Monkey Business

Continuing with the back-blipping brings me to the weekend that Ross and Sam(antha) came to visit from Moscow. Hadn't seen them since we met in Munich last September for the Oktoberfest, so it was set to be a messy weekend. They arrived on Friday (yesterday) but I had to work, so I packed them off in a taxi to the Old Town and then we had a night in, with, in no particular order, a takeaway, beers, vodka and singstar. It was so hot. The mercury gave a reading of 36 degrees when I left work at 5pm and can't have dropped below 25 all night.

Anyway - a great start to the weekend was had, despite the humidity and after a lazy breakfast at home this morning, I despatched the pair of them to a museum that they were keen to see. I had already been, so used the time to pack and get myself organised for the next two weeks away and then joined them for beers and pierogi in the Old Town sqaure for a late lunch.

We did a bit of a bar crawl back towards the centre of town, stopping for a shot of vodka in the corner bar that does everything for 4 zl. (80p), before plonking ourselves down for a couple of hours at a bar with outdoor live music, playing cards and drinking cocktails. Ross went and got his hair-cut for about a tenth of the price he would have to pay in Moscow before we hot-footed it to Jimmy Bradley's, the Irish sports bar, to watch England's first first-round game in the World Cup. It was jam-packed with lots of British expats and a good sprinkling of American counterparts to make it a great atmosphere. I introduced Ross and Sam to Zubrowka (Bison grass vodka) mixed with apple juice at home last night, so we drank that until the bar ran dry of zubrowka, then made our way across town to the Secret Garden bars, where we decided it reminded us of the Hutongs in China. The drinks were as cheap as chips there, but the much-needed and spectacular thunderstorms and early closing there made us dash for cover in another bar for a final night-cap before taxi-ing it home at about 1am.