I woke up yesterday to a rare sunshine-y day and only one thing on my schedule: visit HSBC and work out closing or modifying my bank account. With my time in London coming to a close soon, paying £8 per month for HSBC maintenance fees is no longer justified. I made my way down to the HSBC near London Bridge so I could have an excuse to hit up Borough Market afterwards. I was in and out of the bank in 20 minutes and was excited to see a surprisingly bustling Borough Market. Normally Thursdays are a bit more tame, but the sunshine seemed to have brought out all of the hermits. I grabbed a delicious veg fajita from a vendor and made my way down to Southwark Cathedral to grab a seat and enjoy the much-needed Vitamin D.
After my afternoon jaunt through Borough, I met up with my friend, E., so we could catch a showing of Billy Elliot! I’ve been dying to see it this year and it was the last must-see musical on my list.
We caught the 2:30P showing and managed to snag tickets for £19.50 each. Sadly, they don’t offer student discounts or last-minute deals, but on the bright side, £19.50′s quite a steal for a Grade A musical. It wasn’t the best musical I’ve seen (Wicked, The Lion King and Jersey Boys were higher up on my list), but there’s something to be said about watching the cutest (talented!) little kiddos singing and dancing.
After the musical, E. & I met up with another friend from our MSc programme this year and grabbed dinner in Camden at Mezza Express (a play on Pizza Express? Not sure.). On top of the fact that I’ve been craving Middle Eastern food, I also got to practice some of my new-found Arabic skills on the server! Definitely fun. He also said something that made me realize the limitations of Modern Standard Arabic: “I want to talk to you in Arabic, but you sound like a book.” Hahaha. He went on to say that the way they speak in Lebanon is different and while he understood me perfectly well, his responses would be in a Lebanese dialect which I probably wouldn’t understand. Duly noted. I’m hoping that spending some time in an Arabic-speaking country will help! After dinner, we ended up having a little pow wow (including a Backstreet Boys Marathon) at my friend’s nearby flat. In addition to embarrassing ourselves by singing along to every BSB song from 1997 onward, we also booked a fun-filled trip to Bath, Stonehenge and Salisbury for Sunday! So excited — stay tuned for pictures and a re-cap.
Catch up with you soon,
