John

John came to visit this weekend. He arrived Friday evening after only getting mildly lost on his way to our flat. We didn't mind, though, seeing as how he brought us his old TV/DVD from Uni for us to use for the year. We broke it in Friday night and watched "the Mexican".

Overall we had quite a good time this weekend. We've hardly been here long enough to have a complete lay of the area. But John was a good sport and played along nicely as we tried to take up the entire day Saturday exploring the relatively small area around the Triangle and the Square. (Not every area of Bournemouth is named after a geometrical shape - just the popular ones.)

We went to Corinander,an excellent Mexican restaurant, for lunch. (http://www.coriander-restaurant.co.uk/) In fact, we were quite surprised at how Mexican food is better in Britain then it is in Canada. It was fairly inexpensive (by UK standards) and came with two courses. Adam tried British Mexican chicken wings - not as good as Canadian chicken wings- while John and Troë both had delicious desserts - Strawberry Pavlova and Chocolate Nachos, repectively - both amazing.

Killing time in the afternoon was actually not that difficult once we decided to take in a street performance in the square. The show consisted of a man doing a spot of juggling - which was quite impressive. At the end he juggled a machetè, bowling pin, and apple whilst riding a unicycle about twelve feet off the ground. The only problem with his show was that it ran for the better part of an hour but only contained about ten minutes worth of actual tricks; the rest was annoying filler banter. On top of that, we arrived while he was setting up, and stood around for fifteen minutes before it even started. So we spent over an hour watcing a fool make inappropriate jokes and argue with a small group of children about where they could sit. Overall, it was kind of pants.

But all was not lost. We managed to salvage the day with a flurry of Carcassonne playing. We introduced the game to John when we visited him last month and he's been itching to play again since. The weeks of anticipation didn't manage to improved his game skills, however, as he lost every match. We finished the night off with nachoes (the more Mexican themed events in a weekend, the better everyone enjoys themselves, right?) and a couple of movies.

The adventures continued on Sunday. First we visited the grave-site of Mary Shelley. We learned that she was buried in Bournemouth on our first day here, but we couldn't find the specific grave. This was a bit embarrasing, actually, as we found it inside of five minutes with John. Then in the afternoon we took a car trip to the neighbouring city of Poole and explored its downtown center.

John stayed until late on Sunday. He left within five minutes of winning his first game of Carcasonne, which made us wonder if he visited us for our company or for our game. Somehow he managed to make the return drive in half the time he took on Friday. Now that he knows he can get here in two hours, hopefully he'll visit again soon.