Top Ten Movie Countdown BlogFest - My Top Ten

So I'm doing another blog hop today over at my Tasha's Thinkings blog. Blogger is set up better for blog hops; it makes it easier to link through.

It is Top Ten Movie Countdown BlogFest - My Top Ten where you can see my list of top ten movies and my reasons for choosing them, if you dare :).

I suspect there is a least one most people won't know ::g:: Of course the Avengers made it in there too.

Birthdays 18th-24th March 2013

Happy Birthday to:

quillofdri, cinnatart/cinnatart for today,
sorion/sorion_writes, katemonkey/katemonkey, inspiredlife/inspiredlife for tomorrow,
greenhouse3, beanarie for the 20th,
random_snitch, chestnut_pod, furor_scribiend, alloveryou, sabinefrappe for the 21st,
welsh_briar, xcallxmexkittyx, evvva_90 for the 22nd,
trudyblue, firewood, iltb, thywillbedone/thywillbedone, hysterichotel, liebeundvertra for the 23rd,
dickiesicebox, obsidianchaos, kiwivodka, lady_armand2 for the 24th

Many Happy Returns to you all.

Weekend in London - A Blast

This is a what I did at the weekend post :). Rob and I had a long weekend in London to celebrate our anniversary, which we delayed from Feb because we wanted to see James McAvoy in Macbeth. We had a fab time. We went up on Friday and we were going to come back Sunday evening, but changed our mind and came back Sunday morning because we were knackered :).

Rob found us a great hotel on a secret hotel site that didn't tell him which it was up front, just gave a description. He thought he had it figured out so he took the plunge and it was the Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street :D. Absolutely lovely hotel. The room was well laid out, the bed had a memory foam topper, the breakfast was wonderful and the staff were very friendly all weekend. It also has a Tesco extra right next door, so yay, real milk for the tea in the room and on tap chocolate :).

On Friday we dumped out luggage in our room and then headed for the Natural History museum. I had never been there and I hate to say it, but I was not overly impressed. It has some great points, but the setup for some of the exhibits is frustrating in the extreme. I do not wish to be corralled down a narrow corridor with the herds of screaming school children, thanks all the same.

The gem section was great, but there weren't enough seats on the way round or exhibits set up so you could sit and look at them. Everything was very close up, which meant standing, which equates to pain for me. I had to keep skipping from seat to seat, standing up as long as possible in between. They also have no audio tour for those who are not visually impaired. I'm very happy to pay for audio tours since it means I don't have to go up to the little plaques and stand there reading them, which mostly hurts.

So yes, some of the Natural History museum was splendid, but it was a little frustrating.

Then we went back to our hotel and changed and walked to a Chinese resturant Rob found on Google. Boy was it a good find. It was called The Phoenix Palace and the food was fabulous, the service amazing and the atmosphere lovely. If you like Chinese food, you have to try this one. It's in Glentworth Street, just off Baker Street.

I didn't sleep overly well, but I think that was because we were in a new place rather than anything to do with the room and I had also drunk beer and green tea which meant I had to get up to go to the loo several times ;).

After breakfast (the scrambled eggs were divine) we headed up the road to the Sherlock Holmes museum. We really had to didn't we. We arrived soon after they opened, but unfortunately 70 French school children had just arrived. It's not a very big place, so we viewed it quickly and took some photos and then ran back to the shop. The shop is fab and we bought pressies for those at home from there.

Then we dropped our purchases off at the hotel and jumped into a black cab for The National Gallery. I love the National Gallery and we spent five and a half hours wandering around with the audio tour, sitting down and staring at painting. They have the best audio tour I've ever heard and so many of the paintings are included. It's wonderful.

We started with Van Gogh and the impressionists since we missed them last time, but they're not really my favourites. We had a quick snack then, and since we both much prefer the work at the other end of the gallery, Leonardo and friends we headed down there instead. I really could spend days in the National Gallery. The have a very nice restaurant in the Sainsbury wing where we had tea and vegetable chips to bolster us on our tour :).

At some time past four we headed over the road to Garfunkles to eat. It wasn't stunning food, but it wasn't bad and our server was lovely.

Then we headed over to the Trafalga Studios to see Macbeth. It was amazing and if you want to hear me rave about it I have done a full review over here: James McAvoy as Macbeth is Bloody Brilliant. This was the highlight of the whole weekend and I loved every second, even though my bum went numb several times.

My husband really is an angel, he stood outside the stage door for nearly an hour with me :).

I slept like a log the second night.

We were planning on doing something else, like another museum or the zoo on Sunday morning, but we had breakfast, went up to our room and decided we couldn't be arsed and just headed for St Pancras and home. It was a fab weekend and all the thanks go to my lovely husband for organising it all (well except for the tickets to Macbeth, which I pounced on as soon as I saw a mention on LJ ;)).