Market Sunday's

When I moved to London I thought I would be browsing markets every Sunday like a local (because I thought that was what everyone in London did). The reality is that most Sunday's I don't even see morning, because I spend it burrowed under my duvet with my eyes tightly shut until the clock strikes twelve. Because I firmly believe Sunday should be spent indulging in your favourite past time - and mine is sleep.

In fact, until last weekend, the last time I visited a market was exactly a year ago when I finally ventured to Columbia Road Flower Market (thanks Timehop for giving me a kick up the butt), so I decided it was time to rectify that.

After seeing pictures of the Marylebone Farmers Market on the wonderful Katy's Instagram, it had snuck onto my London To Do List, and with a couple of Sunday errands to run last weekend, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to cross it off.

The market is tucked away behind the main high street, just a few minutes walk from Marylebone and Baker Street Tube. It's set up on a Sunday Morning between ten and two in the Cramer Car Park, and inside you'll find everything from fruit to soups to flowers.

 I loved browsing the the aisles, admiring big cakes, giant carrots and colourful squashes. Con and I were eyeing up a few homemade soups, but settled on a big bag of apples and pears, some fresh apple and elderflower juice, and lemon drizzle cake for a little Sunday afternoon treat! I'd like to go back one morning and pick up all the ingredients for a big Sunday roast!

We were lucky enough to be graced with beautiful blue skies and sunshine that warmed the skin, pretty sure it's the last time I'll be venturing out of the house without tights for a while! It definitely didn't feel like October!

WHAT I WORE

TOP - ZARA // SKIRT - HOLLISTER // BOOTS - PRIMARK // SCARF - TOPSHOP

London Eats: MEATliquor

 This place can be a real mixed bag, and it's worth keeping in mind you will either love or hate it. 

There's no reservations so you can expect around a thirty minute wait, any evening of the week. If you go for lunch you'll often be seated straight away, but the food is never quite as good. 

MEATliquor has an outdoor queue covered with heaters to keep you warm, but it's unlikely you'll wait more than ten minutes there, they usually move you to the bar area when you have about 20 minutes to go. This means if there's more than two of you, your table will be ready by the time you've got your drinks.

The cocktails are tasty, and the bar staff will make a bit of a show of preparing them, but you're essentially paying around £8 for two mouthfuls of drink and a glass of ice, so I generally stick with bottles of beer/cider which all tend to be around the £4.50 mark. 

To say the atmosphere in MEATliquor is unique is an understatement. The decor looks like it was executed by graffiti enthused pirates, and it's exceptionally loud, a place to avoid if you like intimate conversation or dislike rock music. The majority of tables are large, so if you're a smaller group you can expect to be seated with another party. Be wary if you're seated under the domed section of ceiling too, the design means that your conversation can be heard better by those on the other side of the room than those sat next to you. None of this is a bad thing, it's just worth bearing in mind, since it makes for a rather 'marmite' dining experience. 

Moving on to the main event, the food! This is a strictly eat with your hands sorta destination, all the food is served on giant trays, and you can expect to finish your burger with a good amount of grease and sauce dripping down to your elbows. Each table has a big roll of kitchen roll that comes in handy for mopping it all up, but hardly makes for a silver service experience. 

I can whole heartedly recommend the Dead Hippie Burger, but all of there burgers are delicious, cooked medium rare as standard, and served in brioche buns. I've tried a fair few of the sides (cheese fries, dead hippie fries, chilli cheese fries, onion rings, fried pickles, chicken wings, Mac & cheese) and they were all delicious, but it's worth keeping in mind that the portion size is enormous. Particularly the onion rings, which look like they started life as giant genetically modified onions the size of a boxers fist. 

The service in MEATliquor is stretched thin, you can expect to have to haul in a server for your bill at the end of the meal. They're always lovely, their just stretched thin. 

Other notable things, it's cramped quarters and always rammed, expect to be rubbing shoulders with everyone. There's a photo booth that you can purchase tokens for at the bar, which gets a good rep. 

Overall, it's definitely an experience, the food is good, but it's not something you need to repeat more than once or twice. There are other burger joints in London with better service, food, and an atmosphere better suited to being able to hear yourself breathe. 

Turning 21

 I was pretty nervous about turning 21, in my head, 21 is a PROPER adult, no getting away with being a teenager anymore. But in actual fact, when it got to the big day, I was less stressed about getting old than I was last year! I was lucky enough to be able to bag the day off on my birthday this year, despite it falling midweek, and the boyfriend managed to steal some time away too. What resulted was a very chilled out day indeed!

Date Day: The Royal Observatory

 Friday marked the first day in more time that I can count where the boy and I both had a day off at the same time. A pretty rare occurrence these days, so we started planning a date day pretty much as soon as we realised we had the time off!

We started the day by bundling up and jumping on the tube to the Southbank Centre, where we gorged on discounted sushi at Yo Sushi, my favourites are the Beef Tataki and Cucumber Maki! I love being on the Southbank, the views of the city are amazing, and whenever I'm there I just fall more and more in love with London.

