A Fun-filled Friday

On Friday morning I awoke to the sound of the Queen's horses clip-clopping along the street in front of our apartment building. Looking out the window, I saw a line of riderless bare-backed horses, two abreast, trotting along the street under the watchful eye of two or three riders. It is a very nice sight to wake up to.

Later, when entering the St. John's Wood tube stop, I found myself like a salmon swimming upstream among a crowd of enthusiastic Cricket fans emerging from the station. There were hundreds of them -- mostly men, rushing out of the tube stop and down the blocks toward the Lord's Cricket Grounds. They were a well-dressed group for sports fans (nothing like those going to Yankee Stadium) with many wearing sports jackets and some wearing straw hats for the occasion. Most looked like businessmen going on a picnic; some carried coolers or rucksacks with lunch and drinks. There was also a group of young people handing out free beverage bottles to everyone on their way to the match.
This was day two of a five-day match between England and South Africa. The day before, as the 'Cricket Crowd' had left the stadium after the match, they swarmed all over the High Street, crowding the restaurants, depleting the cash in the bank machine, and filling the streets as they looked for a quick dinner. Generally, they were a congenial group just having a good time.

Marcia and I decided to take the bus instead of the tube to Soho and Leicester Square for our London Walk that day. Just outside of Soho, we strolled through the small Chinatown area in London. (It is only about two blocks square.) We came across a massage place and decided to try it out. Marcia got a back massage, while I selected reflexology -- a foot massage. According to the Chinese theory, certain parts of your feet are linked directly with the major organs in your body. So, to have a foot massage like this is to ultimately improve your overall health.
I was taken into a small dimly lit room with relaxing music playing and told to lie down on the narrow table with my feet at the end. Selina, a young Chinese woman, first wiped my feet with a washcloth, then she rubbed them with oil. For the next thirty minutes, she massaged my feet. It was wonderful!
Marcia loved her back massage too, and we both decided we would definitely come back again.

After a delicious lunch of Chinese food, we walked to Leicester Square and saw that Sex and the City was playing at one of the cinemas. Neither of us had seen the movie, and neither of our husbands wanted to see it, so we bought tickets for the 2:20 showing - and saw the matinée. We both liked the movie very much.

When you buy movie tickets here in London, you are shown a seating diagram for the theater and asked to select the seats you want. Then you are issued tickets with those seat numbers on them. As a result, you usually wind up sitting right next to someone else, while the rest of the theater is empty.

When I arrived home, Carl was finishing up a conference call - so we walked over to the High Street to eat at Casalinga, an Italian restaurant that we hadn't tried yet. After we were seated at our table, the Cricket Crowd suddenly reappeared - dodging the pouring rain - and filling the remaining empty tables in the restaurant. The day's match had ended - it was time for dinner.

Back at our flat, we watched British mystery shows before falling off to sleep.

All in all - it was a fun-filled Friday