Holiday Diaries 2009 Part 2
Hmmm, a little while ago I posted about our little trip to Japan earlier this year.
I suppose I really should blog about our trip to Jersey too… that was only back in July!
Flying out and arrival
Once again, it was a pretty crappy July and August in the UK, weather-wise anyway. We were pretty worried that it would ruin our holiday out there.
Things were pretty cloudy when we left Cardiff… on our tiny little turbo-prop aeroplane. Yuko wasn’t best pleased to see it was a small plane, though the nerves pretty much disappeared once we were in the air.
Arriving at Jersey though, it was one hell of an improvement in the weather, with a beautiful view of the Channel Islands as we came in towards Jersey.
We got the taxi down to St. Helier, which is where we would be staying. Journey started off pleasant enough with some light chit-chat with the taxi driver. But, then for some reason then, he started making snarky, jokey remarks and generally taking the piss. I ignored him, and didn’t leave a tip for bugger.
So, with a bit of spare time we decided to have a quick walk through town and then head over to Samarès Manor Gardens, to look at the Western Gardens plus a Japanese one.
The Western ones were quite nice and we enjoyed the chilled out walk in the good weather. However, the Japanese garden was somewhat of a disappointment. 
That evening we had food over at Green Island Restaurant, which is quite well known. It was a little chilly in the evening, so we didn’t eat outside on the balcony. However, it was quite cosy inside and the fish was great.
German Hospital, Vineyards and wet/windy castles
We had been planning on having a bike ride, but having seen the weather forecast for the end of the day, we decided to postpone to the next day and hope they hadn’t screwed up the forecast.
First up was hoping onto the bus and heading up into the hills towards the Jersey War Tunnels. My goodness…. this is a rather impressive war museum. Yuko was rather impressed with it too.
The first thing that impresses is the engineering behind it all. However, the exhibits about life during the German occupation are fantastic and really get you pondering things. There was an exhibit in one room with mannequins wearing German uniforms, but with a TV screen placed where the head is. This played a video of a German actor in a role-play with you being the islander.
For example, a solider comes up to you and asks if you would be willing to wash his uniform for him. He can pay you with extra food coupons. Or how about the German solider who offers to buy your child an ice-cream because he misses his kids back in Germany.
What would you do???
After the museum, we tested out some wine at La Mare vineyard. It was a pretty interesting tour, but once again another wine tour doesn’t match up to the one we had in the Yarra Valley (Australia) (the other one was the one in Tuscany last year).
Wine was pretty good though, and we liked the Jersey Black Butter.
Finally, we headed down Gorey, to see the castle of Mont Orgueil. That was pretty impressive, until the rain came in as promised… and boy did it rain.
We managed to find refuge in a pub for a bit before deciding to head on down the road a bit to Gorey Village for food that evening. Now, I’m not 100% sure of the name of the place now, but I think it was The Village Bistro??? Anyway, it was fish once again that night and it was damn tasty. This place had a more casual feel, and the cook’s husband who does the waiting was a fellow Welshman (I seem to recall).
Biking
For once, the weather forecast was right and we were treated to a great sunny day (though a little breezy).
Up relatively early, and we decided to rent a bike out and ride along the coast from St. Helier to St. Aubin. A little break at St. Aubin wandering around before cycling up the (relatively gentle) cycle path on the way towards La Corbière.
On the way, we stopped off at Jersey Lavender for a bit of grub. Again, pretty tasty.
Back onto the back for last push before reaching our destination. It was all rather windswept, but very picturesque. As in a lot of places in Jersey, there were reminders of the German WW2 occupation with lots of artillery bunkers.
What was also impressive there was the seagulls. These seagulls have learnt about people buying ice-cream and they sweep in from the sun and grab them off you. So, Yuko and I huddled close together and held our ice-creams close to our bodies while we ate ours.
We were successful in keeping ours, but we did see a woman lose her ice-cream.
The journey back was a lot easier, with the wind behind us and it being downhill.
Once back in St. Helier, we felt the need to have a snack… but somehow managed to end up in one of the posh hotel bistro’s and had a rather expensive sea-food platter with oysters, mussels, lobster, prawns etc etc.
Yum yum!
Pampering
For the first half of the day, we got ourselves pampered at the Club Hotel Spa.
Once we were done with that, after a short break it was time for food in Bohemia.
This was the first time that Yuko and I had eaten in a Michelin Star restaurant. As it was lunch, there was a rather reasonably priced ‘Taster’ menu option which was something like £20 per head. Not bad. However, we saw some of the food options for the main menu.
F*#k it we thought, lets go for that. Bloody marvellous. Sure, for some people the food may have seemed ‘pretentious’ with small portions. But, as well as the actual three courses, theres all this various nibbles you get between courses. So, by the end of it all we were pretty much stuffed. The staff were really friendly too, which was great because we were a little bit nervous going there.
The head waiter guy was good as well, because he seemed to take it quite well when Yuko pointed out the incorrect Japanese name in one of the dishes 
(which was very, very, very tasty).
Cost, yeah, pricey. But not excessively so, and nowhere near The Fat Duck prices from what I’ve heard.
Thoughts on Jersey
Beautiful place, and the ability to get good seafood was something that both Yuko and I appreciated.
Mind you, there’s too many damn cars. St. Helier is awful. Also, some of the people in St. Helier seemed to be miserable buggers who appeared to hate the tourists. Stupid really, considering we bring in a fair amount of money to them.
Must admit though, would like to spend some more time in Jersey, staying in a cottage in the north of the island and buying local food and cooking ourselves. Maybe going for walks around the island taking in the nature rather than visiting the attractions (which we’ve pretty much done now).
28 Nov 2009 Gavin comments off