twenty five

This year basically everyone I went to school with is turning 25. This means a lot of cake and catching up. I've been so lucky to have a few months back at home to reconnect with a lot of my friends. I've been absent from their lives for 2+ years, and it begins to take its toll.

I went back to Ireland last weekend to tie up some loose ends, and because it was one of my closest friend's birthdays! I used my newly acquired skills to drive some of us to The Station House in Meath for a birthday dinner.

We had three courses, and afterwards the most spectacluar pina colada inspired birthday cake I have ever seen. Then, in true old lady style we retired to the birthday girl's house where we sat by the Aga, ate cake, drank (tea for me, wine for the others), and reminisced.

For me, there's nothing better than good food, friendship, a roaring fire, for which your friend took axe to wood to keep lit mere minutes before, and cups of tea. Nightclubs fill me with horror, and there's nothing that can be said in a loud pub that can't be said more eloquently over cake or tea somewhere cosy. It was basically perfect.

 

 

 

Hellerup, Bakken Amusement Park, and a Birthday

Last Saturday was Leo's 27th birthday, and, as we're not big birthday celebration people (well, he isn't big birthday celebration people, I love celebrations, but there we go), we kept it low-key.

I'm really relishing having weekends off, I can't emphasise it enough. The whole time I was in London I didn't get any free time to enjoy like a normal person, so it's such a novelty to sleep in on a Saturday and then lounge around.

For Leo's birthday we went on a trip to Hellerup, a beautiful suburban part of Copenhagen that's on the sea. We brought our bikes on the S-Bahn and then cycled up the coastal road, enjoying the fading sun and stopping at a few little beaches along the way.

We found the most famous petrol station in Denmark, design by the architect Arne Jacobsen. Architecture students flock from all over Scandinavia (well, Denmark, in any case), to marvel in the design of this gas station. I don't know if I share their enthusiasm, but then again maybe I'm just a philistine.

 

Bakken is home to the oldest amusements in the world. Entry is free, it's kitschy, colourful, and hosts a huge array of Danish people, many carrying giant chocolate bars or stuffed animals they won.

 It is surrounded by a huge wooded area, and I have been told that it's better in winter, when the amusements are closed and you can wandered around the shut down park like its part of a ghost town.

I didn't buy a birthday cake, because I'm a bad girlfriend, so when we got home from the cinema (we saw Stories We Tell, a documentary by Sarah Polley, it was really good) I stuck a birthday candle in an orange.

Happy belated birthday, mi querido.