Lovely weekends

Categories: life

Tags: weekends, london

Date: 17 February 2009 13:59:30

Despite having spent quite a few weekends in London now, we seem to have mostly had 'stuff to do'- before Christmas this mostly involved Christmas shopping. The last two weekends were the first we've had there since Christmas, and we've made a start on the 'going places and seeing things'. You see, I don't really know London, so I wanted to get out to some of those places I'd always heard of but never seen.

Last weekend we had a lovely wander over a snowy Hampstead Heath, with proper wintry weather (he thinks I'm a bit mad to love winter so much!). We walked and talked, stopped to sit down, and walked again when we got cold. And warmed ourselves up with cream tea in a little cafe on the way home. After church on Sunday we had a mad lunch of Dim Sum with a friend of mine, no idea what we ordered but it tasted good!

This Saturday, yes the 14th, we'd decided to make ourselves a scrummy dinner (rather than paying someone else for it), and so Saturday morning was spent happily mooching around looking for random ingredients- the favourite being a wonderful organic hippyish shop with nuts and seeds and all types of tea in big jars :) Although apparently there are no chives in Camden just now. So now you know.

After the shopping we headed out to Greenwich for the afternoon, to a lovely pub for lunch (with very yummy beers), and then a wander through the park and up to the observatory. With my fix of science geekery we then wandered back down, past the maritime museum, to wend our way home.

The evening was spent in a contented kind of organised chaos as we tried to work out whether the carrots needed soaking before the aubergines had finished being pressed, how to tell if the sesame seeds were toasted sufficiently, and how on earth we would ever use the 'small' bunch of parsley we had bought! The end results were definately rather yummy, with the aubergine fritters and bread and butter pudding being the highlights.

Our Sunday lunch date cancelled, we headed to have lunch near Trafalgar Square, and had a wander around the national gallery. A pleasant discovery was an exhibition of the impressionist painter Sisley's time in England and Wales, in which we learned that he was married in Cardiff and spent his honeymoon on the Gower. His paintings of Langland were rather special.

A rather nice valentines weekend in all. And no hint of the stress of booking restaurants, dealing with stroppy waiters, or long queues in sight. Sorry bimble.