Just a quickie - a visit to Potsdam

As you may or may not be aware, depending on whether we're Facebook friends, I have arrived in Germany! My first few days in the south-western university town of Tübingen were something of a mixed bag - I'm sure that that'll eventually find its way into a blog post somehow - and so, before the start of Tübingen's semester in October, I've temporarily decamped about as far as it is possible to go while staying within Germany's borders. I'm getting away for a little while to see the sights of the German capital with my friend Rachel, who is spending part of her Year Abroad here in Berlin.

On Saturday, we went to Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg, to the south of Berlin, visiting some of the city's many palaces - here are a handful of the pictures I took.

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Just a quickie - winter in Wells

It's almost December and I'm so excited about Christmas! A mountain of uni work and other deadlines meant that recently I've had barely any time for blogging, but Oli and I managed to take a couple of days off last weekend and visit his grandparents in Wells.

Strangely, although it was November and we had last visited Somerset in July, the weather behaved itself and was much better for most of this trip. We were lucky enough to have the very best sort of winter weather: clear and sunny, but absolutely freezing! After arriving on Friday evening, we decided to take a stroll around the tiny city, which in fact is England's smallest. Our first stop was Cathedral Green, where I spotted the above house and immediately decided that I must live there. It's also home, as one might expect, to Wells Cathedral, featured on a recent BBC documentary.

Oli's grandparents caught up with us in the market, which runs every Wednesday and Saturday outside the town hall. We browsed the local produce and potential Christmas gifts, then headed through the Bishop's Eye - as peculiar as that sounds, fear not, as it is actually one of a pair of medieval gateways, the other being Penniless Porch, where people are permitted to busk - to the Bishop's Palace.

Though the trees had by now shed their leaves, I think that the bare branches are still strangely beautiful, particularly set against a bright blue winter sky. The Palace grounds are one of my favourite places to visit when we go to Wells and I've actually never been inside the buildings. This may have a little something to do with us being tight students, but I like to just wander around the garden and the moat outside.

The moat surrounds the Palace's outer walls and is now just a decorative feature - I'm sure that the Bishop of Bath and Wells is very pleased to hear that he's no longer under any great threat as he goes about his business - and is home to such specimen of British wildlife as the giant swan. This swan and her friends make up the Swans Of Wells, a public art project to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. 

The next time we visit Wells will probably be in the New Year now. There's so much to do between now and then, but luckily I managed to get some Christmas shopping done over the weekend, particularly at the Clarks Village in nearby Street.

In any case, I had a fabulous weekend and there are only two weeks of term left before the Christmas holidays. I'll be back soon with new posts about Princesshay's shopping events and more festive fun!

Just a quickie - the end of reading week

This week has been the university's reading week, which is something like a half-term, although I think the official line is that it's supposed to be used for getting work finished off and not going on holiday! But I managed to get heaps of things done earlier in the week, so Oli and I spent part of the weekend with his family in Teignmouth and stayed with his grandparents there. When we came back to Exeter today, we met up with my parents and sister for lunch, so we've been very lucky and spoilt this weekend! In the coming week, it'll be back to lectures and seminars, so it was nice to make the most of the time off while it lasted.

It's November now and I think winter is my favourite season. In Teignmouth, we took Toffee the labrador for a walk along the beach - it was quite cold and windy, but the sun was shining and it's such a beautiful time of year. Here are a few of the pictures that I took along the way...

Just a quickie - testing Betty Crocker's cake mix

I've not been able to do all that much baking since going back to uni, what with essays to write, translations to do and so on, but I've been making a few cakes and biscuits here and there when I can. A few weeks ago, when my parents came up to visit and they brought up some lovely treats for us, including this cake mix, which I got in my goodie bag at The Cake and Bake Show at Earl's Court in September. Now, I must admit that I've been a bit of a cake snob in the past, so I would rather make cakes from scratch than use a box mix. But I thought that I'd give this one a go and see what happened.

