My first really sunny day in Rotterdam and a burger review

Since we moved to Rotterdam just over 2 months ago, it has been cold and windy. Every time I've gone out and the sun has been shining, I've been lulled into a false sense of security.

I've not been stupid, mind. I know that in March, bare arms or legs are a bad idea in the Northern Hemisphere. I mean that I've gone out without a hat or gloves, or occasionally thought that a flash of bare ankle might be a good idea. 

In London, this would be fine. It's unnaturally warm there, so going out in the middle of winter and showing flesh other than the face is do-able. Even if it's chilly, unless you are waiting for hours at Clapham Junction or another frigid Network Rail station (Balham, anyone?) you're going to be ok. You can pop into a cafe if your ankles get really cold. 

Sometimes I've looked askance at the American bloggers I like reading. They post these great photos of snowy New York/ Washington/ Michigan somewhere and about January they start moaning about how bored they are with the cold. At that point, I think to myself 'Oh give over!'. For someone used to the relatively light temperature swings of the southern UK, the thought of temperature extremes is quite exciting. 

However, Rotterdam - while not offering me snow in abundance - is proving to be a tricky place. It's typically a couple of degrees lower than London on any given day, but much windier and colder somehow. I have seen people bundled up as though we were in New York in double digit negative numbers (Celsius) and after a couple of months, (yes I am quite slow to catch on) I realise why. It's just chuffing chilly here. 

So over the past week or so, as it's been warming up, I've really been enjoying it. We went on a walk in the dunes last week which was both sunny and windy. And today has been like early summer. We walked in Het Park and had to take off our coats. I had bare legs. Then I began to think I should have worn short sleeves. I took photos of the tall ships lines up along the riverside for a race, and of W in front of the most lovely magnolia tree. 

Burger review: Hamburger

Following on from my considerations on flat whites in London, I decided to review burger bars in Rotterdam, as we eat there. Yesterday we went to Hamburger on Witte de Withstraat. I had a skinny burger with cheese and W had a triple cheeseburger with fries. 

Let's start with the fries - of course I pinched some. Stolen fries don't count, everyone knows that. They were just so good, dark golden and crispy. I think they may have been double fried. 

The burger was also great - if a little on the small side. Very juicy and well formed, with good processed cheese on top. It came with a pleasant salad instead of the bun, and the price was reduced by one euro, which is unusual! 

W's looked good - but he is not able to say why. He says 'it was a good burger, with nice cheese. And I liked it'.

Hamburger is a nice little bar on the first floor above another restaurant. It has a wide range of beers, including my favourite Brew Dog Dead Pony, although we had wine on this occasion. The decor is mostly in the hallway and on the stairs, and it is kind of psychedelic. 

I think I'm going to rather the following 5 attributes - and by skinnification, I mean: how successfully have they made a burger low carb? 

Service: 9/10

Decor/ Atmosphere: 8/10 (nice decor, menus a little grubby.)

Burger: 8/10

Fries: 10/10

Skinnification: 8/10

Where can I get the best cup of coffee in Victoria, London?

Today’s random question comes from my recent experiences buying a cup of coffee on the way into work. Despite the fact that this is an expensive and not particularly environmentally friendly habit, I do love getting a cup as I walk to work from Victoria Station. There’s just something good about walking along with one, and in the colder months in the UK it’s a nice way to keep your hands warm as well. Bonus!

Not strictly much to do with coffee, but this is some 
Victoria Street street art and I rather like it.

So what are my criteria for a good cup? I try to consume minimal cow dairy products as they definitely give me stomach problems, so I tend to ask for soy milk.^[1]At home I drink much more almond, hemp, oat etc milks as I’m also not wild about drinking too much soy, but those don’t tend to be on offer in cafes.^[2]

I prefer flat whites. I’m not sure why, but I like the texture better than a latte, and the volume is right – much larger and I feel as though I’m drinking a milkshake. For me, a really good flat white is velvety, not too foamy, and even with soy milk, there’s a kind of creaminess.

I also have decaff most days. A bit like the milk, this isn’t a preference, but I quit caffeine while trying to get pregnant. Since I’m still trying, I’m mostly still off the caffeine. Weirdly, I’ve now got used to this emasculated flat white to a degree that one with real milk and real caffeine tastes odd.

In Victoria Station there are approximately 20 places where you can get coffee, including Cafe Nero’s, Costa, Starbucks, Pret and a few other places. Walk down Victoria Street and you pass at least another 20, including Starbucks and Pret twice each, Leon, and various other chains. If you have a Waitrose card, you can get a free latte (no flat white) but these are milk only and decaf, although that was a happy purse month the month before I quit milk.

In Strutton Ground, there is a stall called Flat Cap Coffee, which I call out because it’s pretty good, although sometimes the coffee tastes a little burnt. It’s also on the pricey side at £2.80 a cup.

While thinking about how to enjoy coffee on a semi regular basis without wasting too much money, I decided to research. This demonstrates just how nerdy I can get about this kind of thing. I had a little table set up on my iPhone and everything. Over a couple of weeks, I bought coffee at all sorts of different places, and I’m proud to present the following table:

Demonstration that I probably take this too seriously

Until I tried Ravello today, I had decided to go for Pret on the basis of both taste and cost, but Ravello surprised me and I may have to rethink...

What does this tell us? First that I really need to get out more. Second that coffee can be enormously variable in price and quality. I did a similar exercise a few years back when I had to travel to Milton Keynes every Tuesday for work, but based only on cafes in Euston station. 

And there for the captive market all the cafes were exactly the same price. Whereas in Victoria, where people are roaming about much more, the prices range considerably. Hmm, there’s some kind of paper in there.

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[1] The Dutch call coffee with milk ‘koffie verkeerd’, which basically means you’re drinking it wrong. I disagree, and I think this says a lot about the Dutch – no half measures, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things!

[2] There is a lovely little cafe near St Martin’s in the Fields that makes fresh almond milk every morning. I haven’t tried it yet, but I need to do that before I leave London.

I'm a big fan of blogs. I love reading other people's life stories, and I can get sucked into spending a lot of time with them so easily. I find myself spending an evening cantering through the last 5 years of another human being's life - at least in terms of what they chose to share with the rest of the Internet. The babies, the divorce, the marriage, the food, the marathons and the gear.

So I've never really set my own one up. Why? I have plenty of things to talk about, but they are all so disjointed. I want to talk about:

• running
• clothes (regular and workout) 
• the fact that I've been trying to get pregnant for nearly 3 years
• my work (up to a point, because I'm not ready to be that honest)
• cooking and food
• shopping and my generalised window shopping envy (living in London on a civil servant's salary = torture)
• random stuff

But most blogs seem to have a theme. 

Then today I thought: Why do I have to have a theme? Why not just go for it? Don't overthink this. I overthink everything. 

So here we go. First post, and already it's about nothing much.