Category Archives: Going Out

The Neil and Nathan Show

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Well it was supposed to be The Neil and Nathan Show ….

Pauline, Neil and Nathan and I have been trying to sort out a date for a group of us to head to Church but could never come up with a Sunday when we were all available so someone came up with the idea of a Friday night out instead. Although Nathan mysteriously did not turn up the night had to go on!

James and Rita also joined us for the festivities and although I had been promised we’d be going out dancing that night … as it turned out neither Pauline or I were in much of a condition to do so. I was knocked out by one mere slip of a cocktail (I must learn to avoid that evil blue Curaçao stuff) and Pauline … well let’s just say she was in quite a happy mood.

We ended up moving from Porterhouse, to Wagamama (ever so briefly – we were going to grab some dinner but then Ian turned up at just the moment we were going to be seated and as he was only staying for one drink it felt a bit rude not to join him), to the Maple Leaf for a drink with Ian and his housemate, (after which time Rita left us at the to join her friend at Gaunabara. I must make it there some time!) to All Bar One for another round of drinks and then finally Café Pacifico for a very late dinner.

It was a strange night but a fun night.

Teesh’s London Day 03

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It was a rather long day on our feet today despite the fact it was nearly noon by the time we left the shoebox. We were both exhausted from last night!

We started with a visit to Portobello Road Markets, as you do. As I expected the time of day we were setting of from home meant we ran into a lot of other tourists also visiting Portobello Road Markets. Even though you can never really say that there is an off-peak time on a Saturday in Notting Hill we probably couldn’t have picked a more peak time! Weaving and ducking our way past people we came across the funniest shop window display ever – funny because they used actual real live bunnies as part of the display. I don’t know if it was animal cruelty or not because the bunnies seemed happy enough to be in the display but it was utterly cute! They were so fluffy!

Teesh and I took our time making our way down Portobello Road. She took quite a liking to the antique section of the markets actually and by the time we made it to the Hummingbird Bakery we were more than ready for a break and a sugar rush! The line, though extended out the door and then some, wasn’t as long as normal so we decided it was worth the wait for the delicious cupcakes that the Hummingbird Bakery is famous for. As cute as some of the designed cupcakes were (Teesh went for one with a giraffe on it) I couldn’t resist a red velvet number. Yum.

After that we picked up our speed a bit as we had an appointment at the British Museum for one of their highlight tours. Quickly downing a gorgeous chicken schnitzel sandwich for lunch from the german meat barbecue van we rushed, as much as one can rush through the Notting Hill crowds, over to the British Museum. The British Museum was very busy when we got there but we only had about 15 people on our tour. Probably due to the fact that you had to pay £9 for the 90 minute tour.

We were wondering how they would stop interlopers from joining the tour gratis and they do this by giving you bright yellow badges to wear. That didn’t stop people joining us but interestingly if they did join us they didn’t stay around for very long – I’m not sure why because our tour guide was brilliant.

We had the most amazing tour guide – a guy called William Forrester. I think he said he’d being doing these sorts of tours with the British Museum for at least 15 years so he certainly knew his stuff. William took us around to see the Rosetta Stone, Mexican carvings, the Easter Island statue, Ptahshepses’ tomb, the winged bulls from Khorsabad, the lion hunt reliefs from Nineveh and the Parthenon sculptures. I would like to spend pages and pages re-telling the stories that William told us but I’d be here all day. In my view the £9 was totally worth it for the tour. William is the best kind of tour guide – someone who inspires me to go out and read up more on what we learned today. I just can’t say enough how interesting his interpretations were. Teesh and I later ran into him at the bookshop and he was even then still asking how he could help us. A nicer man you couldn’t meet.

Once the British Museum closed we headed over to Harrods to hunt down some souvenirs. The best thing about Harrods has to be its Food Halls. You could probably spend hours gazing at all the goods on display. Teesh was absolutely outstanded by them. I must admit they are very attractive and as it was nearing closing time we could walk around in almost peace. Though that’s not to say that the tourists were particularly calm around the Diana and Dodi memorial. It was madness and I felt rather disrespectful.

