My Weekend...
Hi everyone
By and large I've thus far had a fantastic weekend
It all started at obscene-O'clock on Friday morning when arminh came to collect me for our trip down to London. A quick hop over to jwhiskers_'s to pick up him and easytiger and we were away!. After several attempts at finding a service station that had a McDonalds we gave up and went to 'Generic Fry-ups inc.' for a horribly expensive, but much needed lardy brekfast and then on we trotted...
We were making damn good time down the M1 until we we around Milton Keynes. We saw lots of notices about an accident causing serious delays a bit further down the line so decided to hop off the motorway and take the nearest A-road for about 10 miles and then rejoin the motorway past the disturbance. This was a plan so cunning we could have pinned a tail on it and called it a fox. Except for the fact that the rest of the south of England had had the same idea, so our little diversion took us over 90minutes to complete :(
Anyway, after that we made London in good time, and after a little bit of faffing around we got to our hotel at around 1pm, to find that gourou and kitten_star had beaten us down there quite substantially (they set off by train an hour after us and got down there two hours ahead of us - oops). At this point gourou and I headed off to meet madfuzzy to go check out the Gamestars Live exhibition over in Docklands.
It was a pretty good show, although there wasn't enough PC stuff for my tastes - it was overwhelmingly console based. It was certainly an experience, but I can't help feeling it was probably the least interesting part of the trip in the end (kind of ironic really, as it was the entire reason the trip was organised in the first place :) ). I alway came away attempting to fight the urge to buy an X-Box (as Burnout 3 and Outrun 2 are out in the very near future and both are fantastically good games.) Help Me!
After doing the show we all headed back to our hotel, and we quickly got showered and changed for the evening activities. After introducing madfuzzy to everyone we had a quick drink in the hotel bar and then away to pick up murasaki_star and to a nice pizza restauraunt for dinner. After dinner we bade fairwell to madfuzzy and murasaki_star and made our way to the Strand to see Chicago at the Adelphi theatre. I'd not seen the film and didn't know much about the plot so I basically went in cold and I thought it was fantastic - the music was great and the performances were pretty good too, although I wasn't too sure about the casting of the two female leads... The Hoff did his best to steal the show and I'm sure I heard a 'You are nothing!' from the back when he came onstage for the first time. It was a great show, and I really enjoyed it so thanks to easytiger for suggesting it :)
We made our way back to the hotel bar, and after a nightcap that turned into several rather expensive rounds we all called it a night and went to bed.
Having arranged to meet at 9 the following morning arminh and I headed downstairs to find a practically unconcious easytiger and jwhiskers_ and a completely not there gourou and kitten_star. Once they were roused we went off to grab brekfast and make our plans for the day. We started off having a wander round the National Art Gallery which was fun for a while, although not really somethign I found enjoyable, so when kitten_star announced she wanted to go find something to eat and have a bit of a rest (as she'd not joined us all for brekfast) I was happy to go with her and get her sorted out. We all met in Trafalgar Square a little later and went for a stroll towards the river, at which point we binned our original plan of the Tate Modern and then Grenwich because of time considerations.
Instead, we decided to just do Madame Tussaudes and the Planetarium which was pretty fun - I'd never been to Tussauds before and some of the waxworks were amazing - some, like Morgan Freeman and Samual L Jackson looked *utterly* lifelike, while others, like John Travolta and Tom Cruise were frankly a bit shit. Anyway, was interesting to wander around and the Chamber of Horrors was fun - they have this live action thing you can walk through, where actors seem to pick on the most nervous in the group. And as kitten_star had decided to skip this bit that meant easytiger got all the attention. She was a quivering bag of nerves by the time she got out...
After finishing with Tussauds we waandered up the stairs to the planetarium, and watched a very pretty ten-minute show in quite a lot of discomfort - they'd remodelled the whole thing since I was down there when I was a kid, and the seating is *not* suitable for the purpose of the room at all.
That saw the end of our activities for the weekend - we went and had a sit down in a bar, and then to get some Japanese food before the journey home. We made much better time coming back and about three hours after setting off we all said our goodbyes and were home. It was a fantastic, allbeit very tiring weekend.
