St. Albans Blog

Interiors Shops St. Albans - Fired Earth & Shiang (Scandi)

Refuel cafe on Hollywell Hill - free newspaper with coffee

New City Government Sworn In

St. Albans School

George Street Shopping St. Albans

St. Albans Farmers Market - Today

Apt Creations - Handicrafts and Gifts

Steamer Trading Cookshop @ The Maltings

Willows Farm Village

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St. Albans Blog Stats for April 2008

The audience for St. Albans Blog continues to grow month on month. Statcounter reports that, In April, 3,391 unique visitors generated 5,591 page loads. That's an average of 113 visitors and 186 page loads per day:

Feedburner, which I use to distribute my RSS feed, reports that there were an average of 27 subscribers to the RSS feed over the past month and that there was a peak of 32 subscribers.

Thanks for visiting!

University of Hertfordshire School of Law

  Wednesday 10:41 am 4/30/08 St. Albans, England 

 

Although the main campus of the University of Hertfordshire is located in Hatfield, about 15 minutes (or longer) drive away, the University of Hertfordshire School of Law is based in the centre of St. Albans.

The School of Law offers undergraduate law degrees as well as full and part time law conversion courses (Post-Graduate Diploma, CPE Law) as well as Masters in Law.

As a recent graduate of the part-time CPE course myself, I would say the experience was variable - some modules were led by fantastic, highly-motivated and knowledgeable lecturers, others modules were so poor they nearly led to mass revolts from the year I was on.

Personally I'm glad I did the course and, overall, would rate it at about a 3 on a scale running from 1 to 5. But hey, it sure was convenient to get to walk to uni one day a week for two years!

St. Peters Church in the Spring

  Wednesday 10:40 am 4/30/08 St. Albans, England 

 

This morning as I walked to the railway station I spotted this scene, a burst of Spring colour, at the top of St. Peter's Street.

In the forefront are the memorial gardens and St. Peter's Church is in the background.

St. Albans Abbey in the Evening Sun

St. Albans Farmers Market

Oops. We missed the Farmers Market held in St. Albans on Sunday. According to PomPomEmporium, who has photos and a recipe from her visit, the market it held on the second Sunday of each month.

Our excuse for missing it? Market fatigue - last week there was the usual market on Wednesday and Saturday, the French market Thursday - Saturday and, now we know, the Farmers Market on Sunday.

French Market Today

Microblogging St. Albans With Twitter

Over the past few weeks I've noticed that a few of the other St. Albans based bloggers are also using Twitter.

For those who haven't used it, the service is pretty simple - users respond, in 140 or characters or less, to the question "what are you doing now". You also follow the "tweets" of your friends and they follow you. It's a great way to keep your friends up to date on what you're doing and where you'll be and, as you can update and follow using SMS, it's perfectly suited for people who commute or find themselves away from a computer. To avoid the risk of starting to sound like an advertisement, I'll stop there and tell you about the thing I came here to blog about in the first place, an add on service to twitter called twitterlocal.

TwitterLocal lets you search for tweets being made within 1/3/5/etc etc miles from a specific place. So if you want to find other St. Albans people to follow on Twitter this is a good place to start. You could also follow me if you want although be warned, I tweet primarily about work related stuff.

Continental Market Today and Tomorrow

  Continental Market, St. Albans, England 

The continental market has returned to St. Albans for another of it's three day visits. You'll find the usual garlic, lavender, fresh bread sticks and other continental market goods. Rather as you'd expect from a continental market.

On Saturday our friends from across the water will be joined by the usual St. Albans market. Hopefully the sleet, hail and torrential bursts of rain we had on Friday won't return to make it a washout.

St. Albans Blogger Meet-Up in May

A few months ago I asked if any readers of this blog might be interested in helping author it. A couple of you came out of the woodwork but, owing to a house move and the arrival of another hungry little crying person, I never got round to setting them up to post (sorry about that!).

So, to make up for it, I'm thinking of organising an informal (because I don't really do formal) St. Albans blogger meet-up during the third week of May. It will be a good opportunity for St. Albans bloggers and would be bloggers to meet up, have a few drinks, and share some tips and ideas. It will also give those of you who want to write for this blog to find out more about doing so. But I'm going to need some help with:

• Finding a venue - probably a pub with a corner that we can take over for a couple of hours, preferably with free wifi
• Creating a logo for people to put on the blogs to help publicise the event
• Figuring out a date and time that works for people who are, um, working and that ALSO works for those with family commitments

Let me know if you've got some ideas or can help.

