36 hours with Friends from S.F. - Thyme for Motherhood

This weekend we played tourists (again) with friends visiting from San Francisco. Kenz’s friend from his S.F. office and his girlfriend stopped through London on their way to Greece to attend a wedding of an ex-colleague. We’ve seen Andrew a few times this year during his business trips to London, but we’ve not met his lovely girlfriend until this weekend, so that was fun! We had a great time with both of them this weekend.

Our friends landed in London on Friday afternoon; and as per usual with visitors, we did the obligatory Southbank to Trafalgar Square walk to see London’s major landmarks – The London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, and Chinatown. That evening we had a fun dinner at Sitaray, a lively Bollywood-themed Indian restaurant in Holborn/Covent Garden. Sitaray has a set menu of 5 to 6 different starters, followed by endless amounts of kebabs, tandoori chicken, curries, and lentils. It’s ideal for large parties as you can reserve booths named after famous Bollywood actors. Jetlag caught up with our friends so we picked up a few bottles of French wines and spent the evening in catching up on life in general and got the update on other mutual friends.

On Saturday, we got up early and made our way to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington to visit the dinosaur, human biology, and earth exhibitions. After the museum, we split up with our friends for lunch as they had reservations for afternoon high tea at The Brown’s Hotel, and met them later at Fortnum & Mason to pick up gifts for their family and friends. Randomly, Kenz ran into another ex-coworker who has been in town for company training at F&M. Random. But it was nice to catch up with him, if only for 5 minutes on Jermyn Street! From there we visited The British Museum, followed by some retail therapy along Regent’s Street, where our friend picked up a beautiful tie from Burberry for the “Big Fat Greek” wedding. We had a long dinner at The Albion at The Boundary Project in Shoreditch — one of my favourite things to do with friends — leisurely dinner. The food was yummy and the company was great!