The Book Pushers take on London

After starting The Book Pushers back in 2009, on 13th August 2011, Has, Ying, E_bookpushers and myself (Minn couldn’t be there and she was VERY MUCH missed, but we’ll be seeing her next month *happy dance*) were at the same place, at the same time, in person for the first time EVA.

I arrived in London on the Friday, and took a trip to the Natural History Museum. I had a fantastic time but I wasn’t going to post any pics I took there. But I wanted to showcase this picture I took because at first I thought it was a big-ass bear, but no, I was very much wrong:

It’s a sloth! Those awesome cute peculiar little animals originated from that hulking beast. *eyes still agog*

Anyways! We met up in Covent Garden on the Saturday at Gourmet Burgers. My mum and I arrived before everyone else, and it was quite an adventurous journey trying to find the restaurant. We caught the taxi from the hotel, and as we stopped at a set of traffic lights, we saw a man crouching with his legs bent looking very much like a penguin, and curious me, tried to see what the heck he was doing. The taxi man (bless him) told me it’s best not to look. Gotta love London :D. He dropped us off at Covent Garden, and thank god for Starbucks and their wi-fi where I was able to open up google maps, and use the navigation to find the restaurant. We finally found it, and waited until Has, Ericka, and Ying and her partner joined us. And from there, it was one of the most fun days I’ve ever had.

We talked…a lot, and a lot of that chatting was about books. After we ate, we made our way to Forbidden Planet and holy moly, there are a hella lot of books in that store. We also had a book debate with a gentleman at Forbidden Planet, who owns and hosts a Sci-Fi book club each month in London (hello sir if you found us online!). We also managed to block an aisle in Forbidden Planet as we lost track of time having another debate about books whilst annoyed book buyers tried to get past us. Oops.

Here we are at Forbidden Planet, where E and Has managed to get some signed goodies. It was amazing to see so many romance genre books in a bookstore, and a whole section and more devoted to it. Ying book pushed the Harry Dresden series onto me, so I’ll be getting some of those books in the near future :D.

Whilst in Covent Garden, we saw about six to seven police vans zoom past us, so I checked twitter to see if there was any trouble going on. And much to my horror (and the other book pushers), there were rumours of a riot. We were worried for a while, until I realised that I was reading out tweets that were three to four days old. Double oops.

Ying had to leave after Forbidden Planet, so after warm goodbye hugs to Ying, we took off to a coffee shop. And you can guess what we talked about: books. Again we lost track of time, and only realised how much time had passed when an employee of the coffee shop came up to our table and told us we had to leave as they were shutting *grins*.

After that, we took a cab to the famous Leicester Square where we walked past the Odeon cinema that showcased the Harry Potter premiers. And all I can say is that it looks much smaller compared to the TV. We found our way to a Mexican place where we ate good food, talked politics, and tried to guess (and failed) what book my mum read a while back that she had forgotten the title for. For desert afterwards, we went to the Haagen Dazs parlour. Look at these pictures and please feel free to drool:

After ice-cream and crepes, it was time for me (and my mum who came along for the trip) to depart for the night back to the hotel, whilst E and Has stayed out late and carried on the party. And I’ll leave it to them to tell the story of the drunk guy in the tattoo parlour. 😉