A Wicked Anniversary

Two years ago, we were saying our “I Do’s”

and celebrating with our family and friends...

This weekend, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Our official anniversary is actually on Monday, August 9. Unfortunately I have to fly to Ireland for work on Monday morning and I will be gone the whole week. So we decided to celebrate a little early by spending our weekend discovering parts of London we haven’t experienced before.

On Saturday morning, we headed out early to the Portobello Market in Notting Hill. We were told by some locals to get there early because it gets extremely crowded, but with the gloomy weather, we figured it wouldn’t be too bad. Man, were we wrong! There were so many people packed onto this one street trying to find a bargain.

The market sold everything from WWI gas masks to silver teapots to fresh fruit. We snagged some sweets, and then headed to Regents Park for lunch. Regents Park used to be prime hunting grounds for Henry VIII. Now it’s a large park with an open-air theatre, a lake where you can rent paddle boats and chase the ducks, and a huge rose garden.

The sun came out as we came out of the tube station. We picked up some sandwiches and crisps from Pret a Manger, our favourite sandwich chain in England, and found a perfectly shaded spot in the park to enjoy our meal and the desserts we picked up at the market.

After enjoying an afternoon in the beautiful weather walking around the park, we headed into the bustling city. We’ve never been up in Tower Bridge before, so we bought lift tickets and rode the elevator to the top of the bridge. We walked from end-to-end and explored the old engine room. By then, it was about 5:00 in the evening and we had pre-theatre dinner reservations across town at Kazan, a Turkish restaurant. So we ran back to the station and got to the restaurant just in time.

I have no idea what we actually ate for dinner… the only items on the menu I recognized were falafel and humus, but it was delicious and filling! For dessert, they brought us pistachio Turkish delight – my favourite! You can’t go wrong with sweet and salty.

Early in the week, we had decided to splurge and get tickets for Wicked as our anniversary present. I started reading the book about a year ago and did not like it at all. I finally finished it a few months ago, but it was tough. The book was hard to read because the author made up creatures and words and then never really explained who they were or what they meant. It was also really dark. Too dark for my liking. We’d heard the musical was brilliant, though, so we decided to try it out. It was rated the most popular musical in London in 2010, so we decided all of those theatre-goers couldn’t be wrong. And they weren’t! It was fantastic! I’m not a huge musical-lover, but the songs were great and the actors were amazing!

Earlier this week we started noticing signs around our neighbourhood for the upcoming London Mela. Both David and I had no idea what the signs were for, so I Googled London Mela. The Mela is a huge Asian festival held annually in a London park, with different zones for DJs, musical acts, dance, traditional foods, and a funfair. This year, the Mela was being held down the street from us in Gunnersbury Park. We slept in late on Sunday morning, woke up and relaxed at home for a while, and then walked to the park. We explored different areas of the festival and rode a couple of carnival rides, even though some of them were run by scary carnies like this guy:

House of Mirrors?  More like House of Horrors!

We drank out of coconuts, which reminded us of our plantation tour during our honeymoon in Jamaica.

I had Indian food for dinner and David had Turkish pizza. For dessert, we had falooda. We wanted to try this because the line was so long, so we knew it had to be good. Then we got to the front and noticed people being handed glasses full of pink noodles. We were both a little scared, but it was actually really yummy and I was proud of us for trying something new! BTW, Falooda is corn noodles (also known as vermicelli), rose syrup, sweetened condensed milk, basil seeds, and Kulfi (cardamom) ice cream.

We had a great time at the festival! This whole weekend has been so much fun, and has really encapsulated these past two years of marriage for us. We have such a great time together exploring new places and meeting new people. But one of the best things about our marriage is that we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to enjoy being together. Some of our best memories are of just sitting around on the couch with Kirby watching movies and eating popcorn. We’ve learned to rely on each other even more over these past few months with all of the changes and new challenges we’ve been taking on. We look forward to our future adventures that we’ll explore together… and with all of you through this blog!