Tag Archives: london

Another busy day of cramming sightseeing activities in.

We began the day by wandering through Hyde Park again, but this time on a eastwards journey, strolling past more squirrels, people riding horses, and pigeons, and stopping on Oxford St to pick up more (more!!) souvenirs for people at home (we’re really working hard to keep the economy going here!) Then headed down to Piccadilly Circus to buy tickets to the show we were planning on seeing tonight with L and T: Jersey Boys. On the way we ticked off another must-do: riding on a red double decker bus!

Our next goal was to walk down through Trafalgar Square and along Whitehall to eyeball Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, although the last had to be put off until after lunch, as we met A at a pub nearby for a bite to eat.

After fortifying ourselves with a Caesar salad and meat pie respectively, we headed off to wonder at Westminster Abbey. While I was initially a bit reluctant to pay the sixteen pounds entrance fee, it was really amazing. As well as the tombs of various monarchs, there were memorials to many of Britain’s noteworthy writers and poets, such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen, as well as scientists like Darwin and Newton. Plus the building itself is amazing, with hugely high carved ceilings and stone floors worn down with millions of feet over hundreds of years.

Plus, while we were wandering about, I bumped into two ex-students, M and M who are currently on a post-school junket around Europe from the sounds of things, staying with relatives here and there. A junket that involves coming and seeing cultural history like Westminster Abbey – pretty classy!

Then it was time to meet L and T for dinner and the show. We tried an Indian place near the Prince Edward Theatre, and while the food was good, it took them forever to bring it (we were in a bit of a hurry to get to the show) and then they asked us for a tip after paying for the meal! A bit rich…

The show itself was amazing. I wasn’t terribly familiar with The Four Seasons, but knew a few of their songs. The story itself was interesting, looking at the relationships and relationship breakdowns in the group over the years, and their rise to fame. The singing was fantastic! Apparently the guy playing Frankie Valli has a cd out, so it’d be worthwhile looking him up – a really amazing voice. The rest of the cast were great too – the actor playing Tommy Devito was fabulous and really played the crowd. This was needed, as he was the first of the revolving “narrators” of the story.

The staging really blew me away. They had a pretty simple set, but with various signs and props that came down from the roof or popped up from the floor, and lighting was used effectively, too. One scene we “joined them on stage”, as the back of the stage was lit with flashing bulbs to simulate a crowd, and the actors played to the back, with hot spotlights on us being “back stage”. Really really effective. It was a great show and I was sorry we’d not made it to more shows while we were here!

Back at the hotel we started packing for the trip home tomorrow. Even with an extra small case and Emirates’ generous 30kg/pp allowance we’re going to be squeezing it a bit – we weighed the bags and between us we have 55kg!

Today was started with a quick phone call to Emirates to see if we could snag a last-minute points upgrade on one of the legs on our homeward trip, and YAY even though they weren’t available on the online upgrade, they had two available on the phone. Goodbye frequent flyer points, hello business class on the A380! Back to economy for the long-haul leg, but I’m happy to get part-way there.

The rest of the day was spent being extremely touristy – we started out walking through Green Park to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards, would you believe! It was packed out, and people kept trying to squeeze in closer to the walls, even though when they were squeezing in front of us, all they could see was a better view of the pillar in front of the wall!

Even so, the ceremony and music and excitement in the air made it a fun occasion. We weren’t intrigued enough though, to hang around for the band’s third track after all the ceremonial walking around a lot, so we said hello to a few police people on horses and wandered off again.

Next destination of all true tourists – Harrods. I was pretty impressed. They had sports cars (of course), lots of big name stuff, and an entire hall devoted to chocolate and tea. Plus a chocolate cafe! What’s not to like? Well, the prices were certainly astronomical on some things – a pineapple for instance, was 14 pounds. Hmm. On the other hand, I cast my eye over the MAC cosmetics and I thought I saw that the eyeshadows were only 12 pounds – less than $20 when here they’re $32!

In any case, I picked up a few suitable “harrods” emblazoned gifts for people back home, and also found a set of the placemats from the gorgeous designs I mentioned the other day, at half price! They are the cheese-themed ones (not on the website – must be old stock) rather than the personality-plus-plus cows and pig ones I adored, but they’re still great! And heavy, as I found out after schlepping them around all day.