By the way, if you want to keep up to date with what all the bloggers in St. Albans have been posting, I've used Yahoo Pipes to create an aggregation. All you need to do is subscribe to the feed using your rss reader, google home page or similar service.

I also made a headline animator widget that you can add to your own blog or profile on myspace, facebook, etc:

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Cafe Nes @ St. Albans Arena (off St. Peters Street)

Lunch in the Verulam Arms, Lower Dagnall Street

New Womens Shoe Shop on George Street, St. Albans

 

It's a Small World Childrens Clothing & Gifts, St. Albans

Footsteps Childrens Shoes

Farriers Arms Pub, Lower Dagnal Street

About Light, Specialist Lighting Retailer, Folly Lane

Hopscotch Childrens Clothing, St. Albans

Interior Design Shop in St. Albans - Chic Interiors

Restaurants in St. Albans: Pizza Express

  Tuesday 12:59 pm 3/18/08 St. Albans, England

Yesterday we popped in to Pizza Express on Verulam Road for lunch. I quite like the design and layout and, unlike on market days or weekend evenings, there were plenty of empty tables.

The pizza was reasonable but not great and our dough balls cold - we rated the food and experience as somewhere between Zizzi, which is both nicer and has better food, and Prezzo which also is nicer as a venue but where, on the one occasion I visited, had terrible service and lacklustre food.

I wonder, which restaurant has the best pizza in St. Albans? Help us find it by adding a comment here...

Lunch at Zizzi

We stopped for lunch today at Zizzi in front of St. Albans Clock Tower. I really like the newly renovated building, which is in a great location, but the food as - this is starting to become a theme with all the Italian restaurants in St. Albans - lacklustre.

Beelux Electrical - Independent electrical supplies, Verulam Road

Beelux Electrical is an independent electrical supplies shop on Verulam Road, St. Albans. They supply to both trade and the public and have a wide range of switches, plugs, bulbs, etc. They can also supply lighting and even complex computerised electrical switching systems. If they don't have it they can order it in for you. 

Beelux Electrical is located between Loch Fyne and Pizza Express on Verulam Road.

Ploughmans @ white hart tap

Seafood Bar & Grill Restaurant in St. Albans: Loch Fyne

  Sunday 12:17 pm 3/9/08 
  Originally uploaded by robinhamman

The Loch Fyne Seafood Bar, Grill and Fishmondgers chain opened it's St. Albans branch, one of 38 now open nationally, last summer.

According to their website, "The Loch Fyne business started life as a small oyster bar on the banks of the loch – a venture by Johnny Noble, the owner of the Ardkinglas Estate on the west coast of Scotland, and his colleague Andy Lane – a fish farmer and biologist. "

Tucked in between the shops along Verulam Road, it's easy to miss if you're driving - look for BeeLux Electrical and you've found it.

I'm veggie so haven't bothered myself, but my other half has been and said the food was very good although a bit, she though, expensive for what you get. Several friends have said the same. By all accounts, it's a busy place and you often need to book a table in advance.

If you do go, let us know what you thought...

Sunday Roast @ White Hart Tap

Probably the best Sunday roast in St. Albans can be found at the White Hart Tap, Keyfield Terrace. The serve beef and vegetarian every week with rotating options of turkey, lamb and gammon. All served with smart vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and gravy. On tap you'll find three different guest ales each week. Best Sunday pub experience we've yet to discover in town. Book in advance or you'll miss out.

Restaurant: Prezzo on Verulam Road

Prezzo (we're going to have to check that spelling!) is located between Carluccio's and the Sushi place on Verulam Road, across from Pizza Express. Basically, it's like Zizzi used to be. Or Strada. Or Pizza Express with a bit more pasta. Can you tell we're less than enthusiastic?

We went on a packed Friday night. It was noisy. Service was friendly but slow and they kept forgetting to bring things we'd ordered. The final beer, ordered midway through eating the pizza fiorentina you see here, was actually delivered after the table had been cleared. I'd actually canceled it, and asked for the bill, and the waitress arrived with both in hand. Maybe it's just because it was really really busy.

The food was, well, mediocre. Like Strada (which we don't have in St. Albans). Like Pizza Express. You know, samey samey Italian fare that's not challenging or interesting. I do wish someone would open something other than yet another Italian in St. Albans...

Disappointed but more with the genre than with the actual place.