Momiji Sushi Bar is a recently opened Japanese restaurant located in Hillsboro, in the plaza by Highway 26 and Cornelius Pass Road. Its location used to be occupied by Starbucks, but Starbucks has moved to a freehold building across from it so that it could offer drive through for its customers. After a year of vacancy at this location, it has finally been re-occupied by another restaurant and Momiji Sushi Bar has finally opened. Although it is called sushi bar, Momiji does offer bento boxes and food other than sushi.
On this beautiful Saturday, we originally wanted to go to the pho restaurant in the same plaza. Since Momiji finally opened, we really wanted to give it try. From the outside of the restaurant, it looked very small and we knew that this Starbucks used to be quite small. When we entered the restaurant, it was actually quite spacious. The seating area was in an L shape and could probably hold nearly 50 people.
We were offered the menu as we sat down and the waiter gave us 2 glasses of water. By looking at the interactions of waiters, this seemed to be a family owned restaurant. The gingers were placed on the side in the glass pot and the wasabi was scooped up like green tea ice cream and placed in the glass pot as well.
We ordered a premium salmon roll, which was a special roll. We then also ordered a 2 roll lunch combo with a California roll and a rock tempura roll. The rolls were delivered us 5 minutes later, which was quite quick.
The California roll was not impressive at all. It used imitation crab meat, but the quality is still quite bad as imitation crab meat. It was dry. There was not much flavor to it. The rock tempura roll has shrimp tempura in the middle with spicy mayonnaise drizzled over it. It was not bad. The premium salmon roll had minced spicy salmon in the middle of the roll. On the top of the roll, there was seared salmon which smelled quite good. The sriricha spicy sauce on the top did make the roll more spicy.
Overall, we were not very impressed by the sushi rolls offered here, but it is cheaper than usual sushi restaurant. Momiji also offers all you can eat option, but costs about $30 per person. Maybe we can try this next time when we are very hungry.
Norway has always been the place that we wanted to visit and we finally went there this year. Traveling to Norway required a lot of planning ahead since there were so many places that we wanted to visit. We had to book car rentals, hotels, and flights to multiple places in Norway. Also since there wasn't a direct flight from Portland to Oslo, we had to fly to London first. Since we had to fly to London, we decided to stay there for few days and visit different places that we had not been to before.
There was only 1 direct flight to London everyday offered by Delta Airline. This direct flight was seasonal as well and was only offered during the summer. The flight was at 6PM in the evening and flew to London directly. From there, we would fly to Oslo by taking Scandinavian Airline and then take Norwegian Airline to other places in Norway.
On the day of flight to London, we got in some troubles before we even got to the airport. The ramp to I84 was closed off due to someone trying to commit suicide. The traffic was horrible due to the highway close off. We had to make detours and take local routes to the airport. At the end, it took us 2.5 hours to get to the airport. Luckily, we left 5 hours early this time as we anticipated some sort of traffic jam, but not like this. We were able to catch the flight on time since we have TSA pre-check to get through security check quickly. Once we get on the flight, Delta offered the meal within 2 hours after take off and this meal included a small tub of Ben & Jerry ice cream.
The flight arrived at London on the next day and it actually arrived an hour early. This was good news for us since it was always good to have more time to make the transfer to another flight. We had to go to terminal 4 of LHR airport. This required us to take bus there, but eventually we got there. We were surprised that we did not have to head out and re-do the security check. There were actually airline counters where we could acquire airline tickets without going through security check again. One bizarre thing was that the LHR did not display departure gate number until an hour before boarding. So we had to sit at a random place and wait till the departure gate was shown. Once we got to departure gate, the SAS crew members were very nice to tag our bags so that they could place the baggage in the cargo space of the plane. Then the baggage would be taken out and placed on the side of the plane when we get off.
At 6:30PM, we finally arrived at Oslo. We first purchased the train ticket to get to Oslo Central Station from the airport. The train was new and clean, but a bit small compared to the Japanese trains. The leg room was quite tight. At Oslo, we were staying 3 nights here at Scandic Byporten Hotel. The hotel was right outside of Oslo Central Station. As we checked in to the hotel and went to our room, it was very small but it was expected. However, one thing was that it was so hot in the room due to the room facing South. Then we found out that there was no air conditioning in Norway. So we had to open the window to let fresh air to come in to cool off the temperature.
