Weekends are usually about down time for me. I like just chilling at the weekend and spending time with my boyfriend and my flat. This weekend was a little bit different – I still got to see everyone that I usually would, but I just went out and did more.
My weekend started on Friday night, when I headed to Concrete with two of my flatmates and my boyfriend. We live pretty far away from Shoreditch so it was quite a trek – and completely not worth it. When we arrived, Sam and I realised that we had actually been before, about a month after we got together when we came up to London to stay with his auntie. We’d been to Pizza East which is a really lovely pizza place on the floor above the club, and somewhere that I would really recommend, and had then decided to pop downstairs for a bit of a laugh afterwards. Hoping that the past two years would have improved the place somewhat, we decided to persevere, but Concrete itself (to be blunt) is just a bit shit. Don’t get me wrong, I had an okay night, but by the time we got there the cloakroom was full meaning I had to carry around my hoodie and jacket all night, the drinks are ridiculously overpriced, and the place itself is just a bit dingy. Considering we’d travelled pretty far to get there and our taxi ended up costing us £60 on the way back, it just wasn’t really worth the hassle when there are places pretty similar a lot closer to home.
Determined to make Saturday a much better day, Sam and I slept in until about 11 and then decided that we wanted to go to Bounce in Holborn. We ended up booking a half hour slot as that was pretty much all they had left, so we headed out at about midday. I’m pretty awful at table tennis as I lose concentration easily and always seem to lose sight of the ball, but we had a pretty good time nonetheless. I think it seems like a really cool place to go with friends and I’d love to go again and take full advantage of the bar.
We’d had to rush quite a bit to make our Bounce slot on time, so we’d both ended up skipping breakfast. Needless to say we were pretty hungry by the time we’d finished playing table tennis and so we went on a hunt to find somewhere to eat. We ended up wandering up to St. Paul’s and after much deliberation on where we should eat – somebody please back me up that sushi is not an appropriate breakfast food!? – we settled for Gourmet Burger Kitchen (read: I dragged Sam into GBK). I never really used to be a burger person, but now I can fully appreciate what I was missing. Gourmet Burger Kitchen is basically just like Nando’s but for burgers, with a very ‘DIY’ vibe which I really like. I opted for the classic burger, but asked for it without mayo and with extra bacon – I hate mayo, what can I say? We should probably have got chunky fries instead of skinny fries as I don’t think either of us expected them to be as skinny as they were, but that’s probably my only complaint!
After we’d eaten we decided to head back to Sam’s for a bit as he lives a lot closer to St. Paul’s than I do, and we just sat and chilled. A couple of Sam’s friends were coming up to London that evening for a drum & bass night at the Coronet, so after a bit of deliberation we decided to go with them. I’m not really a huge drum & bass fan, but I actually had a good night even though we ended up leaving pretty early as we’d tired ourselves out doing so much walking during the day.
Yesterday we slept in pretty late and then I headed back to my flat around seven after a well-deserved Dominos. Despite spending a lot more money that I would have liked, I actually had a really great weekend and I’ve definitely found some places that I want to re-visit! I could probably pass on Concrete and the Coronet, but GBK and Bounce are certainly new faves.
Did you do anything a bit different this weekend?
