Places to go, people to see

I had a really good time and about in London a few weeks ago. It started with lunch at Veeraswamy, quite possibly my favourite Indian restaurant. I discovered it many years ago when I was aimlessly wandering around the Regent Street area with the boyfriend, trying to find a place to have a birthday lunch. Attracted by their value lunch menu, we decided to go in and we've kept going back ever since. The food is really good and the waiting staff are something else - really polite and attentive, even making you feel special if you order from the cheaper set menu, but still leaving you space to enjoy your meal. The restaurant has just had a major refurbishment and now has a relentlessly "modern Indian" vibe going on. The food is still fantastic, but I'm a bit dissappointed that there's no longer a vegetarian option on the set lunch menu. I know, I could have asked if they had any veggie stuff... and it did give me an excuse to order a la carte, but I reckon they should cater for cheapskate veggies too :-)
They stopped doing free poppadoms and chutney last year too, which is a shame, but the food, service and decor are all excellent and I highly recommend the place.

We rolled out of Veeraswamy some time in the mid-afternoon and went to check in at the City Inn, Westminster. We booked the hotel room through a great room consolidation site Londontown.com, which we've used in the past. You usually get good deals there, although it seems to be aimed more at American tourists visiting Britain. The hotel turned out to be a really pleasant surprise. The foyer and our room were clean and modern. The room had a dvd player and a stereo, with a free cd and dvd library for guests available at reception. It also had a real duvet on the bed. I hate those all-in-one hotel bedspreads and itchy blankets, so this was a real plus for me! Being located just off Millbank, round the corner from Tate Britain, the hotel was really well located, too.

Our evening entertainment consisted of going to see Jeremy Irons, Patrick Malahide and Jean Boht in "Embers" at the Duke of York's theatre. "Embers" is a play adapted by Christopher Hampton from the book by Hungarian Sandor Marai. As the boyfriend and I had both enjoyed the book, we were keen to see the play. It was really good. It was still in preview when we went to see it and it needed a bit of time to bed down, I think, but Jeremy Irons gave an utterly absorbing performance that really did the book justice. Judging by the audience reaction, a lot of people hold the book in great affection and appreciated the fact that it had been brought to the stage.

Next morning we took advantage of our proximity to Tate Britain and went to the Gothic Nightmares exhibition. The boyfriend loves Milton and read Paradise Lost with great enthusiasm, so he's very attuned to Blake, devils and gothic art. I studied gothic fiction as a response to social change ages ago, too, and we both thought that the exhibition looked good. There was an impressive range of material on display, all spanning out from the central spoke of Henry Fuseli's 1781 painting "The Nightmare". I particularly enjoyed the compilation of clips from films that have taken "The Nightmare" as inspiration. The boyfriend and I used to go to Tate Britain all the time, predominantly because it was free. We used to return to our student digs with armfuls of art postcards, feeling very cultured. Astonishingly, Gothic Nightmares is the first exhibition that we've actually paid to go and see at the gallery, so you can tell it must have been a good one! It looked good enough for us to fork out money to go and see it, and it certainly did not disappoint.