August 19 – London, UK

war monument

20 degrees, cloudy and light rain off and on – in the evening it was cooler, but clear and sunny

Piccadilly

This morning was spent drinking coffee and planning our time in London. We are a bit spoiled for choice here. When we are in a small place with one or 2 places of interest it isn’t hard to plan our time. When we’re in London where there are about a bazillion different things to do, it’s hard to choose. We have tickets to 2 musicals and tickets to a museum which were on our for sure to do list, but beyond that…we aren’t so sure. Eventually we decided to walk, with Harrods as our destination.

outside our lunch pub - love the green wall

Along the way we checkout whatever we encounter. I like this kind of exploring…touring is like a box of chocolates. Today’s weather is a lot dodgier than yesterday, but we pretty much manage to only get a bit damp. Although it rains, the rain is light and misty.

We visit a church and see musicians preparing for a noon concert, see a war monument, walk along Piccadilly and see many countries’ embassies. It’s fun just walking along, seeing what we see.

embassy-ville, Turkey's in the background

At Harrods we check out the restaurant floor (not cheap) food to take away (very cool things), and find the floor selling art by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol and other artists I’ve only seen in museums! These are a bit out of our budget, so we settle for a few souvenirs. 

fish and chips and shepherd's pie

We have lunch at a pub and I finally have shepherd’s pie. I’ve been looking and looking, but this is the first pub that’s had it when I was looking to eat…it is HUGE…and very good, I’m not disappointed. It is exactly as I expect it to be…ground meat and potatoes. There’s mushy peas on the side that are actually very good. 

We head back to the hotel for a nap before our evening at theatre. We see Matilda the Musical. It is great. I didn’t know the story at all before we got the tickets…never read the book. Once we got tickets I got and read (most of) the book. It certainly wasn’t necessary, but it is interesting to compare how the original story had been altered for the musical.

After the theatre we have dinner in a small Mediterranean bistro, before getting to bed. We are tempted to check out our hotel disco – I said it was hip, but after walking through a bit, decide we are just too tired and not exactly in our disco duds.