At the show in London, we tried some very lovely salted caramel cupcakes at the Sainsbury's stall, which were made from a ready mix, so I was in fact quite looking forward to how Betty Crocker's version would measure up.

The kit comes with a bag of vanilla cake mix - presumably including sugar, flour, baking powder and flavouring - a bag of vanilla icing sugar, a sachet of white chocolate chips for decoration and some cupcake cases. All that I needed to do was add oil, water and two eggs for the cakes and butter and water for the icing. Easy peasy!

Using the cake mix certainly saved time on measuring things out and it made a nice, smooth mixture. It had quite a strong vanilla flavour, but it wasn't overpowering at all after baking.

I ended up with a batch of nine good-sized buns - the sponge seemed to rise nicely and the kitchen really smelt lovely! All that remained to do was mix up the pink icing sugar with butter and water and ice them.

The icing wasn't as bright pink as was shown on the box, but that was rather a neon shade and perhaps not very appetising! I ended up with a more delicate pink shade with a very strong vanilla flavour, much stronger than the cake; but together, thankfully, the two flavours mixed well. I topped the cakes with the chocolate chips and served them to a peckish little sister and boyfriend, who had been hovering ready to test the finished article.

In the end, we agreed that they did still taste a little 'shop-bought' - there's definitely some sort of homemade taste that boxed mixes can't replicate exactly, but what it is, I'm not certain. But overall, Betty Crocker's cakes turned out well and I was quite impressed. The sponge was very light and actually they were quite moreish. All nine seemed to disappear quite swiftly!

My mum and sister have been testing more of Betty Crocker's and Sainsbury's cake mix ranges at home, apparently with great success. I think that, if I were to try more mixes, the Sainsbury's salted caramel would be the top of my list, or perhaps the red velvet ones. 

In any case, I must definitely go and peruse the shelves in the homebaking aisle soon - university is starting to give me cake withdrawal! But Christmas is on its way and there should be plenty more baking opportunities of the festive variety in the works...

Just a quickie - how exciting, I've joined Bloglovin'

As you can see, I've had another change of design/template here on my blog. I'm finally happy with it, so hopefully it's going to stay like this for the foreseeable future. Thanks to The Cutest Blog On The Block for the lovely new template!

I've also just joined Bloglovin', a blog-sharing community which makes it really easy to keep up with all your favourite blogs and find new ones to read as well.

You can follow me using the link below!



(: xx

Just a quickie - Falmouth with Frosty and friends

So I've just arrived back from a whistle-stop visit to Cornwall, having spent the last couple of days with the sometimes-anonymous boyfriend, our friend Frosty and his kind housemates who let us take over their living room with sleeping bags.

I don't have heaps of photos, because I didn't want to inflict my ipad mania on everybody too much, but I did manage to take some pretty pictures on Monday evening, when we went for a stroll around Penryn.

As we walked a little further, we left the Jubilee Wharf behind and wandered in the direction of St Gluvias church, near which were some pretty cottages and another great view of the quay.

The following day, we took a trip to Pendennis Castle to see the mediaeval jousting and melée - as I said, I didn't want to take my tablet all over with me and get on everyone's nerves, so unfortunately I have no mediaeval photos for you. But rest assured, we had a very entertaining day - especially given that the evening's diversion was 'power-rangers-for-grown-ups', Guillermo Del Toro-directed blockbuster Pacific Rim...!

On Wednesday, my last day in Penryn with Mike, Oli and Michel's housemates, we were on the road again. This time our destination was Penzance, where we stopped for lunch, then Marazion, where we caught a boat over to the beautiful St Michael's Mount.

Once on the island, Mike and Laurence trekked up to the castle, while Oli and I stayed in the village at the bottom to explore.

And so concluded another trip to Cornwall. Frosty finally turns 19 tomorrow, so I shall sign off by wishing him many happy returns of the season and thanking him and his friends very much for having me for a few days.

(: xx