Thursday 22 September 2011

Work keeps going on and on...

Outside l'enclume
It’s been a little over a weeks since my last post. I haven’t really had much to talk about because I’ve been working the whole time!

My days (for the most part) have been very busy! Usually work from 9am to around 3pm then a short break (usually for a quick nap) then back to the restaurant for the dinner service (6pm until close which is usually around midnight).

I haven’t really had a chance to introduce you to l’enclume.

L’enclume is french for ‘The Anvil’ because about 800 years ago (same era as the priory in town) the building was the site of the black smith. When you’re inside the restaurant you can see the old nails, pegs and spikes in the old timbers of the ceiling. Of course the place has been updated and it’s now a very beautiful space for enjoying the meal service. There are 4 main areas that the guests see; the lounge when you first enter (with access to the washrooms), the main restaurant area, the conservatory and the salon.

The restaurant features breakfast and lunch 5 days per week and dinner 7 nights per week. Breakfasts range from a fresh fruit salad to a full english style breakfast. Lunch and dinner menus are very similar. They’re not your typical menu, you get menu 1, 2 or 3. You will get either an 8 or a 12 course meal (depending on the menu you choose) and they’re called a tasting menu because you’re essentially getting a taste of dishes. They’re not exceptionally big but honestly, when you’re sitting down to a 12 course meal, do you really want each one to be a quarter pound steak? There’s also wine, champagne and water to be had with the meal, bread as well as a supplementary cheese course offered (a cheese trolly is wheeled over to your table and you get to choose from a number of locally made cheese to try) and of course coffee or tea.

Although the dishes are quite small, this sit down affair can take anywhere from 3 to 4 hours!

So far my job during all this has been as a ‘runner’ this means that I’m there to take the dishes from the chef to the chef du rang (server) and polish the dishes after the kitchen porter (dishwasher) has finished with them. I’ve also done a few drinks (as when the guests arrive they are offered an aperitif in the lounge while they choose their menu and wines for the meal) and delivered them with the canapés (a light tapioca based cheese biscuit and duck scratchings.... they’re exactly as they sound, duck skin fried and salted. Yep.) to the lounge . Then when the guest is finished with the menu and their aperitif I have taken a few to their tables. Nothing too strenuous but good practice.

I have also cleaned rooms a few times, good way to find out where all the rooms are. There are 6 in the same building as the restaurant. Rooms 1 & 2 are by the linen closet which is just above the restaurant (entrance through a door outside beside the restaurant's main door and up a very old flight of stone stairs), both rooms are smallish but also kind of an average size for hotels.

Room 3 is beside the restaurant on the other side of the main door with 4 & 5 being behind the same door but up stairs (above room 3 and the restaurant’s rest rooms and lounge). These are larger rooms some with nice sitting areas. Room 7 is also known as the garden suite and it’s further down the building from the entrance to rooms 3, 4 & 5. This is a quite large room with a sitting area separate from the bedroom as well as 2 different access points to the garden (which is visible from the restaurant’s conservatory).

Rooms 8 & 9 are above the new coffee shop in town, Cartmel Coffee. They are HUGE rooms with king size beds, large seating areas with couches and HUGE bathrooms. with a price tag of £199 per night... they’d have to be! The view from the windows shows the town square with easy and immediate access to any and all shops in town as well as a number of pubs and coffee or tea shops.
Common area in L'enclume house

Rooms 10, 11, 12 and “The Bradshaw” are just a bit further from the restaurant than 8 & 9, they’re in the same building as our sister restaurant, the owner’s namesake, Rogan’s.  10 is quite small, cosy but beautiful with original timber floors, 11 and 12 are of good sizes with some sitting space and views of the courtyard and the garden (respectively). The Bradshaw is on the main level of this building (also known as the L’enclume House). It has heated stone floors and a fire place (though I don’t think that’s had a fire in it for quite some time). In addition to these rooms there’s a common area in this building with a large dining table (though no kitchen) and a huge seating area with couches and chairs.


