My Weekends in London and Around

Even though I am living and working in central London, my weekdays are spent in a dingy conference room. By the time I get out of the office, I am so tired (too much work I tell you!) that I don’t have the energy to walk any more. My legs are seriously giving up on me after three weeks. But, its not stopping me from maximizing my weekends.

I have been planning my weekends to the dot so that I would visit as many places as I can. The first weekend was solely dedicated to London walking tours, the second a quick visit to Scotland and the third to Lovebox Music Festival. Yes, I did not sleep through my weekends; I was out by 2 PM the latest.

Weekend 1: 

I planned my London walks by looking into a hundred websites and finally decided to just wing it. I started with Westminster Abbey and just kept walking. Within about half hour, I ran into a senior from L. How is it that wherever I go, there is always an L person nearby! Anyways, I was happy to see a familiar face. After a bit of negotiation we decided on walking the Tower Bridge and West Bank area.

Sunbathing Londoners

The Tower Bridge

I did not believe that London can ever be this hot and everyone in the city is just waiting for that moment to get their clothes off. Londoners are very much into walking around anywhere and everywhere bare-chested if they can get away with it. I did have my customary Pimm’s start of my tourist trip. We ended the day after a rather gruesome tour of Jack the Ripper’s home grounds.

Looks pretty eh? This is where Jack the Ripper murdered his first victim

The next day, I went on to cover the rest of the major touristy traps including the Palace, Hyde Park, Green Park, Trafalgar Square, basically almost everything a Japanese tourist would capture in their iPad. I got back home thinking that I would go out for a dinner but only to find out the event that I wanted to go happened the day before. Me being the lazy person ordered room service and caught up on my series and phone calls.

Out with the old in with the new, Parliament Building

Weekend 2: 

This weekend shall forever be named as the best weekend vacation ever until that time when I check into Katakies Hotel in Santorini, Greece. My weekend was rather eventful with N planning the whole thing. It’s weird how fast we caught up with the two year information gap. I was like we are back in IIT, just a change of venue from Roorkee to Edinburgh.

Cafes and Parks in the middle of bustling Edinburgh

We had a quiet dinner in Aberdeen on Friday and caught up with each other’s lives. The day trip to Edinburgh the next day was unlike any other touristy trip because for once I was more interested in the experience than the place in itself. We moved from pub to pub tasting their ales and talking away with a bit of shopping thrown in between. We ended up in a Jazz Bar which was by far one of the best live music shows I have attended. It was a cozy basement with low lighting and comfy chairs and a jazz band in the background. I was pretty tipsy by the time we got out because I was so engrossed in the music I didn’t think twice about the amount of alcohol imbibed.

Impromptu Concert

We reluctantly left the place around 10 in the night. Now, at this point on any other day I would head back home and have an early night but that day I did not want to go back. I wanted to dance which might have been the liquor talking but I dint care. At this point I should probably talk about the weather there. It was so cold I did not take my jacket off even inside restaurants the whole day. But, by the time we got dressed for our club part of the night, I was wearing a flimsy dress with no stockings and a light jacket on but I was not cold.

Best part of the night..or maybe one of them

We went to the Cowgate part of the city trying to find out a good club and got into Espionage which was in a basement of this old gothic building. It looked like we walked into a jail cell in 18^th century. We got some Jaeger bombs into our systems before we started the party. I did not dance that much since L but the crowd was much much much better behaved and good looking :D. We found a group of German students and danced with them for the rest of the night. We got back to our room at around 4 in the morning and I was still pumped :D

The Lone Bagpiper

The next day was obviously is the day I realize that I am too old for this shit. So, we limited ourselves to just walking around and having some greasy breakfast followed by a train journey to Aberdeen and a flight more to London.

Weekend 3: 

This was the weekend that I was dicey about. N was supposed to come down to London but as they say never make plans with people in the Oil field :). I was waiting anxiously till Friday morning that week to find out her status. I did have a back-up lined but still I was excited about the Lovebox thing and I would not go there all by myself if she dints turn up. But that she did.

We walked around Piccadilly Circus and Covent Garden on Friday night trying to find a good restaurant. Saturday we did not exert ourselves as we were getting ready for a heavy Sunday. We walked around Hyde Park, had some lunch and moved to Kensington for a glass of cider and crepes followed by another pub in Mayfair where I definitely got too drunk on rose wine (sad day I say!)

The next day we got up and planned for our festival trip all the way to Victoria Park in Hackney, one tube and taxi ride later we found ourselves at a nice family park and I was wondering whether we were at the right place when we heard the familiar cacophony of music from the other side. We walked in where the guys checked all my bags (I guess that never changes) and found ourselves in the Lovebox :D We dint have the schedule on us so we went to a friendly looking organizer and asked about it, instead she handed over a nice little envelope with a contraceptive in it and try to talk us into free STD testing. I will never forget this kind of welcome.

We were pretty early to the party, so it was not that crowded. We got ourselves some drinks and sat down in the park to have a nice lunch. MS MR was performing that day which I found out exactly half hour before they actually came onto the stage which was kind of awesome because I have been listening to their music for the past two months.

Around 5 PM the crowd was getting drunker which was when I observed there were far more guys than girls which should have been a clue but I did not notice it.  Everyone was dressed really well, no scruffily dressed people here, that should have been clue number two. And finally I saw a guy wearing My Private Idaho t shirt ( I was so happy that people appreciate Gus Van Sant, ignorant me :D), I don’t think people can get more obvious than that, but I ignored that one too. I couldn't stay ignorant after a while because, well actions speak louder than words.

But, it was so much fun. We were surrounded by at least thousand drunk guys and I was not afraid. I might finally give electronic genre a chance after listening to Paul Kalkbrenner. I danced like a crazy person. I don’t think I was ever this carefree in any concert. I loved the feel of the whole thing. There was so much security everywhere and these guys were supplying water to the concert goers in between. We came back home covered in dirt and grime but it was so totally worth it. This would be a concert like no other.

Only one final weekend left before I head back to India, hopefully I would be spending it walking around the city and enjoying the short-lived English summer in London.