Well, it’s official, we have had our first real Saturday here in London. Jake was thrilled to have a day off, however, with the work week here being quite ‘normal’ in comparison to the ‘extreme’ he is used to, the need to recuperate was not life threatening. He didn’t need to sleep for 16 hours or eat through a straw to recover from the Iron Man that used to be his typical week. We decided to really live it up and take advantage of all that Saturday had in store. We set our alarm with big intentions but found, once again, that London had a different plan. As usual, our day turned out to be nothing as planned and better than expected!
Goals for the day: 1. Purchase a TV, 2. Get to IKEA, 3. Get Jake black work shoes since his are on the Atlantic, 4. Purchase backpacks for our upcoming excursion.
We made it through 1. We started looking at TV's over the last few weeks and finally came to terms with the fact that we were going to have to spend about 200 pounds. In a last ditch effort to avoid the expenditure we went to the pub on Saturday morning to use their internet and searched gumtree.com. Sure enough, on the top of the list: A 28in. TV for 20 pounds. London miracle!!! We immediately called Ellen and hoofed it over to her flat. The deal was not too good to be true. The TV worked, it came with a stand, and it was 20 pounds...180 pounds to put towards a plane ticket to Italy?...we thought so! The detail we are leaving out is that the TV does not have a flat back. In fact, there is roughly 3 feet of box behind the screen. Somewhere between Ellen's house and ours (in a cab with a lunatic Russian driver and the TV absolutely plowed between seat cushions) we decided to name our new addition 'Kerchek' after the Silverback gorilla from Tarzan. The resemblance is uncanny.
With Kerchek tucked in her new corner of our living room and Jake's bloody finger bandaged (yes, he cut himself trying to shimmy the TV out of the Smartcar Cab) we gathered our bags and headed toward the Angel stop to go out to the boon-IKEA-docks. Well, well, well, we found that the tubes were under construction again this weekend and every station in the vicinity of IKEA was shut down. Lovely. Plan B was a must - picnic and drinks in the park. We ended up on the grass, under the sun, sipping cider, and enjoying some houmous (yes, that's how they spell it here). We weren't there 20 min. when the phone rang. Margaret and Ben were in the area looking at flats and came over to join us. We spent a few hours soaking in the heavenly afternoon. In the words of Damien Hirst, "A weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend."
We left the park a few hours later and agreed to meet back up for dinner. We went into Brick Lane, the area in London known for their Indian restaurants and apparently, their rave scene. Here is the secret with the Indian restaurants: When you walk down the street in an attempt to find your eatery of choice, hold back at the menus in the window. Waiters stand out front and offer deals to get you into their place! We played pretty hard to get and ended up with two rounds of drinks and 25% off our total bill - HA!. We immersed ourselves in the world of curry, korma, and naan and had a lovely time (well, most of us did - Ben ended up with a dish so hot it would have lit a fire on wet wood!). After dinner we journeyed down the street to see where the vibrations under our feet were coming from. It seemed they were coming from about 5 different warehouses where rave-like dance clubs were just getting started. It was pretty exciting really - street vendors on every sidewalk, booze flowing freely in the middle of the road, strobe lights beaming from abandoned buildings, guys snorting coke on the side of the road (absolutely true story!). We gawked at the scene, had a laugh, and walked back to where we came from!
We ended up at a pub near Margaret and Ben's place. Now, all pubs are fun, most are cute and historic, some are pretty...this place was off the wall! We seemed to have stumbled upon quite the eclectic scene - probably all of the rave scene rejects. Top three moments: 1. Realizing that one guy was wearing a flannel shirt that had the collar removed and sewn into it's place was big gingham summer scarf - buttons included, 2. Trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of a male gaggle of mates (we weren't sure in what capacity) who were on the cusp of stomach pumping. They were falling all over the floor and dropping personal possessions left and right, 3. Talking to a local guy and having, what seemed to be the same conversation over and over again, for an hour. Oh what a night!
Lessons Learned: 1. When you ask for a large cab, they will probably send you a small one, 2. When the Indian food menu says 'hot' - make sure to ask for specifics (Ben, that one's for you!),
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