It’s been beautiful here in London since the beginning of March, so I’ve been trying to make the most it! I love spending my lunchtimes reading outside by the river Thames and I’ve been visiting London’s parks more often. Last weekend Rocky and Grant came to visit me here in London! We met up on Saturday morning to explore the city together. I took them to Borough Market which is one of my favourite markets to get food in London. We spent the morning sampling pretty much anything and everything and settled on smoothies and fresh bread with argentinian spreads for breakfast.

The guys brought their skateboards to ride along the Thames so I rented a bike so that I could join in. It was a pretty big fail though. There were so many people around that we ended up walking most of the way anyways. We spent some time in St. James Park before going to Chinatown for lunch and gorging ourselves on a cheap chinese buffet. Like true Newfoundlanders I feel like we spent the majority of the day eating. We met up with Grant’s friends he met in New York and explored Covent Garden and London’s West End before heading off to Brick Lane for Indian Food for supper (hence all the eating!). The best part of Brick Lane was walking down the street and bargaining with every restaurant owner to find the best deal. Every single restaurant boasts about some award they’ve won, “Curry chef of the year 2008/09” “Master chef 2010” “Best curry restaurant 09/10” which leads me to believe they just make them all up. We had a wonderful night though and got quite a good deal on our meal!

I’ve been cramming more shows in over the past few weeks. I saw this new play called “All New People” which featured Zach Braff and was supposed to be really funny. It was pretty funny, but the humour was quite dark and I haven’t been able to decide if I really liked it or not. I also saw the musical Billy Elliot, which was fantastic! The dancing was really good and the kids in it were amazing! I don’t usually like kids in musicals that much because I want to hear someone who can REALLY sing. But the kids in Billy Elliot were amazing dancers and singers and had the most hilarious facial expressions! Definitely one of my favourite musicals.

As for this past weekend, I spent it checking out Camden Market, Hyde Park, and the St. Paddy’s Day celebrations. I’ve decided that my favourite part of London is the markets. I’ve already mentioned Borough Market, which is a food-only market, but I’ve also gone to a few clothing/jewelry markets and I’ve loved them all. Camden is one of the brightest places I’ve been in London; all the buildings are painted bold colours and all the shops have really cool designs on them. The market has everything you could ever need for clothing and it has food from pretty much any country you can think of!

I went to the St. Paddy’s Day parade on Sunday, but I wasn’t really impressed. I didn’t seem to me like it was up to full London potential; in my opinion the St. John’s Santa Claus parade is better. They did have a festival in Trafalgar Square though that featured lots of Irish music! I spent the rest of my day at Hyde Park, which was quite warm and enjoyable. I finished off by going to Knightsbridge which is where the famous department store, Harrods is. It was really posh – that’s pretty much the only word I can think of to describe it. Every part of the store was decorated differently and it felt like different parts of the store had different themes (one of the escalators was called the “Egyptian escalator”). It was outrageously expensive, so I contented myself with buying my favourite french pastry, mille feuille, from the food hall.

Only another 5 weeks until I come home, the time has flown by!

Love Maria