March marks the end of my busy season for work & so I jam packed the month with fun activities to make up for the lost time in January & February! Note to myself for the rest of the year though, plan some REST DAYS! I am so grateful for all of these experiences and I want to make the most of my time in London, hence the lack of rest days 🙂
The month started off with a visit to BookBar in Finsbury Park. It’s a bookshop and a bar in one – my IDEAL location! The first Sunday of March was one of the busiest I’ve had in a while because we went to the Arsenal Women’s North London Derby (an absolute blast and yes, we won!), roast at Alwyne Castle (which I can’t, in good faith, recommend. They put us at a table right by the bar so people were walking into us to get drinks & the food took 1.5 hours to arrive), a quick nap, and then George and I went to see Dune 2. The movie was so good!
Week two of March consisted of a reading date with my friend to start the third Crescent City book, dinner at Rosa’s Thai (a consistent favorite of mine), a concert to see Chance Pena at Scala (SO GOOD), wine with a colleague, volunteering, dinner at Noci with George (another consistent favorite), the NYC ballet came to Sadler’s Wells Theatre & it was one of the coolest ballets I’ve seen, and my friends from the US came to visit! They had a whirlwind of a day on Sunday to hit all of the big sights in London and we ate at Mamuska! (polish food – scratched my itch for pierogi) for lunch and then I took them to the Alpaca for a Sunday roast. They headed off to Scotland, but returned to London ten days later to spend another weekend with me. It was so fun that they came to visit! I went to Fitz Bar to celebrate a friend returning to the US – the menu was so cool, you used a blue light to read the different drinks (which were pricey FYI). Then in between my friends visiting, I popped home to the States for a quick trip to see my family. I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with them and really enjoyed the quality time I was able to spend with my family and grandmother.
Week three consisted of taking a sick day because of how awful I felt after the flight back to London and resting to stave off the cold I was getting. I stayed home all week to recover because my friends came back and I wanted to enjoy our last weekend together. Friday night we went to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese (rebuilt in 1667) and went to bed early because we had an all day tour on Saturday. We booked a bus tour with Evan Evans Tours through Viator and it was a fantastic tour (fair warning, it was a 12 hour day – worth it!). It was a tour to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. Admission tickets were included for the castle, Stonehenge, and we purchased the roman baths tickets option as well, all of which I thought were worth it! Our tour guide was great – he gave us a history lesson and made it fun while we travelled between locations. The tour picked us up & dropped us off in Victoria – I would recommend bringing some snacks for the day (you have time to pick up lunch “on the go”) and we got Pizza Pilgrims when we returned.
Following our fun filled weekend & bringing us to week four of March, I had dinner at Flatiron (had an unreal burger, it was so reasonably priced, AND they give you free ice cream on the way out. Highly recommend!), book club for both the US and UK, and I packed for IRELAND!!!!!!!! Full Ireland post coming soon, as it deserves it’s own, but let’s just say it was the bucket list trip of my dreams!
That wraps up Q1’24! I was able to accomplish most of the goals I set for myself this quarter, I came in a little low on the Orange Theory classes with the mid-month sickness & Ireland trip, but still have three quarters of the year to go 🙂
aventuras de alyssa 