(Note: the following was written November 6 in my travel journal. Places we actually visited are linked; places we merely walked past are not.)
Had a great weekend in London. The hotel was a little disappointing, but it ended up not mattering at all. Friday morning we walked from the hotel out to the Knightsbridge tube stop and rode over to Westminster. We had some time before we had to pick up our London Eye tickets, so we walked around the Houses of Parliament first. The Eye was great - really great view and a little better sense of the layout of the city. Afterward we walked along the river to the Tate Modern. We saw the slides that make up the Unilever installation but decided they probably weren't worth the wait to go for a ride. We walked the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's and then walked down Fleet Street to lunch at a random pub (fish & chips, of course). After lunch we walked down The Strand and through St. James's Park to Buckingham. We took the tube from Victoria back to the hotel. Dinner around the corner from the theater was only so-so, but Spamalot was great! Our seats were outstanding. (As they should have been; I paid a small fortune for them.) I suppose Tim Curry could have been better - more dynamic somehow - but the rest of the cast was great, especially the guy who played the French taunter.
Saturday morning we slept in (more or less) and got coffee at a little Italian place on our walk. Charley got maybe the best croissant I've ever tasted. There was a Toni & Guy hair salon on the way, too, so I stopped for a cut. It looked great the way the girl styled it. I was a little afraid of what would happen when I tried to do it, but so far so good - at least when I don't do anything and wear it curly.
We went to Harrod's, which apparently kicked off their Christmas season Saturday. It was kind of a zoo, but it was also Clinique Bonus Time (bonus!), and they also had an Aveda counter. We wandered around a little bit - mostly the food stalls and luggage. Then we headed out past Buckingham, through St. James's Park and back up toward the theater. We were going to get Vietnamese at a place we saw the night before but stumbled into Chinatown instead. We got dim sum at a place called Chinese Experience on Shaftesbury - another best! After lunch we walked down to Embankment Pier and took a circular boat tour up to Tower Bridge and then down to Westminster. From Westminster we walked up past Downing Street, through the Horse Guards Parade, through St. James's Park and around toward Victoria for a couple cups of tea and pints of beer while we rested and wrote postcards. We took the tube back to the hotel for a quick nap (just me) before going down the street to the Green Door for a steak dinner.
Sunday morning we slept in again and decided to save our energy by taking the tube out to Piccadilly Circus. We got some coffee and meandered around Trafalgar before going through the National Gallery. As usual, my hips, Charley's knees and my disdain for crowds of people in the Impressionist galleries got the best of us after a couple hours. We tried to get pho, but the Vietnamese place was closed on Sundays. We decided to try dim sum at a bigger place, but it wasn't as good as Saturday's. We still stuffed ourselves. Lacking any real energy or desire to do anything in particular, we picked up one of the bus tours in Piccadilly. Not a bad couple hours! We got to see a little more of the city than we might have just by walking, and we got a pretty decent overview of the whole central area which should serve us well whenever we go back. After the tour we wandered aimlessly around Piccadilly Circus a little - into the Virgin Megastore and a Waterstone's. Then we found a luggage shop on Piccadilly that sold Briggs & Riley bags. They also had a shoulder bag I liked, so we got that and a new (greatly needed) large suitcase. Back to the hotel for a quick nap and around the corner to a pub for dinner.
This morning we got up early. Charley's flight was out of Heathrow at 10:00 or so, so I saw him off at the tube station. I showered and got some breakfast down the street. My workshop didn't start until coffee/registration at 10:00 and speakers at 10:30. I think it was somewhat useful - just to get the creative juices flowing in terms of public outreach. I wouldn't say it was really valuable, but the workshop itself was free. The meeting broke up at 4:00, and I caught a train from Victoria to Gatwick at 4:30 or so. It's a good thing I caught an early one because the security lines at the airport (if you could call them "lines") were the worst I've ever been in. I wasn't sure I was going to make the flight, but everyone was in the same boat, and they delayed it by an hour. It's a good thing Charley's decided to drive all the way back out to pick me up at the airport or I might not have been able to catch a train back tonight!
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