By the time I got to the hotel, it was almost 1am. My flight from Amsterdam to London got delayed for about an hour, and it took forever to park even when the plane touched down in Heathrow. After getting some exchange, I got to the tube station and heard the announcement that the last train to city center leaving in 10 min. I was stunned. And there were people everywhere, trying to get tube tickets. All machines were lined with people, all machines except for the ones that take coins only. Fortunately, I had just enough change, thanks to the exchange, to get the ticket right the way. So I got on the train just in time; that was rather intense.

The hotel is in an area called the Strand, which is close to many tourist attractions. After an hour tube ride from Heathrow, I got out of the station with rain pouring down. On my way to the hotel, there was hardly any one on the street, mostly because it was Good Friday the next day.

8:30am: Tower of London

Unlike my first time in London, I was quite determined and prepared to visit Tower of London this time around. I simply had no idea there could be so many people going this place, so this time, I went there first thing in the morning, with pre-paid ticket confirmation in hand. Well, the pre-paid ticket wasn’t so necessary, as there weren’t that many people before they opened. I didn’t really have a high expectation of this place, but I enjoyed the tour guided by the Beefeater (although he didn’t show up on time.) I also enjoyed the exhibits they have in different towers. There are plenty of stories and history here, so I am glad I got to visit this place.

12:30pm: Borders Bookstore – Finding Rick Steves
In all the trips I took in Europe, I came to rely on Rick Steves’ guidebooks to tell me what to see in a short period of time. I have been lucky to find his guidebooks for different European cities in the library, but not this time, not for London. So I decided to get a copy in Borders (since I had the 20% off coupon). It took me a bit of time to find the place (I thought it would be close to the hotel, but not quite) and when I got there, I couldn’t find the book. I ended up crossing the street to get it in another bookstore. I wasted a good hour to get this book, but it was all worth it; I would not have enjoyed the museums as much (and as quickly)

1:30pm: National Gallery – The Greatest Hits
In recent months, I was fortunate to visit some of the big cities in Europe, and had a chance to visit museums with collection of artworks local to the region. Now this National Gallery has a great collection of artworks from different parts of Europe. It has some of the best Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanish paintings; it is like going through the greatest hits of paintings. When I saw a painting from one particular region, it just brings me to smile and reminds me of the city I visited. So fittingly, London being my last European city to visit, its National Gallery was a great recap for me.

4:30pm: Victoria and Albert Museum

After having some afternoon tea in the hotel lounge, I rushed to the V&A Museum, thinking that it would close early on Good Friday. I was relieved to find out that they close late as usual Friday nights. The things they have are quite interesting, and usually come with interesting stories and history.

8:30pm: Trafalgar Square and Westminster Area



Day Two:
Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Courtauld Gallery, Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum, and Tate Modern

8am: Westminster Abbey

This is another place I didn’t get to visit my first time around. So just like Tower of London, I got to Westminster Abbey bright and early, and to my surprise, there was a line up already. And just like Tower of London, it didn’t disappoint, another great place to visit.

Noon: St. Paul’s Cathedral

One interesting thing I learned about St. Paul’s Cathedral is that this is where the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana taken place. Just as with all great cathedrals in Europe, its interior is impressive, and its dome provides a great view of the city.

3pm: Courtauld Gallery

This is one of the few museum/gallery in London that requires admission fee. While the collection is not big, it has quite a few paintings by well known Impressionists. This gallery is very close to the hotel, so I thought I could squeeze this visit in.

5:30pm: Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum

Like Tower of London, this attraction is unique in England. More great stories and history about the war. I really could have skipped the Courtauld Gallery, and spend more time in this place. When I got to the War Rooms, the ticket counter person advised me to come another day since they were closing in less than two hours. And you could really spend more than two hours there. Since I didn’t have another day in London, I just had to have a quick visit.

