Thursday, February 14, 2013 – Valentine’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day, All!
Hope yours is/was memorable!
Here our day started about 8 a.m. Rain had been predicted, and it definitely
did rain during the night, but some blue sky was actually pushing through as we
had breakfast! So, figuring that we needed
to take advantage of any blue sky we got, we decided to head out toward
Westminster Abbey first. We walked to
the South Kensington subway station and got day-long transportation passes for
both today and tomorrow.
 |
| Queen Elizabeth Tower, home of Big Ben |
A Circle line
train was pulling in and in just a few minutes, we were at the Westminster tube
station. Of course it started to rain as
soon as we came up, and of course also, we had left our umbrellas at the flat…fortunately
it was very short-lived, and we only got a bit damp rather than soaked! We were interested in getting tickets for a
tour of Parliament on Saturday – they wouldn’t be in session, but as we’ve
never been in the building, we thought it would be interesting to see. Found the place to pick up tickets, but it’s
not open until Saturday…so…we’ll try again on Saturday morning.
We walked over Westminster Bridge, and decided to take a
ride on the London Eye! No line for tickets,
and we basically walked on to a pod! Not
sure how many times we’ve been up in the Eye – this is its 10th
birthday – but at least I’m not nearly as nervous about getting to the top as I
used to be! Today was a lovely trip;
very enjoyable – and lots of pictures!
From the Eye we headed back toward Big Ben (which, as R
repeatedly tells me, is NOT the clock, but rather the BELL in the tower…but in
one ear…) and got a bus taking us over to Oxford Circus. We are such big John Le Carre/George Smiley
fans that we wanted to see where MI5 (or is it MI6?) hung out. Got there and it didn’t look anything like
the movie – only to find out when we got back tonight, that we should have been
looking for CAMBRIDGE Circus…oh well!!
Tomorrow, maybe? It was now
lunchtime, so we found a really nice pub – the Experienced Traveler – (great name!) and had chicken chasseur –
chicken breast in a wonderful sauce with mushrooms and spinach; it was
great.
I realized earlier today, when thinking about blogging, that
I haven’t said very much at all about London!
In past years, we had visited at least once or twice a year, in all
kinds of weather. But when the British
pound vs. the American dollar got up to 2 to 1, we decided we had seen enough
of London, and would visit other places.
So…very good to be back, and the exchange rate is rather better,
thankfully! But it is still fun to ride
around on the top of double decker buses – MUCH more fun than the Underground,
where you can’t see anything! (And Robert is SO great at finding bus
routes!) London is such an international place – all kinds
of people speaking many different languages; different foods galore! Yum!
After our nice lunch, we decided we wanted to find the
building that Hercule Poirot lives in on the BBC series. I had Googled its location, and it is on
Charterhouse Square. Took yet another
bus over in that direction, and walked a few blocks – and voila, there was
Whitehaven Mansion, looking just like it did on TV!
From there we decided to head to Harrod’s for a look
around. Well…somehow we managed to walk
through their fine jewelry section, including the De Beer’s diamond store –
wheet-whew! What an incredible
collection of diamonds that was! Do
people every really have an occasion to wear those kinds of pieces?? Found our way to the Food Halls, and I was,
of course, transfixed by the cakes section – which apparently was extra busy
today, for Valentine’s Day. I know I’m
on a diet, and all has been going well – but sometimes one just has to
splurge! So – I got a piece of Red
Velvet cake and a piece of Rainbow cake – had never seen anything so
pretty! I’ll let you know how they taste…
We wandered around a bit more, stopping at their Prosecco Café for a nice glass
of bubbly! (It is Valentine’s Day, after
all!) We also got some hummus, baba
ghanoush (sp?) and pita bread, as well as a nice bottle of Prosecco for this
evening! (Figuring we had our big meal
at lunchtime…) So! From there, we caught yet another bus bringing
us fairly close to the flat, where we promptly collapsed.
I am now endeavoring to do a load of wash in our washing
machine/dryer combination … all done without any written instructions – and hopefully
things will work out a bit better than the last time I used one of these
combination machines, in Brisbane – I had to use a hair dryer to get things dry
that time! It has been grinding away now
for about 45 minutes or more – WHY do these machines take so long? At any rate, I will definitely let you know
if and how things work out…or you’ll be reading about me heading out looking
for yet another Laundromat!!
Take care!
m
xxx
PS – We have so many neat pictures of the London Eye itself,
as well as more views from various directions, that I’m going to post those
pictures separately after this one goes out!
m
How was the cake?! It looks scrumptious!
ReplyDeleteBrenda