Honeymoon: The Palace - The Royal Chapel

Journey to Palace of Versailles

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Once we reached the front gates of Versailles, we headed to the ticketing office to get the admission tickets. There are 3 types of tickets available; namely The Passport, The Palace and Trianon Palaces & Marie-Antoinette's Estate. The Passport (€18) allows you to discover the Versailles estate in all its glory, enabling you access to all places.

 

Since we came all the way here, I argued that it would be more worthwhile to get the Passport. This way, we'll get to visit the whole Palace and the surrounding compound. However, the entire compound span over 2014 acres of land. Thus, we had to time our visit to each destination, taking into consideration traveling time between the places of interest. 

An audio-guide in 11 languages (included in the ticket price) is available as well. With the map in hand, we began our journey through the Palace :)

The Royal Chapel greeted the visitors as soon as you enter the Palace. This two-storey palatine chapel is designed based on the model of the Holy Chapel in Paris. The construction of the Chapel first started in 1687 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Unfortunately, Jules did not live long enough to see the end of the construction for he died in 1708. His brother-in-law, Robert de Cotte took over the job and ended the work in 1710.

The Cliquot organ is placed above the alter. Played by the greatest maestros like Francois Couperin, the Music of the Chapel - renowned across Europe - would sing motets each day throughout the entire Church service. Throughout history, all the kings (regardless of Chinese/English/Indian kings) are known to be the Chosen One by God. In French monarchy, the King was chosen by God and through his coronation, the king became God's "lieutenant" on Earth. As such, the paintings and sculptures in the Chapel evoke that idea in a series which start at the nave and ends at the gallery where the king would seat.

Since Leecher took charge of the camera, I decided to utilise my then-newly-bought iPhone 4S and took tons of pictures, lol! Well, I admit that I did attracted a lot of attention with the Hello-Kitty cover, haha! The angmohs seemed to be surprised that such handphone cases existed!

 

I loved all the lights that are found in this Palace! These gold-rimmed lamps lit up the arched passage way, which I think will be an astonishing sight during night time. Then again, we never got to stay till night to witness this :( Perhaps, they would switch of the lights to conserve electricity, lol!

 

As we forgot to bring the extra memory card out for this day trip, Leecher had to make sure the camera had sufficient memory to contain the pictures that we'll be taking for the day. Thus, he carefully scanned through the pics to decide what to keep or delete.

    
OK, no matther what, pictures of the dear wifey will NOT be deleted. 
   
We came across actual documents that lasted through history! I tried to read a few lines but soon gave up. I do admire the cursive handwriting :)  We continued to explore other aspects of the Palace, which I will share more in future posts. 

Honeymoon: Journey to Palace of Versailles

 

It has been a long while since my last honeymoon post. Well, I sort of cheated by putting in a travel guide to Paris in between, so it doesn't seem that I have neglected our honeymoon trip. Truth is, I think I'm slowly morphing into a true-blue procrastinator :) Before I sink further into procrastinating mode, I decided to sweep off the cobwebs of the honeymoon folder, sort out the pics and blog about our day trip. We embarked on a day trip outskirts to visit the Palace of Versailles, which has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list for 30 years.

 

In order to save time, we packed breakfast from Pomme De Pain, a French fast-food chain serving traditional French sandwiches and pastries. We grabbed a couple of bread, sandwiches and drinks to consume along the journey.

 The RER C train will take you directly to the Palace of Versailles. Since the palace is located at Zone 4, ticket "t" or carnet can't be used for the journey. Instead, we had to purchase a "Paris-Versailles Rive Gauche" ticket at €4.10 each (one-way) to get there.

 

 I'm the official navigator since Leecher is useless with directions. I have to admit that at one point, I was rather confused with all the train lines, esp when it crossed over to RER trains. Being in the city, we just need to pay attention to metro lines most of the time. There is always a first experience in everything, so we went along on our journey. Worst come to worse, we'll just end up in a different place heh.

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As RER C line forks at a certain point, I had to make sure that we board the right train heading to the right direction. On board the train, we overheard that this group is also making their way to Palace of Versailles! We decided to follow them since they seemed to know their way around much better than us. 