On the third day, we woke up early and walked around the central station area. We went to the Oslo Opera House. It was not as famous as Sydney Opera House, but it had an unique architecture as well. Then we went to visitor centre to acquire Oslo Pass. This Oslo Pass allowed us to ride any public transit for free! We could also go to museums for free as well! Some restaurants even offered discount to Oslo Pass holders.
Once we got our Oslo Pass, we went to Oslo Bygdoy to visit the Scandinavian museums, Viking museums, and many other museums there. Then we had lunch at Fiskeriet to try out some of Norway's fresh seafood. After lunch, we visited Ekeberg Park at Southeast of Oslo. This was a park recommended by the server at Fiskeriet. From the top of the park, we had an amazing view of the city of Oslo!
On the fourth day, we decided to head to a small town of Baerums Verk on the out skirt of Oslo. We had to take underground subways first and then take bus to there. The journey was long and took about a bit over an hour. When we got there, it was so quiet. Although the village was quite pretty and quiet, there was no one other than ourselves. So we did not find much to do and headed by to Oslo. We went to check out all the cool sculptures at Vigeland Park. Afterwards, we went to one of the local burger joint called Tommis Burger Joints to try out some local burger. We then went to visit Much museum to see the famous painting "Scream", and also visit an ancient Akershus Fortress since this was covered by Oslo Pass as well.
On the fifth day, we were taking flight to Alesund. We were at Oslo Central Station waiting for the train to come, but the train was delayed and cancelled, and changed platform so many different times. At last, we got to the airport. It was quite easy to go through security check as we just had to scan our boarding pass at the gate. No one was there to check out our passport and boarding pass. When we board the plane, we also only needed to scan the boarding pass.
We arrived at Alesund early at 9AM. We got a RAV4 Hybrid from AVIS and was ready to have more fun here. We were very excited to drive in Norway. Our first stop was Trollstigen. It was about 2.5 hours away and after bridges and tunnels, we got there around noon. There was so many people there already and we could not find a parking space. We had to park on the side. However, this was an amazing place to visit. We then checked in to Scandic Alesund Hotel at around 4PM. One thing that bothered us was that the hotel did not really have a dedicated parking space. We had to find street parking that was free from 4PM to 8AM. In the evening, we had dinner at a rather nice sushi place called Zuuma.
On day 6, we woke up early before the sunrise to climb 481 steps to Byrampen view point. Then we went back to the hotel to have breakfast and headed out right away to Geiranger. We were in a rush because we wanted to get there before the tour bus. After visiting Geiranger, we kept driving forward to get to Dalsnibba. Dalsnibba was at the very top of the mountain and the view was unbelievable. One of the best part of the trip! When we got back to hotel, we were so tired and just wanted to have dinner as fast as possible. Thus we went to Real American Steakhouse since it was right beside the hotel.
On day 7, we went to visit the world famous Atlantic Ocean Road. This highway was known to be the most dangerous road in the world due to how close it was due the ocean. There were pictures of waves smashing on the bridge. It was quite an experience to visit this place especially we had to take a ferry to cross fjord. This was our last day at Alesund, and we decided to have some lamb shank at Anno.
On day 8, we left Alesund by flight to head to Bergen. We also rented a car from AVIS and this time we got Skoda Cactus. We parked our car at Bergen Central Station and checked in to Scandic Ornen Hotel. We were lucky that we could check in early. We went to visit the wharf and the heritage site here. It was quite an unique experience. We then had food at Bergen Fish Market for lunch and dinner. It was quite good, but a bit pricy.
On day 9, we went to Flam. It was another place that we need to go early to avoid tour bus, especially at the view point. Luckily we got there quite early and the tour bus was only coming up to the mountain as we were heading back down. After visiting Flam, we went to visit Gudvangen Viking Valley. It was only 30 minutes away. Gudvangen Viking Valley was so cool. There were real Vikings living here! We were able to experience Viking's living style and check out all the handcrafted items. It was a very fun day.
On day 10, we were planning to go to Trolltunga, but it was raining. We had no choice but stay at Bergen to wait for the weather to get better. It was also the first day of Tall Ship Festival at Bergen on this day. Thus we were able to visit a lot of cool sail boats. Some were very large like a real pirate ship. For dinner, we had Norwegian style pizza at Peppes Pizza.
On day 11, which was our last day in Bergen, we had to take this last chance to go to Trolltunga. Since it might rain in the afternoon, we went very early and started hiking before the sunrise. The hike was very long, but it was such as good experience and it was a must do for us.
