After finishing exams, it was nice to enjoy a long weekend in London. I feel like I haven't really been here and if I have, I've spent my time sleeping or sitting in lectures. This was the first weekend of a solid February spent in London, and it was absolutely incredible. Thursday night we ventured to Cirque du Soir, home of stilts dancers, sparkler swingers and snake handlers. It seemed like a scene of some trippy film, but ended up being a fun night of dancing (and snakecharming?)
Friday was spent at Harrod's (can't say I ever need to go there again, except maybe for food...) and Harvey Nichols, which would honestly be my ideal place to shop, if everything wasn't over 150 pounds...meh. We discovered Snog Fro Yo, which made London seem a little more like home, especially considering I spent about an hour of every week consuming fro yo back at school. That night, some of us ventured to Ministry of Sound. We definitely weren't prepared for the evening, as the original plan was to spend about an hour at a martini bar and head home for the night. Replace martinis with interesting club characters, smoke, and flashing lasers, and that pretty much sums up the evening.
Borough Market was probably my favorite destination of the weekend. Basically, there are rows and rows of stands of unique and fresh food. Samples galore. I was too overwhelmed by everything to buy much, but I definitely want to go back. It was pretty similar to West Side Market back home, which makes me see its potential for creating an absolutely delicious meal.
[fresh food?]
After basically exhausting ourselves this weekend, Sunday was a little bit more relaxed. I had one of my first traditional meals, starting off the day (and basically putting me back to sleep) with corned beef hash. I haven't quite grown the nerves to conquer black pudding yet...Later on, we explored our neighborhood, and I'm really excited about all of the things around me that I didn't know about before.
What better way to wrap up the weekend than to ring in the new year? Trafalgar Square had a huge Chinese Lunar New Year festival, with dancers, performers, magicians, and one of those great dragon puppets that kind of reminds me of a stuffed bear...Anyway, the show ended up with incredible fireworks and, of course, loads of Chinese food.
