nut on a dollop of white chocolate and toffee. All of this crowning a fluffy and moist muffin, which tasted just delicious.

I’m quite sure that today wasn’t our last visit at Muffinski’s.

While enjoying our Döner Kebabs we realized how much we miss proper kebabs and in case of Silke also Lahmacun. You can buy Kebabs in the UK, too. But they are too greasy, don’t taste that well and the bread is just awful. Silke and I both hope that one day somebody will realize the market opportunity (e.g. after reading this post ) and open a Döner Kebab restaurant in Cambridge.

My wife spoted their local restaurant in Cambridge when we cycled in the city centre today. After our appointment we decided to try it out. The name gives it away: they have a lot of burgers on their menu with all kinds of meats and flavours and even several vegetarian options. We both ordered a Blue Cheese burger, fries and salad. The amount of food we ended up with was impressive, one portion of fries and salad would have been enough. Our meal was really delicious and we even managed to eat most of it.

Stuffed and happy we continued shopping expedition. Despite the lovely weather we passed on ice creams because we weren’t even a little bit hungry.

And it was indeed all about chocolate. Besides offering a large variety of (mostly) chocolate cakes they had a dozen different kinds of hot chocolates on their menu. They differed in the kind of cocoa beans and (often alcoholic) extra ingredients. Being a bit cautious I went for a Chocolate chaud a plain hot chocolate which tasted exquisite nevertheless. Refreshed and in good mood we started out to Holyrood park.

Both having a cold we only wanted to have a look-around. But the landscape up there in the hills is so beautiful.

And in the end we climbed up much higher than we initially wanted.

We didn’t make it to the top of Arthur’s Seat unfortunately. But we are determined to come back one day and try again when we are both fit.

The enemy in this case was a nasty cold that I had been fighting with for two weeks already. Besides a blocked nose I developed a cough during the weekend. Flying in that condition yesterday made things worse and I had a(nother) rough night. In the morning I still felt tired and exhausted after almost ten hours of sleep.

We therefore had to take things slowly and only walked from our Hotel to The Palace of Holyroodhouse.

When we were back in the Hotel I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep almost immediately. After one and a half hour of extra sleep I felt somewhat better and we went on another excursion in the late afternoon.

We walked all the way down to New Town and strolled along George Street and enjoyed the lovely weather. Just when we considered having dinner we found a great restaurant, The Sizzling Scot. Good and friendly service, a nice venison burger and one of the best steaks my wife ever had (her own words) made it a very worthwile visit. Stuffed and happy we went back to the hotel and decided to put off further sightseeing for today.

When we arrived in the pub we discovered that the menu had changed … which is always a bad sign. I studied it anxiously and found my worst fears confirmed: the burger was no longer on the menu.

I told myself not to panic and searched the menu for a replacement. I found the Rumpsteak Burger and ordered it with the Brie and mushroom topping. I tried to keep the hope alive that the new burger might be as good as the old one.

Unfortunately it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad burger. But there was no way it could compete with the Aberdeen Angus Burger. The meat wasn’t as delicious, the Brie cheese was too greasy and the bun tasted a bit wishy-washy. In the end I left the pub somewhat disappointed.

I really hate it when that happens. I find something I like and they improve it or stop making it for no good reason.