A Sunny Week in June

Some of my colleagues from our US office have been visiting recently, so I've been too busy to blog very often, but not too busy for my usual combination of brunch, gin and random London sights!

1: The elephant skeleton at the Royal Veterinary College. Check out their events page for details of their Night at the Vet College events later in the year.

2–3: Friday evening started out with a classy rosemary gin fizz at the Rotunda bar in King's Cross and ended at Rowans, a seedy bowling alley in Finsbury Park that doesn't seem to have changed since about 1976. A fun night!

4: As St John Bakery on Maltby Street hadn't quite got their first batch of bacon sandwiches ready, I grabbed a huge grilled cheese sandwich from The Cheese Truck instead. "Do you want bacon with that?" they asked. Well, it would be silly not to.

5: As part of the London Festival of Architecture, GUN Architects have created a conceptual rainforest in Bloomsbury's Bedford Square. It would be even better if you could walk inside — or if they had some cute monkeys — but it's still pretty impressive.

6: I finally got to have brunch at Caravan on Sunday and it was epic. After a delicious Chemex brew to wake me up, I worked my way through a tasty juice, and then made short work of my main course: cornbread French toast with bacon, avo and rocket. It's hard to go wrong with Caravan's brunch menu.

7: St Paul's looking colourful on my walk home.

8: I'm still not sure if I'm keeping these yet, but I bought a pair of cute, comfy, rainbow-coloured flipflops. But they're Crocs (the Huarache Flip Flop in multi/island green). The only reason I am hesitating is that the straps make them a little fiddly to put on. Oh, and I did go into Schuh looking for a pair of neutral sandals, but these colours match pretty much everything in my wardrobe.

9: When a gin-loving New Yorker is in town, you have to take her to the best gin joint you know. Luckily for me, 214 on Bermondsey Street is also only a few minutes' walk from my flat. We worked our way through a fair chunk of the cocktail menu, including this gin flight, which included three gins mixed with 214's homemade tonic. We chose the 'nice and spicy' selection and managed to identify all three correctly. That's what they call winning at gin.