Nudity and coffee

I love London.  If you say:

"I would like to go to a sauna (none of these British, wear your trunks kind of saunas though).  Did I mention I want it to be in  a church?  Oh and I'd like some tasty Finnish snacks too please."

Then London will say:

"Step right this way!"

And if you don't believe me: here is the link: www.finnishchurch.org.uk/e_sauna.html

All in all a very relaxing evening.

Finnish Christmas market again

I knew that the Finnish Christmas Market at the Finnish church in Rotherhithe would have exactly the type of gloggi that I'd been to Lidl and the Swedish Christmas Market to find, to no avail.

I popped in after work this evening, and I was very pleased with myself for picking an evening to go rather than a weekend as the market was so quiet.  It was bliss! I could go round and look at everything without constantly bumping into people. And pick up what I wanted whilst listening to some Finnish music.

There was a £1 entrance price, though the folks on the door did say that you don't have to pay it, it's a donation.  I think it was worth £1 just to see the range of Moomin products they had on sale.

Moomin biscuits!

Cybercandy

Cybercandy has 4 shops (Covent Garden, Islington, Brighton and Birmingham) selling some crazy sounding sweets, chocolates and soft drinks from a range of countries: Australia, Austria, Canada France, Finland Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, USA.

Nordic Bar

A Nordic themed bar on Newman Street near Tottenham Court Road.  Things I learned about Nordic Bar:

- they order their herring directly from Denmark.

- it can get quite slippy behind the bar itself.

It's a good job I just write a blog (and a badly written one at that) because I learned a lot more than that but these are the only two things I can remember.  Maybe I should start taking notes...

http://www.nordicbar.com/

The Nordic Bakery

A little cafe in Soho, the Nordic bakery sells coffees sweet pastries and also a few savoury snacks such as cream cheese on ryebread.

Orders come on a cute little tray - 80p for the cookie and £2.40 for the hot chocolate

 They also sell some Scandinavian produce - jams, crisps and juice - by the counter.

It's quite a small location and I arrived at about 16.00 so it was pretty busy and noisy. All the tables for 2 were full.  There are a few bench style tables that seat 6/8 people so I joined several two couples and another girl by herself on these.  I'm sure it's a bit more relaxing when it's less busy.

According to their website they also have a cafe in Marylebone.

www.nordicbakery.com

The Scandinavian Kitchen

Countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland

Cost: from £5 to £8 for a main

Location: Great Portland Street

A fantastic little cafe and shop on Great Titchfield Street, the Scandinavian Kitchen has some delicious food and a lovely atmosphere.  We stayed 3 hours eating, chatting and drinking coffee.

One of my new favourite places in London! 

www.scandikitchen.co.uk/

Finnish Christmas Market

Country: Finland
Location: The Finnish Church in London, Rotherhithe
Event Frequency (twice a year - at Christmas and Easter).  2010 dates are 19th to 27th November.

This is a very popular event, with queues down the street to get in when I went back in 2007.  The church has Finnish products for sale downstairs and a cafe upstairs.