Since Monday is clearly the new Friday and January is the new December, we were invited over to Noel and Megan's place last Monday evening for an awesome slow cooked duck ragu dish and of course, a good few glasses of wine to go along with it. Great night, not such a great Tuesday morning. Then on Thursday evening Keith and Rieke flew over from Germany and made their way through to our place for the weekend. They landed up getting in later than thought, but after meeting them at the station and heading home, we had a raclette a dinner which was the first time we'd attempted it, even though it sounds fairly common in Europe. We just stayed in on Thursday and landed up getting through a good few bottles of red, turning Friday into a disaster of a day.

But at least the day got better as it went on, and after work I headed out to Farringdon and the plan was to meet at the Three Kings but was just way too full to even attempt getting in there, so landed up at the Crown Tavern instead which at least we could all get into. There was a good crowd of us out - Keith, Rieke, me, Charlie, Brett, Alicia, Matt , Vincent and their missus'. Uns was out at her work post-Christmas party, so unfortunately couldn't make it through. After a couple at the Crown Tavern, we walked down to Giant Robot where we'd booked dinner. Our table wasn't quite ready so had to wait in the bar area before being seated, but actually landed up being rather impressed with the place and their food menu. Can see myself heading back there, if I'm in the area again.

After dinner and with everyone being fairly indecisive with plans as to where we should go, Charlie decided we'd head to the Shard for a cocktail at one of the bars half way up, which I didn't even realise was open to the public yet. We grabbed ourselves a couple of taxis and headed down to London Bridge and up the Shard. We initially tried getting into Aqua Shard but they turned us away saying they were full, so instead we tried Oblix which we opposite. We ordered a cocktail each and landed up staying there until closing, both admiring the view over London as well as catching up in general.

Yesterday, Keithy and Rieke headed out for lunch and had plans to watch a show in the evening, while Uns and myself just chilled out around the house and didn't do all that much really. Then this morning we decided to have a fry up for breakfast which Keith had been looking forward to for months.

Instead of heading down the road to some greasy spoon to eat, we decided to have our full English Irish breakfast fry up at home which I think was a better option, giving the two of them time to pack and leave for the airport just after finishing breakfast. Was good catching up with Keithy, hopefully get to organise a plan and head over to Luxembourg sometime soon for a visit.