By the time we were done in Harrods we’d been on our feet non-stop for nearly nine hours and our feet were done in so we headed to my local Zizzi’s for some delicious lasagna and baked pasta. Mmm …

Soho through new eyes

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The nice thing about talking to someone who is travelling for the first time is that you get to see everything through new eyes again. I’m not saying I’m jaded or anything like that but when talking to Teesh I realise just how much I take for granted. Its great to see her see the wonder in everything – even somewhere like Soho, which to me is sometimes just a place to hang out. I guess to someone who has never been to Soho the energy and the people and the atmosphere is something very different.

We were walking around tonight and she just couldn’t help but express her amazement at all the goings on. We were having so much fun just wondering around looking at everyone that it wasn’t until 11 that we sat down for some food! Most places were still packed at that time of night but we found a cute little cafe called Cafe Emm.

If you want reasonably priced and traditional British food Cafe Emm is the place to come. I had a gorgeous steak and ale pie that I would well recommend.

Inside the place was fairly buzzing even at 11 at night however we sat outside because Teesh is a smoker but also so we could people watch. However it almost felt like we were the ones being watched! Still, we did see quite a few interesting things like some guy giving a car the moon for absolutely no reason at all that we could see, lots of couples making out to put it bluntly right in front of us, and even a few ambulance pick ups. Sadly no celebs out on the town though … must have been too early still for them.

Darts – A work thing again

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It’s been just over three years since I last wrote up a darts even from work. The “sports event” has been resurrected in recent times though the central organisation hasn’t really been there and the motivation to represent our teams has been left for the more social of the team to get a team together. I heard that the boys were going to put a team together and I was outraged (heh heh) that they weren’t considering a more representative male/female balance so I volunteered my services, crap as I may be at darts! The venue was, once again, at the Princess Alice which, though inconveniently located in the East at Aldgate, had a decent second floor darts venue.

The competition tonight was seriously competitive and though we managed to beat two of the other three teams tonight because it was scored on a cumulative basis we ended up in third spot. Oh well, good times were still had by all!

Paul and Kelly’s Wedding

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On to the show!

Paul and Kelly’s wedding reception was held at Addington Palace near Croydon in Surrey. It was an absolutely luscious venue. The Palace is an 18th century mansion set on some beautiful grounds and a lovely golf course annexed to the place. Although used mainly for weddings it is also apparently becoming popular for film, video and television recording ranging from, according to their website, music videos for Girls Aloud to historical dramas. Even The Bill apparently comes and shoots there regularly.

In any case I must admit to being very impressed upon entering the Palace. Unlike other venues which may sometimes cater for more than the one wedding in a day Addington Palace only caters for one wedding a day so that meant that Paul and Kelly had the run of the place. This included the Great Hall (where the dancefloor was located and gorgeous with the impressive giant chandelier), a Library and Lecture room, the room which had the bar, plus about three or four other rooms. It was a massive venue and quite often finding people, if they weren’t in the bar where most people ended up thanks for the free bar, meant searching three or four rooms!

The reception really was just a giant party and it kind of operated on that basis as well. There wasn’t a sort of welcome to formally start the evening – probably due to the fact that people were arriving at all sorts of time. Still, it wasn’t until about an hour into the reception that I saw Paul and probably another half hour after that until I saw Kelly. Kelly’s dress, by the way, was exquisite!

The event officially started at 7.30pm and at around 9pm people started congregating in the Great Hall for the cake cutting and bouquet throwing. This was the first time I saw Paul and Kelly together and weren’t they just so sweet. Even sweeter when they came back about 15 minutes later to dance their first dance.

