Surprise trip to London

I posted for 29 days of MoFo and then, when I only had 2 days left, I suddenly stopped... But I had a very good reason!

Halloween is not something that is is widely celebrated in the Netherlands, but since three years, I celebrate it with two friends. We dress ourselves and the dining room up, cook and bake spooky stuff, carve a pumpkin and do goofy stuff, just because it is fun. This year, one of my friends wanted to come by early on Friday to prepare. Then she asked Thursday night if she could stop by to drop some stuff off. I said I could pick her up the next day, but she insisted.

When she was here, she pulled a few packages with two blue balloons out of a bag. In the first package was a tiny bag and I could see two earplugs. I had no idea what was going on. She gave me the second package and I saw a letter from Eurolines, a European bus company. I saw London, I saw the date, but nothing registered... Until she screamed: 'We're going to London tonight!'

She arranged, as a surprise for me, two coach tickets to London. Thursday night to London, Friday in London and Friday night back, so we would be at home on Saturday morning... I had an hour and a half to do some packing and to take a shower before we had to leave.

She brought 'Punselie stroopkoekjes', Dutch syrup cookies and carrots. For breakfast the next two mornings, she had little cartons of Rice Dream and Cheerios.

We went to Fresh & Wild, which is some sort of Whole Foods and I finally got a new supply of Lärabars (I can't find those in the Netherlands), Bounce Balls and my favorite mascara from Lavera.

We are both crazy about the RedVeg, a vegetarian fast food restaurant right off Oxford Street (Dean Street), so we went there as soon as they opened.

Their mushroomburger is amazing (and the French fries are really good, too!)


We also went to two of our other favorite restaurants (there are so many wonderful vegetarian and even vegan restaurants in London!). First, Food for Thought (Neal Street, in Covent Garden). They have the best crumble (crisp) and they always have one vegan scone (they serve 'normal' food too, but I just LOVE their desserts!). It's a crappy picture (dark + cell phone camera), but o my gosh, this crumble was just perfect.


And yay, already so many Christmas lights!


For dinner, we went to Beetroot, which I already wrote about here. The sausages were as good as ever... Because my tummy was ready to explode by that time, I decided to take a slice of carrot cake on the go because I was determined to try it this time (I ate it the next day, and I really liked it).

It was awesome to be back* in London for a day. And do I have a great friend or what?!

* I lived there a for a while when I did an internship there.