Next stop: The British Library to have a look at some cool books. We certainly found them – another Shakespeare First Folio, one of Jane Austen’s notebooks, the Magna Carta, one of the first Gutenberg bibles, some amazing old illuminated texts like more bibles and other sacred texts, and even the words to The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” as first written by John Lennon on one of Julian’s first birthday cards! No photos allowed unfortunately…

We headed back to the hotel to dump my Harrods plunder, then headed out to Fleet to visit cousin E again. After braving the commuter trains at rush hour, we met at a lovely pub, The Heron On The Lake, which unfortunately had only two ciders, both of which I could get at home. Nevertheless, a salubrious spot.

E took us back to her place for dinner, a yummy risotto. It was SO nice to have a home-cooked meal after eating out for so long! The bottle of red we shared also ensured a voluble evening, especially from me. I was particularly amazed at the treasured to be found in the Argos catalogue. Who would have thought you could get a Nerf automatic machine gun?? Three rounds a second! Pity you’d need a good few of the “dart” belts. I can just imagine someone with a bandolier-style belt filled with Nerf darts. Go ahead, make my day!

The trains were a lot quieter on the way back, but we managed to share a carriage with a drunken party of darts-players, strangely enough, who were waving a poster they’d nabbed stating “Go on, play darts!”. We all arrived back in London safe and sound!

Since The Globe was apparently open again today we decided that was our main priority!

First we headed to the Tate Britain, as R wanted to visit the Pre-Raphaelites again, and there’s a handy ferry that goes Tate to Tate (the Tate Modern is the big ugly building right next to the Globe – handy!) The TB have reorganised since R was last there, and the Pre-Raphs weren’t handily located in one place, but mainly weren’t even hung! Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, Rosetti’s Monna Vanna, Millais’ Ophelia (and Sargent’s Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth which almost counts but not quite) were the only ones there!

We thought we’d not even get to see these ones, as when we were wandering through the early 20th Century gallery, we noticed the next room was blocked off as there was a film crew in there! Perfectly timed, though, as after a minute or two in discussion with the gallery attendant, we watched with big grins as the film crew dismantled their bits and pieces and let us in. I think we must have used up the bad museum/gallery mojo last week! (Touch wood!!!)

After drooling over the PreRaphs, we wandered through to the Romantics exhibition, which has a LOT of Turner, as well as one or two of his contemporaries here and there. This was really interesting, as I’d looked at Romanticism a bit at uni, but only as it related to literature, so the artistic interpretation was a new angle.

Then we walked down to the Thames to catch the ferry to Bankside, where the Tate Modern and The Globe sit. We started talking to a lady who was walking a baby in a pram and a big puppy (who looked like a Bernese Mountain Dog – biiiiig puppy!) who was very excited that I wanted to give him cuddles. So much so that he managed to get out of the nose strap part of his collar, which caused no end of consternation. Whoops. Ah well, he was still attached to the lead and all was well in the end.

The ferry was a very civilised way of getting from A to B, floating gently through the water, watching the sights slip smoothly past.

The Globe was pretty much everything I’d expected. There’s a great exhibition inside the Centre which gives lots of details about Shakespeare’s life and how life and theatre worked in Elizabethan times, and how the Globe theatre works to keep a lot of detail of their productions authentic, like the costume design and construction. I was amazed that it was nearly 50 years between the founder’s first idea and the theatre being opened, despite it being an amazing idea. Why wasn’t there some kind of monument to Shakespeare in London, as he is such a notable figure in London’s history?

In any case, we went out to the theatre itself for the “tour”, which was a lady telling us a few things about how the building was built and that we weren’t allowed onto the stage, while we eyeballed a group of kids on an “education” tour who were allowed on the stage! Ah well, we did climb into the audience and sat in the in-demand middle tier of seating for a bit.

All eyes were drawn downwards as we walked through the “piazza” outside the theatre, as one of the early fundraising schemes was to carve donors’ names into the pavers. We saw, among many others, Vivien Leigh, Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, and even the Patrick Stewart Appreciation Society!

