Back to my favourite island nation...

After a few quiet weeks in the tranquillity of our Cote d’Azur office, it was once more time to experience the buzz of the UK office. My flight time on Monday was even earlier than normally (that's what you get when you book your travel for the week before Easter shall we say last-minute) – I had to get up before 5 o’clock in the morning… I was fully expecting problems with my journey, as I had a changeover in Paris and something always seems to go wrong when I travel. Imagine my surprise then, when I landed in Heathrow 10 minutes before the scheduled arrival time! Even more surprisingly, the sun was shining!

Monday night was spent, as it often is during my travels to England, in Guildford. This time the occasion was not only St. Patrick’s day, but also my birthday. The venue was the Stoke, our old local pub from our years in the UK. All the usual suspects turned up (except for Stephane, who did have a godo excuse as he had finally managed to sort out his ski trip) - even Adrian had made it all the way out to the bush from Richmond. Predictably copious amounts of Guinness were consumed. This time I even managed to avoid a fate worse than death (the dodgy late-night bar known as Flares), and crawled into bed at a nearly reasonable time...

For Tuesday night, Louise had most kindly booked a nice Mexican restaurant called Las Iguanas near Waterloo station in London (which makes getting back home a lot easier...). As we left work just after 4 to catch an early train into London, we had time to down a couple of pints at a nice pub near Blackfriar’s bridge before eventually stumbling into Las Iguanas, where we finished off the night with yet more beer (and a bit of food to go with it).

The rest of the week was more or less spent recovering (and working, of course ;-)... I had some worries about my trip back again, especially since my flight was from London City airport. Crossing London just as Easter holidays were starting seemed like a recipe for disaster to me. Amazingly though, I made it – with minutes to spare (I arrived 30 minutes before take-off – fortunately City airport is the smallest airport in London).

More pictures here.