London 2015 Day 29: Late night shenanigans

5/22/2015
London 2015 Day 29: Late night shenanigans

Friday the 22nd turned out to be the most epic Friday night of the extended London trip. Late night hanging out and taking on the town with some new besties. Amazing times. But first, the day: I had lunch at Brunch place in SoHo with Sonia called Muriel's Kitchen, a spot that can only be defined as "super cute" with a funny hanging chair area people can sit in?! Nice.

I had a tasty salmon benedict and a "Vitamin Hug" juice. Good times. The day then progressed into madness. First up was hanging out with some peeps and having some beer & pizza... fancy beers, tons of epic pizza, and doing our best at some beer pong with great new friends. The game got quite intense with many taunts ("Ooooohhh!!!", "BOOM!!!!" etc.) I finished one very intense game and due to my dedication to the game (certainly not my skill), the 2nd team asked me to play on their side too. haha. Absolutely epic times.

Focus.

"Come at me, bro"

After a loud and raucous time with this super fun and crazy group, we chased our beer and pizza with some raspberry doughnuts?! Oy. Let the calories begin!! Had some great chats with all of my new buddies here and headed to Cross Keys which is a local pub.

I got a Guinness, which was fun and tasty. Everyone always says Guinness is different in the UK? So figured I would try it out. Good times. How about some late-night Chips?! But of course. The chip shop down the road from the pub was my jams last time we were out on a Friday night, so I visited there again and got a couple of packs to share. That was glorious. We had a surprisingly serious discussion as to whether Stu's hair is blond or ginger. Many duck-face selfies and blurry night-time photos ensued. Here are some keepers.

My new favourite people.

Great times. We all chatted for ages and then walked to The Hoxton, which is a fancier hotel bar. I got a Cucumber Elderflower Gin Cocktail (fancy). I followed that with a classic, the Talisker 10. I laughed after giving Stu a taste of it ("It burns!") haha. What a great crowd.

At some point we finally checked the time and it was 12:20?! Dang. Time flies. I was gonna call Spring in SF, but she was off to LA that day... so I figured I would try her later in the evening when she arrived in LA! The good times continued at The Hoxton for a while longer and everyone rallied to go for a further late night Friday wander though the streets of London. We eventually made our way to Chinatown to find some Chinese food. It was super good.

(Note: these are literally all the notes I took from this experience. I figure it's funnier to just write my point-form journal notes as-is rather than trying to figure out what I was referring to)

• super good
• water!
• "Something choy"?!
• Chicken of a few kinds (or beef?)
• Ahh excellent rice.

I'll just leave that there.

I was going to Taxi/Uber myself back to my apartment, I was not really on the way to where anyone else was going to... but everyone was such a mensch and Stu said "No man left behind! We couldn't leave you here. We all gotta get home safe." Mercy me. I love these people. :)

I finally got back to my place at 4am or so, and talked to Spring from LA!!! haha!! Awesome. She had flown there since we were at The Hoxton and I called her once she had arrived. Hilarious. Still chatted nice despite it being insanely late in the evening. What an epic evening it was, the best late night of the trip. It was so great to get a chance to meet everyone much more personally and spend a bunch of time all together. "You can't go [back to SF], Mike!" everyone told me as I got out of the cab at my apartment. These people. Glorious.

To sleep, dreaming of tasty Chinese food.