After saying goodbye to our guide, we plundered the gift shop. They have a lot of very cool things there, such as magnets and badges with great quotes on them, play-themed tshirts and mugs etc. I was very tempted by the blood-soaked “Macbeth” mug. I think that would have gone down a treat at morning tea at work, but the problem is always getting breakables home safe! Mugs are such a difficult shape…

Mid-afternoon we stopped for a hearty pub lunch at a “traditional” pub nearby, getting back onto the potato wagon well and truly with a bucketload of chips. What could I have been thinking, not eating any potato yesterday?

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, catching up on the laundry again and heading over the road to a rival hotel restaurant for dinner and making plans for tomorrow. How many of the last-minute sights can we catch? There’s only two days left!

Today was another museum day, as we spent most of the afternoon at the British Museum.

R made sure we saw the Big Ticket items first: The Rosetta Stone and The Parthenon Marbles.

The Rosetta Stone looks like a big rock, mainly obscured by other people’s heads and is enlivened by people trying to elbow you out of the way so they can take pictures of themselves in front of it. We went around the back instead, so we could have an unimpeded view.

The Parthenon Marbles were more my cup of tea, having studied them at uni. Seeing them all there was pretty mind-blowing, and I did love the nasturtiums cast on Greece for having the temerity to actually want them back!

We also saw lots of Egyptian mummies, the Lewis Chessmen, and the Portland Vase which I also remembered studying at uni – so very cool. The Reading Room (the cool round building in the middle) has begun to be used for (paying) special exhibits, so we didn’t end up going in there, even though we climbed all the stairs.

After leaving (through the gift shop of course… you too can take home a life-sized plaster head of the horse of Selene from the Parthenon pediment for only 1650 pounds. Plus shipping of course!) we wandered down to Drury Lane, home of theatre. We stopped for a drink in the Lowlander Grand Cafe, on the erroneous prediction that it was a cafe (it’s actually a pub) and tried some beer (the raspberry beer tastes nothing like beer, by the way, which is good!) and chips and took in the dramatic atmosphere (we were on Drury Lane after all, even if we weren’t in a theatre) before heading back to the hotel to refresh before meeting L, an old buddy from home, for a (another) drink and dinner.

We met in Piccadilly and detoured to one of the Slug and Lettuce pubs, which was warm and served cold drinks. After a couple of ciders, we wandered through Chinatown, trying to decide which of the many very similar restaurants we would bestow our custom onto. Choosing The Crispy Duck simply because it had a great name (without Pagoda or Dragon in the title), we sat down for a yummy meal. R, emboldened by the offallicious delights of the night before, decided to try the Octopus With Pig Organs, a dish which sent shudders down L and my spines. The waiter was similarly surprised, and went do far to doublecheck – “You want… with ears? and tongue?” It actually mostly wasn’t that bad. I’m gaining an appreciation for tongue, in a small corner of the gamut of offal, although there were bits (ear maybe?) that were just wrong. Ick. Needless to say, we didn’t finish that. The king prawn omelette and garlic bok choy was muuuuch better.

After the mega-museum day yesterday, we thought we’d take an easy day wandering along Oxford and Regent Streets and seeing where they took us.

We started by walking along Bayswater Rd until we reached Marble Arch, so named because it has a large, marbly arch in the middle of an intersection. This is also where the SHOPS start.

I’d been advised to visit Evans, Next and Debenham’s among others, but only really had luck at Evans, where I found a pair of jeans. The others had lots and lots of stuff, but not much that appealed. I had an interesting time with “customer service” at Evans!

The changeroom is plastered with signs saying “for any assistance with sizes or locating items, please ask”, and the girl at the changerooms mentioned it as well. However, when I found that in my attempt of “let’s try a few different sizes”, UK size 18 was too big (yay – that’s a size 16 Australian – phew) and looked around for someone to swap it, there was noone to be found. I waited a bit, then pressed the “for assistance, please ring” button in my changeroom. After a good three or four minutes, a different shop assistant appeared. I asked for the swap, and her response was “I can’t leave the changerooms, so I’ll have to find someone else to do it.” Hmm. I waited a few more minutes, and eventually yet another lady thrust the jeans into my changeroom.

