I Have Seen and Heard a Lot

The title pretty much sums up this entry. I have seen so much and heard so much over the past few days. After getting let go from the job, I had the weekend to just relax and have fun. Today I started the third job search (no results just yet), but I don't want to talk about that. Let's focus on how nice the weekend was.

Friday, Matt and I traveled to Brick Lane (not too far of a walk, and well worth it) to find a great thrift/vintage store where most items are under 10 pounds, which is nice. We wanted to get something crazy to wear to Circus @ Soho Revue Bar. And crazy we got. Then we found out there is a larger warehouse just down the road from our flat. It was so refreshing to hear that there was a cool clothing store so close to our flat in little Pakistan.

So, that night was quite awesome. But let's skip forward to Saturday. Scott crashed at our flat, so we spent the next day wandering around the area. That night was a free in-store Deerhunter gig at Rough Trade East back at Brick Lane. We traveled back that location and meandered through the shops and markets. We had a wonderful dinner at the Bustaurant. It was so neat. A group of people had converted this two-story bus into a really nice restaurant. Hence the name.

I had vegetable stir-fry with tofu.

Pretty soon it was time for the Deerhunter gig. They were awesome. It was a free in-store show, so they didn't play a very long set. Nonetheless, they rocked the whole time despite a few technical issues. Here's a short clip from the song "Never Stops":

The next day was the Thames Festival. It started out nice and ended incredibly. While it was still light out, Matt and I just wandered around the South Bank, looking at booths and smelling all the yummy food. Then we watched some free-runners/parkour people perform. They were the people who did the choreography in Casino Royale's famous scene where James Bond chases the guy through the construction site. Anyway, that was kind of cool (a little underwhelming though).

Then I had an entire gourmet pizza at Gabriel's Wharf. Scott met up with us, and we traveled to the Tate Modern only to arrive right when it closed. So we killed some time until it got dark, and that's when things got amazing. First was the lantern parade. Tons of performers and people carrying big lit up sculptures. Cue pictures/video because I can't really put it into words how cool it all was. However, I can say it was one of my favorite things ever.







So, after that magical hour of street performers, marching bands, glowing lanterns, and all around amazing-ness, we walked a little further along the South Bank. We found a nice area to sit right on the river. The fireworks started a little late, but it was well worth the wait. Somehow, we picked the most ideal/perfect spot possible. The fireworks were shot off from two different boats, and we were sitting directly in the middle of them. It was breathtaking, so here are a few videos/pictures to let you see what I mean.