London: The Big Smoke

Two days in London.  

There are things you have to accept if you want to enjoy London - you are going to go home with an very empty wallet, people are going to bump into you - like over and over, and did I mention the empty wallet.

For example, for £210/night you can get a room in a great location, but it'll be a room with a bed in it - like that's it.

Best part was that the pillow kept falling into the window

The threading was interesting and not near as painful as I was anticipating.  I find it sometimes helps to expect the worst when trying a new beauty treatment.  

Threading is all the rage, and Gill got her eyebrows done at Blinc in Selfridges.

You see they take thread and they make kind of a Cats Cradle with it and then they run it along your skin trapping the hair in the thread and pulling it out by the root.  This is supposed to be very precise, trap every hair and doesn't remove any of your skin like wax sometimes can.  

There were 8 chairs at Blinc, and they were always full, and each woman was having every kind of hair removal - not just eyebrows.  Some women had VERY red faces, which I am not sure I would enjoy in the middle of a department store.

Unlike waxing, there are times when you have to help as their hands are full of thread

Wednesday, Gill arrived in London in the afternoon and met me in Convent Garden - as I was exiting the dressing room in COS.  We marched back to Selfridges to get her eyebrows done and drop off my bags from my days shopping.  Then we headed back to Covent Garden and ate at Jamie's (as in Oliver) Italian Kitchen.  It was incredible and we both noted it had been too long since either of us had a bowl of pasta or sat across the table from one another and talked.

During the day, I picked a general direction and went down every interesting street and alley.  London was all duded up for Christmas, and it was fairly spectacular.

A Christmas Story in Handbags

I did occasionally have to consult my map as I wondered - how did I get down here?  I covered several miles each day and was pleasantly sore.

Seriously Cute

There were several arcades and inside are wonderful little stores that don't exist anywhere else.  I particularly like the macaron store, and I purchase a little sleeve of cookies that I am still working through.

This one was FILLED with jewelry - new and old - it was droolworthy

Thursday, Gill and I met up for lunch at Selfridges.  We shared a salt beef Ruben.  The salt beef was from Cork, Ireland.  

We were each going to get one, but then the master said , NO too big - so Gill said, we should share one?  So he looks us over for a minute and says yes, share one - so we did.

I N C R E D I B L E

After lunch we went to Nails Inc for a manicure and pedicure.  The shop was a bit grotty - not clean, over crowded and confused.   But they took us upstairs for our pedicure and turned on Pretty Woman, which caused Gill and I to giggle for an hour - all the giggling caused shaking that could not have made the pedicure easy, but they didn't fuss at us and that made up for everything.

After our nails, we both got ready for our night out - which is why we were in London in the first place.  We'd had our eye makeup done at Chanel.  Gill text me that she'd had to apply more makeup as she just didn't feel her's was strong enough - this is just as I was taking a tissue and trying to remove mine as I thought: too much...too much.

It was a great night with good food.  Always interesting and strange to see people you work with in black tie, but it was a real laugh.  

After 2 hours of sleep, I retraced my steps to Gatwick and flew home on Friday.

In Edinburgh, I saw one of the guys from the night before.  He didn't immediately recognize me last night and once he did, he said, my god you clean up well.  As I approached him in the airport, I shouted, Not so pretty now am I?  We had a laugh and he acknowledged that I was a bit scruffy - which caused his companion to gasp.  I said, no, I know I'm scruffy.

What a nice trip - have I mentioned how lucky I am.