On day 12, we took the flight and flew to London. This marked the end of our vacation at Norway and started the next vacation in England. We had some troubles trying to understand how public transit work here, and we got Oyster card at the end. Oyster card was a prepaid card that was used for entering and exiting the train stations in London. After checking in to hotel at Park Plaza Westminster Hotel, we walked around Westminster to see Big Ben and London Eye, and then went to check out the famous Covent Garden and had some food there.
On day 13, we took the train the Salisbury and then headed to Stonehenge. It was good to understand the idea and culture behind these stones. Then we continued to take train to the town of Bath. This town had a lot of cool thing to check out such as Roman bath and Cathedrals. We also got the famous fluffy bun from Sally Lunn. After we got back to London, we had dinner at Shoryu Ramen.
On day 14, we had reservation to enjoy afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason. It was not a very good experience and we were disappointed. After the afternoon tea, we went to Her Majesty's Theatre and watched Phantom Of Opera there. The theatre was small and there was no air conditioning. It was extremely hot in there. We were sweating like crazy.
On day 15, we took the train to Windsor Castle and this was when we found out that we should visit Warner Brother Harry Potter Studio. While we were on the train, we kept on refreshing the ticket purchasing page and finally acquired 2 tickets for tomorrow! We were so very happy and enjoyed our time at Windsor Castle. Afterwards, we visited the famous Tower Bridge and then went to St. Paul Cathedral, it was huge! Then we went to the famous British Museum to check out all the cool stuff that it had there. We actually thought that things at British Museum were not really from Great Britain, but from many other countries in the world. In the evening, we had this crazy messy ice cream at Milk Train.
On day 16, which was our last day in London, we went to Warner Brother Harry Potter Studio.
We took the train to Watford Junction, and from there we took the shuttle bus to the studio. This was the best experience we had in London. It was definitely worth the effort to acquire the tickets! In the afternoon, we went to Borough Market and had fish and chips at Fish! Kitchen and ice cream at Gelateria 3BIS.
This was a great 2 week vacation. We really loved Norway. The food was so fresh and people were very nice there. The visit to England would have been a better experience if the weather wasn't so hot. The tube subway was like a steamer. We didn't like it much. The stores at England could make use of more air conditioning as well. Next time, we will probably want to visit Northern Norway and Scotland if possible.
Fortnum & Mason is a high end team shop located in central London. Although the exterior of the building is quite old, it has a very well decorated interior with a lot of glimmering items. The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at the top floor of Fortnum & Mason is also a high class English afternoon tea restaurant that offers high end tea selection and afternoon tea foot selections.
We have made reservation at Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon months before the actual date. The week before the actual date, Fortnum & Mason actually emailed me for confirmation to ensure that we were coming. We got to Fortnum & Mason a bit earlier than our reservation time, and thus we went to other floors and looked around.
The lower floor seemed like a market selling meat and vegetables. We were a bit confused and the meat there was selling at a very high price. We did see few people shopping there as well.
The main floor was where all the high end tea and desserts were at. There was also a lot of gift items that were wrapped very nicely. There was a gift set that simply looked like a castle with individual items placed in each room of the castle. It was very cool and fancy.
The grand stairwell heading upstairs with chandelier at the center was very cool. Everything was just so shining. The second floor was lady's floor. Many high end fashion clothing was sold here. Fortnum & Mason also had its own brand of hand bags even though we had never seen it sold anywhere else. There was also a large suit case that could be used for picnic. All the tea cups and sandwiches can fit in the suit case. Then There was also a row of perfumes place in these fancy glass jars with fancy golden knobs to open it.
Then on the third floor, of course it was the gentlemen's floor. This floor had least amount of people, which was expected. Other than just selling shirts, suits, and shirts, there was also shaving cream and old school razors. At the corner of the floor, there was also a barber shop. Then along the wall, there was a shoe wax section. The guy there seemed so bored and had to keep staring at the wall.
Then finally it was our time for our afternoon tea. We headed up stairs to Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon to check in and got our table by the wall. The theme was light mint green and very fancy. However, we waited for 10 minutes before anyone showed up to ask what we wanted to order. This was not what we expected at such fancy place.
There were few afternoon tea selections. We chose the classic afternoon tea menu and savory afternoon tea menu. Each was 55 pounds per person. We also selected a peach tea and a green tea.
The tea and the food was delivered to us very quickly. There were dessert on the top plates and sandwiches at the bottom. Other than that, there were different jams on the other plates.