I think that about covers it! It’s just a lot of information that the website doesn’t quite cover. I hope to have photos to share of each room eventually, the photos on the site (though nice) don’t really do the rooms justice. They help me remember which room is which but they miss some great features of the rooms as well as the actual size and atmosphere of the rooms.

Monday 12 September 2011

Settling in?

Pretty nice looking country!
Well I’m landed and as it sits right now I have a roof over my head. Yesterday was a kind of difficult day towards the end, but it ended well.

There isn’t really all that much to tell right now about where I’m staying. There’s a field with some cows an sheep in it in the middle of town and there’s a pretty big (horse) racetrack at the other end of town.

I learned a bit more about the restaurant (L’enclume) where I’ll be working. It dates back to the 12th century (from the same time of the priory in the town). L’enclume meaning ‘anvil’ in french because where the restaurant is now used to be the blacksmith. In fact, the original anvil is in the restaurant. Hopefully I’ll be able to get more photos of that for you later on.

I am right now staying in the ‘staff house’ which is actually a house in the more residential part of town, but I should be moving into a flat with two of the other girls who work at l’enclume. It’s not that I don’t like the people I’m living with right now, it’s actually the opposite, they’re all really nice! There’s currently myself, a chef (I forgot his name), Vincent (he’s a server and he’s very french), his girlfriend Lindsey and Olla, a polish girl. Like I said, it’s not like I don’t like the people here, but I’m sharing a room (bunk bed, no less) with Olla at the moment and the bathroom with all the previously mentioned people. If you know me, you know my standard when it comes to clean... I think it’ll be easier to keep up with those living in the flat with the other 2 girls as opposed to this group (too many people means too many people not wanting to “clean up other people’s mess”).

But I think the thing that makes the move more final is that there is a shower at the new place. There’s only a bath tub here and I don’t know if I can handle living in a place with only a bath tub for more than a couple of days, forget a whole year.

I should be moving into the new place tomorrow but as far as I know there isn’t an internet connection there yet. I hope we get one soon as it is pretty hard living here without one (the one at the staff house sucks royally, working very occasionally and for short periods of time).

Work starts at 8:30 on Wednesday so hopefully I’ll have something more interesting to say then!

Sunday 11 September 2011

Far toooo early in the morning...


I’ve finally made it to England. London to be precise. I have a bit of a layover before my flight to Manchester so I figured now would be an appropriate time for an update!

As you know, I spent the last week in Ottawa. Lots of hanging out with friends, lots of shopping... LOTS of shopping. I had a really great time, honestly I almost didn’t want it to end.

I left for my flight at around 5pm (that’s about 3 hours before I was set to take off). Made it with about 40 minutes of sitting time because security was really quick and there were only maybe between 20 and 30 people on the Dash 8. Did you know that those things are NOISEY?!

Immediately when we landed in Montreal there was a woman at the door (because we weren’t a big enough plane to actually dock, we got to do the tarmac) looking for me. I had VERY LITTLE time to get to my next flight. To make matters worse, I had to go through arrivals and get a boarding pass at the British Airways counter and go back through security before actually finding my gate. Ugh. I RAN through the airport to and from the BA counter.

I made it.

With just enough time to ascertain that my flight was still there (they were doing pre-boarding) I went to use the washroom and get a couple of drinks and some salty snacks for the ride.

The Boeing 777 is slightly bigger than a Dash 8... slightly... ha. It’s one of those planes divided into cabins and (for use cheap seats) with 9 seats across (3 seats - aisle - 3 seats - aisle - 3 seats) I was originally suppose to to sit on the edge of the middle set of 3 seats but WHAT LUCK! there was a girl (another passenger) who wanted to be closer to her friend so she asked if I would swap with her for her WINDOW SEAT... uh, heck yes! So I got to cuddle up to a window, watch The Young Victoria (LOVE that movie) and snooze for about 2 - 3 hours before... LONDON!!!!

