Day 5: Books, books, books

Breakfast, day five. Another English affair. This time we chose a casual, diner setting - a place called VQ. I was craving some pancakes, Dylan had a Spanish omelette. Turns out the Spanish make the omelette of Dylan's dreams, including chorizo AND potato. The pancakes were pretty good, though not as good as my own if I may say so. 

The flat whites were a 6/10, Dylan had a double espresso followed by a double shot flat white. Now excessively caffeinated, I thought I'd show him the wonders of Primark. The store on Tottenham Court Rd is huge, and has a dedicated Harry Potter section (right next to the front doors which is both great and annoying). We ended up doing some extensive shopping. Dylan has a cool new faux leather jacket (only 28 pounds!). I bought some tights that were ridiculously fuzzy inside.

We left with much more than we came in with, and headed down the road to the big Foyles bookshop.

Foyles. Primark haul in hand. 

It was very Christmassy inside. We ended up walking out with three more books. I would like to point out that only ONE of them was for me. Now that Dylan was laden with shopping it was time for me to leave him, I had an appointment at Penguin UK!

We parted at Tottenham Court Rd station, where I headed off to Vauxhall Bridge Rd, and Dylan headed back to the hotel.

I was set to meet Justin, one of my colleagues who works in the International Sales division looking after Australia and New Zealand. It's not a very glamorous building from the outset, but inside it's very nice. The whole building is Penguin, and the stairs were decorated green for the announcement of Margaret Atwoods new book. Justin kindly took me out to lunch at Pret after introducing me to a couple of the other members of the ANZ team. 

After lunch I set off to meet back up with Dylan. He picked the Duke of Wellington pub to have his lunch. On my way there I was playing 'how much does that house cost?'. I passed one unremarkable terrace house that had a sign outside saying, 'Winston Churchill lived here 1909-1913'. My estimate went up.

I arrived at the pub a little early and settled in with a pint. Dylan showed up soon after and ordered some bangers and mash. This was a fancy area, which served fancy bangers. They were excellent

Just waiting for a mate. 

Dylan with his fancy bangers and Spitfire bitter

Properly fed and watered, we headed off to say hello to the Queen. It's quite a nice area around there, we saw lots of expensive cars. The closer to the Queen you live, the nicer your car. Go figure!

Maclaren.One of many luxury cars on that one street. 

Both of us have seen Buckingham Palace before, but you can't go to London without dropping by!

After the palace we took a walk through St James park towards Trafalgar Square. There were too many birds. One flew at my face. There were many squirrels. One threatened to leap at my face. I do not like birds or squirrels. The views were nice though. 

The leaves leave a lovely orange gradient on the ground

An evil squirrel. 

Nice fountain. Deadly birds featured. 

Next up came visits to two key features - Waterstones at Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. Tragalgar Square's pedestrian crossings have cool LGBTIQ+ symbols replacing the green 'walking man'. At this point the weather was starting to turn, evidenced by my hair in the below photos.

Admiralty Arch at Trafalgar Square. 

Waterstones Trafalgar Square. 

Piccadilly Circus. 

 Waterstones Piccadilly was wonderful.

Waterstones Piccadilly. 

A spectacular Penguin window.

We were getting a bit tired now, so we stopped for a pint. In my case, a half. It was a nice local pub called the Red Lion. There were a group of men ironically singing 'the Sound of Silence' very loudly in a language I did not recognise. The pub claimed to serve delicious looking toasties 'all day', but we were told that the kitchen was closed at 4pm when we tried to order one. Come on. 

Conveniently, we were right across the road from Charles Tyrwhitt, a high-end men's clothing store that Una had told us to check out. Dylan was escorted off for a fitting by a well-dressed man. I observed an older lady in pearls dictate what her husband would wear while trying to look secretly rich myself. We got Dylan's sizing sorted and headed off again. We were going to have dinner in Soho. We walked through Carnaby St, where we'd been with Em the day before, again and marveled at all the lights. There was a cupcake store in one of the lanes that called to us. With it now raining, we decided to eat in, which was a mistake: in London, any eat-ins attract a 20% loading...

I found some shiny Doc Martens at the Doc Marten store. 

Carnaby Street!

