I recently blogged about spending time with Dan and Katie before they went on their Europe trip but now they are back and ready and raring to live the London Life. They arrived on Tuesday of last week and crashed with me while they set about looking for flats, jobs, meeting new people and dealing with the cold. I was happy to have them back, hear all about their stories and spend time with good mates again after feeling a little homesick after saying goodbye to Ali. While they were travelling they had both met up with James who had been travelling the world for eight months with London the last stop on his adventure.
James arrived on Friday so we had planned a big night of dinner, drinks and catching up! We were joined by my housemates Sammy G and Lance and went to a local oriental restaurant in Putney - appropriately called Friends. Where we chatted over yummy food and had some wine before heading a few doors down to one of my favourite places in London - Citizen Smith. It is famous for its cocktails and we soon got on our way taste testing the menu and sampling the STRONGEST Long Island Iced Tea I’ve ever had (it was also the yummiest but that didn’t make me feel better in the morning when I had a headache). We spent the night on the dancefloor, just mucking around and having fun before heading back to ours for a nightcap.
The next morning we were treated to a gorgeous sunny day which wasn’t too cold considering we are in October! Now, I’ve forgotten to mention in all this that Dan and Katie had found a flat on Thursday night, so we spent the morning helping them move into their flat. The move was relatively easy considering we got a minicab to drive us and there was 4 of us to carry it up the stairs to the third floor - the only hard part was the hangover. We had a quick squiz at the new flat (its lovely!) and met their new housemates before me and James left them to it and went off to H&M on a shopping mission.
As we were wandering down the road we saw the London Tram which I had never been on so we found a platform and jumped on it and took the exciting journey (not) two stops down to Wimbledon. Handily for us this is where our H&M shopping mission began as we were looking not only for clothes for ourselves but for some cheap matchy shirts for us to wear to watch the rugby. After about an hour Dan and Katie joined us to check out a few more stores before we headed back to the train station to catch a train down to Kingston where we could enjoy the sunny weather by the river.
Once we got to Kingston we wandered through the main streets where there are lots of shops and LOTS of people and found our way down to the river. We snapped a quick photo on the bridge (before my camera died) and we went along to try to find a spot to grab a drink and eat. It didn’t look like we were going to have much luck as we weren’t the only ones who decided to check out Kingston but we found a possie next to the river outside Woody’s Bar and Kitchen and grabbed a drink while we waiting for a table to free up. We waited like hawks until a table was free and once on was we grabbed it (fighting off a family and kids while we were at it) and ordered some food. We decided on a massive sharing platter, hand cut chips and some onion rings. As we were ordered I asked the waitress what sauce we could get and she listed a few so James just suggested ‘bring us all of them, surprise us’ so in the end she came back with all our few including our sauce sample plate with eight different sauces on them. Delicious! Not only was the food amazing but the weather was fantastic and the company was unbeatable. Couldn’t have asked for a more enjoyable afternoon. Woody’s Bar and Kitchen is now one of my favourite places to go and will definitely go back out there - even on a rainy day the inside cafe is gorgeous.
A friend of Dan and Katies had bought them tickets to see The Lion King theatre show so we said goodbye to them at Kingston before James and I headed to Brick Lane for a BYO curry dinner with a few of my friends. Ended up being a bit of an eclectic group of people attending the dinner as we were all friends with my friend Candra. Some of us (James for example) were friends of friends and others had met her once while she was au pairing in Austria and met up again this evening. Quite crazy how we were all connected and at one point I worked out that we had people from five different countries (England, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and America) sitting at a table all because we met Candra! Quite cool when you think about it!
Sunday morning was spent down at my local pub watching the Rugby World Cup Semi Final between Australia and New Zealand. We had managed to find matching shirts so we were there bright and early in our green and gold where we met up with a few of my friends and my housemates who were our token Kiwis. As you guys know the Kiwi’s won which was a bit disappointing for Australia but good for the hosts to get to the final! I had to go and visit my friend who was sick so I said goodbye to James, Dan and Katie and left them to an afternoon drinking in the common and eating roasts at a pub.
By the time Sunday night rolled around I was in my Sunday blues - because James was leaving on Monday :(. I was lucky enough to get a lunch date at work before he left but was still sad to say goodbye! I know its not long now until I see him again but it was so much fun to have the crew back together again! Yes we were missing a few members but overall it was just great to have people who know your history, already have personal jokes and just spend the whole time laughing with. Luckily for me Dan and Katie are sticking around so I’m sure we will have a few more awesome weekends ahead!
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