Coincidentally, my friends Sheri and Keith were in London this weekend so they invited me out to have a few drinks. They were staying with Keith’s college friends, Julie and Callum, who live in Maida Vale.
In honor of Keith’s visit, Julie and Callum had assembled a bunch of people from their days at “Uni” to hang out at the flat before going out on the town. You know how that goes- you get there at 8 for a drink and the next thing you know it’s midnight and you haven’t even thought about where you want to go.
I was having a great time catching up with Sheri and hearing all about her trip so far. (She and Keith had been to Scotland to visit his family and see the sights.) Keith’s friends were a lot of fun. (You know how much I love the boozehounds. I seem to find them everywhere I go.)
We finally got moving, but by this time Keith and Sheri were tired; they had to get up early the next day for their flight back to the US. They bailed on going to the nightclub, which in retrospect was exactly the right thing to do. I stayed on with the gang – about 8 of us – led by a guy who was later revealed to be of the “not one of our friends – we don’t even know him!” type. He apparently was on the guest list of “absolutely every club in London” so we went along with him to Cafe de Paris.
CdP is exactly what you’d expect from a club- loud, crowded, and filled with scantily-clad, but somehow overdressed women and men who skulk around surrounded only by a heavy cloud of aftershave. The cover was £15 (about $28) and drinks were £8 (about $15). Despite these and other horrors encountered at CdP, I was up for a good time – especially when I found out that none of them really wanted to be there either. But when you’ve already paid almost 50 bucks you figure you have to stick it out.
The crowd started to thin out at about 2am, and I new I needed to get to bed soon since I was due to fly out on Sunday for a business trip to Mexico. The gang showed no signs of slowing down; when I left them, the girls were about to infiltrate the VIP room (wooooo!).
The one good thing about the club was that they were able to put me right into a cab. The guy actually walked me around the block to make sure I got there in one piece. Nice!
It wasn’t until I got back to my apartment at 3AM that I remembered that I would still need to confront what will surely become the bane of my existence and possibly the grounds for my inevitable eviction from Notting Hill… the alarm.
No comments:
Post a Comment