Although the work people didn’t outnumber the rest of the guests at the wedding we certainly formed a large part of it (with probably around 30 people from work at least in attendance.) We were joking that it was almost like another day at work! At the very least this meant there were plenty of people to talk about but sadly not too many people were willing to brave the dancefloor and it wasn’t until very late in the evening, when everyone was well and truly sloshed, that we could get a few more people out there. (The non-work people, however, were more than happy to get out there and show the stuff.) Though the live band were good and managed to cover a wide range of songs I’m sure I won’t be the only one to admit that they were a bit scary because the lead singer was coming around and singling people out to sing on the mic and also to do dance solos!

By about 11pm people started trickling out to try and get the public transport home. Sandra, Julian and I stuck around until just after midnight which actually was a lot earlier than I thought we would be leaving but still I had a great time and was pleased to see that Paul and Kelly had a great day too. I bet they’re really looking forward to their two weeks off in Mauritius!

D’s Good Friday Fish Pie

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D kindly offered to cook up a nice Fish Pie tonight for Good Friday. He invited James, Amy and I over to his place in Eastcoate to host the festivities.

London Transport didn’t make it easy for us to get there with a whole host of engineering works getting in our way but we didn’t let that stop us and by 8pm we’d made it to his place. Because of the late start that meant that we didn’t eat dinner until nearly after 10pm but the wait was worth it.

This was the first time I’d seen D’s new place (he moved in I think more than a year ago) though we’ve been trying to make plans to get together in ages. His place was really nice and there were two things that impressed me about his house – the space (he seemed to have heaps and heaps of storage space and I didn’t even get to see the spare room he had outside) and his TV! It was absolutely massive and, the coolest thing in my opinion, it had a remote controlled swinging function so you could get it to face in your direction, or any direction, you wanted. His brother and D laughingly disclosed that the TV was top of their list for “things for the house” – topping even the fridge! 🙂

Considering that D’s fish pie was a last minute plan I think he pulled it off tonight very well. Plus the fact he had to play host and didn’t really have time to prepare made it even more impressive. Very filling too … Amy even fell asleep as soon as she finished!

The George and London Bridge Nando’s

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James organised a “trainee” night out tonight after college though in actuality it was open to anyone who wasn’t going away for the Easter long weekend. Of course I, as he calls me, as an “honorary” trainee went along as it was a fairly nice evening and its always good to meet new people. Though it wasn’t as warm and sunny is it has been this whole week it was still a fairly nice Spring evening tonight. The George was therefore a perfect venue for after work/college drinks with its large open air courtyard even as the evening fell and temps with it!

At about 10pm we headed over to Nando’s London Bridge for some dinner. I love this Nando’s – I think its definitely one of the biggest ones and my favourite spot is the one towards the back and up the stairs by the open window right under the bridge with views over to St Paul’s. After Nando’s D, James and I had one more drink at a nearby pub – we ended up being literally the last people to leave and obviously we didn’t leave quickly enough because I’m sure I heard the waitress asking for “help” to “close the door” which I think meant help getting rid of us!

Floridita

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I’m not quite sure how Floridita ended up on my to do list but it has been on there for a while now. I think it had something to do with the promise of Little Havana in London. Taking advantage of London Restaurant Week Rehana booked us in for dinner tonight.

The front of Floridita in no way prepared me for what we actually found inside – mostly the size of the space inside. There is a bar upstairs (tonight taken over by some sort of function) and a bar and the restaurant downstairs. The area downstairs itself was split into a few areas including a couple of private function areas which, again, were occupied tonight and stage and dance floor. Its a very attractive area and quite glamorous feeling. Later this translated to some really attractive and glamorous patrons too!

I was hoping for some really good South American food unfortunately, as we were on a set menu, the dishes on offer were less South American than Modern European and at a stretch had elements of Latin fusion such as, maybe, the beans in the Sweet potato and Pumpkin soup or, the most obviously Latin dish, the Mozzarella, aubergine & basil quesadilla, salsa cruda & sour cream.

