Frost City Guides {Zurich}

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Zurich is known as a sterile banking city – don’t believe a word of it. True, Zurich plays home to one of the largest stock exchanges in the world and is the financial motor of Switzerland itself, but step back from the markets and share prices and you’ll find an arty and surprisingly vibrant city. It is very expensive however. Especially food and drink.

Zurich’s setting on the northern tip of Lake Zurich helps lend it an air of affluence and good living, while the Fraumünster and Grossmünster churches, which face each other across the River Limmat, hint at the rich heritage of the Old Town. In addition, Zurich offers smart shops, upmarket clubs and good restaurants. I was told by a local that there were two sides. The golden side and the sneezy side. The Old Town is on the golden side – where the affluent people live. The weather is usually good on this side. The sneezy side is so called because it rarely gets any sun. This is where the ‘poor’ people live. Although, one feels, to be poor in Zurich is to well-off anywhere else!

We got a tram into the the old town. (8 Ch, all day on all types of transport) and walked around. Zurich’s Old Town. It is a beautiful and cobbled. Full of cafes and restaurants. Perfect for people watching.
The next day we made a picnic and went swimming in Lake Zurich. Picturesque, although I found the current very strong. Yes, I know it’s a lake!

While browsing in the elegant boutiques along Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the most beautiful shopping areas in Europe you can work out your credit card. Jimmy Choo , Louis Vuttion are just some of the designer stores there. And this being a financial city with negotiable tax, you can be certain that a couple of metres below, unimaginable treasures are lying in underground vaults.

There are over 50 museums and over 100 art galleries. The National Museum is worth the price of admission alone for a table-top mock-up of the Battle of Morat in 1476 using 6000 tin soldiers.

All in all, Zurich is a beautiful city. It is very small. It would be very easy to cover all of it in less than a week. I made a friend chuckle by saying it reminded me of Glasgow; Small, cultural, near water.

Transport is easy to figure out. Get a tram/ train map. It is usually very prompt, but there was one day I waited for hours because of a tram crash. The locals don’t all speak English, but they were quite helpful. Other helpful hints are; Switzerland’s currency is still the Franc. And spend coins in Switzerland. Banks won’t change them.

I recommend Zurich. It is a lovely city to spend a weekend.

Main information:
Zürich Tourismus
Zurich Main Railway Station, 8021 Zurich
Tel: (044) 215 4000.
www.zuerich.com
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 0800-2030, Sun 0830-1830 (May-Oct); Mon-Sat 0830-1900, Sun 0900-1800 (Nov-Apr)
information@zuerich.com

Hotel reservations
044 215 40 40
hotel@zuerich.com

Passes:
The ZürichCARD, available for 24 or 72 hours,offers unlimited travel within the Zurich canton, free admission to over 40 museums, reduced admission to the zoo and a complimentary welcome drink at over 20 restaurants. You can buy the cards at the train stations, many hotels and some of the main VBZ ticket offices around town. There is a full downloadable guide to the ZürichCARD at

Transport times: Regular services from 5am until 00:30am
Friday and Saturday 1am until 4am.

Facts and figures:
Inhabitants city 383,565
Inhabitants canton 1.30m
Proportion of foreigners 31%
Currency Swiss Francs (CHF)
Colloquial language German ( Swiss German)
Other languages English, Italian, French

By Catherine Balavage

Get into Christmas spirit with Breast Cancer Care. At St Paul's church.

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Get into the spirit of Christmas with Breast Cancer Care’s Carols by Candlelight, at St Paul’s Church

Celebrate the festive season in style this December by attending Breast Cancer Care’s Carols by Candlelight at St Pauls Church, Knightsbridge.

Gather friends and family for some Christmas cheer and support the 46,000 people diagnosed with breast cancer annually, by helping Breast Cancer Care fund vital support services. The Carols by Candlelight will feature traditional and modern readings from celebrity supporters and Amanda Mealing will reflect on her personal experience of breast cancer.

Guests will receive a complimentary gift from Swarovski and be entertained by a special performance by the Westminster Under School Junior Choir before tucking into wine, mince pies and hot roasted chestnuts after the service.

When: Monday 6 December 2010 7pm (until 8pm)

Where: St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London

Tickets: £30

Bookings: Visit www.breastcancercare.org.uk/carols

For anyone wishing to continue the festivities; VIP guests and celebrity readers will host an intimate drinks reception followed by supper at the elegant Lanesborough Hotel near the church. Tickets to the Carol service and the dinner are £135.

Tickets to the supper are limited. Please book early to avoid disappointment by calling 020 7960 3554.

Anouska Hempel joins the world famous design team at yoo

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International design and branding company yoo is delighted to announce a new working relationship with Anouska Hempel. Respected in the design world for her hotel and residential projects, Hempel is the latest high-profile designer to join yoo – alongside Philippe Starck, Marcel Wanders, Kelly Hoppen and Jade Jagger.