Meanwhile, I’d tried on another pair, and while the fit was good, I’d accidentally grabbed a “short” pair instead of “regular” length. I asked if I could try them in the “regular” as I’d picked up the wrong ones. Deep sigh. She’d try to find one.

More time passed, enough to try the other jeans, found they were pretty good and cut enough on the generous side to allow for the big dinners we’d been having so far, and put them on the “I think so” pile. I was thinking about maybe trying a size 14, but things were taking so long and with so many deep sighs that I was worried that I’d be either hounded out of the shop in my underwear if I asked for another favour, or given a decisive “No.”

Finally, the lady returned with the jeans, but as I was putting them on I noticed she’d picked up the “extra long” length rather than “regular”, so the hems were literally under my feet. Rather than have another discussion, I decided to just buy the first pair! Nicely stretchy and wide-leg, in a deep indigo denim. Noiyce!

Even though I didn’t find anything to my taste at Next or Debenham’s, we did manage to find a few suitable items for small people of our acquaintance at Mothercare, so before long I was dragging a couple of shopping bags with me to show for the morning’s efforts.

Morning tea was a wheat-free Red Velvet cupcake and a cup of tea from Lola’s in the Selfridge’s’s food hall. Gorgeously light and fluffy, it tasted like a real cupcake! Nom nom nom…

Appetite sated for the moment, we wandered up to the Wallace Collection near Oxford St to keep a little culture in the day. The lower floor has a lot (and I mean a LOT!) of awesome old weaponry and armour. Suits of armour, equine armour, shields, swords, pikes, daggers, rapiers, flintlocks, spurs, and other pointy and dangerous things abound!

Upstairs was a lot of paintings, the most interesting one to me was the Madame la Pompadour image, as I’d seen photos of it before. One of the big rooms upstairs was closed, but I found there was certainly enough art to more than satisfy me in the rest of the building!

Next came lunch, and I fulfilled my salad craving at the Selfridges food hall. I don’t know why you aren’t allowed to combine salads in the same container, even if they’re the same price. Hmm. Yet another strange “customer service” moment? In any case, my red rice and aubergine salads were tasty, even if they were in separate containers!

We took a detour down Regent St after lunch, and stepped briefly into Liberty, until the price tags cowed me into submission and we left. Some very pretty things in there, but three hundred pounds for a small scarf is a little out of my price range.

Then through Piccadilly, a quick stop for R to revisit Kirsty MacColl’s memorial bench and we hopped on the tube to return to the hotel before heading out again to dinner at St John’s Restaurant to celebrate R’s birthday (4 weeks early, but we thought we may as well use the occasion to have a nice night out).

St John’s was great. It’s a “nose to tail” restaurant, so they use quite a bit of offal and cuts which don’t usually get served as gourmet food. From the outside it’s a very unprepossessing place, but we arrived 10 mins early and were told we were “too eager” and needed to have a drink at the bar before we could possibly take our seats. And I checked – our table was still sitting empty all that 10 minutes!

Nevertheless, the cider I had while waiting was nice, although not on tap. The food itself was lovely. I started with the lamb’s tongues and a glass of champagne, which went down very well. While I’ve never been a huge fan of tongue, this was light and tender (and didn’t look at all like those huge beef tongues you used to see in the supermarket!) R was enamoured of two starters, the rabbit offal (heart, liver, kidney and something else he couldn’t quite identify) and the restaurant’s signature dish: marrow on toast. So with the waiter (who sounded exactly like Mr Nigel-Murray from Bones) aiding and abetting, he tried both, and said they were amazing.

For mains, I had the mallard with beetroot, and a side of green salad. This was really lovely – the beetroot somehow cutting through the intense gamy flavour of the leg, while adding to the sweetness of the breast. R’s choice, deviled kidneys on toast, was apparently another winner.

