It seems we never tire of a trip across the pond to visit friends!
Last month we spent a long weekend in London, catching up with our Aussie mates who were over visiting from Brisbane en route to Italy. We also caught up with our other Brisbane friends and an Irish relative who are all living in London.
We rented an Airbnb in Clapham, walking distance to the tube and main shops in Clapham Common.
The husband hasn’t had much of a chance to be a tourist in the city so we headed to Camden Village to the markets before an evening trip to Westminister for a delicious gluten free dinner and drinks at The Truscott Arms. I had forgotten how nice it was to have a long, lazy meal with friends. We ate outdoors as London hadn’t been hit by autumn weather yet, in the private courtyard which was covered in fairy lights and so quiet you could mistake it for a friend’s back garden anywhere in the world. Surrounded by a table full of Aussies, some of them old coworkers, we felt as though we could have been dining al fresco in Brisbane!
The next day I took him to the chaos and shopping mecca that is Oxford Circus where we marveled at the DJ spinning tracks for shoppers at H&M, such a far cry from our tiny one main shop street village in Kildare. After a few craft pints at the famous Victorian style Princess Louise Pub in Holborn with friends, we made our way to Covent Garden to catch Once, the musical at the Phoenix Theatre. Highly recommend to any fans of the movie, Glen Hansard and/or The Frames!
We were so inspired that we decided to book our next big trip to Prague in early December to take in the Christmas markets, a bit of snow and see some of the Czech Republic (if you have no clue where this is coming from, one of the main characters in Once is Czech).
For now we are settling back into Irish life, watching the autumn hours set in as it gets darker earlier and earlier in the day. I only realised this week as we were driving down a tree lined street with orange and yellow tinged leaves, this is our first fall (North American speak for autumn) in five years! Around this time in Queensland, we’d be embracing spring and lounging by the pool as temperatures began to soar.
Now it’s time to stock up on woolly socks and layers, as the brisk weather starts to bring the temperature down. Today it was only 11 degrees and I see it has already snowed in the mountains in Banff, Canada…time to face our new reality of four distinct seasons!
Later this month I will be off to the second Ireland to visit my sister in Newfoundland, Canada. I’ll finally get to see a slice of her life over there on the rocky east coast where the locals talk a bit like the Irish and have their own tricolour flag to boot! We’ll celebrate a belated Canadian Thanksgiving complete with a pumpkin festival and I’ll get to experience the crazy island life few Canucks get to see for themselves. Happy October, enjoy the change in seasons wherever you are 🙂
Notes From Another Land 