Last week, Keefy and I took a very exciting trip down to London town. Being jazz musicians, I’m always on the look out for cool gigs to go to, so imagine my absolutely delight when I discovered that Dave Grusin (piano- and Keith’s absolute favourite) and Lee Ritenour (guitar) were in town at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. It was an ideal birthday surprise for Keith, who had no idea his hero was visiting the UK.
this is the moment it was revealed to Keith what we were doing for his bday
I booked our day return train tickets a month in advance and got the pair for £50- I was well chuffed with this. Trainline have a nifty new app that means you no longer have to print your tickets at the machine at the station- they are stored as e tickets on your phone and I have to say this system was a dream to use. I’d highly recommend it!
Back to our day trip- we arrived into London Liverpool station shortly after 13:00 and having dealt with some rather sneaky but painful blisters (managed to convince himself to buy me a new pair of flats from H&M!) we were on our way. Refusing to pay nearly twenty quid for two return journeys on the underground we decided to walk the 2.5 miles from Liverpool St to Piccadilly. Naturally this caused for a couple of refreshment stops- the first being a very British pub just near St Paul’s Cathedral
where we both enjoyed a good pint of London Pride. Next we stopped at one of the coolest places I’ve ever drank in, the Old Bank of England which has now conveniently been transformed into a Fullers Pie and Pint pub!
This place was really, really cool and we enjoyed another pint of London Pride whilst people watching and drooling over the menu. Interestingly this place is supposedly nestled between where Sweeny Todd’s barbershop was and Mrs Lovett’s Pie shop was but these days you can find it on Fleet Street.
On arriving at Piccadilly circus we headed for Jamie’s Diner- a “pop up” started by Jamie Oliver designed to serve up tasty burgers and American food, using top notch ingredients, and that it did! We enjoyed a burger each, himself choosing a beef hotdog, topped with pulled pork whilst I went for the bacon and cheese burger topped with blue cheese. It was delicious, very good value (the bill was £40 and we had a litre of wine to accompany out burgers) and we had a great seat overlooking the mad crowds of Picadilly going about their business.
Suitably stuffed we walked the half mile or so towards Frith St, home to the awesome Ronnie Scott’s jazz bar
We arrived just as doors were opening and we’re shown straight to our seats. For those of you that haven’t been here before, even if you’re not so much into jazz, you should totally give it a visit. It is a really sleek, sophisticated and totally atmospheric venue- as soon as you walk in you get that dark mood lighting feel, and you know that something awesome is going to happen! The seats are arranged in a large U shape with the small compact stage in the middle and I think you would have a great view from wherever you sat. The staff were lovely, drinks and food (not that we ate!) reasonably priced- it was just perfect.
The show itself was beyond expectations, the Ben Williams trio opened the night and around 8:30pm the main show started. The music was just superb and at 10pm we rolled out happy as Larry, having obtained Lee Ritenour’s autograph
and excitedly made the 2.5 mile walk back to the train with just enough time for a sneaky mcDs for the train ride home!!
Perfect day!!!
Saxylydz 