London – Our Favourite City

Since we often stop in London en route to/from other places (Heathrow being a convenient hub to other countries and it costing little or nothing extra to layover there), we’ve started consolidating the London portions of different trips onto this page.  We’re behind since Covid but check back soon for more updates from our 2022-2023 trips!

January 2023

MORE COMING SOON

The V&A has one of the world’s best jewelry collections. They update displays on occasion so it always is worth a revisit.

It had been years since we’d been to the Imperial War Museum. It’s a good starting point for a day along the South Bank, and you can walk from there along the Thames.

November 2022

October 2022

January 2020

24 Jan

Due to terrible traffic our afternoon in London in was cut short and all we had time for was to do a little shopping in Ealing Broadway neighborhood, but we were rewarded with delicious ramen!

November-December 2019

23 Nov

Arrival to Park Lane Sheraton to drop off bags and head to Piccolo Cafe on White Horse Street for a good basic English breakfast at a fair price.

Despite the rainy day we proceed to the LondonWalks Brunel architecture tour, where our guide is a docent from the Brunel museum.  Incredibly in all our time spent in London it’s our first Thames River cruise.  After debarking we take the Tube to see tunnels he designed and end at the museum / underground silo that connected to the tunnel.

After the tour we join our fellow travelers at the Mayflower Pub, which connections to the Pilgrims (and preparing for next year’s 400^th anniversary of landing at Plymouth Rock).  They were out of lamb stew and it was very crowded and ½ hour wait for lamb rump. After an hour talking with the guide and his wife, we could have ordered a dinner.

We stop at the Scandinavian Christmas Festival nearby still in Rotherhithe neighbornood with 2 Norwegians who were on the tour and had a great time walking around this street.  Ate one crepe with reindeer meat and jam.

Luckily the remodeled Club Lounge at the Sheraton and we snacked on scotch, sliced duck, caramel cake, other good food.  The lounge and our room are so great, and the weather so not great, that we skip Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park in favor of rest on the fluffy bed and English telly.

30 Nov

First time in decades landing at London Gatwick.  When we’re on the Tube instead of Gatwick Express a local asks us how we’re so savvy to just take the Tube and now wasting extra money like other Americans.  Because we’re smart and experienced travelers.

To our home away from home Premier Inn Hammersmith/Ravenscourt Park.  We see signs around the neighborhood for a St. Peter’s School Christmas Faire:  just like home they are grilling burgers, but unlike home the elementary school PTA is serving beer!  Lots of great, inexpensive, homemade baked goods, too.

Off to the Barbican Gallery to see their Into the Night cabarets exhibition.  This is a museum that manages to always do it right.  This exhibit explores the history of cabarets, cafés and clubs across the world during different time periods, from London to Paris, Mexico City, Tehran, and Ibadan. Students from a local art school have made an exact replica of a tiled bar in Vienna.  Every Thursday to Saturday night, the gallery’s recreated spaces come to life: the iconic 1920s hosts live jazz music and classic cocktails are served in the replica Cabaret Fleidermaus bar.

Afterwards, we get scones and salads and hang out in the Barbican lobby, listening to the live piped in music from the Beethoven and Dvorak concert in the concert hall.

1 Dec

All 4 thumbs up to the Pret A Manger “Proper Porridge” with milk and oats, and also a decent coconut milk and quinoa porridge and a banana.  The milk oats was great.

Royal Horticultural Hall for the Adams Antiques Fair, where we’ve been before and buy a few things from the dealer where we’d previously purchased a Royal Doulton vase.  Big regrets over not buying a Rolls Royce Spirit of Ectasy hood ornament. Had a great time shopping, talking to dealers, bought on flask for 25 pound and had to run to ATM for more cash to fuel my wife’s jewelry purchases.

It had been a long time since we’d been to the theatre, but we enjoy the box to see Ian McKellen’s “On Stage” at the intimate Harold Pinter Theatre, where we’re in a box.  The show starts with Ian McLellen reading his part from The Hobbit and he proceeds to bring a young teen girl up on stage and hold the Gandolf sword and take a selfie.  The rest of the show is him telling his life story, and doing Shakespeare bits – a lot of fun.

We walk to Wild Honey – St. James, whose chef had previously had another restaurant we’d liked.  Expensive, but good dinner with Negroni, ginger beer, rabbit, lamb with kumquat jam, venison.  Dessert was 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream and in front of us the waiter cut 2 dice-sized pieces of honey comb from large comb to top the ice cream.

2 Dec

Victoria & Albert Museum for a temporary exhibit, Cars: Accelerating the Modern World exhibition.

Afterwards we visited the jewelry at the museum and sculptures, and then walked to History museum where we see ice skaters and one of the few times we’ve ever seen the ice not melting

Took Tube to Hammersmith to shop for food and get a hot chocolate from Paul and then head back to Heathrow for flight home.

