On Monday, since it was the last full day that mom and dad were in London, I took a half day and finished up at lunch time and made my way over the river and met up with them at The George down on Fleet Street near to the Strand. Just a quick stop and half pint there, before bussing it back up to St Pauls and up to the roof terrace of One New Change shopping mall. Its been open since November last year, and been wanting to visit it ever since, so it worked out really well today that we managed to get up there. It has quite an impressive view past St Pauls Cathedral, the Shard and over towards central London - an elevated view you don't often get to see.

After One New Change, we made a quick detour just into the entrance of St. Pauls, where dad tried snapping a forbidden photo or two, we then caught the tube up north to Camden for the afternoon, and started out at The Hawley Arms for yet another half pint. It was rather busy, especially for a Monday afternoon, but with it being such a perfect sunny afternoon, who could blame them all for heading down to the pub?

From the Hawley Arms, we negotiated our way through the tourists and stalls up to the Camden Stable Markets and wondered around there for a couple of hours, which apparently is the fourth-most popular visitor attraction in London. There really is not much you can't buy in the Stables Markets, selling everything from fast food, to crafts, household items, clothing and just random rubbish. It's definitely far bigger than I imagined it to be - had walked through the food courts of the market, but hadn't been through the actual stable markets section, the scale of which was rather impressive.

Then that evening, after a few options for dinner, we decided on a curry and made our way down to Tooting to Mirch Masala. It had been a while since I had last been to Mirch, and never unimpressed with a dinner there, so thought it best to take the folks there for a night. A bit of a trek down from Camden to Tooting, but got there and didn't have to queue too long for a table. Think they had a good meal there - I still reckon it beats a Brick Lane curry.

Tuesday brought an end to their two weeks holiday over here, and think they had a good time and saw all they wanted to. Pity I was away for one of the weekends, but that was just slightly bad timing and couldn't change that, but still able to have met up with them in the evenings after work, which worked out well. By now they're probably a couple of hours in the air, somewhere over North Africa - we did decide they'd make their own way to the airport instead of me going with and doing an airport goodbye - it's a bit easier having a quick goodbye in the morning than a long drawn out one before they fly.

Tuesday evening I headed out after work and met up with Tamsen at the Mudlark who was over in London for a week before heading over with the others to Croatia for their holiday - so was good to catch up with her again. Then last night I met up with Kate and Woody at Shaka Zulu in Camden for dinner, which we had spoken about going to for quite some time. Groupon recently did an offer, so we took them up on that and was blown away by the restaurant.

It apparently cost £5.5 million in total, and I can see why. The food was good, just very expensive I thought, especially if you didn't have a voucher like we did. But would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to visit an impressively styled restaurant in the heart of Camden. Not sure when I'll be back, hopefully soon, but I guess it just depends when Groupon have their next voucher or my lotto winnings come in :)