After the Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium shut down the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium remains the only doggie race track in London. I’ve been meaning to go there for a while now but somehow time got away. However, a Groupon offer of £8 for admission for two including a drink and burger each was just too good an offer to pass up. So, I rounded up some troops and off we were.

Getting to the race track is supposed to be quite simple, even by public transport and merely involves taking the train/district line to Wimbledon and then catching a bus … that is, if said bus actually turns up! We waited, with a ton of other people, for over half an hour for the bus to turn up but soon lost patience and hopped in a cab instead. Infinitely quicker and easier and at about £10 for the trip it was not so prohibitively expensive when split between 3-4 people.

Our experience at Wimbledon was vastly different to Walthamstow – where at Walthamstow we’d had comfortable seats and tables from which to view the race track, because we arrived late there were no tables or spare seating left so we made our way instead down to the race track itself. This actually proved to be fun in its own way as you get to see the dogs up close and personal … though it did start to get quite crowded by the track as the night progressed.

As cool as it was to see the dogs we were all there for a wee gamble and (hopefully) a win. I hadn’t really remembered much from my visit to Walthamstow as to how to choose a winning dog and I certainly hadn’t remembered how quickly the races were run! It seemed that just as one race was run the next one was nearly about to start again. As for winning – everyone has their tactics (bet on the big dog, bet on the inside dog, always bet on dog no.2 etc. etc.) but really it all comes down to luck most of the time. Taking a lead from Philomena (who ended up the biggest winner of the night) betting on a win actually wasn’t enough, you really had to start betting on two- or even three-dog combinations if you really wanted to make a decent return. This certainly made it more challenging!

In the end there were winners and losers … but the most important thing was that everyone seemed to have fun!

Casinos really aren’t a big thing in London but if you know where to look you can certainly find them. The Empire Casino in Leicester Square is probably the most obvious and high profile one that I know about, and about six months ago I met up with the lads (James, D, Wongo, Grant) at the Palm Beach Casino near Green Park. They decided it was time for another outing so here we were.

The staff at the the front desk were much friendlier than the ones at the Palm Beach Casino and didn’t seem to get at all affected by the business of the front desk registration. Unlike the Empire Casino, they do require you to sign up and become a member.

The Grosvenor seemed very busy – but as this was my first visit I had nothing to measure it against. Surprisingly there was a large proportion of people just eating/drinking (as a percentage of those gambling.) We didn’t stay very long … long enough for D to get us all a round of drinks though when he came up trumps in roulette. In fact, he was the only one that had success tonight! Thanks D for the drink!

And a visit to London wouldn’t be complete for Rache if we didn’t take her out for one last drink and dance. Venue of choice was the Warrick which, if not being particularly exciting in the basement area in terms of people, had a pretty good DJ at least. A good happy hour too which was surprisingly available on a Saturday!

And yes it did get teary …

I didn’t fancy anything “fancy” for dinner tonight so convinced the girls to head over to TGIF for dinner instead of Gaucho’s as it still gave us the option for food plus some pretty awesome cocktails. To say it was busy tonight was a total understatement, it was spilling over with all these tourists! ha ha. We waited nearly an hour for a table! At least we had good music and good drinks to occupy!

So apparently this is what happy hour at the Covent Garden Cocktail Club looks like. Heh heh.

And this is what happens to those who have consumed the drinks! It just doesn’t look right does it!