January 2018

15 Jan

Breakfast and morning at the V&A and then a walk to the Design Museum for the Ferrari – Under The Skin exhibition.  The museum has no real permanent exhibit, and unlike most museums in London is not free.

25 Nov

Wish we had a lovely report on dinner and Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, but British Airways incompetence (masquerading as “poor weather” despite the fact that airlines much less accustomed to flying in ordinary rain have flights coming and going) so miss our dinner reservation in London.  The concierge takes pity and gives us a free drink coupon so we enjoy a dinner in the Sheraton Grand’s Palm Court restaurant, which is not too shabby.

26 November

Breakfast at our favorite Deco breakfast spot,  The Wolesely (the fancy old auto showroom where we occasionally indulge ourselves in one of the world’s priciest breakfasts) and then a stop at the Natural History Museum before flying home.

April 2017

9 April

Underground to Big Ben / Westminster station.  Very sad to see the barricades from the terror attack the other week and all the memorial flowers.  Lovely Thameside walk to the Royal Horticulture Hall in Vincent Square and got into the queue for Adams Antiques Fair (which we discovered back in 2015).  Back to the vendor we bought a few things from then and get a couple of darling charm bracelets.  Even though we don’t buy much, we learn a lot and see some beautiful things (including some silver dealers who just loaned some things to the Chipping Camden Barn!).

Marquis of Westminster pub for Sunday roast lunch. Lamb with mint and Yorkshire pudding – it’s okay.  Tube to Liverpool Street waiting for our 2:30 walk and a pop into McDonalds to use the restrooms and get an ice cream with Cadbury Flake.   About a dozen people on our Hoxton & Shoreditch walk.  The guide was late, we started late, and we walked for 2 hours learning almost nothing.  This is the worst walking tour we have ever taken in London, or anywhere else in the world, bar none.    At least the people in the tour are very nice, we speak to a man from Sao Tome and a Chinese girl and some London natives.  It’s such a vibrant and hip area that we felt like it was a big, missed opportunity.  We ditched the lame tour upon arrival at Box Park, where memory didn’t remind us that DumDum donuts are not that great, but now we’re hungry and thirsty.  Memory also didn’t serve that Belgo Centraal in Covent Garden doesn’t have the best food, BUT the strawberry Fruli beer and the Trappist brown beer are very good, though expensive.

10 April

First people in the door at the Barbican Centre for a Japanese post-war architecture exhibit.  Plans and models and even a couple of tiny houses built into the middle of the museum.  Very fun and well-curated.

Museum of London for the Fire exhibit, which is not free but we walk around the regular exhibits and there is always something new to discover.  Very good fritattas at the museum café.

Tube to St Martins in the Field for cream tea, but 7 pounds each is too much so we go to our standby National Portrait Gallery basement cafe and have cream tea there.  Poke around the gallery to see what’s new.  Back to Heathrow for dinner and showers at the lounge and our journey home.

November 2016

29-November-2016

Traditional English Breakfast around 9 AM at St.Martins-in-the-Fields.  Walk to British Museum and just putter around the permanent collection.  Pop into a small Christmas Faire at a church near our hotel.  This is our second stay at the Premier Inn, Hammersmith.  It’s an excellent value for London and convenient for the Tube and Heathrow.

Main thing today is dinner at Ametsa with Arzak Instruction, a training restaurant for the famous Basque restaurant in Spain.  As soon as we saw Presa Iberica on their menu, we made reservations.  With the strong dollar it seemed like an opportunity for a splurge.  Everyone got amuse-bouche like olive oil donut balls, thin dough wrapped fish on a stick.  The presentation was nice but the taste mediocre.  Our appetizer was langoustine that was rolled, served on a plate with some clear gel that tasted like we don’t know what.  Totally underwhelming.  The Presa was a massive disappointment.  It came with yellow roots that were coated with something to make them look black like charcoal, and some coconut meal (bad pairing, weird taste).   After the major waste of money and a London meal with decided to skip dessert, but they brought a complimentary sweet – the best part of the meal:  6 tiny, grape bunch shaped, ice cream came out. One was supposed to be cardamom, one was yogurt and beet root, the last chocolate.  THESE were very good.

April 2016

2-April-2016

First Stop to Sir John Soane’s Museum for a temporary Charlotte Bronte exhibit.  The Soane is its usual greatness, but the 2 rooms dedicated for Bronte are charming as well (and include one of her dresses).  Wrong stop for the Borough Market and having to walk a couple of miles.  Too crowded.

Tube to Islington for our a walking tour discovered on Meetup (Walks, Talks, Treasure Hunts).  Hadn’t been in this neighborhood in decades.  Our guide Hazel takes us along the canal and all over the place with great anecdotes and tales.

The tour ends in Joseph Grimaldi Park, a public garden located off Pentonville Road in Islington.  Grimaldi’s grave is at the center and plays music when you step on it.