    

During the train journey, I was too distracted to eat any food for I wanted to make sure that we are moving in the right direction. Now that we met the group of travelers, I heaved a sign of relief. While we were waiting for the last train that head directly to the destination, I felt hungry!

 

  Cute packaging!

 

 While we munched on the bread, we slowly arrived at our destination. We caught a glimpse of the countryside as we traveled outskirts, as the RER is the line which serves Paris and its suburbs.     

 

Once you arrive at ‘Versailles Rive Gauche’, it will take around 5 min to walk to the main gates of the Palace. There are plenty of signs to guide you around, so fret not about geting lost.  

Ending the post with a "scary" pic of Leecher, who set the camera to dramatic mode to capture this. 

Palace of Versailles

Place d'Armes - 78000 Versailles 

Korean Feast Weekend - Red Pig Korean BBQ Restaurant

I started to crave for Korean food 4 days after we came back from Korea. Leecher decided to cook kimchi jjiage for dinner to satisfy my cravings, yums! The hubby is simply amazing in the kitchen, whipping out dishes after dishes to feed my hungry stomach. Even though it was his virgin attempt, Leecher did a fabulous job that we gobbled down (almost) the full pot and truly deserved 2-thumbs up!

 

The next day, lil bro texted me and asked us out for dinner with mummy dearest for she was craving for korean food too! Haha, mother-daughter-telepathy at work? After a round of brainstorming, we decided to head to Red Pig Korean BBQ Restaurant, located at Amoy for dinner.

 

During the weekends, the CBD area is usually a ghost town but boy, I was so wrong when we walked along the shop houses. Most of the Korean BBQ restaurants were filled to the brim, some with a queue forming outside waiting for their table. When we reached Red Pig, the whole restaurant was crowded. I was half cursing myself for not reserving a table in advance. Thankfully, we managed to get a table within minutes.

 

Cute cashier, very appropriate for the restaurant too. 

Leecher flipping through the menu while we waited for mummy dearest & lil bro to join us. Well, there isn't a wide variety of food items on the menu. For dinner, there are 2 pages of food items that you can choose from - ranging from BBQ meat, spicy stews or other side dishes.

We ordered 3 plates of  meat to kick-start the meal - Bbalgam Doiji (Red Pig, $20), Bbalgam Dak (Red Chicken soy sauce marinated, $18) and Galbisal (Beef rib meat without bone, $28). Lil bro can't wait to start, lol! They served pretty decent banchan (반찬) & my fave goes to corn with mayonnaise (one serving per table, additional at $5).

Makgeolli for the alcoholic us. We even got mummy dearest to try this, but she gave up after 2 sips. The 2 酒鬼 (Leecher & lil bro) shared the bottle between them while I sipped on brown rice tea as I wasn't in a drinking mood.
 
Out of the 3 types of meat we ordered, the best goes to Bbalgam Doiji (Red Pig, $20). For the pork lovers, there is another option of Ogyebsal (Pork Belly, $15). I strongly recommend the Red Pig version, since it is marinated with chilli+other ingredients and tasted more flavourful when BBQ-ed.   

 

Mummy dearest enjoying her egg roll & kimchi. Being her virgin trip to a Korean restaurant, mummy dearest was excited that she finally got to eat the food that she saw in K-drama, lol! Looks like I should start training my mum more, so she can come along for our Korea trip next time, heehee!

Seafood pancake ($18) which won praises from both mummy dearest & lil bro. This dish made it to the table twice, lol! The first plate was crispy and filled with a lot of ingredients. When we ordered the 2nd plate, it came slightly soggy and filled with more spring onions than seafood. Quite a disappointment but the rest still enjoyed it.

    
The must order for me in all Korean restaurant, Tteokbokki! I wished this came in a spicier version though - this version is too mild for my liking.
   
  With lil bro, who graciously paid for the meal! Wa, it's not everyday he offered to pay so must whack more, haha! 

Mummy dearest lamenting that she still needs to "cook" for us during her off-days, lol! Well, can't be helped since she's the best & most experienced cook :)
 
Enjoying her first BBQ-meat-wrapped-with-lettuce-experience (^^) & she really loved it!
 

