London Weekender...

I love that in London on any day of the week you can always find some kind of festival on. Last weekend and this weekend I attended two very different festivals.

The first I didn’t actually find out about until Saturday morning on instagram, but decided to buy tickets to the Sunday for an informative day out. Be:Fit has an annual Women’s Health and Fitness expo, and I thought this would be right down my ally, plus Quest Nutrition was going to be there, would I finally get to try my first Quest bar??


So I set off in the Sunday sun. The venue was on the Thames and looked out over Tower Bridge, which was pretty cool. When I entered Be:Fit I was instantly bombarded with “if you drink this once a day you’ll have fabulous skin”, “if you drink this juice in place of two meals, you’ll drop kilos and have amazing skin”, “if you wear this crop top your performance will improve by 80%”.


I was so shocked at what was being marketed to women, and how all these women were purchasing bags and bags of this junk. Instead of empowering women to take control of their lives and make smarter choices about health and fitness, they were pushing crap onto them, which in fact was not even going to make a difference to their weight, cos let’s face it, popcorn is popcorn at the end of the day if you eat it as a 3pm snack, after you’ve had a big Mac for lunch.

It wasn’t all bad, and there were a few jewels among the “healthy” junk food. I met some cool people who grow their own linseeds, and they had made some pretty cool oils. And the vitamix presentation was awesome, when I move home to Aus; I’m totally saving up for that beast.

I did manage to feast on a heap of free samples, and that popcorn did taste amazing, and those “healthy” bars did also tingly my taste buds, but I know better than to buy them as an everyday thing. I however finally find Quest Nutrition, and FINALLY my first quest bar!!! Coconut Cashew, and boy was it delicious, and I’m a sucker I know, I bought a box!! But it’s a treat food I promise, plus it’s full of protein!


With a full belly and a huge amount of brochures I decided to leave. I’m not sure I’d ever go again, for the entry free I didn’t personally gain anything from it that I didn’t already know. But it got me out and about......

This weekend I went to a London Coffee Festival as part of Coffee week. I had been planning this for a few weeks, with some friends who love coffee as much as me, if not more! When we arrived to our 3 hour session the line was about 4 blocks long, I couldn’t believe it! I honestly didn’t think the festival would be that popular. Our session had sold out, but still it never dawned on me that it would be so popular.

The line moved fairly quickly and within 20mins we were finally in heaven!!! Of course my senses took us straight to the chocolate section, free samples, as if I wasn’t going to smell them out. It was the usual suspects, Lindt, Devine, and few other local bakeries with fudges, and peanut butter somosa’s. This was the perfect place to start, as after a few too many chocolates we were ready for some serious COFFEE!

Practically every kind of coffee bean, from every kind of country, pressed in every kind of way was there, and so many samples. Oh the samples. A particular highlight was the Kaluha bar. We tried a delightful mix of coffee, rum, and pineapple over ice. It was super delicious. Although could have used more coffee. We accidentally sat at the table which offered a Kaluha experience. This involved being blind folded and using our taste senses to sample each ingredient that is added to make Kaluha. First one, my favourite; chocolate coated coffee beans, then sugar cane, vanilla and finally rum, it was kinda cool how they explained the process each ingredient went through to become Kaluha.



We then continued through the rest of the exhibitions, sampling tea, coffee and even peanut butter. We met some pretty cool people, who were showcasing some very delicious blends of coffee. It was so hard to find one to buy. I ended up buying 3 bags of tea, hehe, and one bag of coffee.

It was a very successful day out.

Peace out for now....

Bxxxx