Well, I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new on this blog…but hey, I’ve been busy! As a matter of fact, you should be happy that there’s nothing on here because that means I’ve been out and enjoying myself in this beautiful city. Then again, you’re also not reading about said mystical capers…and here we reach the conundrum. For realsies though, I’ve just been hella busy since the last week of term and just haven’t had the time or motivation to sit and write out everything that’s gone on. To be honest, it came to a point where I decided to just wait until this point and go on a writing tear getting everybody updated on what’s been happening here in London. Everything will NOT be posted in this single blog post alone…that would absolutely ridiculous. Why would you even think something like that? Geez. I’ll separate things out in chunks to make it much more reader friendly (you’re welcome). We begin with the end of term and the days leading up to Christmas.
When I left you I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of Jeremy from Belfast after two cancelled flights. Well, it was made three cancelled flights but not before a wonderful adventure to Heathrow. At the time, the flight was supposed to go ahead as scheduled so I made the hour and a half Tube journey to the airport only to be updated by text message from Jer that the flight was delayed. It was delayed…and delayed…and delayed, until finally they cancelled it altogether. After all of the waiting and feeling a little annoyed, I suggested to Jer that he book a flight for a couple of days later in order to avoid the big rush of people trying to get out as soon as possible. He heeded the advice and booked on a flight for the Wednesday and had the hotel set him up in a hotel room for the night. With this settled I figured I’d just relax around the house on Tuesday and get some errands completed, until I received a text from Jeremy telling me that he had just arrived at Heathrow...a day early. Needless I was confused but apparently he managed to get on an earlier flight last minute and didn’t want to tell me until he was actually standing in Heathrow to avoid jinxing it. It worked, he was here, and I went to pick him up and we headed back to the house. After dropping his stuff off he headed right into the city to meet up with Nate and Alex for beers at The Chandos in Trafalgar Square. This is another Samuel Smith owned pubs so they have a large selection of beers and ciders on tap at very cheap prices. We started buying rounds and it got a little messy but nothing serious. After working our way down to the house once more; Nate, Jer, and I decided that the best way to kick off the first full day would be to do a Dick Whittington Ale Trail…obviously.
After a decent lie-in the next morning, Jer and I headed over to Tesco’s to pick up breakfast essentials and enjoy a feast. I cooked up a sizeable amount of bacon, a bunch of eggs, and toast along with our freshly opened bottles of ale. Why not get started early right? Hey, it was the holidays!! After breakfast went down the gullet we gathered Nate and also managed to recruit my friends Megan, Laura, and Jodi to come along. These were the three friends who would be joining us for Christmas Dinner so it was a great opportunity for them to meet Jer and Nate beforehand, Meg was feeling really ill so she opted out of the pub crawl understandably. Our first stop on the trail was a pub on Whitehall called The Shades. Excited and ready to go we entered the pub full of aspiration. Unfortunately the pub was not full of people, though it was 1 o’clock on a Wednesday. It was however full of beer, so we won in the end! To our displeasure, upon ordering our pints of ale requesting a trail map we were told by the bartender that they did not participate in that anymore as they are no longer owned by Nicholson’s brewery. Huge blow to the start of the trip, but we had already ordered our pints so there was really nothing we could have done. Then another problem arose, without the map how would we know the location of the other pubs? Baffled and perplexed we did what any sane, normal Canadian would do in our situation…we decided to create our own ale trail! Hooray! After Megan, Laura, and Jodi met us at The Shades we headed to a Fuller’s pub just down Whitehall, then to The Westminster Arms in (you guessed it) Westminster. From there we went back to the West End to The Chandos and ended the night at The Brewmaster in Leicester Square. After getting in a bit of trouble for eating noodles in the bar (no food on the lower floor) we finished our pints and went our separate ways.
The next day being Christmas Eve we wanted to head back into the city and do a bunch of walking around while also gathering the last things I needed to cook dinner on Christmas Day. We started our day at Trafalgar Square as per usual and headed north. The plan was to make our way eventually to Covent Garden. After seeing a lot of the sites over the northern part of the central city we went through Holborn and an unlucky trip into a Sainsbury’s trying to find the last minute essentials. Apparently poultry seasoning does not exist in this country so I looked pretty stupid attempting to scour the spice aisle for it whilst asking employees who had no idea what I was talking about. After a quick conversation with my parents I was told sage would substitute perfectly and the mission was back on! We made our way to Covent Garden and I introduced Jer to The Maple Leaf pub which we stopped into for a drink before heading onwards. I really wanted to introduce Jeremy to my favourite pub (Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese) so we decided to head towards the old city next. Upon arriving we discovered it was closed (not weird for Christmas Eve) and instead enjoyed a pint in The Tipperary, which is apparently the oldest Irish pub in London. With one more pint in us we headed back to Charing Cross station to take the Tube back to Colliers Wood. Unfortunately With a last second trip to Sainsbury’s in Colliers Wood (15 min before it closed) we managed to fulfill the sage mission and also pick up 30 tall boys of Fosters for ₤18, awesome. Nate and Meg unfortunately could not get on a flight out before Christmas so we sat up and played some beer pong and listened to Christmas music until the wee hours of the morning. Of course our wakefulness was stopping Santa from crossing our house off of his list so we called it a night and headed off to bed.
For a full and detailed description of Christmas and Boxing Day….stay tuned!!
Until then,
Cheers and love
Erik
No comments:
Post a Comment