Post-exam getaway

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to spend a long weekend in London after my final paper that was on Tuesday morning. I'm so glad that I've made the right decision in visiting London and spending time with my friends :) Nothing could be more therapeutic than having your post-exam days spent with your close girl friends. So, I basically took the late afternoon train from Manchester and arrived at London at about half past four.. After that, I immediately headed straight to Evonne, Sandra & my cousin sister, Shermin's place.

For the first night, we had our dinner at this new place that they all haven't tried before, a place that mainly serves burgers. It's like a typical American-diner concept kind of place I would say. This place is located in Covent Garden and it's called Meat Market. This place is quite well-hidden in my opinion because it took us awhile to figure out where was its entrance exactly. Also, there's another burger-joint in London to this one, it's called Meat Liquor or something like that. Heh, I'm not too sure about that myself :p Try google-search them up, if you're a fan of burgers! 

Overall, it's really my first time having burgers in London and I'm not even kidding. Heh. According to my friend Sandra who loves burgers and claims that she could feed on them even for the entire month, she thought that the burgers in Meat Market wasn't really as good as the ones in Five Guys. She claimed that Five Guys serves one of the best burgers in London thus far. So, if anyone of you really crave for one heck of a burger when you visit London the next time, try paying a visit to Five Guys! 

OH, and if by any chance you would like to try somewhere else to satisfy your craving for burgers, you could always consider giving Patty and Bun a try too. The nearest one in central of London would be on James Street, which is conveniently located close to Selfridges on Oxford Street. Thus, it's a very strategic place for you to grab some burgers right after your shopping :p And bear in mind, from what I've gathered, this place is always full! By full, I mean you really have to be prepared to queue up for a seat in this restaurant just for burgers. So, try avoiding peak hours if you really would like to try this place out. Well, I haven't tried this one personally before too, but most of my friends mentioned that it's a place definitely worth trying if you're looking for great & yummy burgers. So yeap, don't hesitate to give it a try on your next visit!

After our dinner, we went to Laduree and despite of the cold, we sat outside voluntarily (well not really, since there wasn't any seat left inside. haha) Had some great conversations over macarons and tea. Such a great place and way to spend your time chilling after a very filling dinner.

A decent picture of us all :) 

Hehe, can't resist myself from posting this picture up as well. Sandra's face expression is just classic :D

Us attempting to do silly faces.. Clearly, Sandra's version of silly face isn't too silly after all, and Shermin's expression: priceless :p Haha.

- - -

The next day, I managed to catchup with Carolyn, a friend of mine since college who studies in London now. It was really great to be able to meet up with her again after almost close to a year! I always feel so at ease and contented after meeting her each time.. This girl is just capable of inspiring people in so many ways with her personality :) Can't help but to admit she's always been a great friend to me in giving advices that I could certainly rely on, even if she doesn't realise how important and impactful her presence can be to someone. 

We decided to meet at this ramen place in London which has been the "It-place" for ramen at present (apparently).. Not sure whether you guys have heard about it, but it's called Kanada-Ya. It's situated in central London, close to Tottenham Court Road. Not entirely sure about the exact location, but it's around there. Anyway, since it's the to-go place for almost everyone who craves for ramen now, it's also an unavoidable circumstance that you have to go through before you can even expect a seat in the restaurant: queueing up outside of the restaurant. Therefore, it is always advisable to avoid going to this restaurant at peak hours because the length of time that you're expected to wait and queue outside in the cold could be awfully long, and it may be as long as 30mins or even more than that. So, if you know you're going to visit this place, be sure to expect at least 15-20mins waiting time outside of the restaurant. 

At the same time, in my opinion, this is a good place for a group of 2-3 at most, nothing more than that due to the reasonably small-sized of the restaurant. The more people you come with to this restaurant, the longer I think you're expected to wait in order to get hold of a table all to yourselves. Hence, this place is definitely not a place that you would like to bring your entire family or a big group of friends to have lunch or dinner; unless, you don't mind having such a small space and room to yourselves at all.

Jeng jeng jeng jennggggg!!! I hereby present you my long-awaited bowl of ramen that I finally get to taste last Friday! It's the special ramen on the menu and I had to order the egg as my sides because it doesn't come with it apparently. So, just be sure that you don't forget to order the eggs as your sides the next time when you visit this place. Also, there is a range of hardness for the noodles that they offer for you to choose from before taking down your order. I chose the regular hardness for my noodles the other day, and I personally think that I should have at least gone for the hard. It's according to personal preferences actually, so it just depends whether you prefer your noodles to be relatively hard or soft. Hmm, maybe the next time I'll try the medium hard one! 

What more can I say? They called this the collar-bone ramen. Haha. It's definitely such a comfort food to have during winter days <3

Carolyn & I back at Evonne's place!

A picture of us four using my selfie-stick! :D

I'm not really good at this, so mind me! :P

- - -

After hanging around at the girls' place, we decided to try this new place for pastries and sweet bites around Marylebone High Street. Heh, I was looking forward to it so much since it was a place that serves mainly French pastries! If you're a fan of French pastries just as much as I do, don't leave this place out whenever you're in London. It's certainly a place to-visit! & for your information, it's called La Patisserie Des Rêves :)

Such a pretty place filled with a touch of pink. Hehe.