8pm: Tate Modern

Knowing that Tate Modern opens late on Saturdays, I planned this visit at night. I was actually prepared to skip it, if I got really tired. But then I really wanted to take some night shots of of St. Paul’s (which is right across from Tate Modern), so I ended up walking there. I have to say that I do not fully appreciate all the modern art it displays, but its specially-commissioned work in Turbine Hall is worth the visit by itself. When I was there the first time, it was Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment (a LOT of boxes). This time, it is Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth (a LONG crack). It may not be art in the traditional sense, but it certainly got people talking.

Bus Tour

Windsor Castle

Stonehenge

  

Bath

Ridgemount Hotel

 

 

Final Impression of Zoom Airlines

Notting Hill

Thanks to the movie, almost everybody has heard of Notting Hill. What I didn’t know before is that the only tourisy place there is the Portobello Market (the world’s largest antiques market?). Obviously this is the kind of place for Tyatt and Margaret. Me and Thomas were pretty much ready to go after an hour there. Not that we didn’t enjoy the time there; we just didn’t feel like buying anything there. Another thing is that I really looked forward to visit the Orangery at Kensington Palace. So we left Portobello Market around 11am, while the gals stayed there until noon.

The Orangery at Kensington Palace

Kensington Palace was the official residence of Princess Diana. There was some sort of exhibition going on in there, but we were certainly not prepared to pay 12GBP to go in. What I was prepared to do was to have lunch/afternoon tea at the Orangery there. Only now that I know orangery is a type of greenhouse, and the one there is indeed a nice greenhouse. I knew I want to visit there when I saw the pictures online. The food there (mostly light lunch and afternoon tea food) is not expensive at all. It is actually one of the cheapest place in London to have afternoon tea.

But instead, we went to one of the more expensive places for afternoon tea. Fortnum & Mason, tea shop turned deparment store, was not too expensive, compared to those fancy hotels. Good thing we had booked ahead of time, people without reservation were turned away, as it was fully booked the whole afternoon. That is where all four of us got back together. While me and Thomas were eating at the Orangery, Tyatt and Margaret visited another department store (Harrods) in the area. It was my first time ever having this kind of afternoon tea, and I guess it was not bad. Just don’t think I would do this often.

Afternoon Tea at Fortnum & Mason

China in London

After the tea (and a bit of shopping there), we split to different things; Tyatt and Margaret went for some more shopping, Thomas went back to hotel and took a nap, while I went to attain my goal in London.

That goal was to visit the Royal Academy of Arts for a special exhibition, China the Three Emperors. Ok, attaining my goal might be overstated a little, but I have this idea of visiting London ever since reading about the exhibition in the Economist. I even have a blog entry on this back in November. So it would be silly for me not to see the exhibition when I was actually in London. Too bad no one else had strong enough interest to go with me.

Some of the neat stuff I saw:

… is to sleep in and get wakeup by the maid, feels just like vacation. I don’t know how others felt, but I thought that is exactly what we needed at that point, taking it easy a little bit. We simply didn’t get any quality sleep since the day we left Toronto. By the time we were ready to go out, it was almost noon. So we lost 6 hours to the flight coming in, another 3 or 4 hours sleeping in, our planned itinerary was basically ruined. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, we just had to make some adjustment; for gals, they chose not to visit the Westminster area; for us guys, we just didn’t go as much shopping (missed the Harrod’s… oh well) But for this day 3, we pretty much stayed together throughout.

The Rock and Sole Plaice
I suppose Fish and Chips is one of the few British dishes out there. So this Rock and Sole Plaice is supposedly the oldest Fish and Chips restaurant in London.

We thought it’s cafeteria self-serve style there, since there were so many people lining up for takeouts, but someone behind the counter told us we’ll be served shortly. Looking at the menu, there were like 6 different kinds of fish you can choose from. Me being a travel guide nerd, I ordered what the book recommended, the fish Skate. Because Cod is most popular there, they don’t have Skate ready-fried like they have for Cod, and I had to wait a bit longer (“they must be still cleaning the scale…”)

Another “bad” thing about Skate is that there is lots of fin (or are they just soft bones?) Anyway, since I’m not eating those fin, I had to separate them out. And becuase of that, I took out all the batter at the same time, made my meal so much healthier. I guess I would’ve eaten all those batter if I had another fish.