  Mum really had a good time & most importantly, we all got a free meal thanks to lil bro! 

Red Pig Korean BBQ Restaurant
93 Amoy Street
Singapore 069913
Tel: 6220 7176

Busy Aug!

Have not been updating much on this space, for weekends are now more precious than ever :) I blame it on the lure of Apple TV for "sucking" up much of my time, haha! I promise to be back with more updates, but till then .....

I'm just going to pretend I'm on vacation :p

Restaurant Week, 2014 edition: J's

The 3rd stop for Restaurant Week is J's, a Latin-American restaurant nestled along Purvis street. As I swing open the front door, I was greeted warmly by Joy, the Managing Director of the restaurant. Joy introduced herself, ushered us to our table before excusing herself to attend to another couple who arrived at the front door. 

With a name like J's, the first thing that popped into my mind was J represents Joy, which is the name of the owner. Later, I realised that not only does J represents the culmination of the many years that Joy dreamt of owning her own restaurant which provides quality food & good service, J also signifies Joy's desire to create a space for her son, friends and community & the Upper Room (located on the 2nd floor) is available for such use.  

 
As we sat at the table, I was half waiting for them to provide us with a menu. Well, I was in for a surprise when the scroll of paper placed in the empty glass was the menu.

 

Wow ~ I wasn't expecting a personalised menu with my name printed on it :) What a lovely surprise! Leecher was disappointed that he was simply addressed as "Guest", haha! Well, I told Leecher that he can always have the honour of making RW's reservations next time, to get his name printed on it, tsk tsk. 

 

Posing with our my very first personalised menu :) It seemed to me that the smaller establishments are making an effort to provide personalised service to differentiate themselves from the big players. I still recalled seeing a personal place-card when we visited Little Diner's last year during Restaurant Week. Sometimes, I think these little gestures go a long way in customers' memories.

There were only 2 starter to choose from, so we ended up with one of each to try. 

Popper & Meatball, which consisted of chipotle meatball and jalapeno popper with citrus couscous and mixed greens. Leecher (unwillingly) had mango and avocado salad, consisted of mixed greens with mango, avocado, walnuts, feta cheese, citrus couscous and citrus dressing. I have a special liking towards citrus couscous & I even finished the mixed greens on the platter. What an achievement, haha! 

Break time before the main courses arrived. Take a break, snap a picture, lol! 

 

With 3 main courses to choose from, we decided forgo the vegetarian paella and instead, opted for beef & fish. 

Leecher's order of Barramundi Filet, served with pan roasted fillet of wild caught barramundi with baby vegetables, mushy peas, potato laces and jus reduction. When the plate arrived, it was like a work of art! I had to take a couple of pictures to capture the essence of the plating while ignoring Leecher's dagger-like stares to start eating.

   

As for me, I opted for the usual Sirloin Beef, consisted of grilled Australian grain fed 120 days beef sirloin with cabbage, leeks fricassee and saffron rice puree. Joy came over to the table once again and explained that the sirloin beef is one of their signature dishes (the other being Chicken "Adobo" which was not offered as part of RW's menu). As I sank my teeth into the beef, I was surprised to find that it was really juicy and tender!

  

The mandatory "main-course" pic before we start dinner proper, heh!

 

Moving onto desserts & once again, we tried the 2 options that were available. 
 

Chocolate & Lemongrass ice creams. Needless to say, chocolate ice cream worked wonders for me, but somehow lemongrass ice cream tasted really weird. Even though it was refreshing, I couldn't bring myself to take another bite. On the contrary, Leecher loved it and before I knew it, he finished everything, lol! We also had churros layered with salted caramel bananas, fresh mangoes and coconut-infused mascarpone sabayon. I've always paired churros with chocolate sauce, so this new pairing was quite innovative even though I'm not a fan of bananas. Another of their mouth-watering desserts is "Bocas Negras", a flourless chocolate cake that I would to try for the next trip. 

 J's 

 7 Purvis Street

 #01-01 Singapore 188586

Tel: 6887 4787