A guide for the modern gent who likes good living. You'll find tech, travel, cars, TV, music and everything else all us guys are interested in. Whether it's watches, the best TV and films or tech, if it's to do with life and it's popular, it's here.
It’s back! Everyone’s favourite dating TV show, Take Me Out is making a return for 2015 and is set to be on your screens this Saturday at 20:30. Paddy McGuiness returns with his flirty 30 and you can see all of the girls in their photos below 🙂
Not only that, but after a brief absence Take Me Out: The Gossip returns with Mark Wright and new presenter Laura Jackson, to dish the dirt on what’s been happening at the isle of Fernandos, this time round they’ll be bringing all the gossip direct from Fernandos!
For film night I watched one of my new blu rays, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to watch for a while. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is the follow up to the first Sin City film, which first came out 9 years ago. The first film was brilliant, and so the follow up had a lot to live up to. I heard that this had some mixed reviews, so I did not really know what to expect. Thankfully it is a good film, maybe not as good as the first, but it did have a lot to live up to.
It’s the last weekend before Christmas! We went out in Newcastle on Friday, so called “Black Eye Friday”, it’s traditionally the day/night that there’s lots of office parties and work nights out. Apparently the town was really busy early on, but when I was out at around 9PM it was no busier than you’d usually expect. It was a fun night, and we went to places like Union Rooms, Jalou, Mushroom, Science Bar and The Head Of Steam. The Head Of Steam sells Rekorderlig on tap, how cool!? 😀 However I noticed they were doing bottles of the premium Winter cider, so I had to get a bottle to try. The label says apple cider with cinnamon-vanilla flavours. It does not sound too good since I am not a lover of cinnamon, but I have to say it is really nice, another hit from Rekorderlig 🙂
A trip to Jalou means a Cookie Monster cocktail, and I noticed they’ve put the prices up of all their cocktails, these are now £7.50 with some other cocktails coming in at £8.50.
Fashionably late, but Michael 84 would not be a Newcastle blog without the mention of Fenwick Window. I have covered it in previous years, and of course have done this year too. If you’re not from Newcastle then you may not know the little story; Fenwick, a department store on Northumberland in the heart of Newcastle dresses up their window each Christmas, and is a hit with kids and grown-ups alike. They may now have stores on Bond Street in London and other locations, but the first store was Newcastle. Each year has a different theme, and this year it is Alice In Wonderland.
Check out the pics below, with the usual reflections of Greggs (and other shops!) 😉
One of the most well known and prominent drinking places in Newcastle in recent times is something known as the Diamond Strip. But what exactly is it? Well it’s basically the name which has been given to the bars in and around Collingwood Street in Newcastle. These bars are typically portray a better quality, more expensive style of bar, and are now targeted more on the student and under 30 crowd, but were previously more focussed on the 25-35 year olds. Most of these are late bars, open until at least 2AM on a weekend, with some opening until 3AM.
The Diamond Strip: Brief History
The Diamond Strip has been the place to drink for around 8 years, since around 2006. It all started a couple of years before that, where a bar which was then named The Apartment opened it’s doors as one of the first VIP style bars. It promised sophistication for the older crowd, a smart dress code and even waitresses which brought round your expensive drinks. It offered VIP membership too, along with a velvet rope and red carpet. This exclusive style of place was popular at first, but the VIP non-accessible ethos drove many people away.
The owners then changed the bar, and in fact the whole space, and you could find 3 different establishments which occupied the old Apartment bar and next door buildings; These are Madame Koo, Floritas and Baby Lynch. Baby Lynch then was re-branded and extended which is now called House Of Smith. Around the same time Perdu which is located further along Collingwood Street started getting popular after opening in late 2005. These bars can probably take the credit for starting the Diamond Strip era.
In late 2007 Tup Tup Palace opened which is off Collingwood Street, and marketed itself as “The only nightclub on the Diamond Strip”, it took the space which was previously occupied by Bar M. Bijoux joined the fray in April 2008 which was formerly The Navy Bar and @Home to name a few. This has spawned similar types of bar in and around the Diamond Strip and beyond, such as Jalou, Livello and Label.
So, you’ll know by all the posts from my blog in the past week I was in Reykjavik recently 😛 One of the main reasons for the trip was to go and see the Northern Lights, however it never happened because the weather was not good enough, and we wouldn’t have been able to see them. Quite ironically, last week it was the perfect time of the year to see them, and you could see them from our country! 😛 Since I live in the North of England, some people did get to see them in some places, so last Friday we decided to go somewhere dark and try our luck.
