Yes, I’m behind on updating here. Last November, it suddenly occurred to me that the youngest of the children hadn’t seen his English grandparents in four years. COVID, of course, has had the world locked down in a vise, and things were finally starting to loosen up. It was somewhat spur of the moment, booked two weeks before we left, barely giving me enough notice to vaguely pre-adjust to the time change before we left.
We spent the bulk of our time in London, and then took the train to Somerset to see the grandparentals for a day. Honey jokes that England adores me, and always shows me her best face. I don’t know that I would have agreed with that on the last trip, as we slogged though the rain at Christmastime on the last trip, but this trip, indeed, gave us beautiful weather. We had brilliant sunshine for at least part of the day, every single day, and saw no rain at all until the day we left, other than some remaining mist in Somerset when we got off the train.
Our first day we made a trip to one of my favorite places in the world, the Burlington Arcade. I am very much a lover of antique jewelry pieces, and there is always a dazzling display at the Arcade. Bentley Skinner, Michael Rose, and other venerable estate jewelers have shops there, and there are other luxury purveyors mixed in throughout the building.
We crisscrossed the city, visiting the Tower of London, the Greenwich Observatory (we went by oat along the Thames, which I highly recommend), walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, visited Churchill’s War Rooms, wandered Borough Market, browsed the British Museum (snooze), and poked around in odd little shops. My absolute favorite adventure on that trip was seeing Agatha Christie’s, “Witness for the Prosecution,” that was performed in an old courtroom, just across Parliament Bridge. It was a superb production. I did finally get my thrift boy into a London taxi that night, as it was both late and bitterly cold. He tuts at me for the spending, if I want to grab a taxi or an Uber, when he knows we have a subway pass. How can a 13 year old boy somehow already be a 70 year old man??
We wandered all the way out to Wembley Park to see a production of, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime,” one night. I felt I owed it to the universe to go see that play. It was what saved our house the night of the fire last summer, as we wouldn’t have been at home, had I not had tickets for a streaming performance of that play the next night. We stayed home because of those theater tickets, and were woken in the night by smoke alarms. They managed to keep the fire contained to the garage where it had started, but we were too tired to attend the performance the next night, so we missed it. It was FREEZING in the theater, as many places in England are in winter. I wore my coat indoors, nearly everywhere we went. You could all but see your breath in that theater though.
I took him for fancy tea at the big Fortnum & Mason store in Mayfair. He won’t admit it, but he loved all the fancy touches. If you ever find yourself in London though, skip Fortnum’s in favor of tea at Harrod’s instead, they do a better job of it.
We went to visit a lovely and very elderly friend I write too, and made dozens of other stops that escape me at the moment. The train journey was extremely comfortable, and we brought our own food to have a train picnic on the way. he will probably rave about that cave aged English cheddar for the rest of his life. It was that good!
It was an excellent mini trip before the long trip to Italy in the summer, to make it less of an unknown for L, and remind him international travel isn’t difficult. Cheerio!
Vagabond.Belle 