London goodness

On Sunday afternoon Ant and I went out to see The Dark Knight with two of our friends. It was a really good movie, although perhaps a bit scary for its 12A rating. Afterwards we headed across the street to a restaurant called Blue Hawaii. We ate all you can eat BBQ: first you collect an empty bowl and fill it with your choice of vegetables. Then you add some raw meat on top (beef, pork, chicken, gammon, calamari, and prawns to choose from). Then add a ladle of one of several types of oil and two ladles of sauce (there were about about fifteen choices!). Finally you add spices and take the bowl to the BBQ chef. He is cooking on a massive dome-shaped hot plate. He takes your bowl and spreads it over the cooking surface, catching any drips in the bowl and then tossing with the sauces. It cooks for a few minutes, while he arranges it with his big sticks. Then he collects it all up for you into a new bowl--voila, a perfect bowl of BBQ veg and meat.


Yesterday I spent the day with Jennifer shopping and enjoying London. We headed over to Camden market first. There are so many stalls along the high street and the canal and in maze-like market areas. We saw so many interesting things and smelled lots of delicious food. Jennifer wanted to buy some little gifts for her friends before she leaves. We visited lots of jewellery stalls to find the perfect earrings. In the end of the stall holders gave us each a free pair of studs. I loved one particular stall that was selling loads of costume jewellery in bins.


Here are the three small things I bought. My free studs are in the middle--aren't they tiny! The ring on the left cost me 49p. The moisturiser is from Lush, an amazing cosmetics company.


Jennifer and I went to Covent Garden after lunch and we also stopped by the National Gallery to see a few paintings. My favourites there are a Vermeer painting of a woman playing music and the Impressionist rooms. I have always loved the Monet paintings of water-lilies, the most beautiful paintings of which are in Paris, which I saw with my family when we were travelling in Europe when I was a teenager. Yesterday we also saw the Coastal Scene by Seurat, which is a beautiful pointillist painting, and Van Gogh's Sunflowers, an essential stop for Jennifer's only visit to the National Gallery. The colours are incredible and the online images don't really do it justice, in particular the background yellow is a lovely bright, clean lemon yellow that seems hard to reproduce.