Look at the way they displayed their pastries. So cute.

The Mille-Feuille that I insisted on trying as soon as I saw it out on display! Definitely worth the try. In fact, I strongly recommend this if you're a Mille-Feuille lover just as much as I do.. In comparison to Aubaine's, this is definitely better in my opinion because I thought that the sweetness for this was just nice. 

Paris Brest! This was one of their bestsellers & I couldn't agree more (Y)

Chocolate Gran. Something really good for chocolate lovers out there.. Especially if you have this take-away and eat it with a scoop of your favourite vanilla ice-cream.. Oh my :O Definitely satisfying!

This was also another one from their bestsellers. It's called Saint Honoré. Hehe, I believe that this was an improvised version of eclairs along with mille-feuille! If you don't believe what I just said, try it yourself, and I'm sure that you will definitely agree with me :p

The three of us: Sandra, Evonne & I braving the cold and seated outside just 'cause we were desperately seeking for a place to sit to try the pastries since their place didn't have any indoor seatings. :( But it was indeed worth it!

- - -

On Saturday afternoon, it was our girly time to have afternoon tea!!! Thanks to Sandra, I along with the rest get to enjoy this somewhat luxurious afternoon tea at Mandarin Oriental Hotel for the first time. It's called The Rosebury for this afternoon tea session. It's around 45pounds per person, excluding service charges. I would say each of us had to pay close to 50pounds or so after rounding up the bill. But all in all, I was definitely satisfied and very pleased with the service, atmosphere, and the food served during our afternoon tea session. I would definitely rate this experience of mine at MO Hotel for the afternoon tea around 8.5 out of 10! Honestly wouldn't mind coming back again in the future with my mum or something since everything was just perfect! 

Also, those of you who know me well, I'm a person who quite fancies having afternoon tea occasionally. Therefore, I have actually tried quite a few afternoon tea places in London before this, ranging from Brown's Hotel, Sketch, Berkeley Hotel, Sanderson Hotel, Ham Yard Hotel, Bea's of Bloomsbury etc. Can't recall whether I've tried anything else before, but so far, I would rank Mandarin Oriental's afternoon tea the first, and coming in second would be Ham Yard Hotel + Bea's of Bloomsbury (this one would be highly recommended for the scones and their cupcakes + brownies only). Other than that, I wouldn't really say there were anything fantastic about their afternoon teas. 

I honestly can't wait to try more places if everything goes well after I graduate and that I will be living in London for my postgraduate studies. Hehe, I reckon that during then I might start blogging properly and each time it would repetitively be about food or afternoon tea stuffs. Haha. Alright, alright.. I shouldn't get carried away too early since nothing's been affirmed yet. When the time comes, I will definitely blog and talk about it. *fingers crossed*

This was the entrance to our afternoon tea place.

Our afternoon tea menu at The Rosebury. A plus point to this place was, most of the tables are very big for the first time and not only that, we really have sufficient space to ourselves, unlike those compared to what I've experienced previously.

We requested a stand so that our "bird cage" containing our food could be hanged onto it! Hehe.. Isn't it pretty and so cute at the same time having your food to be hanged up in a so-called bird cage? *grins*

The cousin sister & I, together with our bird cage. heh.

Me and my afternoon tea set in a bird cage. 

Us girls, trying to be all tai-tai like :D

We were provided with three different types of jams for our scones. (Y) Sorry about the mess seen in the strawberry jam on this picture.. Clearly, my friends and I have taken some of it before I even took this picture!

Aside from all the desserts given on our stand, we were still served with these! Banana loaf, lemon pound cake etc!! You could imagine by the end of everything, how full we all were...

The scones were only served to us once we have finished our sandwiches because they want to ensure that the scones are warmly served :) Don't they all look nice and fluffy? Really enjoyed these scones (the plain ones and the ones with raisins!) 

Another benefit of having afternoon tea at this place was, each of us were given the opportunity to change our choice of tea for however many times we wished to! Isn't that just great? I basically managed to try their signature black tea, fresh mint tea, to a type of Chinese tea throughout my afternoon tea session on Saturday.. It was really worth it given the fact that I'm one who loves black teas as well as fresh infusion herbal teas! 

Okie dokies, I shall put a stop here to my post for today.. Can't believe I've been quite consistent in blogging so far, hehe. Hopefully I'll keep up with this! Just realised how much it makes me miss my friends in London and everything else that we've had last week even more after blogging about it... Really hope that days and times like these could be relived again. Oh well, for now, I have to shift my focus and know what my priorities are. So, welcome back to reality, Krystal. Holidays are officially over for you, time to work your ass off on your dissertation + new course modules! 

"I pray hard that this new semester would be less of a stressful one compared to previously. No matter what, I hope that every difficult and stressful period that I encounter, I will be still and remain strong always. That's all I'm hoping for."

Thank you for being so patient with me in reading through my entire blog post for today. Heh.

I'll be back soon I promise!

Goodnight,

✗

KrystalH