A Little Lusciousness with Rosie, a pop up dinner through Grub Club, which we’d been to a couple of years ago (then in her home, now in a café called Alice’s).  We meet an interesting group of people who gives us recommendations for other places to eat.  This is a gin-theme diner.  Gin soaked trout that tastes like salmon, great bread, something else, roasted goat with leeks, and barley, yum.  Excellent.

3-April-2016

 Green Park is blooming with daffodils and crowds coming to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.

Dim Sum at Yauatcha, very trendy place.  You mostly pay for the ambiance, but our food was good.  The annual Olivier awards are being held in Covent Garden, where we unwittingly made dinner reservations.  Still we enjoy some tunes from Jersey Boys, Phantom, etc.  Clos Maggiore is romantic (some magazine voted it most romantic in the world), and the inside looks like a fairy house with flowers and trees and strings of lights.  Meal highlights include seabream fish with tiny pieces of shellfish on it on top of minty potatoes, duck breast and chocolate and banana ice cream on top of creme and hazelnut crispys .

4-April-2016

 Our favorite (albeit extremely expensive) breakfast at The Wolseley:  Haggis and duck eggs.  New museum for us, the Royal Institute of Science.  There is a fun teaching tool of a periodic table that sings and you need to hit the element when it appears.

Stroll through Liberty to admire the architecture.  Next stop is Selfridges for roof top lunch at Forest (recommendation of one of our Pop Up dinner companions), which has a very cool setup like an English potting room. We had smoked wood pigeon with endive and blood orange and hazelnuts and foraged mushroom with a barley risotto.  Both were super good, and the truffle chips added to it.  Lunch was better than dinner from last night, I think.

Walk to the Wallace Collection.  How beautiful this place is – one day we will have to have tea there.  Back to the Strand and the special Orham Pamulk exhibit based on his “Museum of Innocence” novel at Somerset House.  It’s about to end and therefore a bit crowded, but this museum has great views of the Thames and on a nice day it’s pleasant to sit outside in the large plaza.

Dinner at Five Fields in Sloane Square, truly one of the best restaurants in the world.  Before dinner we stop at the Church of the Holy Trinity, famous for its exquisite William Morris stained glass window.

We each took the 80 pound tasting menu.  About 5 amuse bouches, kept coming out.  Clam chowder with a croissant, very good hummus on a cracker, a hot cheese mousse in a tiny shell, white asparagus with caviar on it, then foie gras with rubarb topping in some red vegetable ball, then a scallop with smoked haddock sauce, then the most incredible mutton that was probably sauteed in butter. Pre dessert was some white cream with blood orange frozen morsels.  Final dessert was rhubarb mousse on top of green tea matcha semi freddo, then a passion fruit chocolate. Wow.

November 2015

29-November-2015

Museum Of London to drop off our luggage for 1 pound (unlike most of these self-service lockers this one keeps the pound, so make sure before you turn the key that you don’t want to get back in there!).  Been here so many times, but it is so vast and detailed that it’s always worth a revisit.  It’s free, but their ticketed exhibits are astronomically expensive.

You can walk from here along a covered walkway to the Barbican Centre, where there is currently a Charles and Ray Eames exhibit including their chairs, artwork, drawings, furniture, multimedia displays and movies, leg splints, airplane parts. A still 14 pound entrance fee, but good. It’s raining, and here in  “the City” a lot of places cater to business people and are closed on Sunday, so we eat at Pizza Express chain restaurant, which is fine.

October 2015

9-October-2015

Staying at the Premier Inn in Ravenscourt Park (Hammersmith-west London), where there are some great deals if you time things just right (the Premier Inn chain throughout the UK runs some great sales).

Guildhall, which we only now discovered through a program on PBS which showcased its underground Roman Colosseum, discovered in the 80s. part of it remains.   The art gallery upstairs has pre-Raphaelite works among others in its permanent collection. The 15^th century hall itself was rebuilt after German bombs destroyed it in 1940. Famous trials there include those of Lady Jane Grey and Catherine Howard’s lovers, and there reside Gog and Magog , the 2 giants who guard England.

Terrible, overpriced lunch in Hammersmith at the Black Lion pub, not even architecturally interesting and any sliver of joy there was drowned out by the raucous Reggae music. .

Luckily this was just a bad memory after our extraordinary meal at Five Fields in Sloane Square (we made reservations 6 weeks earlier, when they opened up on Open Table, and they fill fast).  Hare with chicken of the woods mushrooms and parsnips, beet root juice filled bon bons, crab amuse bouche, too much to list. The main was fallow deer, done like a work of art. Desserts were tiny chocolate gooey cake with sake ice cream, and ginger ice cream with ginger cake.

10-October-2015

Borough Market, were today’s special today was Icelandic food, luckily focused on sugary things and not their fishy “delicacies” like harkel (google it and weep). Breakfast was hunter sausage made with pheasant, boar, duck, other wild animals and one egg and fresh, cloudy apple juice. Found the French place where bought our cheese back in January, but that was sold out (though we bought many other treats) We feasted our way around the market.

