A wonderful weekend in London...

I've already reviewed Friday night and Monday night's gigs, but there was a whole weekend of fun and food in between!

So after a fab night out on Friday at the gig, and a lovely midnight stroll over the river back to the hotel, we awoke slightly tired on Saturday morning and got ready to go out at a leisurely pace.

The destination? Scandi Kitchen.

I was determined to have lunch at this lovely little Scandinavian deli cafe and shop on Great Titchfield Street, and as we were starving by this point we headed straight up there. I was somewhat excited - The Beard is Swedish and has introduced me to a wealth of amazing food. We discovered Scandi Kitchen earlier this year after they started doing mail order and we have been repeat customers ever since. Its a small team that run it, largely Scandinavians living in London and they are super friendly.
The shop/deli is small but full of amazing food. I opted for a 3 piece smörgåsbord of meatballs with beetroot salad, seafood salad and prawn and egg on a variety of delicious breads. This was followed by a slice of apple cinnamon cake and washed down with a large cup of amazing Swedish coffee.

Looking content with my lunch!

Buying dill chips, otherwise known as crack crisps

Food for my belly

After we'd eaten lunch and bought some stuff, we headed back to Oxford Circus with the intention of going to Carnaby Street and Fouberts Place for MAC. However, we got a bit waylaid in New Look and River Island and had to rush back to the riverside to watch the fireworks for the Lord Mayor's Show!

Once we'd strolled along the riverside back to our hotel and got ready, we re-emerged to go out for dinner at Bangalore Express, an Indian restaurant opposite Waterloo Station.

Ladders to tables!

I think they have a couple of other restaurants across London as well. I went here last year with some forum friends, and it is good value and rather yummy. The poppadoms are excellent, the cocktails well mixed and the peshwari naan is to die for. They also had a low fat curry which suited me and meant I felt less guilty about the naan bread! Saturday night was definitely not a night to be limiting my syns - there was curry to eat, and rum to drink! After stuffing our faces we moved on.

Our original plan was to go to Crobar, but it was quite busy so we wandered up the road to The Intrepid Fox which was marginally less busy. Still really busy, but the music was good and the prices aren't bad for central London (about £8.50 for a rum and coke and an JD and coke). The decoration is a little tiny bit cliché but the staff are friendly, tattooed and the punters the same. We spent the rest of the night here, singing along, drinking, chatting with other people. Avoiding sick. We finished the night with a walk back from Soho to our hotel. It's quite a long way but all downhill and a nice walk at that time of night, if a little eerie in places!!

Sunday saw us up in time to get ready and check out of our hotel by the prescribed time, then we wandered over to the Imperial War Museum for lunch and to have a look round. We'd been to the IWM last year and managed about half of it, so we were returning for the other half. Lunch was delicious - I had steak and kidney pie with veg mash, followed by a blackberry meringue. And tea. plenty of it! We decided to go to the Holocaust exhibition which is massive and very thorough. No photos as they aren't allowed, but I can highly recommend it. What I found particularly interesting were the stands talking about the Allied response to the unfolding crisis. I think the quote attributed to Edmund Burke at the end of the exhibition sums it up nicely:

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." 


Then it was time to head back to our respective stations and get our trains home. It was a great weekend in the capital, and for once I was a little sad to leave.