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A weirdly busy day
R. and I had more Pave from Liberte for breakfast (it does not stale quickly, yay!), and then we walked over to the Thames and looked at Big Ben and then over to Buckingham and caught the tail end of the changing of the guard accidentally, learned that Macron was visiting in a couple of days (on the 8th) based on the massive alternating and same sized French and English flags on the mall. We stopped at Chestnut bakery and got A. a croissant and a Nutella brookie (and a croissant for R.s breakfast tomorrow) and then went to a Tesco Express and bought fruit, veg, cooked chicken, cheddar cheese for A. and Stilton for R. On the way back to the hotel, we passed Cream Dream, and I picked up a chocolate and hazelnut sweet for later — that’s the vegan bakery I’d meant to go to last night but did not. Ukrainian. There is a conspicuous lack of Russians in this city, which I’m not sad about at all. It’s a little creepy how many of them there were in Paris, and I’m still kicking myself about that lamp I bought.
We came back to the hotel, and I got a reservation at the rooftop at St James Trafalgar for 1:45 pm, and adjusted our Sherlock Holmes pub reservation from 5 to 615.
I think between Pride and Macron’s visit, we have a partial explanation for why it’s been so easy to get dining reservations. But it might also have been the absence of Russians.
Later: OK, Rooftop was excellent. I brought my umbrella, wore my travel vest and left my visor and sunglasses at the hotel, so obviously, the sun came out and they retracted the roof. Thank you, fucking Murphy, I guess? Great spicy margarita, really really amazing mushroom taco (vegan). R. got the cheeseburger and fries and the skinny fries were mad delicious. I seem to have finally broken my Too Many Burgers streak. England is really good about having vegan everywhere.
We went to the National Gallery and I got some good pics of the Van Eyck wedding and the mirror in the background. Did you know there were miniatures surrounding the mirror? Because I sure as hell did not know that. WTF. The Rosa Bonheur is hung so that if you stand just in the hallway to the gift shop it’s nearly perfect so good on them for doing that right. Claude (one name) has some really nice landscapes with some really useless figures in them. There was a really nice Finnish post-impressionist. The building itself is very beautiful, and there are some nice mosaics on the floor, unattributed as near as I can tell, which is a pity. We’ll probably go back with A. later. It was moderately crowded.
There’s a great picture of Westerkerk, and very little around it. So weird to see it that open to the sky around it!
We saw a super old dude in black and white check suit with hat and amazing shoes.
Dinner was at Sherlock Holmes Pub. They were out of both the pale and the amber, and British IPAs don’t taste like much altho Roland got one anyway. The Sherlock Holmes room / exhibit is very cute. Since it is a Sunday, the menu is different and at first, I thought we had a complete fail on our hands. They still had the fish and chips, so R. got that, and I’d planned to share it with him. But the burger, steak and chicken escalopes were NOT on the menu, so A. wound up with the roast chicken instead, which came with cabbage, stuffing, carrots, duck fat roasted potatoes and a pig in a blanket (sausage wrapped in bacon in this case). I figured I’d split that with her if she hated it. She tried the cabbage (two bites!) but decided no, and she didn’t care for the carrots (probably the thyme, and she doesn’t like them cooked anyway) or the stuffing. But the bird, potatoes and pig in a blanket went down the hatch and she was mad when I tried a bite of the sausage. LOL Calories listed on the menu, with the fish and chips being around 1200 and the chicken around 1300. It’s a good thing we only got the two, especially since we then added some stuff to it.
I had about half the fish, and I ate the stuffing, carrots and cabbage. R. added a yorkshire pudding, which A. tried a couple bites of but passed on. We also got bread, and split that pretty evenly. A. had the brownie with ice cream for dessert; R. and I split a peach melba tatin that was vegan and awesome. I had a single of Glenmorangie because they were out of the Bruichladdich; Roland had a Lagavulin.
A. was pretty hostile at the beginning, and skeptical of the whole Sunday dinner idea but I showed her a wikipedia article about it and she settled down and the whole dinner wound up being fantastic. It was a nice, cozy meal and wasn’t even a crazy amount of money (115 L and I added 20L in tip, and it totaled out to $157 and change).
I was not aiming for the Sunday Dinner Experience, but it’s nice we had it and that it worked out. I think one of the best parts of it was seeing how they portioned things.
We came back to the hotel, and I got a reservation at the rooftop at St James Trafalgar for 1:45 pm, and adjusted our Sherlock Holmes pub reservation from 5 to 615.
I think between Pride and Macron’s visit, we have a partial explanation for why it’s been so easy to get dining reservations. But it might also have been the absence of Russians.
Later: OK, Rooftop was excellent. I brought my umbrella, wore my travel vest and left my visor and sunglasses at the hotel, so obviously, the sun came out and they retracted the roof. Thank you, fucking Murphy, I guess? Great spicy margarita, really really amazing mushroom taco (vegan). R. got the cheeseburger and fries and the skinny fries were mad delicious. I seem to have finally broken my Too Many Burgers streak. England is really good about having vegan everywhere.
We went to the National Gallery and I got some good pics of the Van Eyck wedding and the mirror in the background. Did you know there were miniatures surrounding the mirror? Because I sure as hell did not know that. WTF. The Rosa Bonheur is hung so that if you stand just in the hallway to the gift shop it’s nearly perfect so good on them for doing that right. Claude (one name) has some really nice landscapes with some really useless figures in them. There was a really nice Finnish post-impressionist. The building itself is very beautiful, and there are some nice mosaics on the floor, unattributed as near as I can tell, which is a pity. We’ll probably go back with A. later. It was moderately crowded.
There’s a great picture of Westerkerk, and very little around it. So weird to see it that open to the sky around it!
We saw a super old dude in black and white check suit with hat and amazing shoes.
Dinner was at Sherlock Holmes Pub. They were out of both the pale and the amber, and British IPAs don’t taste like much altho Roland got one anyway. The Sherlock Holmes room / exhibit is very cute. Since it is a Sunday, the menu is different and at first, I thought we had a complete fail on our hands. They still had the fish and chips, so R. got that, and I’d planned to share it with him. But the burger, steak and chicken escalopes were NOT on the menu, so A. wound up with the roast chicken instead, which came with cabbage, stuffing, carrots, duck fat roasted potatoes and a pig in a blanket (sausage wrapped in bacon in this case). I figured I’d split that with her if she hated it. She tried the cabbage (two bites!) but decided no, and she didn’t care for the carrots (probably the thyme, and she doesn’t like them cooked anyway) or the stuffing. But the bird, potatoes and pig in a blanket went down the hatch and she was mad when I tried a bite of the sausage. LOL Calories listed on the menu, with the fish and chips being around 1200 and the chicken around 1300. It’s a good thing we only got the two, especially since we then added some stuff to it.
I had about half the fish, and I ate the stuffing, carrots and cabbage. R. added a yorkshire pudding, which A. tried a couple bites of but passed on. We also got bread, and split that pretty evenly. A. had the brownie with ice cream for dessert; R. and I split a peach melba tatin that was vegan and awesome. I had a single of Glenmorangie because they were out of the Bruichladdich; Roland had a Lagavulin.
A. was pretty hostile at the beginning, and skeptical of the whole Sunday dinner idea but I showed her a wikipedia article about it and she settled down and the whole dinner wound up being fantastic. It was a nice, cozy meal and wasn’t even a crazy amount of money (115 L and I added 20L in tip, and it totaled out to $157 and change).
I was not aiming for the Sunday Dinner Experience, but it’s nice we had it and that it worked out. I think one of the best parts of it was seeing how they portioned things.