We pick right up form yesterday, realising that the tate modern was still open. Then we go for food, before I finally get back home to bed (36 hours after I had woken up!). Only to be woken up the next day and taken out again!
If you like art, then you now about the Tate. It’s this huge gallery on the river in London that holds exhibitions for Modern Art, including sculptures and installations. If you go in the daytime, or god forbid, at the weekend, it’s chockablock full of tourists and school children. It’s loud, crowded and basically a nightmare. Last time I went, and couldn’t see any art because there were too many people in the way.
Now take away all those people, leave maybe 10% of them, and you have the Tate on a Saturday night at 8pm. It’s actually open until 10pm. I never knew art galleries did this. The area was clear, the rooms quiet and you could walk around leisurely and admire the paintings. The perfect setting for a date, because we also had the balcony thing all to ourselves. Just staring at the night view of St Paul’s. For a date I wasn’t expecting (or wanting) I felt very happy.
We left at closing time, and I bought a little umbrella as a souvenir. I thought for sure he would take me home now, it’s been god knows how long since I slept and I really, really needed to! But in the car my stomach gave this almighty rumble and we both laughed as he drove to “somewhere nice to eat at this time of night.” Everyone knows how busy London is on a Saturday, and good places to eat are nearly impossible to book last minute. That being said, before I knew it we were wooshing up this very fast elevator onto the 39th floor of some building!
As if by magic we were seated at the nicest view I have ever seen, and given delicious sushi menus. The sushi that came afterwards ranks very highly on foods I’ve eaten (and I’ve eaten a lot!) and I have to say, it was probably the most perfect date I’ve been on. After dinner Lee drives me home and I practically pass out in his car due to sleep deprivation.
But in what seems like moments later my phone is buzzing. Lee is calling me, at 1pm Sunday afternoon, asking if I wanted to go eat Dim Sum. I point out that dim sum is a breakfast food, and he replies by asking what time I had woken up. Touche! I’m given an hour before he arrives to pick me up, and by that time I’ve actually woken up and I’m very excited. I don’t even know why. I don’t think I’m attracted to him, not in the immediate way I’m used to, but I realised I really enjoy is company. I never do anything on Sundays anyways.
The Dim Sum place is actually very close by, it’s owned by a vietnamese woman and so the menu has a vietnamese, chinese and english option. My reading skills aren’t amazing because I never learnt Vietnamese properly (left when I was 4) and so Lee finds the entire meal hilarious because I keep reading the names of the dishes wrong.
We decide afterwards that we should get dessert. This place doesn’t do it, and by now it is already 5:20pm on a Sunday. Everywhere in the UK closes early on a Sunday, except in London as I found out. Somehow, we make it from Dim Sum to one of my favourite pastry cafes! Two macarons, an apple tart, a chocolate slice and eclair later we are both stuffed and happy and really enjoying the day. It’s not until 7pm when we finish.
Since it seems like a nice day we walk around for a bit. We go to trafalga square where i climb on the collum with the lions (I love those lions) and we get told off by a warden person. Then we get one of those bike people to take us back to the car, where we drive along the riverside and park in Chealsea to walk on Battersea bridge (one of my favourite bridges). We just walk. And talk. We talk about the factory and branding, production and expansion and rivals. By the time I make it home, and my weekend is officially over, it’s 1am. A really, really nice weekend.