North to Goldfinger House (aka 2 Willow Road), modernist house built in 1938, and which inspired Ian Fleming to name his villain after the architect, now run by the National Trust. Scored on 3 etchings of Venice, $15 each, at the local Oxfam shop.

South again to Clapham and 575 Wandsworth Road, left to the National Trust by an eccentric Kenyan author who spent 30 years carving little strips of recycled wood and affixing then anywhere and everywhere. The neighborhood is bleak with nothing else to recommend it.

Back to Sloane Square to see the William Morris and Burne-Jones stained glass windows at Holy Trinity Sloane Street Church.

Back at Ravenscourt Park there is a Carter’s Steam Fair with some tacky attractions but some old timey, charming attractions. It moves around the UK.

Dinner at Charlotte’s in Chiswick, good (with a fun vibe) but not great. Apps were fried kale with almonds on some ricotta; dinner was gnocchi with pumpkin and lamb belly and shoulder with farro. Cherry chocolate dessert was excellent.

11- October -2015

Breakfast in Chiswick at mini chain restaurant Cote, which has excellent hot breakfasts at a reasonable price.

Morning visit to the V& A Museum and then a bus to Twickenham.

Strawberry Hill House was the home of Horace Walpole, author of the Gothic classic “Castle of Otranto.” There aren’t many furnishings, but the Gothic structure should eliminate any surprise at how Walpole’s nightmare while living there inspired the book. Lunch at the museum café, and it’s warm enough to be al fresco. We walked along the Thames back to town and bought some craft beers to eat along the waterfront.

We’d been anticipating dinner at Sapori Sardi, a Sardinian restaurant recommended by some foodies we’d met at a Boston secret supper. The pheasant in bacon was really tough and disappointing. The lemon flavored chard and cheese ravioli was good but nothing memorable, and they made the concession of cooking in butter with sage instead of tomato sauce. The best thing was the Mirto, a blueberry and digestive flavored drink for after dinner.

12- October -2015

Royal Institute of British Architects gallery for an exhibit on Palladio. It’s a small space but the exhibit is nicely curated.

British Museum to see the Rothschild’s collection, newly displayed, and the Sutton Hoo hoarde, which are the remains of an antique burial mound found by some woman in 1939. A revisit to some of their classic masterpieces like the Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles, and a drool over the Anne Hull Grundy jewelry collection (she donated 1,200 pieces in 1978). FYI, they have one of the worst, and most overpriced, museum cafeterias.

January  2015

November 2014

21 November, 2014

Our new London splurge, The Wolseley for breakfast:  Fried duck eggs over haggis, a double espresso, plus a plate of regular eggs and bacon and two fresh-squeezed clementine juices. About $50 but hard to put a price on the experience (and blocks to our hotel).  Front of the line for the opening of the British Library (which opens at 9:30, a ½ hour earlier than other museums) for a special exhibit on Gothic. Down the street to the Wellcome Instute for exhibit on Institute of Sexology.  They always have thought-provoking (and free) exhibits there.

In Pimlico we stop at tiny pop up boot sale and get a jar of homemade jam because can’t bring home the cool furniture or other large items.  Lunch at a culinary arts school, The Vincent Rooms, where students do a 2 week stint of rotations.  We’d read rave reviews, but for nearly 40 pounds without drinks it was okay but definitely not great.  Creamy wild mushroom soup (tasty, but lacking mushroom chunks), small steak, small salmon, and the students are nice and polite but show their inexperience.

Walk to Winter Wonderland, a German style Christmas market in Hyde Park.  Lots of stalls, rides, overpriced food, nevertheless fun to walk around.
.

22 November, 2014

National Portrait Gallery for our “regular’ breakfast of scone and clotted cream and jam.  Special William Morris exhibit (too crowded).  Then a Gallery Talk (always winners offered on most afternoons, free and given by their curators) on some war hero called Fred Barnaby, legendary for carrying 2 Icelandic ponies under each arm.  Many people running around the museum looking at Grayson Perry works.

Dreadful lunch experience at Koya, a ramen bar where it took 45 minutes to get a bowl or ramen and some raw duck.  As it was starting to rain we popped into a theatre in Leicester Square to see the play “Charles the III” on 17 pound tix  (mediocre show that could have done a lot more with the concept of what Charles would do once his mum dies).

Post-theatre snack in Chinatown for the crème-filled fish we saw earlier (think stylized waffle iron that quirts crème into a fish shaped vessel).

Over to the Shoreditch area for a Grub Club pop up dinner hosted by a young Argentinian who cooks and performs his original music..  Quintessential London, cosmopolitan group at our table, two British guys and their continental (Italian and German) girlfriends, a Dutch woman and an Armenian woman.  Argentine-style pizzas and dulce de leche pancakes.  Enjoyed the food but mostly the company.

