I Heart the Big Smoke

Rob & I spent this past weekend in London. We got the train up on Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel and went straight out to meet Brent, Joe & Tara for a meal. It was amazing - it called itself 'Healthy Meal' but there was so much of it; I'm not sure it was all that healthy to eat such a large amount of food in one sitting :).

Saturday was our shopping day. I mentioned at work last week that I was looking to buy a ring in London and one of my colleagues told me to call her friend, who owns a jewellery wholesale business. I spoke to him on Friday, and he gave me the name and address of a jewellery shop in London that they supply. When we got there on Saturday, they had been told to expect us, and they gave me about 17% off the price of the ring I chose, plus a bottle of champagne to take away. Result! It's not what you know...

I also got a watch and a handbag, and two separate opportunities to speak some Italian. Rob got a key ring. But it's a nice key ring.

In the evening we met up with Joe and Tara again and went to see The Shawshank Redemption at the Wyndhams Theatre. I don't know how faithfully the West End production sticks to the original play, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (or even how the film fares against the original, for that matter), but as a stand-alone piece it was pretty good. By no means as good as the film, but there's only so much you can do with a play about a prison escape when you can't actually portray the guy crawling through miles of sewage pipe. There were some noticeable differences between the play and the film, but as I said, taken in isolation it was a great way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday night.

On Sunday we got up early and walked down to HTB for the 09:30 service, then afterwards we made our way back towards the hotel, walking past Harrods just as it was opening :). We had a quick browse around before going back to the hotel to check out and get the train home.

The more I go, the more I love London. I couldn't live there, but it's great for a few days.