This week was another busy one, although less so at work, having settled back into the usual routines. For Peter’s birthday in December I had bought him tickets to Dear Evan Hansen on the 2nd March. I couldn’t believe this had come around already but on Monday we headed off to the theatre. We met up at Cork & Bottle, a cute little wine bar on Leicester Square, and had a glass of wine with some snacks – ham and cheese croquettes, slow cooked beef arancini and beef carpaccio. Delicious! We headed over to the theatre at 7 and found our seats, looking over the stage from the second balcony. The show was great, with a fantastic musical score, interesting plot and interesting integration of technology. It was a pretty late night though, so we headed straight to bed and were relieved to have nothing on Tuesday night so we could have a quiet night at home and an early night.

On Wednesday night we had a booking at Cahoots, a 1940s-Underground-themed cocktail bar. I’d got a voucher for two free cocktails so we enjoyed a couple of cocktails and some snacks on the ‘southbound platform’. After we’d had a drink we headed across the road to ‘Shampers’, a little Italian restaurant, where we stopped for dinner before heading home to bed.

On Thursday night I had a quiet night at home writing a visa application cover letter and working on my puzzle. It was nice to have a rest – particularly after a busy day at school with World Book Day. The week felt like it’d gone for a long time so it was a relief to get to Friday and after school I headed to the Mayflower in Rotherhithe to meet up with some girls from the London New Girl facebook group. They were both really lovely - one was American and the other Canadian, and we had a great after-work drink discussing mostly beer and education. Afterwards I headed home to get changed and have some dinner before meeting Cal and Peter at Kings Cross for a night out. There was a ‘pop-rock/emo/metal’ night at a club there so we headed in at 10 or so and had a great night of catching up with Cal and dancing along to tunes from the mid-2000s, which was a lot of fun.

After a very late night, we had a bit of a sleep in on Saturday morning, and a slow start getting up and getting on with things. We were heading to Oxford for the day but didn’t get out of the house until about 10:30. When we did eventually leave, we unfortunately discovered halfway to Marlyebone that the Bakerloo line was down so had to get off at Oxford Circus and walk the rest of the way. Once there we grabbed some train snacks and hopped on the train. We ate our late breakfast/snacks while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, and arrived in Oxford at about 12:30. On arrival we just wandered into town and down the main street, checking out a few sights and admiring the gorgeous old buildings. We found our way (after a bit of confusion with Google Maps) to the Covered Market and explored the various shops there, admiring a cute little wine and beer shop along the way. We continued down the street and took a left turn past the Radcliffe Camera and Bodleian Library to the Blackwell’s Bookstore. This book shop was absolutely enormous and we spent quite a while looking through all the different sections of the store and discussing the various genres of books on offer.

After Blackwell’s, we stopped off at a little café Peter had read about called Vaults & Garden, but neither of us were particularly hungry after our late breakfast/snacks on the train. We decided to make our way to BrewDog, which was a bit further out of town, so walked along the main street, checking out the sights along the way. There were beautiful gardens and little rivers lining parts of town and we admired them from the bridges as we walked, as well as the colleges of course. Down on Cowley Road we found BrewDog and stopped in for Peter’s stamp and a late lunch – delicious burgers! Once we’d finished up there, the weather was looking pretty gloomy, so we headed back into town. We’d intended to go to the castle, but it was closing soon and similarly we’d just missed last entry to the Botanic Gardens. Our backup plan was to find a nice wine bar but the one in the Covered Market was still packed full of people (and children) so we continued along the main shopping mall and around to the castle, where there was supposed to be a cute wine bar. When we arrived we found that it too was closed. We walked up the mound that looked over the castle and the town, and then after a bit of discussion we decided to head back to London. We were both pretty tired after our late night so after a train and tube ride back and a quick stop at a Tesco to grab some food we headed home to cook some Carbonara for dinner and watch some Brooklyn 99.

We slept a long time on Saturday night and I woke up with a bit of a blocked nose, which probably explained how exhausted I was yesterday. Nonetheless I had bottomless brunch organised with Ash, who was visiting from Amsterdam. I met her in Shoreditch at 10:30 and we enjoyed a couple of hours of delicious food, great conversation and plenty of prosecco. It was interesting to hear her thoughts on the Harry Potter Studios after her visit yesterday, and her experiences of living in Amsterdam for the last 6 months or so. We hung around until around 1 and then headed down to London Bridge, where we said goodbye when she met up with Nic and I went and found Peter and Lee at the Cloudwater Brewery. They were at the tail end of a run-and-beer midday adventure, and after a bit of a catch up with Lee we headed home. We had a quiet afternoon at home resting and getting ready for the week ahead.