The classic afternoon tea food was more like dessert and sweet. There were cakes, scones, and sandwiches. The savory afternoon tea food was more salty with smoke salmon, salty scones, and other savory items. We think that the classic afternoon tea menu had much better items.
As we finished our plate of food and finished all the tea in the pot, we were sitting there to see if anyone would come by and ask for refill. Unfortunately it did not happen for 15 minutes. It was very disappointing. It just seemed that the waiters and waitresses at Fortnum & Mason simply did not care about its customers. We had to waive our arms at them very hard in order to get their attention. Then when we wanted to get our bill, we were not offered to have the cake either. The worst thing would be that Fortnum & Mason dared to add 12.5% of tips on top of the bill when the waiters and waitresses were so bad and did not need to work for the tips.
Overall, Fortnum & Mason is a very fancy place to be, but its service is just so bad. It really needs to train its staff to provide better service to its customers, or simply don't add 12.5% tips on top of the bill. We don't recommend this place for afternoon tea. Especially if you want to dress up for afternoon tea, Ritz seems to be a much better place to go to.
Gelateria 3BIS is a shop located at Borough Market, London. It specializes in different flavors of gelato ice cream. Its exact location is right outside of the Borough Market, so it is very hard to miss. People often come here for a good gelato ice cream after finish eating and shopping at Borough Market.
Gelateria 3BIS is the first shop that we noticed when we went to Borough Market, since it was right outside. However, we didn't go into the shop until we got our dinner at Borough Market and finished looking around. When we went back to Gelateria 3BIS, there was a long line at the front of the shop. Thankfully the line was moving quite fast. We guessed that serving ice cream should be quick.
Gelateria 3BIS offered many different flavors and we could have up to 3 scoops of ice cream on the cone. We chose pistachio and mango flavor. The pistachio flavor ice cream was very green, just like matcha. The pistachio ice cream smelled so good however. We could smell it from a feet away. We loved the smell of pistachio. The ice cream was quite smooth and really had a lot of flavor to it.
The mango flavor gelato was more like sorbet and frozen yogurt. We wouldn't really consider it as gelato. It had very good flavor nonetheless and it was quite good as sorbet. We actually liked the mango flavor over pistachio because the mango sorbet was much colder to help us cool down from the extreme hot weather in London.
In addition, like most of the ice cream shops, the floor of the shop felt quite sticky due to all the ice cream drips.
Overall, we think Gelateria 3BIS is a good place to get ice cream from when you are at Borough Market. We definitely recommend to give this place a try!
Fish Kitchen is a very popular fish and chip shop located at Borough Market in London, UK. It is located near the far end of Borough Market with a huge line all the time. It has won the National Fish & Chip Award as well. It also has various type of fish to choose from and the chips are known to be the best of its kind.
As we are visiting London, one thing that we could not miss was having a meal of fish and chips. As we ventured through Borough Market, as saw this huge line at this shop and we immediately knew that it was the fish and chip store that we were looking for. We stood at the back of the line immediately to wait for our turn.
While waiting for our turn to order, the car was coming through and we had to move away since we were lining up in the middle of the road.
It was finally our turn and we ordered a meal of fish and chips with lemon fish. We got the lemon fish because it was the deal of the day. We also got a coke and it came with glass bottle. We had to use the bottle opener beside the cashier.
When we got our order, we immediately regretted getting the lemon fish. The fish was quite thin and small. The taste of the fish was all right. There wasn't any special flavor. We were thinking that we should have gotten halibut instead and it was not that expensive. The chips was good however. It was thick and chewy. It goes very well together with ketchup.
Another thing is that Fish Kitchen's food was more like a to go food. There wasn't really any tables or seats to sit on to enjoy the food. We had to place the box on top of a pole and finish the fish and chips on the side of the street. We saw many people do the same thing and some people even just sit on the street.
Overall, we think that the fish and chip from Fish Kitchen at Borough Market was okay, but not spectacular. It is definitely worth a try since it has so many different fish to choose from.
Milk Train Ice Cream is an ice cream shop as its name suggests. It is located in central London. Milk Train does not just sell any ordinary ice cream. It sell ice cream cones surrounded with cotton candy cloud! It sounds extremely crazy right? It indeed sound super crazy and this is why we definitely want to get a ice cream cone at Milk Train.
We walk through several small street to get to Milk Train Ice Cream shop. Some streets were quite sketchy and smelled really bad. But we got there nonetheless. When we got there, there was not that many people here. However, we did notice the floor being very sticky. It had ice cream and cotton candy all over the floor. It didn't feel too nice.