In fact, I begin to wonder if that is the proper way of eating fish & chip; not eating any batter. I found my fish pretty tasty and moist, not oily at all. With all those fin and batter left in my plate, it looked as big as before.

Covent Garden
We decided shopping is the best thing to do after having such a big lunch. The area where the Fish & Chips place located is called Covent Garden; there used to be fruit and vegetable markets. But now it’s mostly a place for tourists to shop. You can tell it’s a tourist trap when they have street performances on a weekday. I mean, I can understand having performances in a summer weekend (like in Ottawa), but a weekday in winter? I don’t think you can find that anywhere in Canada.

According to our original itinerary, we actually left Day 3 quite open. But then by the time we left Covent Garden, it was already 3pm. We ended up going to the South Bank, which is on the other side of the River Thames. We were supposed to spend some time in that area on Day 1, but we managed to go up on the London Eye only. This time, we only went to a museum called Tate Modern.

Tate Modern

I’m not sure why is it called modern. To me, modern should be all about mechanical, logical, practical stuff. This seems to me more like post-modern. As for Tate, it is name of the organization’s founder. The main purpose of this visit was for Tyatt to get some weird postcards for her friend. But I think we actually enjoyed the limited time we were there for. Things there, after all, are quite unique. After Tate Modern, we went to Tower Bridge (with some detour and roadblock)

Tower Bridge

Next to the Bridge is Tower of London, one of the most popular tourist attraction. Two things prevented us from going in: 1) Expensive admission, 2) It’s closed for the day already.

British Museum

(7 Tyatt’s photo, lots of overlap, stitched up)

Best thing about British Museum, other than the fact that it’s free, is that it opens late on Friday and Saturday. We planned it all along to visit Friday evening, and it seems we weren’t the only one; there was this one cute girl we saw on our flight to London there at the British Museum as well. Thomas lamented that he didn’t go up and talk to her when we were stuck in Halifax (he actually did tell me on the flight that he wanted to do just that)

One of the must-see: Egyptian Collection

Of course, one of the impression I got when I saw their collections: what a big collection of loot! Oh well, I guess all of this are in good hands, better than anywhere else in the world.

Another must-see: Parthenon

Stitching like Crazy

As you can tell by now, I am almost obsessed in stitching up multiple photos. In fact, I went back to British Museum on Day 6 just to get more pictures of the place. Some of the stitched up pictures turned out better than others.

(3 pictures stitched up)

British Museum is such a nice place; I think I like the building itself more than the lootings they have in there.

(5 pictures stitched up)

Inside the round building, the library:

(6 pictures stitched up)

Eurostar

Less than 12 hours after we arrived London, and we were on the move again, to Paris.

Departure time was 5:34am, and we had to get to the Eurostar train station about an hour earlier, so we got no more than 3 hours of sleep after that fancy dinner.

We naturally slept most of the way, but we did do some more last-minute research with the books I got from libraries in Toronto.

Train ride took about 3 hours, and with one hour time zone difference, we got to Paris just before 9:30am. Compared to the Shinkansen in Japan, I think speed of Eurostar is about the same, maybe just a tad slower.

We were shocked to find out that you need to pay to use washrooms in Paris; at least we didn’t see any free washroom. The one in the train station even have shower facilities. Of course we didn’t try the washroom there, thinking we could go to one in restaurants. Little did we know that even washrooms in restaurants charge for a fee as well.

After wasting some time at the train station, we got our subway daypass and started getting around Paris. Most subway trains in Paris have this European feel, i.e. old. Actually it feels more like a streecar. They do have some nice new trains around. Subway stations were fine, not unlike the ones we have in Toronto, maybe a bit older. And because there are very few washrooms (coin-operated) in the stations, we always thought there was this strange odor…

Montmartre
First area we visited is Montmartre, highest point in Paris. The only “attraction” I heard of in that area is Moulin Rouge (but it was early in the morning, so nothing going on) But the real attraction is Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, a Parisian Roman Catholic church.

