pub crawlin' in the rain

since Christine only has a week left in london, she's been making a list of pubs to hit before she goes:

jerusalem tavern
dovetail
bishop's finger

to name a few. pubs here are weird though as far as hours of operation go, so we knew jerusalem wasn't open on saturday. we figured we could have a quick dinner, then hit bishop's finger and meet up with Beth and Lou at dovetail. ah, the best laid plans. :-)

we started off at a clerkenwell restaurant called match, which was more of a bar but they had good pub food on the menu so we took a chance. i ordered a half pint of some strange beer (don't remember the name) and it took FOREVER to get our food. i was getting fish n' chips, Christine was getting shepherd's pie. as my friend Dave would say, we were trying to lay a good base.

the food finally came out and the terrified looking waiter said "if you don't think this tastes good, you don't have to pay for it." just what you want to hear before you dig into a meal. :-) turns out that the chef hadn't shown up for work, so the restaurant manager was preparing everything and she didn't really know how to cook!

we started eating and the waiter came back a minute later to see how things were. we assured him the food was fine, but he insisted that we needed some kind of compensation...so he whipped out three tequila shots and we did them right then and there. i love london.

after dinner (which we decided to pay for), we headed to the bishop's finger...which wasn't open! silly pubs.


closed!

we strolled back through the empty smithfield market where i made a quick pit stop inside one of the fabulous red phone booths that are all over the city. i didn't think anything could actually smell worse than the underground on a rainy day, but the phone booth definitely did.


'ello london!

even though the green was not on our list, we went in for a pint since it was starting to rain a bit harder. good thing we did! the rain was coming down sideways, upside down, and every other way you can think of. poor Beth called from finsbury park and said they were soaked and probably wouldn't make it down. Christine and I were wishing we were home on the couch. gross, gross weather.

but then, as they always do, the skies cleared and we braved it over to dovetail where one of Christine's college friends was going to meet us. it was 10:20 and the dovetail closed at 11 (most pubs do), but we grabbed a half pint anyway. there was a cactus on the table, ha ha.



the college friends arrived and not long after, last call hit and we were booted out into the street. cafe kick was close by though, and open for another hour, so we headed there for some sagres. at midnight we were booted out AGAIN and walked up to the lexington in angel. i bailed at this point though, as drinking for hours on end every weekend is starting to take a toll on my wallet and let's face it...i was probably drunk enough anyway. :-)