Dylan: the rain and neon gave off some great vapourwave vibes

Now it was time for dinner. Tonight we were craving curry, and headed to Masala Zone, a chain that Justin at PRH suggested to me. Dylan had some amazing Chicken Tikka and I had regular ol' Butter Chicken. I know. 

Last stop of the night was to drop by Leicester Square to see the Christmas markets. Before we could go in however, we spotted THE Lego Store. It was a magical wonderland. They had everything. Lots of Harry Potter themed Lego, as you might expect. One of us was clearly much more excited than the other. 

Another part of Leicester Square - we did not venture in but it looked ridiculous.

Casual 650 quid millennium falcon. 

You can't turn any corner in London city without being greeted by cheerful Christmas lights, by Leicester Square was next level. They were beautiful. Dylan got a chocolate-coated banana and was very pleased. 

Until next time! 

A+D

Day 4: Pizza, Pints and Pals

There had been some talk on the news of 'Storm Diana' headed for the UK, and that it would bucket down (#sydneysolidarity), but when we got up on Day 4 there wasn't any sign of rain - only fog which magically shrouded Shipton-Under-Wychwood.

Against the spirit of the blog, Adelaide didn't feel like a huge breakfast, and as I had burned through my 20 pounds of phone credit already (because apparently I was meant to buy an 'addon', thanks 3 Mobile), I needed to once again top up my phone; so the plan was made to stroll to Milton-Under-Wychwood, the village a short walk to the west in search of bakeries for a lighter breakfast, and for any P-Offs (That's right, P-off!) that I could top up at.

It didn't take us long to find a small corner store which had a post-office nook where I was able to replenish my credit, and in the cool damp morning we continued our walk. We passed a horse in a pasture and a somewhat ominous playground in the fog (Zombies!), but were unable to locate the bakery. Turns out in England when they call something "The Old X" it can also mean "used to be X".

No matter, our plan B was to head back to the Wychwood Inn and have brekkie there. We got a generous coffee and Adelaide had some hearty and delicious porridge, while I had eggs, bacon and sausage. It was topped off with a fresh, warm plain and chocolate croissant.

The drive back to London was uneventful but began to irritate me once we hit London traffic and everythingg sloweddd dowwnnnnn. I think out of the 2 hours it took us to get back, the last 5 miles stretched across 30 minutes, but not a single horn was heard. I pulled into a square near our hotel so Adelaide could off-load our luggage, and got to oggle at a TV or movie that was being shot at the top floor of one of the Georgian Townhouses(? not sure of the right term). They had a giant solar light on a cherry picker outside. We also had to fill up our car before we returned it, and after a few triple lane changes in front of some bobbies, we got it back in one piece.

With the car dropped off, Adelaide and I went to meet Addy's friend Emily at Marble Arch (only two blocks away). We had the goal of staying up past 7pm for once too, so we took a quick pit stop at our inaugural Pret-A-Manger (Manager? Main-ja? Manga? I still can't pronounce it; lets just say Pret) for a tolerable americano. We crossed the road and ran into Em.

It was good to catch up with Emily, and we walked down along Hyde Park in the chilly light rain before we started to cut across Mayfair looking for a place to eat. I felt under-dressed just walking through Mayfair - there was so much money there! We hit Soho and stopped off at Shakespeare's Head on Carnaby St. To celebrate the release of the Bohemian Rhapsody movie, they had some creative lights setup down the length of the street. For lunch was fish and chips for Addy, a burger for Em, and a great Philly cheese steak for me (and accompanying pints of beer - Em and I had a 'Rockin Reindeer').

Christmas display in Mayfair

 

The great philly cheese steak

Once fed and watered it was off to Liberty for a browse. Both our Mothers would have loved it! Especially the fabric section...

We continued our walk through Soho and eventually ended up back at our hotel where we stopped off to quickly check in properly. With light fading we opted to go check out The British Museum. Even with the rain and low light there wasn't any line to get in. Addy was at awe at the Rosetta stone, and we spent some time checking out the mummies, Greek and Roman artefacts. At 4:30 it was time for Emily to leave, and so Addy and I adjourned for a few hours mostly to get off our feet for a bit... and also to catch up on the blog! We're staying at the Morgan hotel which finally has some decent Wifi.

