water, water everywhere, but none for us to drink
Written on 2 January 2003 | Posted in travels | 0 Comments
No matter how well you prepare for the rain, you can never be quite prepared enough for London rain. As a tourist, juggling umbrella, camera, and a cup of Caffe Nero coffee or tea is a mere inconvenience, I can only imagine what the locals have to deal with on a daily basis.
Apart from the 24 hour drizzle, there have been many highlights thus far.
Friday: walked around Convent Garden and ate an early supper at Rock Garden (where U2, The Rolling Stones, and Dire Straits all played during their respective pre-stardom years. Despite that, the place has a very no-nonsense, good restaurant feel about it, thanks to a conspicuous lack of rock memorabilia).
Saturday: explored Picadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square. Went on the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour at night, which had all the potential of being kitschy, but wasn’t thanks Tony, our guide, who was as entertaining and theatrical as he was knowledgeable.
Sunday: had a lovely day in Bristol with Meredith, Xavier, and the girls, Alix and Victoire, who cooked us a fantastic lunch, after which we played a spirited round of “Pit”, a card game we have to buy when we get home. Meredith sat out one round so that she could take pictures, but the camera doesn’t quite capture the frenzy that is Pit, unfortunately.
Monday: both of us woke up feeling a bit sick and we blamed it on the girl on the bus back from Bristol who sat two rows behind and across from us and hacked and spluttered throughout the entire 2 hour and 15 minute ride. So we started out a bit late (1pm) and covered less ground than we wanted to, but did manage to see the Cabinet War Rooms, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Parliamentary buildings. We rounded out the evening at The Shakespeare’s Head, a pub across the street from our hotel, and retired early in an attempt to ward off the ailment-that-plagued-us, thanks to the coughing bus girl who should have just stayed home (and was being cursed that night by a whole bus load of formerly healthy people).
Tuesday: The British Museum. All sorts of treasures here, the highlight for me being the Reading Room, whose spectacular circular design was the architectural inspiration for the reading room at the Library of Congress. Walked through Bloomsbury the rest of the afternoon, had supper at Wolfe’s, a nice little restaurant across from our hotel, and brought in 2003 in the hotel lounge, where we got a table right by the window, the perfect vantage point for watching all the revellers on the street. Good viewing.
Wednesday: a rest day. MJ had well and truly contracted The Bristol Bus Cough by now, and it was perfectly timed because everything in the city was shut, being January 1st. So we walked around Convent Garden a bit, and ate two of our three meals at The Shakespeare’s Head.
Today we’re trying to make up for lost time and have a fairly long hitlist to cover, starting with the National Gallery, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and Pollock’s Toy Museum. My promise of pictures has to go unfulfilled for now because this Internet cafe is not equipped to handle the download. But we’re home on Sunday, and downloading will commence shortly thereafter.
Love and hugs to all at home. Big wet kisses and huge hugs to Ab & Zain, who are feeding, watering and crap-raking for Heidi & Sebastian while we’re away, bless them.