Day 5 – I am related to Barack Obama

Konigsegg

So the president Barack Obama is in London this week. Visited the Queen yesterday. Prior to that he was in Ireland. While he was there he visited with a distant relative with the surname of Healy, on his mothers side. My mums maiden name is Healy, so therefore I must be related to the President.

I think I’ll wait until I really need it, rather than blow it on something trivial like a rushed passport renewal.

I’m quite into nice cars, as is my brother, Stephen. So he took to me to a local high end car dealer in nearby Banstead. They sell very high end cars at considerable markup, but they have the desirable cars when they might have a 6-12 month wait. Consequently, they are quite a popular place for the well heeled.

Ferrari Enzo. Can I get it in something less red?

Despite having a fairly small location, they had a Ferrari parked on the corner and several Bentleys outside. Inside the packed showroom they had a Pagani Zonda and a Konigsegg. They had 2 Ferrari 599s and several very nice Bentley cars. No Aston Martins though, bummer. They also had a Mercedes SLS, which seemed rather tame compared to the Zondas and others.They also had a rather stunning Ferrari Enzo on display. That thing looks like a racing car and I presume drives like one too. Bloody fast is what Stephen told me.

The jewel of the showroom however had to be the Bugatti Veyron, with a POA listed for the price (Price On Application) it probably sells for £1,500,000. However, it is the fastest production car in the world with 1000 HP and 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. Is it practical? Nope. Is it necessary? Nope. Is it frickin awesome. You betcha! Apparently, Bugatti actually pays about 2 million pounds per car to make them and they sell them at a loss. Bizarre. There are only about 500 made. I bet its fun to drive on a nice piece of flat road.

Bugatti Veyron. Yours for about £1,500,000

After some family visits and catching up we went out to a Spanish Tapas restaurant in Coulsdon. The place is called “Las Fuentes” (The Fountains) and is, according to Stephen, “The best tapas bar in London”. As I do not intend to visit them all, I’m going to take him at his word. I have been to Tapas bars in Canada and in Arizona. Neither exactly sold me on the concept, which seemed to me to be to sell customers small, overpriced plates of food.

Inside Las Fuentes

This place seems to do a good job of making Tapas seem reasonable, mainly by being fairly generous with the portions. They are still on smallish plates, but each one would make a decent lunch. Interestingly, they had a whole line of skewered meats which were delicious and not a million miles away from certain Brazilian steakhouse restaurants some of you may have visited in the past.

Beef on skewer

In addition to that we had Patatas Brava (potatoes in tomato sauce), kidneys and mushrooms, pork strips, creamy spinach something, something cheesy with aubergine (eggplant) and my favourite the chorizo. It was all actually very good and certainly a place to visit again.

Kidneys and mushrooms. With chips of course

Chorizo - absolutely fantastico