One of Mana's favorite weekends in Europe was London, her "home" in Europe where she spent one year of her undergraduate experience and a few months during her time at HSBC. This would be her first time showing Sahil where she made some of her favorite memories of all time!
We arrived on Thursday, March 11th and Mana took Sahil all around the London School of Economics campus, where she spent her junior year abroad. We grabbed lunch at Pizza Express because Sahil is very passionate about his pizza and its a cute restaurant chain that Mana and her London roommate Shauna would often eat at during their time there. After lunch, we walked down the Thames river, across Blackfriars Bridge, to Mana's dorm, Bankside, next to the Tate Modern. While so much construction had developed and the area had changed quite a bit, some things had definitely stayed the same. The same doorman who worked there when Mana studied at LSE was still there to greet us and he remembered Mana immediately. He let us in to take a tour around the building so that Mana could show Sahil the rooms which she and Shauna shared as well as the Belching Beaver (the pub downstairs where she and her friends spent many hours at during their time in London)!
After reminiscing quite a bit, we moved onwards to Mana's cousin, Radhikaben's place to spend the rest of the night with her and her husband, Suketubhai. After catching up with Radhikaben for a few hours, the three of us went to pick up Suketubhai and the four of us stayed up until 330am. We had a fantastic time with them and it was great to catch up after so long! Sahil was especially in heaven there because Radhikaben made him Daal Makhani, which quite possibly may be his favorite Indian dish. Plus, it had been ages since we'd had homemade Indian food - it was delightful! After sleeping in on Friday, we finally made it up to have tea and lunch with Radhikaben before heading to Mana's friend Sunny from LSE and his sister Nishi's place near Tower Bridge.
We arrived at Sunny and Nish's by evening and the original plan was to hit up Crush, the ghetto college bar at the LSE. This idea got quickly vetoed since we would be 8 years older than the college students there now! Instead the four of us headed to Busabha Thai (one of Mana's favorite restaurants during her time at LSE) for dinner and then met up with Asha, and Amit, who are Mana's other close friends LSE at Guanabara, a Brazilian night club. It was a TON of fun!! It had been AGES since all of us were hanging out together in London, like we did in our college days, and we ended up partying until the wee hours of the morning! After some last night Subway food action we headed back to Sunny's and crashed!
The next morning Nishi whipped up some amazing breakfast food and after saying our goodbyes to Nish and Sunny, we headed out to meet Asha and Josh. We climbed to the top of the monument and took a look at the latest developments and changes to the city of London after which they took us to Boroughs Market followed by the cutest Pub for lunch called Garrisons! Josh told us that the street was one of the oldest streets in London. After a few hours, we had dinner at Asha and Josh's place where Ash made us Caribbean food. It was delicious! After dinner, the four of us headed to London's version of a German Beer Hall where we laughed and celebrated the night away in honor of Josh's friend's birthday. We made it an earlier night than the night before, since early Sunday morning we were heading to Wembley for Mother's Day brunch with Sahil's family.
On Sunday, we met Sahil's parents, cousins, and aunt and uncle at a restaurant for Dosa. Soon after, the boys went to drop Sahil's dad off at the airport while the girls went shopping. We arrived back at Sahil's cousin, Mona Didi's, place where we all hung out and played cards for a while. We played our favorite card game, Judgement, where Mana beat Sahil's Mom in pretty much every round (a very rare event since his Mom usually dominates at the game)! Afterwards, we played soccer with little nephew Tanay. We ended our night by watching the film, The Three Idiots with the family. It was a very relaxing Sunday and we thorougly enjoyed our time in a homely environment with family! On Monday, we said bye to everyone and headed for the airport.
We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend in London and it was a perfect way to finish off our travels in Europe outside Paris!
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