Almost Booked

So, I guess it's been a pretty busy week here. Monday was a quiet night at home. But we celebrated our Bermuda visa's which I collected from the VFS Sandton offices earlier in the day. YAY. Our holiday planning began getting much more serious this week (more on that later!).

On Tuesday, I skipped SCM and went for a catch-up dinner with @WhizBangLouLou at 1920. She'd never been before. I couldn't help myself but order the same Chicken Trinchado I'd had last time. Yum :)

On Wednesday I cooked at home. Sheesh, I seem to be doing that a lot again lately :) I guess I really have settled into the new house and it's bigger kitchen and the dishwasher - haha! I made Pesto Chicken with Caramelised Aubergine and Roast Tomatoes (cut those pesky olives right out of the recipe!) Sadly there are no photos :( But it did plate quite nicely :) I will definitely be trying the caramelised aubergine again sometime. I think I cut the pieces too smaller (I cut it into "rounds" and then quartered those) and I think our oven is way hotter than it should've been (recipe said cook at 200deg C for 40mins ... I took mine out for a bit in the middle and then popped them back in to heat up before serving). I will also remember to spray & cook the baking tray next time :P Haha. They added a nice sweet flavour to the dish and the roast tomatoes worked out far better than I was expecting! Maybe a little less pesto next time (I used a jar of Basil Pesto Princess, so it was all a very nice green :) )

And then on Thursday we decided to go and try out the new YuMe that has opened in Bellairs. I'd never tried a YuMe before, but have been watching this one get ready over the last few weeks and picked up a menu on Tuesday that I'd been poring over.

Okay, so I will say that even tho sometimes the idea of other foods turned into sushi sounds like a yummy idea, they very rarely, in my opinion, actually work out. But I was still very curious to try a few of their combinations. We should've gone on Monday evening, they have a special where all plates are priced as a Blue Plate.

We tried a smorgasbord of different things. We tried some halloumi spring rolls and some prawn dim sum and then I tried a hand roll (Prawn Paper Roll) for the first time ever (because they were wrapped with rice paper instead of seaweed ... I don't like the seaweed touching my tongue, okay? Which is why California Rolls are fine, but I won't eat Maki). It was all okay, it was nice to try. I liked the 4x4 rolls and the Moshi Moshi "Hello" rolls. But I really didn't like their Smoked Salmon Roses ... or their Adidas Roll (needs avo!).

I will probably still go back, I want to try their Noodles. And I'd definitely go back for dessert, loved their Kawasura Rolls :)

And that was our week.

And now onto the holiday planning. So I reshuffled our itinerary a few more times ... turns out once you factor in the actual flights you can get (somehow I thought there would be far more availability on routes in America and that you could get from just about anywhere to anywhere else quite easily), what we'd planned was no longer feasible. I tried switch the America journey around, all this stopping in New York for one night here and there was not in my plan, but even that wasn't ideal.

So I ended up finding the only ideal solution was to drop Washington from the itinerary altogether. I realised that with a wishlist of 4 must-see places (okay so they were pretty much all museums: Natural History, Air & Space, Holocaust and then the Zoo), I could never do it in the time we had. And I don't want to feel like I have to rush thru a museum because I have to be fitting in the next one. And I hadn't even allocated any time to the traditional touristy things like Lincoln Memorial or any of that either (lower on my list, but probably still gotta be done). So I grumbled and admitted that with the 10 year visa and The Trucker's love of USA, we'd probably be back, and I could tack on a proper 2-3 days in Washington on another trip and do it properly and not feel rushed.

So we're still Amtrak-ing to Philadelphia for a day so that I can go to the Mütter Museum (life list item) and we can get a Philly Cheesesteak from the original spot. Also may have to look into adding in the Penn Museum if we have time (since I did just give up all those Smithsonians)! So far it all looks like it's gonna work out perfectly <3 I am too excited. Just wanna get things booked now. But we are waiting till Tuesday (The Trucker has a connection at Flight Center who is on leave till then) to see if we can get a better price than booking online directly with the airlines, it's a tricky decision ... to wait or not, with the current state of the rand and potential for flight prices to fluctuate ... #sigh. Not for the fainthearted, this, but I can NOT wait. Sadly tho it does seem like it's going to be more expensive than we were expecting ... but it is going to be an amazing trip :)