March 2014

A glorious day starts with a ride on the # 9 bus from Green Park to High Street, Kensington and a huge English breakfast at Balans. Good charity shops in the area. On to Sambourne House/18 Stafford Terrace, a great example of a Victorian house that was barely touched (no photos allowed).   In 1979, a descendant gave it to the London Victorian Society. Lord Sambourne was a cartoonist for Punch, and much of his work hangs in the home.

Final night dinner at our now-regular Chinatown joint, Leong’s Legends:  shrimp and mushroom rice, ginger and pork and preserved vegetable and taro root soup, soup filled dumplings. Drink was super sweet milk tea, tasted like stuff our grandmas drank (in a very good way).

November 2012

A new place we visited this year is the unusual Dennis Sever’s House.  It’s off the beaten path and difficult to find, so if you plan to visit make sure you have a detailed map (like an A-Z) or have a map downloaded to your mobile device.  It’s in Spitalfields neighborhood so makes a good end to a trip to the market there.  You must make reservations, and their days/hours are limited so do visit the website.  We highly recommend visiting at night when everything is by candlelight (no electricity in the house).  Dennis Severs was an eccentric who actually lived in the Georgian house until his death in 1999.  It’s all set up sort of like a mystery, and you must walk from room to room in silence and observe your surroundings.   We don’t know how to categorize this experience except to borrow Severs’ own words, that it is a “still life drama.”

21 November 2011

Breakfast at the National Portrait Gallery starts our week of supporting the excellent museum cafes of London, which are affordable, delicious and benefit the institution.  Since so many museums are free, this is a great way to pay back.  We visit this museum on nearly every trip because of its central location and continually changing works.  A new portrait on this visit is that of Sir Dyson (of vacuum lore).

10 pound fixed price lunch at Olivelli restaurant near the British Museum.  The staff is all Italian, and the food is decent and fairly priced.

Hadn’t visited the Museum of London since its recent renovation.  It is truly modern with many multimedia exhibits that take visitors through the city’s colorful history. The Art Nouveau elevator (from an old department store), Art Deco doors (rescued from the Firestone factory before it was demolished), and the Lord Mayor’s (which can be seen from street level outside the museum) are just some highlights.

In situ pieces of a Roman wall are contained within the museum, and the intact mosaic floor from an old Roman house have been used to depict what life might have been like millennia ago.

We grab sandwiches from Pret a Manger and eat an economical dinner back at our hotel (Sheraton Park Lane).

22 November

A few months ago when the sterling had dropped very low we hopped onto the Internet to purchase train tickets to Bath, which were just 10 pounds each way.  Of course one of the most picturesque cities in Europe on a sunny day and we left the camera in the hotel.

It seemed like a good idea to buy the hop on/hop off City Sightseeing bus ticket.  The main part of the city is certainly small enough to see on foot, but the tour commentary is very good, and it’s a nice way to rest weary feet.  The architecture is stunning.   The Christmas market was opening up that night, so we saw the stalls being set up.

Lunch at the Chapel Arts Center Café included a tasty leek soup and a veggie-topped flatbread (and the desserts looked so scrumptious that we returned in the afternoon for tea and free WiFi).

The Jane Austen Centre is mildly interested but overpriced and really not worth the bother, even for an enthusiast. There are only a few rooms with exhibits, but the live, costumed talk and the film are informative.   We walked around the city for hours and then grabbed food at Sainsburys to eat on the train home.

23 November

The National Army Museum had a wonderful exhibit on the role of horses in war, inspired by the play and upcoming movie “The War Horse.”  The museum is adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home to the famous Chelsea Pensioners (basically, it is a retirement home for veterans), and its permanent exhibits are very well done. 

The café looked good, though we weren’t there at the right time to enjoy it.  Curiously, we did not see any exhibit of the “War for [American] Independence” (they generally do not call it the Revolutionary War).  Maybe we just missed it?

Fish lunch (no chips) at the Café in the Crypt at St. Martin in the Fields.  Then we went to meet a college friend (who is studying in Oxford) at Two Temple Place , an incredible building along the banks of the Thames that is newly opened as a museum with its inaugural William Morris exhibit (since the William Morris Gallery is closed for renovations, many of the items were temporarily relocated to this location).  It turned out to be closed for a special event (we went back later in the week).  We walked over to Covent Garden and had a snack in the Museum of Transportation café.

Dinner at Kopapa , very close to Covent Garden, was good with good service and a nice pre-theatre menu.  Saw the “Pitmen Painters” at the Duchess Theatre.  Since the theatre is tiny we just bought the cheap 12 pound tickets.  Since the show’s been on for a long time, the theatre wasn’t full and they bumped us up to the second row mezzanine  = great seats!

24 November

Thanksgiving Day and we have egg sandwiches for breakfast before visiting the “Grayson Perry:  Tomb of the Unknown Crafstman” exhibit at the British Museum.  From there we went to the Wellcome Collection for an exhibit on Mexican milatros/ex votos.  Like other exhibits we’ve seen there in the past, it was all well done.

