Getting up this morning for our area team’s official Christmas party for the year was a little bit difficult. I could barely walk because my feet were still so sore from dancing last night after the London conference. The only consolation was that we didn’t have to meet until 10.30 where other teams were meeting for 8.30!

We started the day in a pub in Holborn with a very tough quiz! It was all done in good spirits though with the highest score being about a 50% correct answer rate we were certainly scratching our heads on many of the questions.

We then headed over to Boulevard Bar Brasserie for lunch. This was an exercise of controlled chaos with three big groups (our group along must have been greater than 30) having their Christmas party there. The pros with this restaurant were that they were very flexible. Whilst most other places at this time of year require confirmed numbers and meals pre-selected before sitting Boulevard Bar Brasserie were happy to flex our numbers and didn’t require us to pre-select meals. Though this worked well on the one hand (as it turned out numbers for us kept fluctuating as people went off sick etc.) it also worked to our disadvantage with delays in our meal coming out. Between our starters and mains there must have been at least an hour if not more to wait. In this time a good deal of wine was consumed as you can imagine as we waited for our food so probably the restaurant was happy. Service was pretty good considering how many of us were there. Food was fairly ordinary and my turkey seemed a tad dry and overcooked. Not gigantic portions so even after our desserts a number of us were still fairly peckish.

Overall not too bad for lunch for Christmas but at the price we paid I’ve experienced better. Because the restaurant was quite relaxed I must say that it’s the longest we’ve ever spent in a restaurant for a Christmas do. Normally they are keen to get you in and out but we must have easily spent four hours in there!!

Finally, we moved on to the Bier Bunker in Covent Garden for drinks. It was clear that other companies had the same idea as to even get into the place you needed to be checked off the list. They seem to relax that a bit later on but seemed fairly strict for a bar at 4pm but I guess it was a very busy time of year.

I left the beer buying to the boys. Bier Bunker is a microbrewery so has a wide variety of beers on tap. Space-wise it seems quite large with a third of the room dedicated to long (for sit-down) tables and the other parts to empty space surrounded by more couches. Strangely empty for most of the early evening it suddenly seemed to get very busy very suddenly with heaps of people on the dance floor. We eventually also headed out to the dance floor and by the end of the night I was lucky to be able to physically get home – me feet were sooooo sore I was tempted to crawl the last few hundred metres home!!