dinner with a view...almost...

I spent most of last week suffering through some sort of lergy, masquerading as a cold, except that I had eye waters and puffy eyes for 5 days - on alternate eyes each day. I spent all wednesday and friday arvo at home, not enjoying the misery one bit! I looked as though I'd been taking boxing lessons.
But I was very happy the puffiness had gone by saturday, as a bunch of us had made plans to go to dinner at the Oxo Tower, on the Thames. Yes, the same Oxo that makes stock cubes! A&M had friends staying from Adelaide, and thought we'd go there for Kate's birthday. We all jumped in a taxi, which was excellent, as I'm usually in the tube underground and never see anything. We drove past Harrods and Big Ben, all lit up, which were lovely sights!
When Anna booked the table she laid the charm on, saying that we were from Australia, and it was for a birthday, blah blah, and could we have a window table? We took the lift up the Tower and arrived at the most amazing view! St Paul's at night, Blackfriars bridge, and the London Eye and Westminster behind us.... And were most disappointed when we were shown to our table in the middle of the room with no view... Bummer... But we enjoyed a very expensive, very delicious dinner, and later stood on the balcony freezing our bits off to enjoy some of that view.
Can you believe that I forgot my camera?? Me either... I must have been in a lergy-haze still. So no pictures unfortunately...
One interesting thing about the Oxo Tower - apparently the Queen banned advertising along the Thames (in the late 1800's?), and Oxo got around this by making the word 'Oxo' patterned in bricks. Somehow they got away with it!
On sunday I joined a book club! Friends of Anna's pulled the group together, and our first book was Khaled Hosseini's 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. Since Amazon took 3 weeks to deliver it, I didn't have it finished in time - but it is an awesome, awesome book. (Is about 3 generations of Afghani women). I highly recommend it. Next book we're reading is 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' - just for something a little fun and trippy!