We did try to choose some side dishes which had some Latin flare such as the Roast Pepper, Onion & Courgette Sofrito, Pao de Queijo (Traditional Warm Cheese Breads) and Tostones Fritters with Garlic Sauce (Deep Fried Plantain.) Note that the Cheese Breads were more like cheese dough balls in size.

We arrived a bit early for our booking at just about 6.15 and there were only a few other diners around. We both ordered a couple of drinks from the bar before making our way to our table at about 6.30. The waitress wasted no time in telling us that, unfortunately, they had to reclaim the table from us at 9.00pm. By the time we got around to ordering our dinner (we were too busy gas-bagging to be honest!) the place was really starting to fill up. We had a table just off the dance floor and therefore very close to the speakers and the band on stage. Later, when they started to blast the music and also when the band started playing (at just before 9), I would find that this was quite awkward for conversation. It felt kind of weird that all the tables were set around the dance floor so it felt almost kind of voyeuristic!

For my dinner I went with Warm spinach, red onion & feta tart, dressed leaves as a starter followed by Roast fillet of Scotch salmon, mussels & white wine. Although neither dish felt particularly Latin to me I must admit both were extremely tasty. Combined with the sides I was suitably stuffed by the time we got around to having to order our dessert. However, never one to pass up on dessert when on offer, I still proceeded with dessert choosing the Coconut crème caramel, crème fraiche & brandy snaps over the Baked lime & vanilla cheesecake, passion fruit sauce, which is what Rehana ended up choosing. Normally I’m a sucker for cheesecake but I figured that the crème caramel would be a little lighter and I could always take a sneaky taste of Rehana’s dish (which I did do!) I was quite satisfied with the meal though I do wonder if I’d be willing to pay the more premium prices to dine from their a la carte menu. The dishes that other tables were getting, not off the set menu, certainly looked pretty good.

Sides Tart Salmon
Quesadilla Cheesecake Crème caramel

Service-wise I couldn’t really complain. It was fairly responsive and wasn’t at all snooty. The only distressing aspect of the evening, though not unexpected, was getting shunted off our table at 9pm. Not to worry though – we soon managed to find a couple of seats by the bar which gave us prime viewing of the dance floor. By then the entire place was getting fairly near packed though only a couple of couples out on the dance floor demonstrating their salsa skills. Entertainingly there were two girls who were dancing as a couple who appeared were there, presumably employed by Floridita, to generate interest in the dance floor. And it worked. Soon enough quite a few people ventured out on the dance floor. It also soon became obvious that more than half of them were Floridita regulars. Seeing the dancing made me realise how much I’ve missed going to regular salsa classes!

Oh yea – pretty nice, if expensive, cocktail list too.

Snow Patrol at the O2 Arena

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I was lucky enough to be able to go with Pauline tonight to see Snow Patrol’s last concert (in England anyway) on their Take Back The Cities tour at the O2 arena. I’d heard that Snow Patrol have really great concerts and I was glad that tonight they didn’t disappoint. In support tonight were Animal Kingdom and Fanfarlo. We didn’t get to hear Animal Kingdom as we were still having dinner at Canary Wharf but arrived in time to hear Fanfarlo’s set. I don’t think Pauline was too impressed with them but I thought it was interesting that this indie pop group used instruments, such as the trumpet and violin, that are probably considered less “alternative” but more “classic.” Their set only lasted about half an hour.

Snow Patrol came on to stage at 9pm (no late start for this band) and didn’t leave the stage until about 10.45pm except for a brief five minute break to signal the end of the “normal” set before they came out for a twenty minute encore. They played some new and some old songs. At the start of the concert those who had seating were for the most part glued to their seat but by the end of the concert everyone was up on their feet.

In addition to their music being quite suited to a concert style venue I think its their very charismatic frontman who really made tonight happen. There was just something about Gary Lightbody that was so engaging. He really gave himself to the to the crowd and the concert was the kind of concert that actually had shivers going up and down my spine at one point. Maybe it was the romantic in me because lets face it their music is actually quite tender and dreamy!