Then came dessert. I chose the chocolate mousse with creme fraiche, which was incredibly rich and dark chocolate, cut beautifully by the sourness of the creme fraiche, while R tried the rhubarb crumble, which was “the best rhubarb dish he’d ever tasted”. I forebore to mention my humble homegrown rhubarb crumbles from last year; after all, this was a restaurant that Tony Bourdain reckons is his favourite restaurant, and won Best London Restaurant in 2001. I suppose the rhubarb grown in our backyard and lovingly sauteed and baked can come a close second best…

I’d recommend St John’s to anyone who enjoys something a little different. While there’s (strangely!) not a lot of vegetarian offerings on the menu, there is one or two entrees and one main, if so desired. There are also a few options of “usual” cuts for those who might be a bit taken aback by the signature uses of offal and lower grade cuts. While they didn’t make a lot of changes for my gluten free requests (no bread provided, and they forgot by the end and gave me wheaten biscuits with dessert), the waiter was able to advise which dishes had toast as an integral part, or used flour in the preparations. It was really a lovely dinner.

Our first proper day in London started with… wait for it… a very exciting trip to the Launderette!!! Well, I have to say I was quite enamoured of the prospect of clean clothes that I hadn’t hand-washed in the bathroom basin and draped over the furniture for a while.

The day properly started after this nail-biting interlude, with a wander through Hyde Park. I’d started the morning by reading a regency romance, to really get me psyched up for this, so I was imagining dashing heroes and swooning maidens meeting in a secluded corner of the park to exchange pleasantries and maybe even hold hands, before promenading on Rotten Row at the fashionable hour!

Well there may have been some illicit meetings behind the trees, but probably not many. We did see lots of birdlife (Canadian Geese are huge, btw) and wildlife (squirrels are still very cute, but rats aren’t) and human life (but the only people allowed to swim in the Serpentine are the Serpentine Swim Club, and only between 6.30 and 9am) and joggers.

Rotten Row was pretty devoid of Fashionables as well, unfortunately, but we fixed that by promenading up to the Albert Hall and memorial.

Next stop was the V&A Museum, which I’d been looking forward to, as I’ve got some fabulous books on their fashion collection. Unfortunately (this did cause a lot of indignant squeaking from the peanut gallery) the Fashion Collection is closed for remodelling and not opening again until Spring! How could they do this to me? Many exclamation marks later, I managed to drown my sorrows in lunch, a fish pie from the cafe. (I didn’t see they’ve got a salad bar until after we’d procured pies. Once again I was eating potato. Sigh.)

Thankfully, the Theatre and Performance collection was open, otherwise I think I may have staged a one-woman riot. They had an Annie Lennox exhibit, which was great, and included some of her fabulous stage/video costumes. Other pieces of interest included Pete Townshend’s broken guitar (one of them), and stage costumes from Adam Ant and Mick Jagger. And of course, there was some scribbles from Mr Shakespeare.

The jewellery rooms were pretty drool-worthy as well – some pretty blingy pieces there. Well worth a look!

Next up was the British Galleries, and we focused on the 19th century ones. Luckily I was able to catch a glimpse of a Regency gown in the early section, to appease my costume hunger. They had a lot of furniture, tapestries, crockery and all sorts of accoutrements of life, which was very fabulous.

Our last stop at the V&A was to see the Raphael exhibit, on loan from the Queen, apparently! These were on a huge scale, of course, and were very imposing.

The gift shop provided lots of opportunities for pressies for people back home, and while the bookshop had lots of books I wanted to add to my collection, taking coffee-table hardbacks in long-haul luggage just isn’t fun. Good thing bookdepository.com has a nice range of V&A books with free shipping. Woohoo!

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum, just across the road from the V&A. R wanted to come here to see the dinosaur skeleton, and it was pretty amazing! Their exhibits on the whole were great – like the Roman Baths at Bath, these guys do a great job at organising and arranging their stuff so that it’s interesting and relatively easy to manage wandering around finding things out. Well worth a visit, especially for kids! The gift shop here also had some great things – anything nature, science, or dinosaur related you could think of, and more you wouldn’t think of!

By the time we finished here, the gates to Hyde Park had closed, so we walked the long way around, past Kensington Gardens, back to the hotel.

Dinner was a Malaysian place around the corner that we spied this morning while finding the launderette (see? Great things came of that launderette trip!) which was very tasty, especially the black glutinous rice pudding. Yum!