We looked at the menu, and there wasn't many flavor to choose from. There was only vanilla, matcha, and flavor of the week. We could also choose to have the ice cream in a cup or cone, and we chose the cone of course. Then, we chose to add cotton candy cloud for 1 additional pound. There were also many other toppings that we could add to sprinkle on top of the ice cream. We chose the caramel crunch as our topping.
We waited for about 5 minutes to get our ice cream. During this time, we were watching how they put up the cotton candy cloud. It looked very difficult. The girl was trying so hard to put the cotton candy cloud around the ice cream so that it would not fall down.
After we got our ice cream, we were being very careful. The ice cream was starting to melt due to the temperature of the cotton candy cloud. It was also very difficult to each the ice cream due to the cotton candy around it. The couple beside us simply took off the cotton candy and placed it on the side.
The cotton candy was quite sweet and sticky. With the ice cream melting on top of it, it started to look very very messy. It was really hard to eat it. We had to finish this ice cream as fast as we can. To be honest, it was very hard to enjoy this ice cream.
Overall, we do not recommend to come to this place just to have the ice cream. It certainly doesn't have the best ice cream. People would come here to get some cool photo of ice cream with cotton candy, but not just for ice cream. This is probably why there was not that many people at the shop.
Shoryu Ramen is a very popular a famous chain ramen restaurant in London. The name itself means the rising dragon. We have noticed that many ramen restaurants like to have dragon in its name. It has several locations that are just blocks away from each other in London, and yet the restaurant is still full most of the time. It is known to be the best ramen restaurant when we searched on web and has a 4.8 rating out of 5. This is definitely something that we would want to try when visiting London.
We went to the Shoryu Ramen restaurant near Piccadilly Circus. This was because there are 2 Shoryu Ramen near by this subway tube station. When we got there in the afternoon at 4PM, there was already a small line and we had to wait for about 15 minutes. When it was our turn, the couple that came after us was trying to cut in front of the line and said they were here before us. This was unbelievable. We were definitely here before them and we could not believe this kind of thing would happen in London.
We got to our seat and ordered a signature ramen, a curry ramen, and an order of takoyaki. As we were ordering the ramen, we could choose 3 different type of ramen noodle with different softness. The chef in front of us recommended us to choose the medium hardness noodle so that it would be more chewy. We took his advice and did that.
Soon the takoyaki was delivered. The takoyaki was extremely hot but it was not that much different from what we had at other places.Then our ramen had arrived. It was so aromatic and looked so good.
The signature ramen had pork soup base. The soup looked so creamy and flavorful. The chef was also correct with the type of noodle to get. Getting a medium hardness noodle made it more chewy and did not soak in the soup that easily. We enjoyed it a lot.
The curry ramen was so good too. The smell of curry plus ramen was a perfect combination for us since we loved curry too. The curry soup base was not as creamy as the regular curry used on rice. The curry pretty much mixed with the soup, so it was like a curry soup base. It had a lot of flavor.
Overall, we loved the ramen here. Although it was expensive and the restaurant added 12.5% tips on top of the bill automatically, we would still go again just to enjoy the amazing soup and ramen.
Borough Market is a popular food market in London. It is open from Monday to Saturday, but the full market opens only on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It is a giant market with a lot of food vendors selling different kind of stuff. There were fresh vegetables and fruits, and also various pastries and seafood.
We got to Borough Market in the afternoon and there was a lot of people here. The roads were quite sticky and dirty at the Borough Market as well, but that was expected. The color of the vegetables and the fruits at the vendor was so vibrant and beautiful. The food simply looked extremely fresh.
We walked around to see find some interesting food to get, but we did not find much. There was this vendor selling Spanish Seafood Fried Rice and it seemed very popular. There was a big line for this vendor.
There were also many other vendors selling freshly cut fruits in a cup such as watermelons, pineapples, and apples. Freshly squeezed juicy was quite popular as well.
One of the most popular pastry would be the cheesy bread sandwich. We stood by the vendor and saw how much cheese was placed on top of the bread. We could smell the cheese from far away.
The market itself was actually not that big. It was actually very small and we have pretty much checked out all vendors within 30 minutes. We were hoping the market to be much larger. Most people here were just having drinks outside and enjoying the relaxed time after work.
Overall, Borough Market was not as interesting as we have hoped. There was not much to see here and if we wanted to get some food, there are better places to go to. We don't recommend to go to Borough Market unless there is free time on the itinerary.
