London

Sushi go round

On Friday, we picked up Tom from school and headed straight to Lancaster as we were catching the train to London to see Helen, Max and Baby Aster.  First stop, though, was an early tea at Nami Sushi.  We had forgotten that Tom hadn't been yet, he was very excited to see all the sushi passing by on the conveyor belt.  We let him choose a plate (he went for salmon surprise, surprise) and then we shared a chicken katsu curry, a salmon teriyaki don, some gyoza and edamame.

We then headed to the station and got our train to Euston (a Pendolino called Stephen Sutton).  The train left on time, our reservations held and we arrived in Euston on time - can't ask for better than that.  We then got ourselves across to Ilford, where we were met by Helen.  We got to her house at 9pm, not bad considering we left Lancaster at 5.40pm.

Baby hugs

We were greeted by Max, cheese, wine and biscuits - fantastic, we settled right in.  It was a good night, but quite a late night, and quite an alcoholic night!  We got to stay in their new loft conversion too, which was amazing.  Very very comfortable and large.  Normally after a bit of a drink, neither of us sleep too well, but we were out for the count here.

Imperial War Museum

On Saturday, we had a bit of a lie in, and then a breakfast of croissants, pains aux raisin and pains au chocolat.  They must have known our tastes as this is Matt's favourite.  We tucked in and then we headed out to the Imperial War Museum.  It has been refurbished, and Max thought it might be interesting for Tom.  We were wowed by the place.  The display on the first world war on the bottom floor was amazing, full of interactive displays for Tom to play with and plenty for us to read, learn and be interested by too.  We lost a good 90 mins in there, I could have spent the whole day just in that bit.  We headed to the restaurant for lunch (surprisingly good and reasonably priced) and then went to the second world war - not quite as good, but plenty of interesting vehicles for Tom including the front part a Lancaster bomber.

Bang!

We stopped for tea and a bun, during which time Helen and Aster joined us, and then headed to another floor where we learnt about life for an ordinary family during the second world war (children were evacuated from London to the countryside (?) of Wokingham - poor things!!!!!).  We then decided we had had enough - we had been there for 5 hours, so we got the bus (front seat upstairs!) and then train back to Ilford.  

Northern Baby!

We were joined by Phil and Anna (Matt's friends from Uni - Max and Phil went to university together) and were treated to 4 curries, rice, naan, popadoms and lots of other Indian treats.  Fantastic - just what we all needed with our hunger hangovers.  We all tucked in and ate too much, but were much more restrained with the alcohol intake this evening.

Lovely girlies

We had another amazing night sleep in our suite and a lie in - in fact I was told to stay in bed whilst Tom and Matt went down to the kitchen.  I got breakfast in bed (more pastries) and a bunch of flowers and a card, it was Mother's Day.  Great start to the day.  We then headed in to London Kings Cross to meet up with Katherine and Lily for lunch.    A good time was had by all.  Too quickly it was time to say goodbye.  Shame, we had a wonderful time, great hospitality, great hotel room, baby Aster was a joy (once she got to know us) - lovely to have some baby hugs, Isobel was also very good company and entertained Tom in lovely style, and well, we all got on and had a great time.  Tom was exceptionally well behaved during our time away.  On the train on the way home, I even got to read a book (and Matt got three long-ish patentability reports translated) whilst he amused himself (unheard of to date).  We had dinner at The Bridge on the way home and were in bed nice and early.

Thank you Helen and Max for a great weekend.