Collaborative design is at the core of the yoo brand. Entering its 11th year yoo remains an innovator in the style-led property sector with unique interiors, architecture and branding. ‘yoo inspired by Anouska Hempel’ will create Contemporary, Asian, Classical and Best of British designs for yoo, on soon-to-be-announced projects.

Chairman of yoo, John Hitchcox says, “Anouska will bring her famously glamorous, slick and high-end aesthetic, which has already proven to have an international appeal, into yoo’s established stable of designers. We are very much looking forward to working with Anouska Hempel to create living spaces with her beautiful and distinctive design stamp.”

Hitchcox has equipped yoo with a strong global identity, making his firm an international lifestyle brand synonymous with exceptional developments around the globe, and bringing the designs of Starck, Hempel, Jagger, Wanders and Hoppen new homes and new markets. yoo was one of the first brands to realise the power of collaboration in its residential design projects – an approach now used widely to capitalise on a growing market of design-savvy purchasers.

Anouska Hempel’s studio, Anouska Hempel Design, has established a strong international reputation for its skill in delivering glorious architecture and interiors including luxury hotels, restaurants, stores, private residences and yachts as well as products which include tableware and outdoor furniture. Hempel firmly believes in ensuring that every part of a design scheme is tailored to the needs of the most discerning client, with the highest expectations of quality and finish.

Anouska Hempel comments, “There has to be an amusement factor… a sense of wit, and human eccentricity… The four design styles for yoo symbolise the evolution of Anouska Hempel Design’s style and my passion for travelling and fusing different cultures. Anouska Hempel Design’s spaces are a successful marriage of exuberance and restraint; elegance and simplicity; creativity and tradition – adding up to spaces of the future, places filled with life, fantasies and desires.”

Appy Halloween. {Software}

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GetJar’s top five scariest apps to keep the horror alive this Halloween

Halloween has been celebrated for centuries by families all over the world, with traditions such as trick or treat and duck apple still being played to this day. But this year, mobile apps are playing a big part in Halloween celebrations.

GetJar, the world’s second largest mobile apps store after Apple, has over 75,000 mobile applications available to download for virtually every mobile handset. There are hundreds of spooky apps available to download for free – perfect for scaring even those with the most hardened of nerves, or simply for a bit of ghostly fun.

From noises of the eerie supernatural that holler when darkness hits and the full moon appears, GetJar has plenty of apps that can turn mobiles into the ultimate scare machine. Trick or treaters will be guaranteed to send shivers down the spines of friends, and might even result in an abundance of sweets and tasty pumpkin pie.

To get people in the frighteningly festive spirit, here are GetJar’s top five must-have Halloween apps:

Halloween Soundboard Scary Sound Effects – Be it brothers, sisters, mums or dads, this app is guaranteed to scare anyone close enough to hear the terrifying sounds of ghosts and ghouls.

Horror Attack – The most awaited prank has made its way to mobiles. Scaring friends has never been so much fun and really separates the men from the mice.

Dectectoplasm – Ever suspected that spirits may too be living in the house? This app helps detect kinetic activity or to put it simply, will tell if a ghost is also sleeping in the bed.

Soundbox Horror – Not for the faint-hearted, this app takes scary sound effects to the next level. Choose from spine-chilling screams, the sound of limbs being ripped off, deadly groans and more.

Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost – Ghost stories and Halloween go hand in hand. Read the famous horror story from Oscar Wilde with friends and let imaginations run wild.

To find these ghoulish apps and more, visit www.getjar.com.

Radox names Victoria Beckham THE modern day ‘PhenomeMUM’.

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New study crowns modern mums the ‘Mistresses of Multi Tasking’

The Clocks Go Back Giving ‘PhenomeMUM’ A Well Needed Break

Phew – Mums are exhausted! They are at it over 20 times a day …. Multitasking that is!!

With the modern Mum doing over 20 different task every day (please NOTE there are only 24hrs and even Mums have to sleep) that is a lot of multi tasking and a pretty big to do list!

52% percent of mums are able to do four different tasks at any one time; a typical scenario could include putting the dinner in the oven, whilst chatting to a friend on the phone, whilst bending down to feed a pet, whilst tying up a pair of shoes whilst, whilst watching Eastender’s, whilst and logging onto the internet to pay the heating bill and check their twitter account.

When questioned what celebrity mums the PhenomeMums most admire, Davina McCall and Angelina Jolie were up there with Victoria Beckham, who’s multi tasking skills were the envy of modern mothers; juggling three boys, creating a fashion empire, owning a handful of houses and travelling the world, all while wearing high heels is pretty impressive!

