Warwick and London

Because the kids expressed interest in a castle, we altered our earlier plans and only visited the Anne Hathaway Cottage on the way to York so we could swap Warwick Castle with Stratford. So on Saturday, 2 July, we left Preston after breakfast and headed to Warwick on our way to London. Anna and I both had good memories of Warwick and were looking forward to the visit. As we arrived I could tell something was up. We were directed to an outlying parking lot 20 minutes from the castle: the place was slammed. Walking in, we passed a huge new lodging park called Knights Village with cabins and luxury tents. It was apparent that someone was trying to milk every penny from Warwick Castle. Adult entry was £30.20, parking was an additional £6.00, visiting the dungeon was £9.00 extra, and to shoot 12 lousy arrows was "only" £5.00. The place has been taken over by an amusement-park company and it has all the charm of a crappy carnival. Warwick was our final and major disappointment of the trip. We should have gone to Stratford. The brilliant binkers said in their best Monty-Python voices, "Let's not go to Warwick; tis a silly place." The best part of our visit to Warwick was the hour we spent in the town where we found reasonably priced food at a killer local bakery.

The rest of the trip to London was great with Rob driving masterfully and me navigating. Rob was concerned about driving in London, but I assured him it would be no more difficult than driving in Keighly near Haworth. We found a tender-mercy parking spot that required no backing or turning very near our Airbnb flat in Linden Gardens. I stayed with the carrier while the others moved in, and then Rob and I returned the carrier to Heathrow Hertz and caught the Tube back into London. Anna and the kids dashed to Portobello Road and met Lisa, Anna's friend who joined us for supper at Zizzi. We walked Lisa to Queensway for her Tube and then picked up a few things at Tesco and Sainsbury's before turning in.

 The crew at Warwick

 The castle from the Mound

 View of the town from the walls

 Wall walkers

 Into Warwick in search of food

 St. Mary's in Warwick

 Beautiful fresh flowers

 Beauchamp Chantry in St. Mary's

The green door in the rear is 16 Linden Gardens: our home

The interior of our fantastic Airbnb

More of the same

This be me bed and with front and back windows open,
it were heaven!

 The District Line to Notting Hill after returning the carrier

 Off to dinner with Lisa

 Very decent Italian food

Lisa and Anna

 Down Queensway

Chinese ducks in a Queensway restaurant window

It was so exciting to be back in London in our old neighborhood. What larks.

OXO

D.