A night of folk music and Guinness – not the worst way to start of a week

Monday night we headed to The London Irish Centre in Camden. A festival called The Return to Camden Town celebrating Irish culture is currently going on in Camden and Jamie Smith (who we saw last year as well) was playing with his new band Smith: Byrnes: O’Sullivan and this was the release concert of their first CD.

There were two bands playing that night, the first one with was a guy playing different a instrument for almost every song with his band. This was a bit more traditional I guess and then there were Jamie and his friends playing a bit more upbeat with a drummer and guitar. I really enjoyed the music, it reminded me of my days back in high school when the folk festival was in town there.

I shot a video of the first song they played; Exotic Snowball. The sound in the video is not good so if you want to hear what it really sounds like go to their myspace profile and hear the song there.

Last weekend I went to visit Ann in London. It’s really nice to have her closer so we get to see each other more often. It does mean that I dont get the boost of sun a trip to Malta would give to a pale guy like me Hopefully we’ll manage to make a trip to Malta for Easter. 

In the meantime we enjoyed the sprawl of London. The picture above and below is from the Portobello Market in Notting Hill. As you can see it was a great day for strolling and the market was bustling with people along the almost two miles the road stretches.

London is getting into gear for the Christmas shopping and and there where lights up a lot of places. Here we make our way down Oxford Street, the big shopping street, in a painfully slow tempo. Looking at the city as it slowly sail by makes up for it.

Saturday night we went to Camden Town to meet up with Jamie and Becky who used to live in Prague. They went back to London. (It was Jamie who had advised me on my Scotland itinerary and his parent’s house I stayed at in Glasgow).
Jamie is a folk musician so we went out to hear him jam at a very local bar called The Golden Lion. It was good to see Jamie and Becky again and to hear their take on London. Jamie is at the back of this picture in stripes – this night he was playing violin, flute and guitar.

While I was there I borrowed cousin Martin’s flat which was very appreciated. Ann has a lot more details about the weekend at her blog. The weekend was over fast and I’m now back in Prague.