Dim Sum and a Farce

Hello! I hope everyone had a fun-filled weekend. I certainly did, and it’s not over yet because I’ve had the day off work today. Today and yesterday have actually been very chilled out, but I was busy on Saturday. It’s my auntie’s 70th birthday next month, so I met her and my Mum in London to have some lunch and see a play.

After a natter over a latte at the train station, we headed off to China Town. I was aware that it was Chinese New Year last week, but I didn’t know that there would still be celebrations in China Town. We were lucky enough to see some of them, although I didn’t get any good photographs unfortunately. This gives you a flavour of what was going on:

For lunch we went to Joy King Lau for dim sum. I’d read some good reviews of this restaurant and I’d heard that it was very popular. We were lucky that we managed to nab a table without having to queue. I’m not really sure what I’m doing when it comes to dim sum, because it wasn’t really served in the area of China that I visited. I just went for what sounded good, avoiding fish (because my Mum’s allergic) and chicken’s feet (because I’m squeamish and didn’t try them even though they were served to me every day for three months when I was in China … lame I know).

Vegetable spring rolls.

Beef, ginger and spring onion dumplings.

Vegetable dumplings.

Beef meat balls.

Steamed custard buns.

(Blurry) beef noodles.

Plus about a gallon of green tea. We managed to polish all this off between the three of us and it only came to £22, which I thought was a bargain!

We then walked around for ages trying to find somewhere to have a cup of tea, but every cafe was absolutely packed. Eventually we stumbled across a new frozen yoghurt place called Tutti Frutti that was virtually empty, probably because it wasn’t really the weather for fro-yo. The other two were sensible and had hot drinks, but I couldn’t resist having a huge tub of the cold stuff. There were so many flavours that I really had trouble choosing, but I went for green apple in the end.

We then went to the matinee performance of “One Man Two Guvnors” at the Adelphi Theatre. I’d heard so many good things about this play, so we booked tickets a few months ago. It’s a good job too because it’s completely sold out and there was a sizeable queue of people hoping for cancellations outside of the theatre. It’s transferring to Broadway in the spring with some of the current cast and transferring to another theatre in London with a different cast.

I won’t say too much about the play in case you go to see it, but basically it’s a farce with misunderstandings, innuendo and lots of physical comedy. There was also some audience participation, which were the funniest bits. I laughed so hard that I felt exhausted by the time it finished. I’m so glad that we made an effort to get tickets.

After all that excitement, the rest of the weekend has been very relaxed. I took a very chilly four mile run yesterday morning, and looking at the weather forecast I think there’s going to be a lot more where they came from over the next couple of weeks.

What were you up to this weekend?

Have you seen any plays recently?