I’ve been meaning to head to Guanabara for a very long time after having done salsa lessons all those years ago. Though the salsa lessons are now a distant memory the beat of the music is still in my blood and with Notting Hill Carnival on my door step Brazil is never far from my mind!

I hadn’t actually planned for a big night out tonight as I thought I’d just be grabbing some dinner with Pauline and Anna however Pauline had other plans so we found ourselves in the line for Guanabara. Once we got inside it must have been just after 10.30 and the place was jam packed and full of energy. Apparently the band which had won this year’s Notting Hill Carnival steel band comp (or something) was on stage and they were drumming up a storm!

The club itself was smaller than I thought with a teeny tiny dance floor surrounded by loads of long communal style tables and as a result the dance floor was packed! Especially with all the keen salsa and latin dancers out there who were obviously regulars. Strangely enough by about 1 or 2 am the areas away from the dance floor were quite … well, quiet and not as busy as I thought it would be on a Friday night or Saturday morning …

I liked the live music and its different from most other clubs in the area.

Dios mio I wasn’t planning on tonight’s event resulting in me ending up at home at 2am this morning. All of the trainees got the results of their exams today, or yesterday if you want to be technical about it, including a few who were on their finals such as Boo Boo, D and Catherine. For the most part the results were good with just a few glitches. Traditionally the trainees have a bit of a blow out to celebrate, or drown sorrows if results are not so good, and tonight’s venue was Floridita.

Based on my one and only visit here and of what I know about Floridita I was expecting drinks to be expensive and they were. However the upstairs bar has a happy hour that lasts until 9pm, even on a Friday, which made cocktails almost as reasonable as beer and in some instances cheaper! I think D’s Spanish beer (a 330ml bottle), for example, was £4.25 or something like that and my long Yellow Bird (basically a drink with a LOT of alcohol in it) was £4.

Wongo had reserved a spot for twelve people but Floridita gave us a space that only seemed to fit about eight of us. Ridiculous. As it was I think there were at least twenty of us at any one time if not more anyway! Still, it kind of worked out and the place didn’t really get crowded until much later around ten (the first of us eager to get away from work turning up just before six.)

By the time happy hour was over I had more alcohol I could handle having had about three alcoholic cocktails so I was in a pretty happy place. But I still remember Jenny spinning me around on one of the couches (mainly because I nearly threw up on her), Jenny trying to feed everyone chillis and the toilet woman complimenting me on my shirt!

By about 11pm I was getting pretty hungry so James, a couple of his mates and I went into the tapas section of the upstairs bar for some food. The food came out pretty quickly and I was surprised at how good it tasted. Yes I was hungry and that could have accounted for my liking it so much but still. The only disappointing was the spicy chicken wings which weren’t that spicy and actually tasted a bit strange.

In the meantime, everyone else had headed downstairs to the salsa club. So, after “dinner” we joined them. I wasn’t very impressed with the music. I wasn’t particularly feeling it though plenty of others (not the trainees) were out on the dance floor. The other thing I remember of tonight was accidentally punching this woman in the face and then having my heart nearly stop when I saw her talking to the bouncer! It was an accident I promise! 😀

After having dinner with Sandra and Jules I ended up in Soho hitting a couple of bar/clubs with Jenny. It was her friend’s boyfriend’s birthday so she invited me along for a night out. I think she was hoping to get me hooked up with someone! Ha ha. We started at Green Carnation. Only about two years old its already become a hip hot venue. I found Jenny and crew upstairs where it felt pretty relaxed. I could see soft leather lounges everywhere and it actually felt a bit plush and posh. The music seemed pretty good as well and might I just say that there were quite a few nice looking young lads around us. Just a shame they were not available to the fairer sex! By the time I arrived at Green Carnation, however, the group were ready to move on to the next venue – Freedom Bar!

Upstairs Freedom Bar is a comfortable, if crowded, lounge bar but downstairs is where the action is at with the night club. The space downstairs is not particularly huge but I like the fact that the dancefloor was bordered by a set of padded bars where you could both put your drink and lean on to watch the action. The room is decorated with what seems like hundreds of disco balls and around the dancefloor some cushy couches.

