Wedding Anniversary Day Out

In four days it will be a full year of marriage for both Katie and I, it has zipped past so quickly we have barely had time to take it all in. We have had laughs, worked hard and made a home and a life for ourselves that we are truly happy with.

With the idea of doing something special, yesterday we woke up early and we ventured into London. There was no real plan or places in mind to visit, we were just going to hop on trains or tube carriages and go where the feeling took us. A quick tweet was sent out to court potential ideas, we knew we wanted to enjoy a meal later in the evening:

Arriving in the city just after midday, we came up with the idea of visiting some museums, we settled on visiting the Natural History Museum, a museum I had been too when I was quite young and Katie not at all.

Yesterday, the temperature was up around the thirties, we expected the Natural History Museum to be well ventilated or even air conditioned. How wrong we were. The place was sweltering, lots of tourists, children and couples packed into tiny exhibits with no air flow, the whole experience was a nightmare temperature wise. Katie made sure to play on some of the computerized exhibits before making a hasty retreat to get a bottle of water and some form of a breeze.

Walking out and along the road, we knew it wouldn’t be too long until we happened upon the Science Museum. Like the Natural History Museum, they are free to enter so this made the decision to go in even easier.

The Science Museum saw a vast increase in the number of schoolchildren but on the whole they seemed to be genuinely well behaved. Inside, we walked the Basement taking pictures and interacting with the exhibits, moving up to the upper levels which seemed to have a severe lack of interesting things to do and see. Stopping short of being there a full two hours, we decided to head back to the Tube and make our way to Covent Garden and the theatre district.

For years now, Katie has been dying to see Dirty Dancing but tickets have either been sold out or in very poor places inside the theatre. This time I didn’t want to fall foul of the latter so we headed to the Box Office inside the Aldwych Theatre looked at the seating plan and asked for tickets as close to the stage as we could get them. We ended up with tickets five rows from the front.

The only thing between the performance we had to do was eat. This was something I had planned for the longest time. For ages, myself and friends of mine have gotten together, organized what we call a “Steak Night” (basically we have a few beers and then order huge steaks). Katie had always wanted to know what these steaks were like, so with the aid of the awesome iPhone application AroundMe I was able to navigate us to the nearest Gaucho Argentine Steak House where we would sample the tastiest steaks this side of London.

 
To start, we were treated to the tastiest cheesy herb rolls, nicely brewed beer and then a choice of at least six different varieties of steak for our main. These were all displayed on a wooden chopping board, where the waitress talked through the different steaks and how their tastes differed as to how you had them cooked.

Katie decided to have what was known as a “Chorizo”, we both thought this was a sausage but in reality it was a lovely marinated sirloin cut that came out to the table looking like it could encompass half a cow. I chose to order the “Bife De Cuadril”, a rump cut that lended well to being cooked, as I like it, rare.

Now let me tell you, I have never left a restaurant feeling so sick from being so full. We both agreed they were probably the nicest steaks we had ever had and we couldn’t let any go to waste. From leaving the restaurant, we had an hour or so to kill so we had a drink in a nice little bar we always go to when we are in Covent Garden and waited the short duration until Dirty Dancing started.

I went into the show wanting to enjoy it so Katie wouldn’t feel like I was just there for her. I was expecting it to be awful and completely over the top but to my surprise it was funny, well acted and thoroughly entertaining. I think Katie loved it, I could tell because she smiled the whole way through and tapped to every beat of the music.

Finishing just after ten, we jumped in a cab and headed for the station. We arrived home just after midnight, completely exhausted but completely satisfied with the day we had just experienced.

It’s been a great year of marriage, here’s to the next fifty!

Oh and if things continue to pan out the way they are, expect another celebration soon!