Last Friday it was my 29th birthday. While I unfortunately could not avoid work that day, Angie gave me my presents in the morning which was good! One of the presents was a poster of a painting I like it has written on it (in French) "This is not a Pipe".. It's not a pipe, it's a painting of a pipe. The other part of that gift was tickets to the Surrealism exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (along with chocolate and other nice things!). Angie baked me a cake too!Before that, though, I went to work and afterwards we went to Jamie Oliver's restaurant Fifteen for an early dinner. We ate in the Trattoria section which is upstairs and is more casual - we ate so much that the tube ride home was quite uncomfortable. It was a really nice meal though - we'll be going back.
On Saturday it was a lovely day - the sun was out and it was shorts weather. A short trip to the V & A later and we were in the exhibit. No photography is allowed, but there was a lot of good stuff in there. My favourite was actually the artist of the painting I like - Rene Magritte - but they had a lot of Salvador Dali and Man Ray as well. Angie and I disagree about which was better, but she's wrong so don't worry about that.
After the exhibit we had lunch in the restaurant there and then we sat in the courtyard for a while to soak up the sun. Lots of kids were in the water, which was much to the irritation of the V&A staff because it's not allowed! No-one touched the sculpture in the centre though, so it wasn't too bad.
We went home at about 2 and lazed about for a few hours before heading to Covent Garden to The Harp to meet Gregg and Natasha. Alex and Lea unfortunately couldn't make it but they will be moving to London in 2 weeks so they're forgiven :) We managed to get seats right at the front early on that we claimed all night. My mission, which I chose to accept, was to try all of the local Real Ales they had there. Real Ales are the 'proper English ales' that are served at cellar temperature and are not very bubbly, but they are normally brewed in boutique breweries and are unique to the area. One was like Guinness in flavour but not so syrupy, and at the other end there was a wheat beer, and everything in between. It's a really nice place though so I think we'll go back. The thing is though, you can't move for pubs in that part of town so it might be a while before we visit enough different ones to choose favourites.
After the pub and in time for the last tube, we headed off home. A good day! Sunday, for some reason, Angie wasn't feeling 100% - we can't imagine why?! I had to soldier on to get a certain someone certain gifts for a certain upcoming day, because next weekend we'll be in Oxford for a weekend break, so I won't have time. Photos to come, of course!
More photos of Dan givin' the old crazy-eye
