Working For The Weekend

Finally...our first weekend after my first week back at work was here and...IT WAS AWESOME!  I don’t know if it was because I had worked all week and rediscovered new appreciation for the weekend or if it was just really an awesome weekend all the way around...maybe both!

Sadly, I can’t remember how we kicked off the weekend on Friday night, but I’m pretty sure covering Saturday and Sunday will still make for an interesting and sizable post.

On Saturday we got up and went for a run down by the river (the Thames) which takes you by Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. It’s really amazing how “in the middle of it all” we live! Then we got some breakfast as we headed back towards home.  Our first traditional English breakfast consisting of beans, toast, eggs, sausages and a rasher of bacon. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon  a rasher of bacon is one serving of bacon. Check out the link to learn more than you ever needed to know about bacon.  Then before returning home we went to check out the discount ticket booth to see what was on and discounted for the day.  Chicago (with America Ferrara a.k.a Ugly Betty) was discounted at 50% off and there were 12^th row center seats available for the Saturday 3 PM matinee.  We bought the tickets and went home. 

After doing a little cleaning, we got ready to go out for the day.  We finally dropped off the two second hand suitcases I had purchased for our move to London at a local charity shop about a half mile from our flat.  It was good to get them out of the way since they were kind of bulky and we didn’t have sufficient closet space to “hide” them.  Then we grabbed some lunch at Belgo Centraal and went to the show.  The show was great.  America did a fantastic job and our seats could not have been better. 

Saturday evening we took it pretty easy.  We walked to another part of town, called Fitzrovia, that we had not spent much time in but liked during our flat hunting visit in September.    We also stopped by our local TK Maxx to look for sport coats for Mo.  TK Maxx is the UK’s TJ Maxx and they are virtually identical except UK/European brands versus US brands.  We had success and scored two very reasonably priced sport coats for Mo.

Sunday we had some unusually pretty weather for November.  Since it was so nice we headed out early to a place called Spitalfields Market.  Markets are huge here on the weekend and it seems Sunday in particular.  Spitalfields is an indoor market with shops, stalls and restaurants.  Many design students sell their wares at Spitalfields.  A couple of streets over on Brick Lane is an outdoor market.  The market is largely stalls selling prepared foods with a few stalls, much like a flea market, selling used and new goods.  We started our time on Brick Lane with a bagel from the famous Brick Lane Beigel Bake.  We stayed long enough to share a couple of other items from the food stalls for lunch.  Brick Lane has definitely become a favorite for Sundays.

After returning home Mo researched and found a sports bar that was playing the Falcons game.  It was not an easy feat as only some of the football games are shown by the networks in the UK and the Falcons game was not one of them that weekend.  Mo found an online forum about American football which eventually led us to the sports bar that was playing the game.  We spent the evening watching the game and met some local Atlanta Falcons fans. More on our American football experiences and friends will be the subject of a later post. It was a great way to end a fun weekend.