By and large I've thus far had a fantastic weekend
It all started at obscene-O'clock on Friday morning when arminh came to collect me for our trip down to London. A quick hop over to jwhiskers_'s to pick up him and easytiger and we were away!. After several attempts at finding a service station that had a McDonalds we gave up and went to 'Generic Fry-ups inc.' for a horribly expensive, but much needed lardy brekfast and then on we trotted...
We were making damn good time down the M1 until we we around Milton Keynes. We saw lots of notices about an accident causing serious delays a bit further down the line so decided to hop off the motorway and take the nearest A-road for about 10 miles and then rejoin the motorway past the disturbance. This was a plan so cunning we could have pinned a tail on it and called it a fox. Except for the fact that the rest of the south of England had had the same idea, so our little diversion took us over 90minutes to complete :(
Anyway, after that we made London in good time, and after a little bit of faffing around we got to our hotel at around 1pm, to find that gourou and kitten_star had beaten us down there quite substantially (they set off by train an hour after us and got down there two hours ahead of us - oops). At this point gourou and I headed off to meet madfuzzy to go check out the Gamestars Live exhibition over in Docklands.
It was a pretty good show, although there wasn't enough PC stuff for my tastes - it was overwhelmingly console based. It was certainly an experience, but I can't help feeling it was probably the least interesting part of the trip in the end (kind of ironic really, as it was the entire reason the trip was organised in the first place :) ). I alway came away attempting to fight the urge to buy an X-Box (as Burnout 3 and Outrun 2 are out in the very near future and both are fantastically good games.) Help Me!
After doing the show we all headed back to our hotel, and we quickly got showered and changed for the evening activities. After introducing madfuzzy to everyone we had a quick drink in the hotel bar and then away to pick up murasaki_star and to a nice pizza restauraunt for dinner. After dinner we bade fairwell to madfuzzy and murasaki_star and made our way to the Strand to see Chicago at the Adelphi theatre. I'd not seen the film and didn't know much about the plot so I basically went in cold and I thought it was fantastic - the music was great and the performances were pretty good too, although I wasn't too sure about the casting of the two female leads... The Hoff did his best to steal the show and I'm sure I heard a 'You are nothing!' from the back when he came onstage for the first time. It was a great show, and I really enjoyed it so thanks to easytiger for suggesting it :)
We made our way back to the hotel bar, and after a nightcap that turned into several rather expensive rounds we all called it a night and went to bed.
Having arranged to meet at 9 the following morning arminh and I headed downstairs to find a practically unconcious easytiger and jwhiskers_ and a completely not there gourou and kitten_star. Once they were roused we went off to grab brekfast and make our plans for the day. We started off having a wander round the National Art Gallery which was fun for a while, although not really somethign I found enjoyable, so when kitten_star announced she wanted to go find something to eat and have a bit of a rest (as she'd not joined us all for brekfast) I was happy to go with her and get her sorted out. We all met in Trafalgar Square a little later and went for a stroll towards the river, at which point we binned our original plan of the Tate Modern and then Grenwich because of time considerations.
Instead, we decided to just do Madame Tussaudes and the Planetarium which was pretty fun - I'd never been to Tussauds before and some of the waxworks were amazing - some, like Morgan Freeman and Samual L Jackson looked *utterly* lifelike, while others, like John Travolta and Tom Cruise were frankly a bit shit. Anyway, was interesting to wander around and the Chamber of Horrors was fun - they have this live action thing you can walk through, where actors seem to pick on the most nervous in the group. And as kitten_star had decided to skip this bit that meant easytiger got all the attention. She was a quivering bag of nerves by the time she got out...
After finishing with Tussauds we waandered up the stairs to the planetarium, and watched a very pretty ten-minute show in quite a lot of discomfort - they'd remodelled the whole thing since I was down there when I was a kid, and the seating is *not* suitable for the purpose of the room at all.
That saw the end of our activities for the weekend - we went and had a sit down in a bar, and then to get some Japanese food before the journey home. We made much better time coming back and about three hours after setting off we all said our goodbyes and were home. It was a fantastic, allbeit very tiring weekend.