Josh and I have had another busy and fun week here in London. We kicked the week off with a rock climbing "taster" session at
The Castle Climbing Center. The building that houses the climbing center truly looks like a castle! "The Castle" was built as a water pumping station back in the Victorian era...
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| The Castle Rock Climbing Center |
...and is now used as a place for climbers to practice their skills. Josh and I were a little dubious when we first entered the building. It literally smelled like sweat and feet! I suppose we got desensitized to the smell though, because we ended up having a great time. I am somewhat afraid of heights and I was very nervous about climbing up the walls, even if I was attached to a rope!
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| Josh practicing going horizontally on a short wall. |
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| Me ready to attack a wall! So nervous! |
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| Can you see me way up there? I made it! |
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| Josh on the same wall. |
I would definitely climb again. It was fun and it was a great workout! My arms and legs were sore until Wednesday!
On Tuesday, Josh went out with some of his old coworkers from Expedia in Springfield. They were in London for a conference. He had a great time bar hopping with his buddies and showing them around the Islington area.
I had a Nanny interview on Thursday morning with a very nice American lady (who sounds British). She has been living in London for about 10 years. Her husband is British and they have two adorable kids, a 2 1/2 year old boy and a 4 year old girl. We had a fantastic conversation that lasted nearly two hours! I am meeting the kids next Tuesday and hope to start working with them in the near future.
On Friday, I didn't really have much to do at home. I have been wanting to try to "upcycle" a few shirts of mine, so I got out my trusty sewing machine and got to work. I ended up making two new shirts out of two old long sleeve shirts that I no longer wore. I thought they turned out pretty good!
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| Ruffle tee from an old long sleeve shirt. |
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| Another ruffle tee :) |
Friday night, Josh and I went our separate ways. Josh had a work event at a bowling alley and I was going out with my meetup.com Islington ladies group. I had a great night and stayed out much later than I thought I would. First we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Desperadoes. It was pretty good, but not what I would call Mexican! I guess it is the British interpretation of Mexican, ha ha! I did have a huge, yummy blue margarita. After dinner we went to a couple different bars which was fun, but the noise level made it difficult to chat. Still, overall, a very fun night meeting some new ladies in my area of London.
Josh and I had a hard time deciding what to do on Saturday. It was another beautiful day to be outside and we wanted to ride the Barclay bikes again. At first, we were going to go to a huge park called Hampstead Heath, but the Barclay bikes are not available that far north. We finally decided on riding our bikes down the canal path to the river Thames. We were meeting our Australian friends for dinner down that way later on, so it worked out!
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| Josh on the canal. |
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| The canal walk. |
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| One of many canal boats...this one selling books! |
The canal walk is full of people on bikes and exercising and people walking dogs and babies in prams. It is an interesting place where graffiti mixes with fancy apartment buildings and canal boats clog up the water.
We stopped along the way to visit the Broadway market in Hackney.
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| Broadway Market |
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| Mmmm...Lunch! |
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| A food vendor at the Market. |
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| At a park next to the Broadway market. |
After having a snack at the Broadway market, Josh and I continued through the canal towards the river. We ended up at Canary Wharf and promptly started looking for a place to sit down and have a drink!
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| Canary Wharf |
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| Josh and I at Canary Wharf |
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| Josh and his pink fruity drink :) |
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| Me and my Spanish beer...Estrella (very good!) |
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| Our attempt at a Corona style picture...except I have a claw hand and you can't see Josh's drink! |
After our fortifying beer/fruity drinks, we continued exploring the area we were in. We came across a church with a cemetery. I am a sucker for old stone cemeteries, so we went in and explored.
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| St. Anne's Church |
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| I've never seen a gravestone like this! |
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| Gravestones. |
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| This stone was as tall as me! |
After some exploring it was time to go meet up with our Aussie friends for a delicious dinner at the
Lahore Kebab House in the Brick Lane area. The food was amazing! We haven't seen our Aussie friends for a few weeks, so it was nice to catch up and see how they are fairing in London. After dinner we took a walk down Brick Lane and found a pub to have a few more drinks in. It was a great night ending with a random guy playing his guitar and singing for everyone on the tube!
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| Random tube picture :) |
8 comments:
So fun! I love the shirts! Great talking with you on Friday...miss you! Sarah
Great pictures and as usual great stories to go with them. The rock climbing looked kind od dangerous to me, rope or no ropes. Hey, grat job on shirts. You are a girl of many talents. Peggy Mahoney Marcks likes old cemeteries also. As did your Grandpa. We went to one up by Navoo he found. He had me take pictures of all. Love you, take care. Thanks for all the pictures. Makes it feel like your closer. Granny D
YAY! New Blog!! Dad and I get excited to read them. Love, love the shirts, so are big huge buttons in this year? I know colored jeans are. I knew you could do the rock climbing,looked like fun.and the building looked neat, don't think I could get past that smell though. Wonder if Cathy would approve that Food Vendor Market, hmmmmmmm On the bikes,can you rent,then drop off at another location? Or have to bring back where you picked up? Claw hand, LOL! other then that, the view looked beautiful. So enjoy seeing your pictures, you Kids are so lucky to be living this lifestyle, ask Josh if Expedia needs a Engineer?
The sky looked a bit threatening in some pictures, did you ever get rained on? Looked like a fabulous day though otherwise.
PS. Take a picture of your Ladies Group, and your Aussie Friends next time. Oh and are the Ladies Group mostly single women? out bar hopping?
Let's see here...
I don't know if big buttons are in...I have a bunch of vintage buttons from Josh's Aunt Myrtle, and I thought they were a cute addition to the shirts.
The bikes are great. We pay 1 pound for 24 hours of access. Then we take a bike and as long as we drop it off every 30 minutes, we aren't charged more. We can drop them off wherever we can find an empty rack. It is brilliant!
I don't think Expedia does the type of work that dad does!
No, we didn't get rained on. Occasionally, it will sprinkle and we did have one day of heavy rain this week, but usually it stays pretty nice.
I will try to get pics. The Aussie's are going to Paris next week so we won't see them until Trisha visits (we are planning to go out to dinner with them and Trish on the 25th). The Islington group is a mix of married and single ladies.
Miss you too!
Thanks Grandma! It is good to hear from you!
It's called a cocktail, and it has hard, manly alcohol in it. - Lord of the House of Baird.
LOL! Josh!!
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