Two Days of Hard Charging

Friday morning we took the train from Waterloo Station to Hampton Court where we spent the day. The weather was perfect and we saw just about everything. Unfortunately the maze was closed. We are now members of the Historic Royal Palaces and can come and go as we please. There is even a members' room where some of the students discovered that you could get a cup of hot chocolate for 50p -- such a deal!

The Hastings and Taylors in front of the
Tudor entrance to Hampton Court

In the Tudor kitchens with a roaring fire
that felt nice on a crisp morning

A light lunch of scones, butter, jam, and clotted cream

Saturday we got an early start for the Tower of London. Transportation is a disaster with planned engineering works every weekend, so we took the central line to St. Paul's and then caught a 15 bus to the Tower. We arrived early enough that the place was fairly empty. We joined a Warder's tour, which is always entertaining. After the tour we hiked through the White Tower from top to bottom and then proceeded to the Crown Jewels exhibit which was a little crowded by then. We visited a few other towers before lunch. We stopped at Subway where the Hastings bought some portable lunch. (I had filled my pockets with cookies before leaving the centre.) We walked to St. Dunstan in the East for a quiet lunch away from the crowds. After lunch we proceeded on through the City to Leadenhall Market and Lloyds of London. Everything is quite deserted in the City on the weekend, so we had the place to ourselves. We tubed (the Central Line was PACKED!!!! because of severe delays due to a signal failure at Stratford) to Holborn where there was a group of thousands of motorcyclists parading down Kingsway. We were finally able to cross and walked to Covent Garden. (It is a very different experience for me to go to all these places with folks who don't need to go in all the shops.) We walked on to Leicester Square where there were no half-price tickets that we wanted so we went to the box office of the Shaftesbury Theatre to see about tickets to Hairspray. When we got that sorted out we still had some time, so we bussed back to St. Paul's, but arriving inside the Cathedral, decided to wait until the dome was open for climbing. Exhaustion was setting in at that point so we attempted to get on the Tube at St. Paul's but came back up out after waiting interminably for a train. The 25 bus took us to Oxford Circus and the 390 took us from there to the top of Palace Court. It felt good to sit!

We walked down beautiful Palace Gardens to the Kensington-High-Street Wagamama for supper and then back to the Gelato shop near the Queensway Station for dessert. I asked the nice girl who has been dipping gelato for us for two months where she is from. She said, "Brasil." It turns out she is from Londrina where I worked! We had a good chat in Portuguese and I secretly hope she will give me bigger scoops now -- do you think she will? Too bad I didn't chat her up weeks ago. We walked home and set our captive travelers free. I am afraid I am running them ragged, but hopefully they will see a lot of London before I kill them.

Bill and JLynn with a Yoeman Warder
or Beefeater at the Tower of London

Lunch at St. Dunstan's in the East,
beginning now to show its fall colors

Bill and JLynn at Lloyds of London with the
Erotic Gherkin shining in the background

Dinner at Wagamama. Kris says I take too many pictures
of us eating, but I told her we do it three times a day, or
more, and so there you go: it's what we do.

Today the Hastings have gone to the Hyde Park Chapel with mom for church and will likely visit museums afterward. They may also try to attend an Evensong service somewhere this afternoon. I won't have any adventures to post today, so watch for more at the beginning of the week

OXO

D.