The PhenomeMUM- an overview

1 – She does over 20 different tasks a day

2 – She has to have eyes in the back of her head, and eight arms to allow her to do all the housework (93%), food shopping (92%), cooking the evening meals (88%), washing up (85%), disciplining the kids (77%), helping with homework (73%) & paying the household bills (72%)!

3 – She has secret super powers:

· 66% ‘Queen Multitasker’ (no matter how busy she is, she will get everything done in the fastest time possible)

· 33% Florence Nightingale (on call 24/7 and have a medicine cupboard that rivals Boots)

· 26% Chef Extraordinaire (any meal, anytime, anywhere) and UN Peace Maker (kids, partners, in-laws she can keep it all together 24/7).

4 – they are beating the men of the household hands down with one in 20 PhenomeMums reported the ability to do over ten things more than their partners in any given hour.

But, there is a problem, 77% PhenomeMUMs feel more like OverwhelMUM with 84% feeling a pressure to be good at everything 24/7, 83% saying that there are not enough hours in the day and 82% feel their to-do list is endless often running out of hours to do everything!

So Radox asked the PhenomeMums what they wanted? 65% said ‘more time to myself’

Radox asked to do what? 59% to read a book and 50% in the bath

Well bobs your uncle, wishes can come true!

Radox has answered every PhenomeMums dream by teaming up with leading website – Mumsnet – to sponsor their book club for six months. From this Sunday they will be calling on all Mums to take a Selfish Reading Hour AND they will be giving away thousands of free books each month – so there is NO excuse not to!

So ‘PhenomeMUMs’ log onto www.be-selfish.co.uk/selfishreadinghour-mumsnet and claim your Selfish Reading Hour.

Be upstanding for The President of the United States…Jon Stewart reels in the big fish.

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I can hardly contain my excitement…I love Jon Stewart, I love the Daily Show and I think Barack Obama is one cool dude. It’s like Christmas has came early as now…

Please be upstanding for the President of The United States of America…. Barack Obama…. Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show. Tonight at 8.30pm on More4.

Mr Obama was making his first appearance as President on Jon Stewart’s satirical The Daily Show – in a studio that was transported to Washington DC, along with the audience.

For Mr Stewart, a chance to show his slightly more serious side – as he quizzed the President on his record.

“You ran on very high rhetoric, hope and change, and the Democrats this year seem to be running on, ‘Please baby, one more chance’,” he quipped – as Obama defended his policies on health care and financial regulation.

“When we promised during the campaign ‘change you can believe in’…it was ‘change you can believe in – but we’re going to have to work for it.” Barack Obama

There is a preview of the two heavyweights going at it below.

Obama had to defend his policy and record so far as Stewart slammed him hard. All is not looking too rosy for the President, In fact the latest poll for the New York Times has some far more worrying news for the Democrats: it’s not just young people who are disillusioned, but other key elements of the coalition which swept Obama to power are actively switching to the Republicans.

According to the survey – the GOP has managed to wipe out the Democratic advantage among women, Catholics, the less affluent and independent voters. Not only that, but the Republicans are now far and away the party most trusted to handle the budget deficit, while President Obama’s own approval ratings still languish at around 43 per cent.

Last night, in a conference call with volunteers from “Organising for America” – tasked with trying to get out the vote for Democrats in these last few crucial days – Obama told them: “We’ve got to run through the tape. We can’t just run half a race: we’ve got to keep on going.”

The White House has just six days left to persuade its erstwhile supporters there’s still some hope left, and still some change to come.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Weeknights at 8.30pm on More4. www.channel4.com/dailyshow

Republic Launches Shoe Collection {Fashion}

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Highstreet retailer Republic are well known for being the one-stop-shop for brands such as Bench, Diesel and Firetrap.  But, mid-November 2010 will see the launch of their first shoe collection, from designers Miso and Crafted.

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Day time footwear comes in the form of ankle boots with studs and shearling details, biker boots and ballerina pumps.  Night time brings stilettos with bows, and pumps with jewels.

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If you can’t wait for these great shoes in store go online at republic.co.uk where you’ll get free delivery on all orders over £50 until Sunday.

 

 

Crafted Clog Boot £59.99

Miso Bow Back Shoes in Red £34.99

by Tamar Kendall

Derek Lam’s Ebay Capsule Collection {Fashion}

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TOD’s creative director, designer Derek Lam has teamed up with online auction site, eBay to create an exclusive capsule collection. The collection will be shown at New York Fashion Week in February, after which, members of the public will be able to vote online to choose which pieces should be put into production. The collection will then be available from Spring 2011.

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Ebay say the prices will be ‘accessible’, which sounds like there will be fashion bargains galore. If you can’t wait until then, visit Lam’s online store for the AW2010 collection.

 

by Tamar Kendall