Once we'd eaten as much as we could manage, we headed to Greenwich, to visit the Royal Observatory. I'm something of a Space Geek, and the Observatory had been high on my list of places to visit in London since I moved here. We watched the Dark Universe show in the Planetarium, and looked through the exhibits, and it was well worth the visit, but the view from the observatory was worth a visit itself! You can see right out across London, and the parks surrounding it were so calm and peaceful, it hardly felt like we were in London!

We strolled through the parks after, before heading back home, it was so cold and windy we couldn't stay out any longer! On the way back we stopped into Space NK, I had a £5 N.Centive to spend, so I finally repurchased my beloved NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer! We picked up coffee from Starbucks too, and retired home to bed to watch Snow White and the Huntsman! Not a bad way to spend a day!

 Also, a moment of appreciation for my socks here?

A Foodie Day

I wish I had some photos from yesterday other than food to show you, but hey, I documented the important stuff, right?

Yesterday is the first day off the boy and I have both had in months where one of us hasn't had coursework or something to keep us at home. I'm on my Easter break now, and the boy is done with classes for exam period, finally. I needed to pop into Central to pick up my Mum's Mother's Day present, and I'd had to cancel my plans with Daphne earlier in the week because my hip was playing up (#OldLadyProblems), so we decided to combine the two and meet Daphne for tea before wondering around the shops. We met Daphne and headed straight for Yumchaa which is tucked away behind Oxford Street in Soho. Daphne and I are something of tea addicts so it made sense that we would head there for a drink and a catch up. I'd never actually been into a Yumchaa Cafe before, I've had plenty a Yumchaa tea, but never direct from the source. It's a really cute, simple cafe, with a scrumptious looking selection of cakes, even a few gluten free options, and the biggest selection of tea ever. What I love is they have a little of each tea in little pots by the till, so you can have a sniff to make your selection. Daphne and I are both on a bit of a juice hype right now, so we both opted for frozen fruit teas, which were downright delicious (the boyfriend didn't fancy anything so he just sat stealing mine). I can't remember what the names were, but there are only four frozen teas, Daphne had the Berry & Rooibos one, and I had Mango and Green Tea. They were massive and the Boyfriend ended up having to finish mine, whilst Daphne transferred hers to a to-go cup, since we both ended up with brain freeze.

After that we were actually starving, so we headed up to Tottenham Court Road to grab lunch at Franco Manca. I had never been before but The Boy is something of a pizza place dictionary and said it was good. It was pretty busy so we had to wait ten minutes for a table but MAN was it worth the wait. The menu comprises of five pizzas, so it's pretty simple, but they're all made fresh, and the menu tells you where all the ingredients are sourced from which is nice. I can't even begin to describe how good these pizzas were, but they were definitely the best I've ever had outside Italy. It's pretty cheap too, you're looking at between £5-£6.50 for a pizza, and I'd reccomend skipping the drinks since they are constantly putting bottles of cold filtered water on your table for free anyway (and the drinks are inexplicably pricey and small). It's a cheap lunch date anyway that will fill you right up. They have a few locations so it's worth checking them out!

After Daphne bid her fairwells (after we drooled at stationery in Tiger and Muji) the boy and I meandered in and out of a few shops and then headed back home, snuggled up on the sofa and watched Netflix. My favourite kind of day.

Birthday Bits

I've been a bit awol on this blog recently, it's coming up to my deadline (Friday) so I've not been doing much other than work!

I was looking through my phone and camera and realised I took a lot of snaps on my birthday, and I wanted to share them somewhere. I turned twenty on Tuesday, and since deadlines are coming up I had a pretty quiet day. but my parents did come up from Bournemouth to spend the day with me! Unfortunately, my boyfriend had lectures he couldn't miss, so he was at uni for most of the day, so I spent the morning getting some work done before my parents and sister turned up around lunchtime. We had a little gift swapping session at my place (it was my Dad's birthday on Monday too) before heading out.

We were all really hungry so the first thing we did was grab lunch. We ended up at Las Iguanas because it was close, it's a place I've always dismissed as being a boring chain restaurant, but we actually had an amazing meal. I had an alcohol free apple mojito, a steak burrito and we shared some nachos too. It was really great, and the waitress even bought me a slice of cake since it was my birthday. I'm not usually into chocolate cake, but this was chocolate, fudge and orange, and it was utterly delectable.

After lunch we headed down to the river, we had planned to be tourists and do the Tower of London, but since we ended up having a longer lunch than anticipated, by the time we got there it was too late. We had a stroll along the river though, and a wander round the outside of the tower, it really is a beautiful building. It was incredibly windy so we took shelter in Starbucks for a coffee pick me up. After that it was time to shop, and I got one more amazing birthday present! Then when the boy joined us, we headed to Yo Sushi, since all of us are pretty hooked on sushi right now.

In the evening after my parents had left, my friend Sam popped over. He bought me a beautiful new teapot and came armed with scones, clotted cream and jam from Harrods, so we had tea and scones! I'm so in love with the teapot, it's so beautiful!

 Not the wildest of 20th birthdays, but it was definitely a good one. I'll have a proper celebration after my hand in, but I really enjoyed just spending time with my family!