Definitely unkind! The costume section is one of my favorites, and it was closed for renovation the last time I was in London. Did you also find the newish, and stunning, jewelry section upstairs?

Thanks for the mention of Tas Bloomsbury, I'll add to the list.

Before the opera MC, H and I went to the Pizza Express just across from ROH.

This was the end of our V&A day and our timing was tight. After standing in line for awhile we knew we'd only make the curtain if we ordered a few quick things. Our waiter, an older British guy, was cheery and pleasant until he heard our non-drinks, just-a-pizza-and-some-salads order. He turned in a flash into the rudest single server we'd ever seen, amusingly so, and maintained that throughout the rest of the meal.

I dashed over and got out tickets at Will Call while the food was preparing, and we were able to pay, get out the doors and across the street, up the elevator and into our seats with a couple of minutes to spare. A young waitress gave us a sympathetic smile as we left.

Yes, thursdaysd, we love the Jewellery gallery. We had visited there a few years ago, and stopped in again this time. We also really liked the theatre exhibits. My favorite thing this time was having leisure to sketch Greek and Roman sculpture and watch people.

stoke- love the somerset house pics. When I worked in London it was part of the High Court as well as the public record office and I well remember standing where the ice rink is now freezing my socks off waiting for the doors of the court to open when i had an early hearing. [it didn't matter if you had a 10 am hearing, they still only let you in at 9.55 so you had to interview your client/s out in the cold!]

I guess these days you'd arrange to meet your clients at one of the Starbucks that seems to be on every block. What do they use those buildings for now, besides the museum and café?


I'll continue this report here:

tinyurl.com/axbnnqu

under another alias , where it's easy to post photos. Thank you all for your comments and patience!

(I mean the Somerset House buildings, Ann.)

"Please do yourself a favor and see One Man Two Guvnors, currently at the Royal Haymarket"

Stokebailey - I did myself a favor and did just that! Your post was just the "push" I needed. DH and I are going to London next month and had already booked tickets for "Peter and Alice" with Judy Dench. This trip is mostly about day trips out of London and there was only 1 night available to squeeze in another play, but that's what I did - hope James Corden is appearing that night!

Also, thanks for the Lupita's recommendation - our rental flat is almost next door to this restaurant (on John Adam St.).

I guess these days you'd arrange to meet your clients at one of the Starbucks that seems to be on every block. What do they use those buildings for now, besides the museum and café?>>


Stoke, I honestly don't know what the part of Somerset House that used to "house" the court and the record office is used for now. I just read the Wiki entry which talks about recent use by HMRC [the revenue] and other gov depts, but as it makes no mention of its having been a court, I'm not inclined to give it too much credence.

so your guess is as good as mine!

I am loving your report!! Your daughter takes amazing pics!!! is the Candy Man at Boroughs Market?? I will be looking for him!!! We had amazing mushroom patee last time!!!

Somerset House has played host to all kinds of government offices and public institutions over the past couple of centuries, and the allocation of space has been in constant flux.

The modern complex was quite deliberately designed, relatively recently in the 1780's, as an imposing home for whatever government offices needed housing (it's merely on the site of a posh house built by the then Duke of Somerset: there've been a few rebuildings since). There was never one specific use it was intended for.

Conventional wisdom these days is that it's in the wrong place, and is too encumbered with protection orders, to be terribly useful as a place for modern bureaucrats to work in productively.

So, apart from the Courtauld Gallery, it now houses a large space for temporary exhibitions, loosely connected with fashion. It's also the semi-permanent home of London Fashion Week. In the early 1980s, Courtaulds was still the world's largest textile manufacturer, by turnover: the family founding the business came here as Huguenot refugees, set themselves up as silversmiths for three generations (quite fine ones, as their corporate archive on display in the Gallery shows), then moved into weaving. Though the megacorp it turned into more or less self-destructed in the Great Deindustrialisation, Courtauld family foundations contributed quite a bit to the Somerset House refurbishing in the 1990s and 2000s. In principle, the plan is for the space to be used for what you might call creative enterprises

Apart from the several cafes and a decent destination restaurant, there's a fair amount of imposing and well maintained space left empty to be hired out for film shoots, weddings or conferences. There's a dozen or two creative-y businesses or foundations based in the complex, and there are a lot of quite imaginative uses the central courtyard gets put to, including ice skating and open air film performances.

But I suspect there's a lot of empty space looking for a revenue-generating use, and I don't know how much of that space is actually fit for human occupation in an era of draconian workplace safety laws.

It also gets used as a film location. One Open House weekend, I went on tour around it, which took us into the basements (some remains of the original Tudor building and its then uses - it housed the Portugese Embassy for a while and was allowed to have its own Catholic chapel as a result) and the service corridor that runs round the central courtyard under buttresses and arches, which I've seen serving in several period TV series as some mysterious/dangerous London alleyway. Plus there are some elegant staircases, as you would expect in a building of the period. It was the Navy Office in Nelson's day, but I don't know if any of the posher boardrooms and their fitments survive from that time.

