Woohoo I got to go to London again! For my project we organised a hackathon and London just happens to be a good place for such an event because there are lots of developers and journalists in the city, and then we also had a project meeting, because the project partners were all in the same locale anyway.
Getting to London was a bit bumpy, I had a flight booked to Heathrow, then KLM emailed me to say that the flight was delayed, whilst on the train to Schiphol I found out it had been cancelled, but at the desk I found out I had been proactively rebooked on a flight to London City, leaving about 40 mins after getting to the airport. Still made it, but it was a bit weird. Anyway, I like London City, although it was raining when I arrived, but then it didn’t rain anymore while I was there (although I did bring an umbrella!).
Anyway, I had booked a nice little hotel/hostel/B&B near Russell Square with a view of the tennis courts. The room was super small but it had everything I needed, including pretty decent internet. I had breakfast at the hotel twice, but the weather was just too nice to sit in a basement breakfast room, so the last two days I went out, the real gem I found was Fork, where I discovered bircher muesli, which is just awesome!
On the way to Haymarket where our hackathon took place, I passed by the Wyndham’s theatre, which currently has Skylight on. I’d sort of been turned off theatre by a few really crappy performances, but with Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy, I spontaneously thought I could give it a try. I got one of the last tickets, which actually turned out to be a fabulous seat in one of the boxes. I shared the box with an American lady who “was happy she didn’t have to share the box with a creepy old man” 🙂 The play was fantastic! It was a 2.5 hour rollercoaster ride of emotions, so many layers. Kudos to Carey Mulligan for cooking spaghetti on stage whilst sucking the audience into the story and keeping them there. Great night out, Variety thinks so too. Go see it!
On Wednesday night, we went out with the project team to Busaba Eathai, a really nice Thai restaurant near Covent Garden. They had a bit of trouble managing such a big group, but eventually everyone got their drinks and food, such as Gamma Ray beer, which had a funny alien on the label. Afterwards we had a lovely walk through London back to Bloomsbury. I love walking in cities in the evening, perhaps I should go out on a stroll in Amsterdam more often too 🙂
On Thursday, I met up with Mischa and Lucy for a lovely outside dinner at a place called Gail’s Kitchen. The place has marvellous bread and great nouveau tapas. Instead of a dessert Lucy and I went for a cocktail that was made up by the bartender who just asked us what kind of flavours we liked. A perfect ending to a perfect day.
I decided to make the most of my time in London, so on Friday morning I popped into the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery on my way to the airport. Both were cool, but I preferred the National Portrait Gallery because it has cosier little corridors and slightly funkier setups. I also really liked the Vivien Leigh photo exhibition. Definitely a place to go back to (and spend money in the museum shop).
Merpel's site 