October Recap: London Part 1

I got to go to London the last week of October. Let me say I love London, so so much. I don’t know why but it’s a place I could visit over and over again and not get bored.

Anyway, I spend 5 days in London. Well, 4 really as I spent my first night and second day visiting friends in Oxford! Here’s a quick recap of my first 2 days.

After roughly 3 hours of sleep, I got up and headed to the airport with 4 friends (and a fifth met us at Stansted). From here, I went onto Westfield’s Stratford and met up with Lex, from bonjour, l’amour. We had a great day shopping, laughing and having fun, even though we did have wait 45 minutes for our lunch from GBK. Best shop was probably Forever 21, you could get lost in there looking at everything!

Lex on the giant shoes in New Look!

After Lex caught her train I did a bit more shopping and then headed to Paddington Station to catch a train to Oxford! When I arrived, Beth had made me a yummy dinner (as well as some delicious brownie cheesecakes!) and after we had some wine, chats and old music. And then to bed, which looked like this

The next day we did some shopping and went to lunch with Angela, looked at some of Oxford’s pretty scenery, had some Krispy Kreme donuts, saw a hotel that was once a prison and took advantage of Happy Hour! I was sad to leave Oxford as I was having a great time. And I wish our friend Donna could have been there too.

 

Yummy lamb burger for lunch; Pretty Oxford

Donuts! And the prison hotel

Beth, Angela and me.

That afternoon I went back to London to meet my cousin and my friends for a Jack the Ripper Walk! We went with Ripping Yarns and had a great time with our tour guide Dickie. The walk was about 2 and half hours long and brought us around a lot of the East End, through places like Brick Lane, Whitechapel and Spitalfields, showing us places where Jack the Ripper victims lived, worked and died. It’s very entertaining and well worth the £7. After we ate and then I headed back with my cousin to her house to catch up on some sleep!

St. Boltoph’s Church, Aldgate. Also know as “Church of Prostitutes”.

(last picture from http://www.jack-the-ripper-tours.com/)

11.11.11

Ah, what an interesting date! Looks so odd but at the same time looks so nice. So many people believe in the power of 1s. I know people who love it when they just happen to look at a clock and the is 11.11. Or their bill in the shop is 11.11. They make wishes when this number occurrence happens. I know 11.11.11 is probably a popular request for a wedding day and that so people will hope their baby is born this day.

I tried to research if anything interesting happened on 11.11.1111 (ah, the ultimate of 1 dates!), but nothing came up. However, 11th November is an interesting date of itself. Lots of interesting things have happened over the years.

- 1918 Official end of WWI, at 11am (11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month)

-1926 Route 66 in USA is established

- 1880 Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged

- 1675 Gottfried Leibniz shows for the first time the area under a graph using integral calculus y = ƒ(x)

- 1992 Church of England vote to allow female priests

Leonardo DiCaprio, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore and Calista Flockhart all share birthdays today. Today marks the death of Ned Kelly, Mary Mallon (a.k.a. Typhoid Mary) and Yasser Arafat. Today is also Remembrance Day (Poppy Day, Veterans Day, Armistice Day in other countries), a remembrance to the end of WWI and a mark of respect for those who fought and lost their life.

Do you have any special plans for today? Do you have any dates or numbers you think are luckier than others? If so, I’d love to hear!

 

(P.S. I got most these facts on Wikipedia, so please don’t be too hard on me if something isn’t entirely true!)

It’s that time of year again!

I’ve been watching some YouTube videos recently and quite a lot of them have said ‘I can’t believe it’s November again’, ‘Can you believe it’s November?!’, ‘Wow, it’s November!’. It reminded me of Michael McIntyre and this particular sketch on it being November. Never fails to make me laugh.

Halloween Treats!

I know this is a bit late but here’s all the treats I made on Halloween for my family! I might edit it later and put in recipes, but for now just pictures.

Chocolate orange cake made in a pumpkin mould I got in Aldi! Next time I use it, I’ll probably ice the cake too.

Ghost muffins! Or as we called them Ghost Toast! Made from another mould I got in Aldi.

 

Mummys (Just home made sausage rolls, using puff pastry wound in strips to look like a mummy). Not the prettiest of foods I’ll admit!

Witches brew soup! (Pea, broccoli and bacon soup). Was surprisingly yummy!

Fudgy popcorn balls. Which I ate, a miracle considering I don’ like popcorn!

Skull and pumpkin white chocolates (pumpkins just have some food colouring in them). And the dark ones are made from left over fudge sauce from the popcorn. Another mould I got from Aldi (wish I bought them all now!).

Orange jelly with gummy worms and skulls inside. Made using the mould from the pumpkin cake above. I’m particularly happy with how this looks, my mother said it looked horrible (I took that as a compliment).

Of course, there was lots of sweets from trick or treating (with the odd bit of fruit too!).

Bonus cat picture!

Woody trying to steal some of the ribs from dinner (he got into the Halloween mood by getting out his creepy eyes!).

October Recap: Ballet

 

So for the second weekend in October, I got to do something I had never done before: Go to the ballet! The UL Concert Hall was showing The Moscow Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ and I went along with my mother, aunt, 2 sisters and a cousin, one big girlie night out! We got seats right in front of the stage, which is great in that venue as the stage isn’t high up. It was a beautiful production, the strength and stamina these men and women have is amazing! And the costumes are just so pretty. I got to take a few pictures and one video of the last half of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Although it was a little early in the year to be showing The Nutcracker (traditionally a Christmas show), I’d recommend going anytime. I love Tchaikovsky’s music and you’d be surprised how much you know (I think I knew most of it from Fantasia!). I’m really looking forward to getting the chance to go again to the ballet.