More Birthday Celebrations!

RIMG0005, originally uploaded by Bio-hazar.

Well the celebrations for my 40th are still going strong. After a shortened work week, it was time for more festivities. This time at the London South Bank. We went down to the South Bank Centre to check out the Slow Food Market. I was especially looking out for a little van that I knew was going to be there called Jimmy! He is a converted ice cream van that now brings chocolate joy to the world and is called Choc Star! As we drove through the South Bank, we saw Choc Star right away, so after some time finding a parking spot, off we headed straight for Jimmy. I had the original chocolate brownie sundae with hot fudge sauce and Peter had the Blondie brownie with caramel sauce. It was a bit of a cold day, so we stood in a sheltered area next to a exhaust vent to keep warm. Then we walked around the rest of the Slow Food Market and has some samples of bread, humus, venison and pigeon sausages. After looking around we decided to have kofte lamb burgers for our lunch/tea. It started to lightly spit, so we bought a couple of coffees and retired inside the Royal Festival Hall. After some browsing in the bookshop and a nice long leisurely stroll along the river, we headed back to Choc Star for a nice Jamaican Hot Chocolate. Petra even threw in a gorgeous chocolate truffle made with amazing Willie's pure cacao chocolate free for my birthday. Thanks again Petra!

Then it was back to the Festival Hall for the main event of the evening, seeing the Kodo drummers. Peter knows that I'm am a big fan of the Kodo drummers, and when he found out they were coming to London so close to my birthday, he knew it would make a great birthday present. He managed to get seats just 4 rows from the stage. They weren't even the expensive seats. They were the row behind us. When we were aloud to go into the Hall, I was surprised just how good the seats were. We had left our camera's in the car, as no photography was allowed during the show, so we only had our phone cameras. We took this photo before the show started to prove were were there. The concert was amazing. The show started off with the usual drumming you would expect from Kodo and then three guys came out with about about 2 meters worth of bamboo strapped to their backs and sticking up above their heads all decorated with flowers. The were also wearing very brightly decorated costumes, as well as carrying drums. You think at first that the bamboo is just for decoration, and then all of a sudden one of the guys bends right over and slaps the bamboo on the floor of the stage by just using his back. All through the rest of the number the three drummers with the bamboo slap the floor in different patterns. Some times alone and other times together in a circle. It was just jaw dropping, heart pounding excitement. The concert just got better and better from then on. It definitely was the best birthday present EVER!