What could be more Thanksgiving-like than to have Chinese Food for lunch, at Manchurian Legends in Chinatown (recommended by Time Out).  Good, cheap and spicy.  Next door is a bakery with an excellent peanut cream bun.

The afternoon was spent walking along the Christmas Market of the South Bank and then down to Waterloo Station for a hot chocolate (excellent) at Paul.

We highly recommend the backstage tour of the National Theatre.  You get to see two of the spaces prior to a performance and learn how they set everything up.  We walked onto the stage of the show we were seeing that night.  We saw the props table, and then it was exciting during the show to see actors come onto the stage holding the props we’d seen backstage.  We saw the carpentry studio and a collection of props from plays past (including the puppet for Joey’s mother in “War Horse,” whose scenes actually got cut and the puppet never used).

25 November

My wife hadn’t been to the Tower of London since she was a teenager.  At almost 20 pounds admission, it’s a pricey ticket but we had 2-for-1 vouchers.  At the recommendation of the Time Out London guide, we were in line for tickets the minute they opened and made a beeline to the Crown Jewels.

You stand on a conveyor belt that goes past the crowns because the place gets insanely crowded.  However, at 9:07 a.m. in winter we could have kept getting on the belt over and over again because there were only about five other people in the exhibit.  We were practically the only people in many of the other exhibits until the rest of the tourists and tour buses started to arrive. There is so much to see, and it is all so well curated, that you can spend many hours there.  We toured until lunch and then had an excellent meal at the café, including some sausage sandwiches and a squash/goat cheese tart.

We boarded the Dockland s Light Railway to visit the Docklands branch of the Museum of London, another terrific museum.  There was a session that gave visitors (just us and one other couple on this day) a chance to touch actual historic artifacts from the museum collection that were found in the mud on the river banks.  We enjoyed another good tea in the museum café.

Small plates are the theme at Da Polpo , conveniently located just up the street from our theatre.  Our waiter was British (rare these days!) and very helpful.  The portions were much larger than we had anticipated, and we were stuffed with a total of 5 dishes.  With tip the meal came to less than $60, which is a great place for this quality and location!

We could have sold our tickets to the sold-out comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors,” which had one the Olivier Award earlier in the week (we’d bought them online 2 months prior).  The show was funny, but you got the feeling that a lot of the laughs came because everyone had been told how hilarious it was.

——————–

17 September 2010

Benefit of Sheraton Park Lane is its proximity to Piccadilly Arcade and Laduree, where we tried mint & anise (great), orange blossom, raspberry and our old favorite caramel. Lunch at a mediocre Italian place on Cromwell Road with a cute young Italian waiter named Fabio. Natural History Museum to enjoy the building and rest at a talk on volcanoes. Then to Victoria and Albert for Vito to see the Renaissance & Medieval Galleries while Annabella attended the excellent but cramped Grace Kelly, Style Icon exhibit.
Korean dinner at the cheap and tasty Bi Bim Bap in Soho  before going to see The War Horse play at the Royal Theatre Drury Lane (a small space, ideal for such a visual show), now being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg. A good WWI drama with life size puppets.  Unnecessarily long, but clever.

6 March 2010

Nightmarish arrival to London after a flight from Tel Aviv, with Piccadilly Line works and substitute buses, and then some kind of nutty protest near Hyde Park so I had to walk a ways off the bus (I love to walk, but not with luggage).  Somewhere in all the changes I dropped my jacket, so I was really cold that night.  Nice upgraded room at the Sheraton Park Lane, though, and I was able to rest a little.  It was exciting to take a shower where the floor didn’t end up wet and to roll around on the gigantic king sized bed just because I could do it.

Pleasant walk down Piccadilly and managed to resist the temptations of both Laduree and Fortnum & Mason among many others.  Chinatown stroll was enjoyable just to sniff different food.  The National Gallery has a painting of Charles I that was badly damaged by shrapnel during WWII and is only now being restored.  They are documenting the restoration process.

Met a friend in the Café in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields for tea and then an old friend for dinner at Busaba Eat Thai, which has replaced Wagamama as a London budget favorite (my friend Mandy would like to clarify that we are not “old,” just that we’ve been friends for almost 30 years).  What a rush to eat Thai after 2 weeks in the Middle East!

27 November 2009

Very early morning arrival in London, but by the time we arrived to our hotel we were able to leave our luggage and proceed with the day.  You can read our detailed review of the Cherry Court Hotel on TripAdvisor.  Rick Steves and his followers love this place.  I will say that I don’t know of any other hotel in central London with a private bath that isn’t totally scary for £55 a night (at the time we booked, but for 2010 the price is raised to £60, and I think we might be inclined next time to return to the Arran House Hotel near the British Museum, where a room without private bath is £87 in 2010, and where we stayed in 2007) , but the sliding bathroom door with little frosted glass panels was a bit much even for budget minded travelers like us.  It was clean enough, and the owners are kind, but “comfortable” isn’t the first word that comes to mind (convenient and cheap do, though).

