It was super great to get nearly everyone in one place round Orsi’s on Saturday. I still can’t believe someone fished out photos from the ball, Barcelona, Prague and all the other weird stuff we have been upto throughout the years. Looking at those, I definately need to get my hair cut soon! Thanks everyone, it wasn’t so hard to sort out so we should so it again.
Orsolya and dave are acting very grown up with their proper shiny new house. It is in a nice residential area and even has a turret on the corner. Unfortunately the most imaginative thing the builders decided to put up there was the boiler. But it was great catching up with orsi, hearing about ina’s placement in Cali, being inspired by ina’s mom’s sailing escapades and being jealous of cecilia’s travels in Honduras. And the best part was that all of this involved about five cafe visits per day!
I am sitting in Foyle’s bookshop cafe in London and contemplating phase two. Tomorrow morning our twelve hour flight to Tokyo leaves and I really hope we get a Boeing 747 jumbo. The airline is supposedly good and the food supposedly tasty. We have a very broad plan in place for which parts of the country we want to be in at any given time, and in an hour or two Dave will turn up to help me add detail. At five we will be having ‘fika’ with cata down at marble arch =) woop!
I went to the Globe with Claire to see Romeo and Juliet on thursday. Apart from having to stand up due to my strictly limited budget it was absolutely amazing. At the best of times you can’t go wrong with R+J, it has the classic heart wrenching story and some superb lines – but in the right setting and performed in the traditional way it was captivating. Oh, and the sword play was sooo cool, don’t know how they didn’t end up killing each other in rehearsals.
We also had pizza at the rumoured best pizzaria in London – Rossopomodoro in covent garden if you were wondering. Not sure it was quite as amazing as everyone made out, but it was very tasty indeed and highly recommended if you don’t mind some rather ‘abrupt’ service from the italian staff.
I know it is very sneaky going to London without seeing all the people I am supposed to see but I will be back to make up for it soon =)
As far as logic goes this wasn’t very. Ina flew back from Rome to Heathrow Wednesday morning at about 3am and took the national express back to Brizzle. By 3pm we were on the train to Paddington at a cost of about £11 each. We then when to a sushi bar near bond street for some dinner – it was very good by the way. Next it was the tube to the Brixton Windmill which is a very strange pub/live music venue. There was a complete cross section of people there, from 60yr old motorcyclists to punk rockers to tourists to swish middle aged people… and us of course.
We were there to see the Veils start their tour in support of their upcoming third album. And what an amazing concert it was! We knew it was going to be, but there you go. The audience never got a breather from the intensity, regardless of whether the band were playing emotion-dripping ballads or raging torrents of sound. The new material is going to be classic but definitely a bit weird. It was all quite random really, and the singer even came in his wellington boots.
Finn Andrews of the Veils
And then we had to rush away at the end of the set to get the last National Express home (£16). This involved a somewhat exciting £15 taxi journey though the snowy London back streets and over the speed bumps. When we got close to Bristol we realised it was massively snowing (obviously we were also massively delayed). So we got to trudge through the swirling snow making virgin tracks through the whole of the centre. Outside Lounge people were starting to emerge from their student night and indulging in a massive snowball fight in the middle of Park Street.
Ina's street
Ironically, Ina had bought the tickets for Tuesday nights show which turned out to be canceled due to the weather. She originally hadn’t realised she would still be in Italy so we bought a second set of tickets for Wednesday. All in all the adventure cost about £60 for what was essentially a £5 concert. And I would have paid twice that it was so good!!
It was great to zoom over to London for two days this weekend and see Orsi and Cata. After some strenuous calculations we concluded that I hadn’t seen Cata in over a year (and that time even more briefly than this) and it was certainly more than six months since Orsolya came to Bristol for some undistracted exam revision. Regardless, the best thing about our group of friends is we can just pick it all up again however long ago it was that our paths crossed.
Cata knew an amazing japanese tea place in Soho – first time I have ever been shown to a table by a waiter for afternoon tea. We had a pot of Taiwanese green which was a first for me. It was a little like Japanese Sencha, but more ‘crisp’ and very refreshing. We also had unbelievable cakes. Mine came in a small glass and was a mixture of exotic fruits, green tea flavoured mouse, sake and some other unrecognised ingredients. Needless to say I have never tasted anything like it, but it was without a doubt the most ‘flavour-diverse’ ‘cake’ I have ever had.
And then after wandering around some record shops it was time to meet up with Orsi for dinner at a great (and very reasonably priced) Thai place. The calimari was sublime, as was the jasmine and fruit smoothy. The curry could have been hotter but all in all…
‘Potion’ by the UCL area and BT tower was the cocktail destination. Embarrassingly I ordered the same cocktails as Ina did the last time she visited, but you can’t go wrong at £3.50 each.
And brunch up Orsolya’s end of town was beyond belief – pancakes with maple syrup have never been so needed. Finally to round off a ridiculous marathon of eating, drinking and catching up we went to a cute little cafe (don’t know where) but it looked something like this:
Orsolya and Pecan Cake!
Cheers both for a great time x
Went to Bristol’s shiny new bouldering centre yesterday. Alas it is still 45mins walk away (55 since we got lost), but it is really great. The routes are clever and you have to think quite carefully about how to do them. And there are so many to choose from! The cakes and sofas are also great but the best part of all is the fingerprint scanner that confirms your membership. No annoying plastic card and oh so cool =)
Can’t wait to go to London and see Orsi and Cata. It will be awesome to eat good thai food and go out dancing. See you guys tomorrow!
