London pt. 1

We woke up early to drive to London. We dropped the car off at London Gatwick Airport and (eventually) figures out what tickets we had to buy to get to the place we're staying.

Unfortunately the train from Stanstead to London was pretty busy, so we had to stand the entire train ride with our massive backpacks. There was a large group of high school age Spaniards on the train, some sort of "British Summer Program," so I enjoyed watching a Spanish Teen Queen hold court with her adoring subjects. Oh to be a teenager….

They're obnoxious in every language!

We belatedly figured out that the stop we needed to get off at on the Underground was closed so we had to go a stop further. It took about 30 minutes for us to get from the Waterloo Station to our place, and about 20 minutes of that was just us trying figure out how to get out of the station! We've had better luck since then.

We found our way to the place we're staying. We couldn't get into our room yet, but we were permitted to drop our bags off. This place is basically an unlicensed hotel, and probably our worse AirBnb room yet, but it's not horrendous, just not quite as welcoming and convenient as the other places we've stayed, (and at least we were able to get in right away...). It was also affordable and in a great location in London, so we knew what we were getting into.

Once we'd dropped off our bags and changed into shorts (it was warm and sunny that day!) we headed into the city. One of the things that Jay really wanted when we were in London was Indian food, since we'd both heard that London has the best Indian food outside of India. He'd done his research and found one that was supposed to be good with Gluten-free, so we headed to Dishoom.

On the way, I kept seeing things I wanted to take a picture of so it took us a while to get to Dishoom. On the way we walked onto a pedestrian way lined with shops. Most of the shops were old bookshops and one had a bunch of Arthur Rackham prints for sale (I love Arthur Rackham) so we stopped to look. We decided to go into the store. I walk in, first thing I saw is that the store is about 12 square feet and 15 feet tall, the shelves lines with books. The second thing I saw, when I looked to my right, was a Dalek.

If you don't know about Daleks, or my love of Doctor Who, (What are you doing reading my blog? Who are you?) then this won't strike you as particularly amazing, but for me it was great. Here it was, a reference to Doctor Who in London, within an hour of us arriving. I was quite happy. The Dalek was apparently one of the first ones that they built that was capable self propulsion. They still had to have a man inside steering the thing, but they no longer had to pull it along with ropes and pulleys during filming. He had another one mounted higher up in the corner. He was kind enough to let me take a picture. The proprietor was an interesting fellow, quite and unassuming, but happy to show me some of his old Doctor Who memorabilia from the 60s once he figured out I was a fan. The rest of the store was old books, most childrens books, including several shelves of every possible edition of Alice in Wonderland in every language ever. It was quite the collection. I wonder if he ever willingly parts with any of them.

DALEK!

Me, nerding out with a Dalek. Forgive the blurriness,
Jay is intimidated by my camera. 

Shortly after that we got to Dishoom. Jay got Lamb Sheekh Kabob, I got a delicious prawn curry stew that I dumped a bunch of rice into. It was all fantastic. I also got one of their cocktails, the Bombay Pimm's Cup, which was a Pimm's Cup (basically alcoholic Sprite) but with a bunch of ginger and spices added. It was delicious. After lunch we had some very tasty coffee. If you read Jay's coffee post, you'll understand how happy this made him.

Finally! Good coffee!

After that we walked through Trafalgar Square and into St. James Park.

One of the lions at Trafalgar Square

The cavalry parade grounds next to St. James Park. The real reason we stopped to take this picture is because a scene from Parks and Recreation was shot here where Andy Dwyer and a Lord played with remote control helicopters.

I had  lots of fun taking pictures of birds and flowers. We saw Buckingham Palace and some of the guards. Eventually we worked our way into Kensington Gardens and I took a picture of the Peter Pan statue. 

Waterfowl of London: 1. A goose that wants to know why we haven't given it bread. 2. Strange little birds that we couldn't identify. There were tons of them and the look like they're wearing little plastic white masks. Anyone know what they are? 3. A mama duck and one of her ducklings. Man those little guys could swim. It was fun watching them dive for a bit. 4. A heron at Kensington Gardens that kindly posed for me. 5. A cygnet (young swan). 6. One of the many swans on the pond that day.

A sculpture installation in Hyde Park that we christened "The Giant Wine Rack."

St. James Park, with the London Eye in the background

Superb Flower Gardens at St. James Garden

I took a picture of this guy in the hopes that my mom, grandma, or aunt might be able to tell me what the heck it is.

Buckingham Palace and the nearby Victoria Monument

The UK coat of arms. They sure aren't timid about the gold decorations here.

After that, we walked over to Harrod's and enjoyed looking at the extravagance. They had a Laduree inside, so I bought one of each of the two dairy free flavors we had for me and Jay to share. 

Harrod's

All in all we walked about 30,000 steps (~16 miles). When we headed back home we stopped at Tesco Express, got the fixings for salad, went home to eat (and drink ridiculously sweet and tasty Passionfruit cider) and then conked out in our room.