London Weekend
474 wordsDebbie had another examiners’ meeting in London, so I followed her down there.
We took the train from Leamington on Friday evening, and emerged unscathed from Russell Square station in good time to check into a hotel, have a quick freshen up, and go out foraging for food. We had a corner room, with a decent view onto the street below, which was quite pleasant. I was curious what the big red pull-chord in the bathroom was for. It made a red LED come on. It turned out that, more than just lighting the LED, it caused the front desk to phone up and see if we were OK. It was a disabled room. I apologised and told him we were OK.
Bloomsbury has many restaurants aimed at the business traveller and tourist, and we’ve tried a few of them. We wanted a change though, so we walked up to King’s Cross, and got a tube the East End, aiming for a curry on Brick Lane.
On Brick Lane, I was prepared to be pursued by many waiters with menus, eager for our custom. In the event, we could think of no reason not to accept the first offer we were given — “The Famous Moonlight”. Their £15 included a beer, a starter, a main course, rice or naan, and a side dish — and it was all very nice. When we needed another beer, the waiter told us they were not licenced (our first beer was a gift), but offered to go to the offlicence for us. Great service! I put it on a par with the best curry houses we’ve been to in Birmingham.
On Saturday, while Debbie toiled, I met up with Sean at a record fair in Olympia. I was more successful than Sean, spending £11 on a stack of CDs at £1 or £2 each. Since one £1 purchase was a 3 CD set, it ended up at under £1 a disk. The only problem was that having spent so little on these frivolous purchases, I wasn’t prepared to pay £4 for other CDs, so I may well have missed out on some bargains there.
We ate at a cafe in Olympia, then met up with Mark at the Science museum — the Science Museum and specifically the Game On exhibition we were there for deserves a blog entry of its own (coming soon!).
Afterwards, Mark’s Kathy returned from some shopping, and Sean phoned Karen to arrange a meal. We settled on a Strada near Regent St., and I arranged for Debbie to meet us there. Alas, despite assurances on the phone, Strada couldn’t seat us for over an hour, so we went exploring, and settled on a posh burger joint, which served nice food, but lacked somewhat in service.
We walked to Marylebone via Baker St. and caught the train home with minutes to spare.