Once again we saw nothing! 🙁 But it was quite a laugh and something different to do. It was also a good chance for me to actually try my hand at some night photography. I have never done it before, and bought my Tokina lens for situations like this. I was actually quite surprised at how the pictures turned out, I think they are pretty decent for a first attempt. I got some shots of the moon and stars, the moon was quite orangey and almost looks like a sun set. I was doing long exposures, and even got in on one of my shots to see how it would turn out; Of course it’s not sharp because of the slight movements of myself, but it’s not too bad 😛
It does go to show how much light pollution there is in Newcastle. I was actually blown away by how many stars you can see out there in the middle of nowhere…I remember seeing them as a kid years ago, we must somehow have a lot more light pollution in the city these days.
So you’ve read about my days and nights in Reykjavik, but there is so much more I must of missed out! What about the general things in Reykjavik, Iceland, prices, living and so on. So here it goes!
After Saturday night out in Reykjavik I needed to chill.We had already booked the Blue Lagoonwhich was a really good idea, however the bus picked us up at 9:30AM and I got in at 5AM….So I only had around 3 hours sleep!
The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa, basically a large lagoon which is heated up by the earth. It’s probably the best way to unwind after our Saturday night in Reykjavik, and best way to waste a day when waiting for a flight;
Far, far better than trying to kill time wondering around bored which I’ve had to do on other holidays! 😛 Unfortunately it was the only day it properly rained, but I guess that didn’t matter so much since we were in water anyway, and it was so warm! 😛
It’s a cool place, you go in and have a shower, then there is a small pool indoors, and the large lagoon outside. I got the €60 package which included priority entry to the lagoon, a drink, robe and towel and some skin products.
The lagoon is all different depths throughout, it goes down to around 1.5m so you can easily stand, and in places it’s so shallow you can sit on the floor and not be under the water. It’s pretty big, and even though it was pretty busy there was plenty of space for you to relax or have a wonder.
I got a waterproof pouch for my phone so I could talk pictures while I was in…Thank god it worked! 😛
From the Blue Lagoon we headed to Keflavik airport to catch our flight. The only bad thing was that the last bus from the Lagoon was at 3PM and we did not need to be at the airport until 6!
But the Blue Lagoon is definitely worth going to if you ever visit Iceland 🙂
So it was Saturday night, we had just been on the Golden Circle Tour which takes it out of you, being out all day, but we’re in Reykjavik, and were only there for 3 nights, so we can sleep when we’re dead and let’s go out-out!
We saw the weather was no better so resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d not see the Northern Lights and this being our last night we’d not get another chance. We did contact the company who organised it just for the formalities of them telling us, and they did 🙁
It was such a shame we did not see them, which was the biggest reason to go on the trip.
Saturday night was supposed to be the big one, we were going out-out Another friend and I booked to go to the Blue Lagoon the next day, and had to leave at 9:30AM so it was another early start, but that did not really stop us doing it up as big as we could 😀
The Wheel Of No Fortune – In a lot of bars there’s this wheel behind the bar (you can see it in the pics below).
You can pay 2,000kr (about £10) to spin it, and you can win whatever it lands on. Of course there are a lot of chances to lose, the options are; 8 beers, 1 metre beer, 2 beers, spin again and sorry.
There are 5 chances of sorry, and since 2 beers would cost around 2,000kr you’ll only really win if you get the 8 beers or 1 metre beer. It did not stop lots of people having a go, in fact we saw 7 people try, and 5 got sorry!
So the odds are heavily stacked against you, as you can see in the pic there’s only 2 of the sections in red, those are the big wins. Still, it’s good fun to watch…Probably not so good when you don’t win
The problem with Reykjavik is almost all the bars are quiet even at 10PM, so if you’re like us and like to go to a lot of bars and start quite early it’s pretty quiet especially at the start of the night. The previous night we had gone to B5 and it was quite early, maybe 23:30 or something like that.
The Saturday night we did not go until later, which proved to be a mistake. Despite there being only 7 or 8 people ahead of us in the queue, it took 2 hours to get in! I got in before my friends, and was in around 30 minutes before they got in, even though they were only 1 place behind me!
I was kept entertained by an Icelandic girl who was cute and had some good banter in the queue 😉
B5 on a Saturday night is a crazy place. Other than the fact you have to stand in a queue which does not move, when you’re in it’s pretty packed.
The people dance and jump around like crazy, it’s like being in a mosh pit, I’ve never been in a club like it. People barge past, jump around and are pretty crazy, but everyone is the same and it sort of seems fine.
There’s no fighting or people saying sorry when people are jumping around into each other, it just seems like half the fun. It was strange at first, but I did get amongst it after a little while The place played pop, RnB and Hip Hop bangers, I loved it!
So on the second full day in Reykjavik it was Saturday and we had planned on doing the Golden Circle Tour out in the Icelandic country. It was a long day, getting up at around 8AM and the tour lasts around 8 hours, so it is a full day, but worth doing.
This included going around the countryside of Iceland, and seeing Gullfoss aka The Golden Waterfall, Þingvellir National Park, the Geysir hot spring area, a church and the geothermal power station.
