20110826  London  Cloudy, misty, some rain, then sun

This was the day to get gifts purchased and sent home. This is a “bank holiday”, so nothing will be open till Tuesday except for those businesses designed to separate tourists from their money. In other words, no services like FedEx.

We went first to the British Museum for books, but they hadn't opened yet. So we stopped at the money changing place on the corner and traded $500 of old AmEx traveler's checks for Euros.

Then we went to HMV, the largest DVD/CD store in town, on Oxford Street. D (who loves BBC TV comedy shows) then picked out 100GBP of DVDs for herself and our dependents.

We came back here to drop them off and picked up some more stuff at the British Museum next door, and dropped it all off in the room.

Then we went to Fortnum and Mason on Picadilly. The bus there had to do a large detour due to construction on Picadilly, but we got there. We picked up a bunch of stuff for gifts for the home folks, then tried to return. Nope. They closed Picadilly both ways to clean the streets with soap and water (water supplied naturally).

So we walked to Picadilly Circus and caught the tube (subway) to Leicester Square, then the bus back to Tottenham Court Road and the hotel. We put everything out on the bed and sorted it according to its final destination. Then I took it to the Mailboxes, etc., store down the street and shipped the whole works home. Now we can collect things only to the capacity of our suitcase(s) while in Europe.

We sat around for a while deciding where to dine. There are so many options it's hard to narrow in on one. Finally we picked Pescatori, a seafood Italian place on Charlotte Street, about a mile away. D didn't want to arrive there worn out, so we caught a black cab, which put us out across the street for 5GBP.

We were the first ones in the place for the evening. They put us at a nice little table with a view into the kitchen. I had a small plate of nocallara del belice olives and Coppa (Calabrian dry cured ham) and mustard fruits (candied fruits) for antipasti. D had panzanella, a salad of bread, tomatoes, and red onions with olive oil.    Menu Link  

Then I had Yellow-Fin Tuna Nicoise with a side of salsa verde while D had the dressed Devon crab with wilted spinach. The wine was an Italian Pinot Grigio. We shared panacotta with grappa and English raspberries for dessert (yum).  Menu Link  

So the first half of the day was just plain work but the later part was flat-out good.

We walked back to the hotel through wet streets from a recent shower, but under blue skies. Several pubs had overflow crowds because it's Friday evening.

But we have to be up at 0600, so we'll do these notes and watch TV (hurricane Irene approaching NC) and read.

Not much in the line of Owen Photos today      Dolores Photos today.    

20110827  London  Sunny till late afternoon, then showers

Another beat-em-to-death day. Up early, conned management out of coffee before the breakfast room opened, then over to the British Museum to be picked up. Nickolas came soon with the 16-passenger mini-van. He told us the van would be full, then went to other places to pick up people at other stops. At the final stop, seven people were to be there but weren't. We waited and waited, then finally had to pull away.

We headed west and a little south toward Stonehenge. Nickolas gave us all sorts of information. Of a sudden, we popped up over a hill and it was there. We parked and walked through it with an audio helper. Very strange and mysterious. But there it is. You just have to wonder why people did this in 3,000BC and at other times since. And how? No one knows.

On then through an edge of the Cotswolds to Bath. We heard that our missing people were mid-Easterners and on their way to Bath by train to catch up with us. They met us at the Bath Abbey and baths entry and on we all went.

The Abbey is impressive all by itself. A huge church, but now there's a town all around it where it had many acres in its day. The baths are nearby and very large, very spread-out. The middle set is the best reconstructed, but there was another set both east and west in attached buildings.

The water comes out of the spring at 46*C, very hot and steaming. It was channeled through various ponds so the customers could bath in the temperature they wanted. There was a ritual of stripping and giving your clothes to a slave, then entering a pond to clean, then entering the hottest pond to open pores, then going through progressively cooler ponds until you were ready to exit a few hours after entering. Bathing was mixed-sex in bathing places except for the largest, we were told.

There are many, many, artifacts here. In addition to the bathing pool in the center, all sorts of things have been retrieved, including headstones, altars, statues, figures, and even some curses put on stone or foil asking the god to do something to the person who stole something from the asker. All in Latin, of course.

We went on to Windsor Castle, a huge thing on a height. It was late in the day; we went through the large chapel, but couldn't join the line for Queen Mary's dollhouse (said to be really “something”) due to its impending closing. We wandered around, then quit the castle to go to a pub for a glass. Then Nickolas came along to take us home.

Back at our hotel, there was a mob checking in. Weaving through them, we put away our goodies and headed out for something to eat. We went to the Crown Pub nearby and ordered drinks but were told no food was being served tonight due to the bank holiday. We went across New Oxford Street to Giotto and had a perfectly acceptable dinner of veal and something for each of us. Good waitstaff.

Then back to the room to do chores and/or collapse.

Tomorrow's a day on our own (no scheduled things).  Owen Photos     Dolores Photos