Canadians in full force
This weekend we had Lija’s friend Ashley come and stay. Lija met Ash when she went over to Canada when she was 16 I think. I also met Ashley when she came over to Melbourne many years ago. She’s been travelling around Africa and western Europe, and spent a couple of nights with us in London.
It was actually really funny, when Ash got to the house on Thursday night, Lija was out at a meeting and I was up in my room reading – you can’t hear a thing up there – supposedly she was knocking for a while. Anyway, my phone starts ringing so I think, that’s prolly Ash wanting me to let her in, answer it, and there’s some middle-eastern sounding guy saying ‘Is this 10a Grove Rd?’ and I’m like, ‘yeah’, and he said ‘there’s a girl down here waiting to get in’. Anyway, when I finally closed the door after Ash came trooping in with full pack on her back and up the three levels, we had a good laugh.
She said the guy was eating (from one of the many dodgy fast food shops) with his family in the car and she asked if she could borrow his phone to call me to let her in. She even offered for him to hold her phone while she was using his, but no, he insisted on calling me to pass along the message!
On Friday night we went for dinner at this place I constantly run past on the way to Stepney Green. It always looked like just a little beer garden out the front, but it has quite a large indoor area and we had nice meals there. Despite the fact the barman didn’t know how to make a Green Lagoon cocktail and jibbed me by putting orange juice in there instead of green cointreau or however you spell it, I really enjoyed my chicken tikka masala with popadoms and naan bread.
Saturday we found a nice set of cafes/restaurants by wandering off of Oxford St along James Street, where we found a nice lebanese restaurant and had mousakka, vine leaves and lamb style wraps. Yes people, it’s all about the food! And no, it wasn’t expensive, which was great.
We then went to Notting Hill where I showed them the great cheap little book shop and after spending any remaining money on Starbucks we headed out to Hyde Park to find a nice patchy green bit of grass where we all sat reading.
The Great Ormond St Hospital was putting on a show of Peter Pan, and all these kids were running around dressed up as mini Peter Pan’s and Tinkerbells – it was so cute.
Ash had to get up early on Sunday morning to leave for the airport, but the district line was closed so she had to go through the city and down instead of under the city. I know she’s got back ok cos she added me to facebook!
Sunday was good old shopping day at Tescoes, including cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. So yeah, that was so responsible of us, wasn’t it?! Eh.
We ventured out after lunch in our Sunday best to go and watch the Red Bull Air Races from Lija’s building at work – might as well get some perks – but no, they had cancelled all visitor passes for the day. We think they must have had too many people in on Saturday with limited security staff. Scungy bastards.
Which left us wandering around the Thames with heels and jackets, the sun coming out and hiding again every five minutes, and we had no idea where the race was actually starting and finishing. Needless to say, after wandering down a few side streets, we found a tube station and made our way back home. What a waste of a day!
Tags: Travel
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