Heights on impulse

With us both working so much lately, Chris and I only really get to see each other on Saturdays now. Much as it pains me that this is the situation, it does mean that we have an incentive to ensure we really make the most of our days together.

This Saturday afternoon, once I had finished volunteering, we headed up to Westfield shopping centre in Stratford. The initial idea was that we would see Jurassic World at the cinema, as it came out on 11 May but, unfortunately, we had got our dates muddled up and it's actually not out until June. There was little else we wanted to see so we thought we would go for a wander anyway, and see what was going on in what has become a bit of a tourist destination of late. 

Needless to say, we had managed to choose a day which actually didn't have very much going on! It was warm, so we found ourselves in a nice little pub called The Cow and had some London Lager which was rather nice. 

One thing we had never done before was go up the Mitteral Orbit so we took the plunge and took a trip up that. If you've never heard of it, the orbit was built as a sculpture in time for the Olympics in 2012. When it was first built, I was very critical of it as it seemed unnecessary, ugly, and lacking a real story. But as I go past it on my commute every day, it's gradually grown on me. 

The Orbit is sold as a fantastic platform from which to view London, and I will, admit the distance we could see was brilliant. It wasn't as far as we had been led to believe, although it was exciting to see the different levels of the London skyline.

I do feel as though one of the reasons I wasn't overly excited by the distance was that the office I work in has 27 floors, and the sights from up there are equally great. 

We (well, I) thought that there was a bar at the top, which would have been brilliant but as it turned out, what I had seen was adverts for the cafe at the bottom. It looks lovely, don't get me wrong, but it's not exactly champagne in the clouds - I think the next trip will have to be The Shard if we want that!

My weekend break

My weekend trip back to my home-land (wow, I didn’t realise how easy it would be to make myself sound like something out of Black Beauty!) was fantastic. I was meant to be meeting Sengagh in Stratford on the Monday before heading back to the flat, as she wanted to buy her boyfriend an expensive birthday present and we thought it would be nice to spend a bit of a shopping session in London (especially as she’s from a very small village up north) before we go our separate ways. Unfortunately she decided that she couldn’t afford it, so that didn’t happen :( however, it was still a really lovely weekend.
On Friday night Chris’s parent’s took us and his sister to the local Thai restaurant for dinner which was really pleasant as I had not been out with them for ages! The food was delicious and it was lovely to catch up.
On Saturday Chris and I went to see ‘American Pie: The Reunion’ at the cinema. We have watched pretty much all of them now, and so really enjoyed this one. Because it was ‘The Reunion’, unlike some of the later films, it had the original cast. This was really nice as it enabled the audience to see how the characters/actors had changed over the 12 years since the first ever film.

On Sunday I went to Hornchurch Country Park with my parents. My mum had gone on a course for her school environmental co-ordination thing and had learnt that herons perch at the top of trees, so we kept our eyes open for herons. We did see a couple but unfortunately the camera didn’t pick them out very well but if you look quite closely, you may be about to see them:

 

It was a lovely day as the weather had finally picked up and it was perfect weather for strolling. My mum gave me a list which was published by the National Trust, of 50 things to do before you reach 11 3/4 which I thought might make another good page on this blog. Click here to see it.

I still went to Westfield on the Monday, but with Chris instead of Sengagh. We had a fantastic day and I bought The Big Bang Theory on DVD so I can watch the whole set from start to finish :D


The sun has finally graced us with its presence, so with any luck it’s here to stay! Roll on summer!

xx