A few of my friends had visited plenty of churches in Europe, but this was a first for me. As great as the buildings are, it gave me a feeling of glory in the past; they don’t really serve as a church, no more than tourist attractions with gift shops. It reminded me of all those temples I saw in Japan a few years back; the money they collect is really for maintaining the attraction. Now, what about all those great big churches in the States, will they fade out in the future and become merely tourist attraction? (Probably not, they’ll become convention center first)

Since it sits at the top of the hill, there are quite a few stair steps in front of the church. Supposedly this was featured in the movie Amélie (Vince K never forgive me for bringing him to see this French chick flick) but I don’t remember it; I just remember enjoy watching it.

French Lunch
We probably spent a little too much time in Montmartre, pretty much the whole morning. We had planned to go for a boat cruise around 1pm, so we went for a quick bite, naturally we picked a sit-in restaurant, Les Deux Palais, having the “Tourist Menu” (Should’ve seen it coming…)

So, we have the French Onion soup, French bread…

Salad (with French dressing?), “Steack” with French Fries…

We were going to have tap water only, but then we realized no one in the resturant drink tap water; either bottled water like perrier, or wine. So we ended up ordering a French wine… and to end it all, French ice cream, Napoleon (OK, it’s actually Neapolitan, but it sounds the same to us Chinese)

I thought the restaurant was not bad, given the price we paid, the amount of food we got. Although Margaret was not amused by the steak with a strange cut, Tyatt was impressed by the fact that it actually tasted good, even if it was a bit burnt. And of course we weren’t happy about the whole bottle of wine we got (when we only ordered a half bottle)

Boat Cruise
We barely made it to the boat cruise on time. I’m sure the boat cruise was fine, but I was half asleep most of the time. We were sitting on the top level open to the sky, but it was getting cold with traces of drizzle. We saw quite a few famous landmarks in Paris, but with such overcast sky, they don’t look much interesting; even the Eiffel tower looked dull.

Louvre Museum
We knew all along that we wouldn’t be able to spend much time in the museum; we just wanted to check out the area and the gift shop (I don’t think we bought anything there) Oh, that’s right, free washroom! That was unexpected surprise.

Notre-Dame
This is where the guys and gals spliting off; while me and Thomas went to do some more sightseeing, the gals did something more romantic, shopping… I guess Notre-Dame the building itself is more impressive, but I get this same feeling from the big church earlier.

Arc de Triomphe
Original plan was to meet up with the gals here at Arc de Triomphe (because it’s close to where they shopped), but there were some complications, so it was just me and Thomas again. We were really tired and cold, so we spent no more than 10 mintues in that area; we went for McDonald’s for some snack.

Eiffel Tower
After being revived by McD, we went to our last attraction of the day: Eiffel Tower. Me and Thomas made it just in time to see the “light show”; basically it makes the tower more sparkling.

 

The later or darker it gets, the more we appreciate how beautiful the tower is. We didn’t realize how big the tower is until we get to the bottom of it. The area under the tower is actually one big open space. Just when we thought we might go up the tower, the gals came calling: it’s time to go for our train ride back to London. And it’s the last train of the day, so we could not afford to miss it.

End of Day 2
Everything looks nicer at night in Paris, do they have special light bulbs to make everything more romantic? Departure time of our train was 8:43pm, and we got back to London around 10:30pm. (Gained the one hour back from the time zone difference) We were tired, hungry, cold, not feeling too well with this Amazing-Race-style of trip. I was thinking to myself, we got to take it easy, to make this trip more enjoyable.

 

Zoom Airlines

It seems that no one have heard of the Zoom Airlines… I saw their ads in newspaper last year for their promotion to Hawaii (I was captured by the word Hawaii last year) But then I found out that their primary flying routes are between Canada and UK. Their price is usually pretty attractive, and that is mainly why we chose to fly with them.