My connection for Manchester isn’t for a few hours so I have signed up with boingo so I may use the inter-webs at the airport (because there is no way I could keep sane in an airport for this long without it) after this, it’s a flight then I get to try my hand at the trains around here!! Should be fun!

Saturday 3 September 2011

Hellooooo from the road!!!

Hellooo!!!! I just landed at the “Toronto City” Airport! That’s the one downtown and I have to say... HOLY SHORT RUNWAY!!!!! Seriously, I thought we were going to get wet (the runway juts out into Lake Ontario)!

I figure now would be a good time to do that post I wanted to about what exactly I needed to get done before I started this little trip. This may or may not interest you, but I got to say, I wish someone would have given me a list the second I thought about doing this. I might have changed my mind!! There’s SO much to get done! Fortunately for me , I have been planning this for over a year and a half, so I’ve had plenty of time to get things done. And thankful as I ever am for the ‘last-minute’, I got everything done!!

  1. Passport
    Seems like a no-brainer, but hey, you gotta do it!
     
  2. Visa
    I chuckled a bit to myself when I told some people about this visa thing and they thought it was a credit card. I feel justified in laughing at them because I thought the same thing when I first started wanting to travel (some time in grade 11). I thought it was perfectly reasonable to need a credit card to travel to some countries, not everyone uses the same currency!! Now I know better!
    Interesting thing about getting the visa (which I got no less than 10 months ago!) You have to go to a designated location to get your visa processed. I figured that I could go get it done in Winnipeg, where I had to go for my passport. WRONG! You have the option of St. John’s, Ottawa (possibly Toronto too, I don’t remember), Edmonton or Vancouver. Seriously, that’s it. Do they not realize that I live 1860km from Ottawa and 1663km from Edmonton? It’s not exactly a day trip! Ah well, I got it done.
    **ALSO** Did you know you need to have money to get a Visa? I mean $$MONEY$$ Somewhere around $2600 as far as I recall. Not really much when you start tapping into it to pay for Travel Insurance, power adapters... But I don’t think that’s what it’s for.

     
  3. Health Check
    I assume that if you were to go work internationally without the aid of a company like Scotia Personnel, you might not need to get the letter from your doctor saying you’re “To the best of my knowledge, in good health”... But I would also assume that a person hiring you, sight-unseen would want this piece of mind. I got mine ages ago. Lets hope I haven’t gotten cancer in the last 9 months!!
     
  4. Criminal Record Check
    Same applies to the criminal record check as the health check, not everyone will necessarily necessarily want this, but they might! No murders or parking tickets on mine! :)
     
  5. Travel Insurance.
    This wasn’t “required” to have to leave the country but, like I’ve been saying “If I don’t get it, knowing my luck, I’ll end up falling in front of a train as soon as I get off the plane.”
    Better safe than sorry!!
    Make sure you put a bit of money aside for this, it can be pricy!!(I mean a whole paycheck for me this summer)!! (But trust me, your health is worth it!!)

    Big thanks to Debbie Lang (http://www.debbielang.com/) for helping me out with this!! True to form, I left one of the most important things to the end (insurance) and Debbie helped me figure it out the day before my flight and in about one hour too!!! Can you say LIFE SAVER?!
     
  6. A sense of adventure and some super supportive friends and family!!
    Yeah... sounds cheesy, but seriously, I don’t think I could be doing this if it weren’t for my family and friends. Everyone is really supportive and it helps! It’s kinda daunting thinking about a whole year (and a half?) without the comforts of home!
     
  7. A camera!!
    Ok... now we’re branching out from what you NEED to what you SHOULD have! I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of photos I’m going to be putting up here!! Going to be good!


Well I think that about sums up what I’ve had to do for the trip. I left out things like “Plane Ticket” Because unless you have feathers, I think that’s implied.

If you’re following me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll know that I’ve already started the trip. From now on I’ll be posting about the trip on here along with some ‘select’ photos. For the full spectrum of photos, refer to my facebook page where I’ll be putting up all the goods (and even some of the bads!)!!!!

Cheers!
-Shelly