Belated Valentine's Weekend

As Rob had only just got back from Sudan last weekend and anticipated that he would need a weekend of not doing much to recover, we postponed our Valentine's Day plans until this weekend, which were to go to London to buy wedding rings. Not actually doing this on Valentine's Day also meant that we didn't have to pay inflated Valentine's Day hotel prices :).

So we went to London yesterday morning on the train. Ben and Jill had gone up to London on Friday night, and had spent yesterday morning at Tower Bridge. They met us off the train and after we checked into our hotel (it doesn't take long to type it, or read it, but the actual act of doing it took ages), we went for a late lunch at a great Italian restaurant nearby. Then we walked across Westminster Bridge (crazy packed with tourists taking pictures of the London Eye/Houses of Parliament), past St James's Park and round the back of Horseguards Parade, pointing out the sights on the way. Then we bought our wedding rings, which took all of about 5 minutes. We walked back to our respective hotels via The Mall, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, then met up again an hour or so later at the Old Vic theatre where we had tickets to see the last night of Complicit, starring Richard Dreyfuss and David Suchet.

I enjoyed the play, although I had to get Rob to go over the plot with me afterwards to make sure I'd got it all :). The play is 'in the round' (seats on all sides of the stage), which was a novelty for me, and although it was quite short - 45 minutes each Act - that was actually a good thing because we were in the Gods and it was boiling up there. I was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved one and had to go to the toilets at the interval to take the long-sleeved one off...

This morning we went to Holy Trinity Church Brompton, affectionately known as HTB, for their 09:30 service, which was ace - lots of friendly people, free food, a really well rehearsed band (always something I look for) and a great talk. After we left there we met Ben and Jill for lunch at Giraffe on the South Bank (no Giraffe restaurants in Southampton; I miss them!), then we got the train back home. Which was easier said than done, because they were doing maintenance on the line between Eastleigh and Southampton Central today so we had to get a bus from Eastleigh to Parkway, but it was only a minor glitch. What a great weekend!