Probably what I liked most was that at the end of the day the group come across as modest and humble folk asking for nothing more than for everyone to enjoy their music. And we certainly did.

Does an hour in the gym justify a 3-hour pig out at Ping Pong?

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Its funny that in my last entry I was mentioned Ping Pong and then today that’s where we ended up having a 3-hour pig out! Jenny and I planned a kind of girls day out with first a visit to the gym, a hair cut and then lunch/dinner, depending on how our day went, at Ping Pong.

We started the day off with a session at the gym though looking back I don’t remember working particularly hard. I spent some time on the rowing machine (which we used as a warm up but after 5 minutes on it I was nearly done in!), treadmill (I just can’t quite get used to how the whole thing shakes every time I land on it so I don’t find it very easy to run on) and the bike. Jenny worked particularly hard and I think managed over half an hour on the treadmill which bodes well for 10km run in July. My attempt, on the other hand, was pretty pathetic and I managed just about 11 minutes to jog 1.5km which is really really slow before I stumbled off the treadmill! I think I need to learn to push through the pain barrier because I must admit that once I hit that wall where breathing is even slightly uncomfortable I manage to convince myself that its too painful, and not good for me, to continue! I then proceeded to spend about half an hour on the bikes before Jenny took me over to try and teach me how to use that weird all over body elliptical machine which is supposed to be very good for you cardio-wise, good for an upper and lower body work out and all without having impact on your joints. I just couldn’t get the hang of it and though its supposed to be natural action it felt quite alien on it and I didn’t last long. This was followed by a bit of work on our butts (crucial) on the step machine and then a quick visit to do a leg press. We topped off our gym visit with some time in the sauna and steam room. Nice. Awfully relaxing but later I was to find seriously dehydrating and gave me one of those headaches bad enough to make me nauseous. Of course it probably wasn’t helped by the ginormous amount of food I consumed at Ping Pong!

Inspired by our gym session and feeling pretty good we headed off to walk the 1.5km down to Covent Garden to go to one of my favourite hairdressers in London. For £13 you can get a cut and wash. They are very quick, and give a lovely hair wash, though admittedly the hairdressers could probably afford to take a bit more time with their styling. But for £13 I guess you can’t really ask for too much. The guy who sits behind the desk, I think the owner, is very friendly and I’m not sure if he recognises me or not but he often has something nice to say to me.

Following the hair cut we decided to continue with our physical exertion for the day and walk to Ping Pong which actually happened to be located up near the gym we’d just visited (that is, another 1.5km walk.)

On Sundays Ping Pong have a Lazy Sum Days deal which for just over £17 you can have as much as you can eat from their regular dishes (no specials or desserts sadly.) Its fair to say that between Jenny and I we more than got our value for money. When we arrived at Ping Pong there didn’t appear to be any tables free for just two persons (there were a few four-person tables) so the waiter went to seat us at a communal table which was empty at the time we arrived. We wanted our own table and asked if we could sit at on of the four-person tables but the waiter insisted, as it was restaurant policy, that we couldn’t have one of the tables despite the fact it was about 3.00 in the afternoon and there were only two or three other groups in the restaurant at the time! Silly boy. At any rate this actually worked in our favour as we could then actually fit all our dishes on to the table (it would probably normally seat about eight people!) We ended up sampling nearly every available dish and had 20 (!!!) between us. To put this in perspective when I go to dim sum with my brother we normally have a main dish (some rice or noodles) and five or six dim sum dishes. Granted we had this food amongst a lot of talking and it was probably about three hours later when we stumbled out the door.

We had a few deep fried dishes but on the whole I think that dim sum food is generally quite healthy (mostly being steamed.) The biggest risk is the salt content of the food which comes from the dish itself plus the soy sauce or chilli oil that you dip your item into. However, I do think that perhaps we went a bit overboard in what we ate. Its only 7pm and with my giant headache (from the earlier dehydration) and pains in my stomach (from serious overeating) I’ve decided its time for bed!