We own Cheap Eats!!
It's been a busy couple of weeks in London, and we feel we're finally
settling down and getting into the swing of London life.
We reached a milestone last week with the purchase of the London Cheap Eats guide.
Yes, we know enough people to actually need places to meet up with
them! Tuesday last week we caught up with Debbie and Andrew, back
from skiing in France, plus Brendan and Catrin, and went out for Ethiopian
in Tuffnell Park. Actually it was the same restaurant we'd taken Andrew's
Dad to but we loved it so much we wanted to go back. It was a great
night, several bottles of wine were consumed and we were the last
ones out of the restaurant, the staff obviously relieved to see us
finally leave! This week we dined out at a fabulous Italian restaurant
near the Angel tube station. Fantastic antipasto, 5 types of salami
with deep-fried pizza dough bread, and pizzas that fell over the edge
of what were already enormous plates. Certainly the food in London
is amazing, it seems difficult to have a bad meal (well, unless you
go into a greasy spoon cafe!) and after finally realising that dim
sum is London-ise for yum cha we're all set for further culinary adventures.
Apart from eating we've tried to get out and about and, well, exercise some of
the calories away. On Monday night, two weeks ago now, we headed off
to Somerset House on the banks of the Thames, for a spot of outdoor
ice-skating. Unlike our Italian outdoor ice-skating adventures the
temperature was definitely above zero and there was a lot less clothing
required to stay warm, however, the same uncomfortable boots were
in evidence and the same bad disco tunes. We had a lot of fun circling
around, as you can tell from the photos, and managed not to fall over,
even though there were a lot of collisions around the rink!
We've also had our second houseguest, Lucy Marks (sister of Claire), come to stay
as she stopped through London for 5 nights on her way home from South
America. She got included in Buxton Manor's inaugural Nachos Night
on Friday, cooked by our housemate Phil, and we went on a walk around
Regents Park on Saturday and to the freezing cold Camden Markets on
Sunday. Monday night we went along to see 'The Producers' which we
all really enjoyed. Poor old Prince Harry should have simply said
that he was dressed as a character out of the musical to avoid all
the recent dramas!
Wednesday was, of course, Australia Day and we did get a bit homesick looking
at all the newspaper pictures of people out enjoying themselves in
the sunshine and waving Aussie flags. Andrew cooked a batch of Anzac
biscuits and took them into work, which went down very well, and Kate
pined for a day that wasn't 6 degrees and which didn't include the
usual sardine squash on the tube. On Sunday we went over to Brendan's
Australia Day BBQ, which impressively included an actual BBQ out in
the courtyard. It was nice to have charred sausages, Minties, Savoury
Shapes, Twisties, and Caramello Koalas after many months without them.
You can buy Vegemite at many supermarkets and even TimTams at some
Tesco branches (because there are just that many Aussies in London)
but sadly not Pizza Shapes or Ovalteenies. We'd visited the Australia
Shop in Covent Garden with Lucy and found it to be a mosh pit of Aussies
buying up for Australia Day events; obviously Brendan had got in early.
And a big thank you to all of you who expressed your sympathies about Kate's grandfather. In a very surprising turn of events he's about to be discharged from the hospice and moved back to his old bed at BonBeach nursing home. Seems his time just wasn't up yet.
- 31st January 2005
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Skating at Somerset House |
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