Coffee wasn't enough. To help aid us stay up past pensioners bed-time, we met with our high-school friend Eleanor who had been over here the last two years working for GreenPeace. We had initially arranged to meet at Kings Cross but should have known how big that station was. After some back and forth calls, Nori and I managed to triangulate our position. Turns out there are multiple Boots and multiple Prets in the same area. We Hillbrookians (who studied Geography no less!) should have known to use a better POI... or just share our position on Messenger (SMRT).

Anyway, eventually we found each other and headed to the Skinner Arms for a catch up over a pint. Unfortunately, we were now too late for dinner at the pub (we just can't time it right), and so when we'd finished our drinks we headed to Pizza Sophia only two blocks away, where we only just slipped in the window of them serving food. As we finished our pizzas and it was getting late, the owners of the establishment had free reign over the music playlist and we were treated to a Country-Western-Johnny-Cash mix, which we knew was our cue to depart. We said our goodbyes to Eleanor and headed back to our hotel, which pushed us just over the 18,000 step mark (with apparently 18 floors climbed!).

Cheers!
D+A

Day 3: The day a jacket potato changed my life.

We awoke to a sunny day three, and headed downstairs for our included breakfast at The Old Mill. As usual, the spread was continental with a full english. Adelaide kindly donated her black pudding over to me, and to be honest I didn't think it was too bad. It wasn't until we'd polished off our plates that the lady serving us told us we could have mixed and matched the breakfast as we wished. The breakfast room at the Old Mill had a glass viewing portal down into the flowing water beneath the building which was pretty cool.

Just water under the... mill

Today we were headed north to the Cotswolds with a pit stop at Stonehenge en route. When booking tickets to Stonehenge, however, you need to specify a time to go, which we had over-estimated at 11am, thus had some time to kill before we needed to hit the road.

Departing Salisbury in small village 'peak-hour', we headed back through Downton to the New Forest to explore the woods in more detail. Adelaide got to take some more pictures of the wildlife and we pulled over at a carpark in the northern end of the park, got out and started wandering. There was a group of a few ponies sunning themselves in the morning light, and we circled down past them to a cluster of trees where we spotted mistletoe.

I just found a big stick!

We headed back towards the main path (in Australian terms more like a firetrail/access trail) and headed into a wooded area pursued by some more walkers and their dogs who loved the open space. The woods were quite bare now that it was winter, and the area was coated in orange leaves but it was peaceful nonetheless.

After a short 30 minute drive from New Forest through Salisbury and a handful of villages, we arrived at Stonehenge. Parking and the visitor centre at Stonehenge is around a mile away from the actual site, and after some perusing through the history of it at the visitor centre, Addy and I opted to walk along the road up to Stonehenge (there were shuttle buses running too but perhaps we should walk some of our carbs off!). Adelaide was surprised by the size of Stonehenge (Quote: It was good).

Adelaide and I settled in for a two hour drive from Stonehenge to Burton-on-the-water in the Cotswolds. While most of the drive was on the highways, the last half hour or so took us on tight country backroads, where we eventually got held up behind a tractor with a monstrous load of hay bales. His load would progressively shrink as every low hanging tree would scrap a bit off so we had to keep our distance!

Burton-on-the-water was our lunch stop. Getting into the festive spirit, the town has Christmas decorations up including a Christmas Tree in the middle of the main stream that ran through it. We had a stroll through town before we stopped off at the Kingsbridge Inn, where we both had significant culinary discoveries. For Adelaide, it was BBQ Pulled Pork and cheese jacket potato, and for me, it was discovering a 'biscuit beer' I had tasted many years ago but not caught the name of (Brakspeare Bitter). In all, it was a good lunch.

The beer in question

The potato in question

With light fading, we left Burton and made our way towards Shipton-Under-Wychwood for our next night's lodging. It was another short drive but the country roads (Take me home) always keep it interesting. Adelaide had chosen the Wychwood Inn as our accommodation but was disappointed as there was no real Wychwood forest nearby. The hotel however had the traditional styling outside but very modern amenities inside.

We spent what light we had left exploring the sleepy village, and stopped off at The Shaven Crown for a pint. The pub and hotel was built into an old farm house which used to be run by the local monks. The monks had moved on, but in their place was a lovely couple and their pub dog which Adelaide befriended.

We retired back to the Wychwood Inn for dinner where we both had burgers with exceptional slaw.

Cheers!
D+A