Perfect Ealing Saturday

Today has been quite possibly one of the favourite Saturdays I've had in a long time.

And, I'm sure you'll be surprise to hear, it didn't include any wine!

Quite simply, my partner in crime and I stumbled out of bed and into a dreamy stroll (why one might even call it a bimble) that saw us have a kick ass brunch, a rainy amble around Walpole, a wander around a photography exhibition at PM Gallery, a nibble with the current chef in residence at Pitzhanger Manor and a nose around a Peter Blake art exhibition - all in a mile radius of our house!

If any one is reading this who hasn't been to Ealing, it's days like this that make me so happy and (if I'm honest) feel ever so slightly smug that I live here.

So, we started with brunch at Amalfi Caffe (my little post about them HERE if you missed it) which certainly hit the spot. (as I write this 8 hours later, we are still full!).

Fulled up to the max, we headed off - brolly in hand - to wander around Walpole. 

Quite possibly one of the best parks in London (in my humble opinion) and one that is undergoing a mega make-over to restore it to its original state - a big chunk of the funding for this (£2.4m to be precise) came from The Heritage Lottery Fund, so make sure you keep buying The National Lottery products so we can keep raising money for such amazing projects!

There's a lot of detail here about what's going on with the park and I cannot wait to see it finished!

Can anyone tell me what this is? It looks amazing and I want one!!

Oink!

 

I must admit I did feel rather sorry for Spencer's Cafe as they have been displaced to a portacabin, but we soldiered on through the rain to grab a coffee for him, green tea for me and to eye up their excellent (and, apart from the Oreo, slightly retro) biccie selection which resulted in the purchase of an Orange Club - classic!!

At this point it was absolutely pi$$ing it down, so we sought refuge in Pitzhanger Manor and stumbled on a fantastic exhibition called 'Living Laboratory - Richard Pare on Le Courbusier & Konstantin Melnikov'.

At this point I must admit that I don't think I was meant to take any photos, but I did (sorry PM Gallery!) as they were pretty cool.

As we were finishing taking it all in, we were told that there was the current chef in residence downstairs doing a tasting and even though we were still pretty stuffed, I thought it would be rude (and most unfair to my blog) if we didn't check it out.

We met the lovely Kalwant Sahota from Kay's Cookery, the first Chef in Residence, who made us Papdi Chaat which was light, refreshing and delish - she also gave us the recipe so I will definitely be trying this out at home.

As well as the food and the recipe, she also told us about an event on 1st June called The Big Lunch, which will be the biggest picnic in Ealing Borough this summer,so make sure you put that date in your diary!

Love this is - it's where the servants bells went - very Downton!

After we'd said our goodbyes we wandered up out of the Manor and into the glorious sunshine!!

And walked into a Peter Blake exhibition at For Arts Sake.

I love this shop - they are constantly refreshing what is on show and if you see anything you fancy you can pay monthly rather than paying out a big sum in one go. Being pretty passionate about art myself I think this is brilliant as it means that anyone can buy and own original art rather than getting a load of crap from Ikea!

After this we popped into Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre (for things far too mundane to talk about on here) where we saw a mini #ldnexhibition going on. Now I LOVE these prints, so if anyone connected to this exhibition can get in touch please I REALLY want them!

After all of this, we were pretty exhausted so wandered home happy Ealing bunnies.

Hope you all had fab Saturday's? What did you get up to?