Leaving London: our last days in town

Last week the time had come to say goodbye. It was a whole farewell week and it was a marvelous couple of days. Here are a few impressions from our last week in London featuring parcels, lots of leaving drinks and the last supper.

It was the weekend before when we realised that we still had too much stuff to get it with us on the plane. So we decided to send three parcels with stuff back to Germany using Parcelmonkey. The parcels were actually sent by Parcelforce so the same company that would have done it if we’d used the Post Office. But handing it in at the Post Office a parcel would have cost us over £60 – with Parcelmonkey it was only £20. Per parcel! And it worked out very well. Only downside was that I had to wait for the pick-up at home so that was Tuesday.

Wednesday I had drinks organised with a few friends at the Meltdown, an e-sports bar up in Caledonian Road which had just opened a couple of days ago. I love watching and playing Starcraft 2. I think nobody else even knew it but I appreciated the boys coming with me regardless. The Meltdown is an old pub and not specifically pretty but the stage contains a proper tournament setup and there are streams on screens all over the walls. Cocktails and shots are named after Starcraft maps, players (Stephano!) and units. My geek heart was jumping. The burning Blue Flame Hellion shot won’t be forgotten (although the one on the picture was another one, don’t remember the name). Yes, we did have a lot of fun.

And Thursday: last day at work. Always a weird day. We had invited quite a few colleagues to join us for some Sekt and wine (from my father’s winery of course) at the end of the day and we had a full house. There were some really nice speeches, we got a bunch of (mostly baby themed) presents and cards which to read was a lot of fun at the end of the day.

There are probably not that many people staying at the office after six on their last day, we did. Twelve bottles needed to be emptied before we moved on to The Fellow where we had more time for a last chitchat before shaking hands, hugging and being swallowed by King’s Cross’ tube station one last time. Thanks everybody who came along that afternoon / evening, we will remember that day for a long time.

Friday was mostly packing and looking forward to a table at the famous St. John which we reserved many weeks ago for our last dinner in London. Do you call that modern English kitchen? Not sure, probably not. They have their very own style not selling the filet mignon but roast, all kinds of innards and root vegetables, very rustic. St. John also has a bakery where they produce very German dark bread which you can purchase for a ridiculous price at Waitrose (but it’s very good). The bone marrow I had as a starter was super tasty and nicely balanced with a parsley salad cutting through the intense juiciness of the dropping marrow.

I’m not sure if I ever had chitterlings before and might have looked a little concerned when I first saw the big frazzles in front of me. But the sauce was absolutely amazing and helped me getting used to the unusual mouthfeel. Not sure if I would cook it myself but I didn’t regret ordering it.

And look at the tart Melanie got as a desert: the salted caramel was gushing out of the slice with a smooth but solid chocolate layer sitting on the top of it. Yummy.

It was a good last supper. And as we were walking back to the tube seeing all those promising little restaurants we’d never been to we realised that we will have to come back soon.

Sitting in our plane Saturday afternoon waiting for a delayed take-off it started raining cats and dogs. As if London wouldn’t want to let us go. Farewell!