It has been a long time since I’ve last seen Mirela – gosh it must have been Madrid in June last year and that was only a very fleeting visit. Since then she’s left Madrid, gone to work at a summer tennis camp in the States and then gone back to settle back home in Greece (moving in with her boyfriend to the new apartment that her parents built her) so a lot has happened. Further I don’t think she’s visited London since November 2008.

Although February is probably not the best time for someone who loves the sun and warmth to visit London at least the weather for her this past weekend has been fairly lovely. Especially on Friday when I took the day off from work to spend with her traipsing around London.

In every conversation that we’ve had since she booked tickets to come visit London the very first thing that comes up is Crispy Duck. Her flight was delayed coming in on Thursday night so we didn’t end up leaving Heathrow Airport until just before 9pm. We were both absolutely starving by then so we made our first stop one of my favourite local Chinese restaurants: New Fortune Cookie! We didn’t even bother stopping at home to drop off any luggage – lucky she packed relatively lightly. I love the staff at New Fortune Cookie. I don’t know if they recognise me, I do get take-away and eat-in quite often, but they are always ready to greet me with a friendly smile and friendly service. I also don’t know if they remember Mirela visiting last time and her total obsession with the hoisin sauce they serve with the crispy duck. It was rather amusing! The crispy duck went down an absolutely treat that’s for sure.

This weekend with Mirela wasn’t planned at all which is very unlike me as most people know! But because I also had to consider Sabrina’s plans, one of Mirela’s close uni friends, it was a bit hard to organise anything such as tickets to an event or even to organise drinks. But I think it worked out okay.

As I mentioned Friday weather was absolutely lovely. We started off with coffee for Mirela from Starbucks before walking down Kensington Church Street to get to Giraffe for brunch. Mmmm … love their English Breakfast. Even the vegetarian version, which is what Mirela had, isn’t too bad.

After brunch we headed up the Babylon Roof Gardens for a peak, a quick drop by some of the shops and then it was off to the Tate Modern to meet up with Fabrizio, another of Mirela’s Uni mates. Interestingly this guy never works and has spent most of his 30+ years at school! He has recently decided that he wants to move to Spain somewhere. To do goodness knows what but hey – he seems happy.

The current installation in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is Miroslaw Balka’s giant grey steel box which is in essence a vast black dark chamber. Its supposed to represent aspects of Polish history (the artist is Polish). Supposedly the experience creates a range of “sensory and emotional experiences … provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.” Er … it was literally a big box (think huge container van) with no lights on inside. We walked up to it, into it, fumbled around, got to the back and then walked out again. Mirela, who can cannily imitate a barking dog, entertained us by displaying her skills and as a result a bunch of teenage girls ran screaming out! Anyway, if a big vast black box sounds like you’re kind of thing you have until 5 April to visit.

Another meal that Mirela was keen to have was sushi. It was kind of awkward timing at 3pm by the time we ate – we returned to HiSushi which was okay but as they were nearly closing down we were pretty much rushed to order our food.

After heading back to my place for a bit of a rest, we’d been walking for quite a few hours by then so we were rather weary!, we headed over to Sabrina’s house for a night out in South Kensington. After a couple of hours mucking around at Sabrina’s we stopped at Carluccio’s for dinner, which as usual even at 10 pm was heaving (we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table”), and then headed to Vendome for some drinks: 3 drinks for £30 – ouch!

Vendome was more bar than club – its quite a small venue with plenty of seating around – so it was quite relaxed but it was filled by what I imagine to be a typical South Kensington crowd. Music was not too bad but quite mainstream. We managed to dance the night away but with the bar closing at 1am it was an earlier end to the night than I was expected. As it turned out it nearly took me two hours to get home anyway – it didn’t help that I was quite a little bit tipsy …

On Saturday we all woke up a little worse for wear – we only had three drinks each at Vendome! But we had planned on a pretty quiet day of shopping at Westfield so it wasn’t supposed to be a demanding day. We made the mistake of trying to lunch at Westfield right in the middle of lunch time. Sabrina was craving Nando’s but the line for it was massive. To be fair the line for most other places was the same. We must have waited nearly an hour – I didn’t think we’d make it we were so hungry!

Surprisingly we actually lasted the whole day in Westfield though Mirela did have a few naps:

Ha ha. Just kidding! We did also spend quite a bit of time admiring the hot guys at Hollister – couldn’t believe there was a queue to even get into that store!

Sabrina then cooked us some dinner at her home:

On Sunday all we had time for was to say goodbye to Mirela. A quick visit but one that we appreciated. Its only now that she’s gone that I’ve realised how much I’ve missed her!