We took the scenic route to Spitalfields Market.  Despite having spent so much time in London, it’s still an experience to drive past Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.  Our first stop was the Geffrye Museum, which we had visited years before but never at Christmas time, when it is decorated for Christmas throughout the ages (the museum is set up as a timeline of interior decoration, and the Christmas theme follows through).  Having visited before in the off season on a normal day, we expected the place to be nearly empty, but it was bustling with activity.  Unfortunately it is set up so that everyone enters and exits through the same hallway, and it got very crowded an uncomfortable.  Of course a highlight for us the beautifully decorated Arts & Crafts era room.

To us Spitalfields Market is a bit overrated.  A lot of shops and restaurants, but many of them are chains.  We ate lunch at Wagamama since it is always cheap and good.  We bought truffles at Montezuma’s, which says it is award winning, but despite an excellent choice of flavors we found it waxy and lacking flavor (and at £1.65 for one truffle, overpriced).

Southbank Centre for the rest of the evening, stopping to pick up our concert tickets ordered online for a benefit for the homeless at Royal Festival Hall (hosted by Stephen Fry but ultimately a huge disappointment since he scarcely said a word, and the music was uninspiring).  We walked along the banks and observed the German Christmas market, the London Eye, the buskers, and the Bankside Gallerywhere we had purchased some etchings a few years ago.

Dinner at Ping Pong.  When, when, when will we ever learn not to eat at restaurants recommended in American guide books??!!  Ping Pong is a trendy dim sum style restaurant.  We ordered combo dishes that came with 11 pieces each and also flowering teas.  The teas come with a little bundle that opens up in a few minutes, and while they were pretty they tasted like a glass of hot water, and we don’t need to spend four bucks for a glass of hot water (we sent them back and did get the money taken off).  The dim sum pieces were all very good, and the sticky rice and mango custard dessert was delicious, but for the equivalent of $60 we left hungry.  So we went to hear some free jazz inside the concert hall and enjoyed excellent pumpkin spice soup and vegetable mushroom soup (we would have been better off just having dinner there).

28 November

Scenic bus ride through Camden past the busy Saturday market and up to Hampstead.  Wish we had known the right in Hampstead Heath area there are so many places with full English breakfast at a good price – next trip!  The Keats Museum doesn’t open until afternoon, so we had to skip that though there was a costume exhibit from the film “Bright Star,” which would have been nice to see.  From there walked over to Highgate and stumbled upon a monthly Farmer’s Market in Queen’s Park, and our snack issue was solved.  We tasted a bunch of cheeses and then purchased a goat cheese camembert style cheese and a sheep’s milk cheese – mild but delicious from Wobbly Bottom Cheeses.  At the risk of developing wobbly bottoms ourselves, we ate some right away.  We also sampled and then purchased an amazing slice of cardamom sweet bread.

Walked through the posh neighborhood up to Highgate Cemetery, taking advantage of one of the only non-rainy days we’ve had the entire trip.  Highgate is jewel in the crown of Victorian cemeteries.  We have a book Permanent Londoners (out of print but available through Amazon – we have Permanent Parisians as well), which offers a good overview to many of London’s cemeteries (we’ve visited Brompton and Kensal Green on other trips), but Highgate can only be visited through a guided tour.  The cemetery was built in the 1830s to accommodate burials for the growing population, but it become dilapidated by the 1960s and 70s.  During that time Hammer Films made many of its famous horror films there, though an Internet search for a list of which ones was fruitless (I found many references to movies having been filmed there, but no list of specific ones, so if any of our readers come across such a list or even the names of a few specific films please email them to us).  During the 1980s the Friends of the Cemetery started a massive restoration project that continues to this day, and the admission fee for the tours all goes towards future restoration and upkeep efforts (the tour fee is £7, cash only, and check their website for tour times since they change seasonally).

Our guide was excellent and gave us a lot of history and information.  We saw the new grave of the Russian journalist (Alexander Litvinenko) who was murdered and many historic tombs, including that of the Warne family (including Norman Warne, who had been secretly engaged to Beatrix Potter before his untimely death at a young age).  You can photograph most of the picturesque cemetery, but some graves are not to be photographed out of respect, including that of the Russian and also the interior of the elaborate mausoleum that entrepreneur Julius Beer built for his little daughter (including a statue of her made from her death mask).

Following the tour we took the bus to Swiss Cottage and walked to the Hampstead Theatre.  We had an excellent lunch for £17, an onion and goat cheese tart, a side of chunky chips with garlic mayonnaise, and an excellent mushroom and sweet potato risotto.  We couldn’t more highly recommend eating at this theatre, and be aware that there is a lot more seating in the downstairs if the upstairs is full, though the food took a long time to come out.  We saw an entertaining one act play called “I Found My Horn,” based on a popular book by the same name.  We’d purchased the tickets in advance online directly through the theatre, with no service charge, and picked them up from the box office just before the performance (you must produce the same credit card upon pick up).