What drew my attention, and actually everyone else’s attention, were the three stripper poles spread throughout. In addition to some adventurous patrons getting up on to the poles and flashing their stuff the club also has a dancer to show everyone how its really done. She was quite fit if not particularly pretty but the things she could do on the pole. Wow – I can’t imagine how many hours of practise or training she put in to be able to pull of some of her moves. Throughout the night she changed costumes a few times starting including disco girl and catwoman. Catwoman sure got everyone’s attention!

The other thing that got attention was apparently my cleavage. Considering the clientele at Freedom it’s the most action I’ve got in ages – I mean getting groped by three gay men. What’s that about? It was all in fun though and I couldn’t really take offence.

The music at Freedom was kind of a bit hit and miss. There were a few good hits played but for the most part it was surprisingly doosh doosh music. Or maybe not so surprising. Still we were pretty much out on the dancefloor for a few hours straight and not only was it stinking hot my feet were absolutely killing when I finally crawled into bed this morning …

When I was in Venice one of my cousins from New York had emailed me to say that her and her mother were going to be coming to London for a visit. I was pretty excited to have them coming to London for a change (since I’ve been over to New York more times than I can count over the last six years) though I was a bit worried that I’d still be in Europe when they came over. Luckily they timed it just right arriving the day after I got back from Madrid! Unluckily I couldn’t really afford to take any more days off to entertain them!

My aunt works for an airline in the states so sometimes they’re eligible to be on standby for free flights. Even though I couldn’t take the time off to spend the days with them I was all set to pick them up from the airport and drop them off at their hotel at least and also to take them out for evening entertainment. My cousin had picked a hotel which was conveniently about ten minutes walk from my shoebox so it all worked out quite well.

My cousin is fairly laid back so she wasn’t really up for a full London sight-seeing schedule. As my aunt laughingly related to me over dinner on their first day in London – they hopped on the hop on hop off bus but never hopped off! Ha ha!

With only the evenings to spare I took them to a local pub for some English fare and also to a local middle eastern joint for some yummy Persian food. I think my cousin was fairly impressed. But what she really loved about London was night time! We took this gigantic walk from Victoria down to the river, past Big Ben etc., past the London Eye and across to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. I’d almost forgotten how tiring that can be for non-walkers! It was good to see both my cousin and aunt though my cousin said that next time she comes she’ll have to leave her mum behind so we can explore properly the London nightlife. 🙂

Nathan organised for a group of us including Pauline, James, Rachel and Wongo to have a Casino night in Leicester Square. We started off with dinner, of course, in Bodean’s where I had the most massive mac and cheese I’ve ever had in my life. It was so massive that I couldn’t actually finish it – to everyone’s surprise. Actually, I think the biggest surprise for everyone was the fact that I didn’t go for ribs!

Going out to the casino for a big group is always interesting. As much as I love going to the Casino to watch other people (and from that aspect I think its quite social with the people that you’re playing with at the table) in a group like ours you’re always going to have people with different risk aversions and hence either not playing at all or playing only a little bit, like at the roulette tables which allows £1 minimum bets, or play a lot, like me at the blackjack table, or play crazy like Wongo (he was literally running around playing a hand or two here, playing a bit of roulette there, stopping at the bar, then going back for more. Kudos to him because I think it seemed to work.) This made it kind of hard to sort of interact with each other.

However, Nathan, Rachel and I did end up sitting down at one particular blackjack table for a bit. Luck wasn’t with me tonight but it was still fun nevertheless to see all the other characters playing. At one stage I had to pull out because of a particularly energetic and flamboyant player who was actually stressing me with his wildly swinging arms! Ha ha. James stuck with the roulette and seemed to be doing alright though I don’t know how. At the end of the day the house always wins in the casino, this everyone knows, so even in blackjack, where you can delude yourself that you have some measure of control, you’re eventually going to walk away the loser but I just don’t understand the appeal of games like roulette which are absolute games of chance. However, that’s not to say it still isn’t entertaining to watch. I could watch the crazy people all day. Poor little gambling addicts.