Grounded in Halifax

Because Zoom Airlines are such a small company, they have only so many planes. So when they had troubles (hydraulic leak) with the plane we were on, we could do nothing but wait. At first they thought they could fix it in an hour. Then after two hours, the captain informed us that they are getting another plane in to take us to London. Since the plane was in Ottawa, we waited another 3 hours in Halifax before flying in the air again.

Gatwick Express to London

So we ended up arriving the Gatwick Airport 6 hours late. After another 30min train ride, we got to London around 5:30pm. Our original plan was to do some sightseeing (and had some fancy lunch) in the afternoon, had we arrived London on time in the morning. By then, we barely made it to the last attraction in our plan, the London Eye.

The London Eye

They built this thing back in 1999, and it was called the Millennium Wheel, part of year 2000 celebration. They were going to tear it down after a few years, but it seems there is plan to keep it permanent. I think that’s a good idea, it’s one of the best attractions there. You can see most of London’s cityscape from the bird’s eye view, which is why it’s so popular.

After the London Eye, we finally checked into our hotel, and had a bit of a rest before having dinner.

Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s

The fancy lunch we were going to have had become our really fancy dinner. We didn’t plan to have fancy dinner because we thought we would save some money by having the lunch. But then since we got to London 6 hours late, we wanted to cancel the lunch appointment. Problem was, there is a cancellation fee of 150 GB Pound per person, so we changed our reservation to have dinner instead; we ended up spending about 90 GB Pound per person. It’s only the most expensive meal I ever had.

Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s is actually not the one we planned to go for lunch; it was the one in Chelsea, which is supposedly #2 in the world (3 stars in the tire man guide). This one at Claridge’s actually has 1 star (which is of course still impressive) Missing out on going to #2, I blame it on the Doom Airlines.

So how did we spend 90 GB Pound per person? Easy, just order the tasting menu, and a bottle of wine (very good German Riesling) In fact, we probably didn’t bother reading the menu carefully… (it’s not like I know half of the words there)

1. Iranian saffron and cauliflower soup with anchovy beignets

Salty soup with salty fish. Actually I didn’t realize there were patches of oil on top of the soup… it was just so dark in the restaurant. I actually didn’t mind the strong flavour so much.

2. Ballottine of foie gras marinated in Beaumes de Venise,
pickled beetroot, salad of leeks and green beans, truffle dressing

Foie gras, I had it once before, but this one seems to be much bigger than normal. On top of that, I had the pleasure of having two of them; Thomas, who needs to keep a close eye on his cholesterol level, would NOT dare to touch it. (So now maybe I need to watch it) And the toast, that goes with foie gras, was probably the best toast I ever had. But after two chunks of foie gras and a piece of toast, I was basically full. BTW, that pickled beetroot was very good as well. Poor Thomas, who had only the salad portion, almost missed out on that, thinking it was only sauce. He did agree that beetroot was very good.

3. Roasted hand dived scallop, pumpkin puree, Barolo reduction

Not really that memorable for this one…

4a. Steamed line caught sea bass, sauteed potatoes,
truffled broccoli, basil veloute

All the food pictures were taken by Tyatt, except for this bad one (by me). I took this one because I was the only one having sea bass as main course. What can I say about this one, it is as good as it gets. All the others are having this next one…

4b. Roast breast of Gressingham duck, turnips cooked in five spice,
cinamon and star anise sauce

To me, it’s like deluxe version of Chinese BBQ duck. But then presentation-wise, it looks so much better than what you get from food court.

5. Banana and coconut bavarois, passion fruit jelly

We were most impressed by the desserts we got here. I suppose it’s not that hard to make jelly… but what is bavarois?

6. Peanut butter parfait with milk mousse, cherry sauce

I actually know every single word in the name of this course… it tastes as good as it sounds.

End of Day 1

While the meal was expensive, it’s probably worth it (just don’t ask Thomas) By the time we left the restaurant, it was almost 1am, only a few hours before our train ride to Paris…