The rest of the night went downhill after the play.  Taking a bus instead of the Tube in order to go down Oxford Street and enjoy the Christmas illuminations was a bad idea since traffic was barely crawling.  It was raining, but we finally got out to walk anyhow and ended up making a wrong turn when trying to take a short cut.  We went to Mr. Punjab, a well known but affordable place, for a curry, but the wait was 45 minutes long yet they didn’t take your name down (we were told to just come back and they’d remember us).  Not trusting the Mr. Punjab system we just walked around and found another Indian place, and though the couple immediately in front of us were seating immediately, we were told for us there would be a 45 minute wait.  WTH??  Did Punjab call ahead to these people and given them our physical descriptions and ask them to turn us away??!  We continued walking through the rain and ended up at Mela, where we had eaten a decent dinner a few years before, but we missed the pre-theatre menu by 15 minutes, and ordering a la carte is ridiculously overpriced.  For £19, including the mandatory 12% service charge, we got 1 entrée (a good, but small portion of chicken tikka masala) and 2 pieces of naan.  Did I mention we paid $34 for one little portion of chicken and 2 pieces of bread?

Hungry, cold and tired we waited and waited and waited for one, two, three buses to come and then pass us over since they wouldn’t be going all the way to Victoria.  Finally back at Victoria we went to Sainsburys for some end of the day discounted sandwiches, yogurt (our favorite Müller crunch corner – banana with chocolate flakes and cherry), and Hob Nobs.  We enjoyed our reasonably priced food with no service charge back in our hotel.

29 November

Another rain-filled day, so we headed right to Trafalgar Square to spend the whole day viewing art.  The National Portrait Gallery had a photography exhibit in the lower level, and then later while walking around the museum we saw the twin Indian sisters who had been in one of the pictures.  Annabella approached them and asked if they were the sisters in the photo, and they said that they were and were doing some research for an upcoming exhibit.  They are Indian miniature painting artists, so she told them how we had purchased a custom made miniature on our trip to India, and said she would try to visit their exhibit when she’s back in London in March.

We headed over to the National Gallery for a guided tour, which included some painters we had been unfamiliar with, such as Cranach the Elder.  A great thing with the London museums is that they are free, so you can come and go as you please.  We then headed back to the Portrait Gallery first to get lunch in their café, a yummy sweet potato and rocket/arugula frittata and a scone with clotted cream and jam with a pot of team.  We paid 25 pence for an extra portion of clotted cream, though the cashier seemed a bit distressed about the purchase, exclaiming, “One cream is enough for one scone!”  Prices in this museum

Obviously we are not the only people who decided to spend the day in the museums because both were the most crowded we’ve ever experienced them.  Back at the Portrait Gallery we attended a talk about Robert Louis Stevenson since we’d just from Scotland and heard so much about him.  These tours are all free, informative, and only about 45 minutes long.  Apparently even 45 minutes was too long for an older man who had fallen asleep in parts and then kept asking questions about things the guide had already told us, finally prompting her to comment, “Yes, I did say he was the inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde, you must have been asleep during that bit.”  Cheeky, but funny.  Then back again to the National Gallery to see if the crowds had subsided at the exhibit of Amsterdam prostitution, Keinholz, the Hoerengracht.  How to describe it?  A life-size installation of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, created decades ago by the American artists, but in National Gallery fashion well done with commentary and complementary exhibits of historical paintings of Dutch prostitution.

St. Martin-in-the-Fields was holding a Carol Advent service, so we decided to go early to get a seat.  Normally we would have eaten in the church’s excellent crypt cafe, but we weren’t too keen on the menu choices that day.  The early seating was generally a good idea since it did fill up, but just at the last minute a stinky homeless man (with a cell phone) came and sat right next to us.  I know it’s church and all, but the smell was terrible.  We thought it would be a nice musical service for under an hour, but there was reading after reading and prayer after prayer, and the songs were god-awful boring and it got to the point where we just couldn’t take another minute of it and we had to leave (and we were not alone).  We had already been there 80 minutes.

Dinner tonight at Wagamama’s new sister restaurant, Busaba Eathai.  Like Wagamama you share a table with strangers, but this has a more upscale look to it, and though it was crowded we were seated right away.  The food was good, not stellar, but by London standards pretty fair prices (£18 for 2 entrees plus a side of rice).  Picked up some custard and bean buns in Chinatown for dessert.

30 November

Tate Museum (the old Tate) visit on our last day in London, which since we were last here also expanded its museum restaurant and café.  Another guided tour today, quite enjoyable and organized from the oldest painting to the newest.  Lunch in the café and a good parsnip soup and chicken pot pie.   Back to Heathrow for a little shopping and our flight home.