It was the Navy Office in Nelson's day, but I don't know if any of the posher boardrooms and their fitments survive from that time.>>

if they did, they were not on display to those of us attending the courts there in the 70s and 80s. if not Dickensian, they were very utilitarian, with no private conference facilities, phones, or cloakrooms, and subterranean loos.

no glamour there.

Thank you for that, flanner. That would explain this photo MC took a few years ago.

http://tinyurl.com/ayrdbxt

It was May then, and children were wading in the courtyard, not skating.

I'd like to take that tour you describe, Patrick.

Also would like someone to make more movies of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, and use the Nelson era staircases for when he's in town getting raked over coals by his Royal Navy superiors. Russell Crowe would still make a good Aubrey.

dorfan, so hope you like 1Man2Guv. I'd have gone back the next night if I could. I read a reviewer who thought that Corden's replacement at the Royal Haymarket was every bit as excellent in his own way, so it would be fun to see them both.

oh2doula, Thank you. Yes, the Candyman was at Borough Market. I love that place.

WHERE DID ALL THE INTERNET CAFES GO?

I had a notion of getting up nerve to organize a GTG in London, was never sure how the timing would work, so I kept putting it off.

H and I traveled without any sort of internet device, but I hoped that after MC left with her laptop I could try something last minute, and check my email and so forth at one of the many internet cafes we saw around London 3.5 years ago.

The Doubletree Hilton, as is usual with such places, had a business center where you could use a computer for 5 GBP/hour. I scoffed at that overpricing and kept my eyes peeled for the closest internet cafe. Then we looked for any such place whatsoever.

Finally I saw one on Oxford St, west of the Tottenham Ct. Rd. tube stop on the south side of the street, and I went there one morning at 0930 to find it closed. Later in the week we went by in the evening, and found the "cafe": a few computers in a tiny basement corner under a t-shirt and souvenir shop. So that was fine, and it worked, and I probably wouldn't have had courage/time for a GTG this trip anyway.

Since MC pays so little for her Blackberry service in France, may I assume everyone now carries a handheld internet device, and that such cafes have gone the way of livery stables?

Your assumption seems to be correct. I first noticed the disappearance of internet cafes in Europe a few years back. You still find them in countries with a lower standard of living. I usually don't stay in places expensive to charge for net access, but when I do I look for a cafe with wifi (I have been traveling with a netbook or tablet for several years.

i think you're right, stoke. the vast majority of my colleagues who are under 40 have i-phones; I'm looked on as a dinosaur because I've got a blackberry. and most of them have i-pads as well.

It's a whole new world out there.

>>It's a whole new world out there.<<

At Christmastime, my seven-year-old great nephew was showing his one-year old brother how Daddy's tablet computer worked; and the little one spent a fair bit of time trying to work out why tapping and swiping at the TV screen didn't make it do anything.

"may I assume everyone now carries a handheld internet device, and that such cafes have gone the way of livery stables?"

Not quite. I still see handwritten "internet cafe" signs around the main stations, though not so many. There's an awful lot of wifi hotspots - and a lot more if you live here, since a number of phone companies (including BT, the legacy landline business, and Virgin Media) offer free wifi in thousands of locations to their subscribers. Most "metics" (google it) live in a shared flat so they get free access that way these days, or get it at work or college.

And a growing number of us carry those pocket devices as well.

Which just leaves those hard-core tourists odd enough to travel without a laptop of tablet (why?). Who are so numerically trivial in a city London's size (most foreign voices you hear live here) there's little point anyone trying to save them money.

For future trips, go to the Trip Advisor forum and ask about wifi hotspots in any substantial Western European city you're likely to be in. But I'm afraid leaving home without a tablet or laptop is sort of like not having a mobile phone these days.

And yet I thrive without enriching the tablet manufacturers; someday will become so numerically trivial as to approach vanishing point. If you're defending London against me, flanner, save your breath. I forgive it entirely.

Maybe I should have tried swiping the TV screen.

I forgot to answer flanner's possibly sincere question: why anyone would be so odd as to travel without laptop or tablet.

I can only speak for myself: I enjoy traveling untethered to the rest of the world. I like being where I am at the time and being with the people I'm with. I spend my working days attached to a computer and a telephone, and thankfully I am not important enough that my workplace needs me when I'm gone.

I didn't want hourly or even daily updates on how Bob's cold was progressing. I didn't need to keep up with the fiscal cliff situation. Internet cafes were handy the previous time, once or twice a week. It's nice to be able to check a museum's hours or restaurant address. If I'd really cared to I could have spent the 5 GBP and logged on.

On the day I left H on Kensington High St. and she was later getting back than I had expected, I might have called her if we'd had phones. We didn't, and she made it back just fine without my interference.

"I enjoy traveling untethered to the rest of the world"

You don't have to turn the gizmo on all the time! I find having a tablet or netbook essential, since I travel for several weeks at a time and need to reconfirm reservations and even make some on the road. I like to post blog and TR entries and it's much nicer to do that from my room. But it's locked in my bag or a room safe during the day. I travel solo and I also like to be able to listen to audio books at dinner.

LIFETIME SO FAR PUB REVIEWS (from someone who thinks a half pint is plenty) IN THE BLOOMSBURY/FITZROVIA/HOLBORN AREAS, AND ONE ON THE STRAND.

My daughters are 21 and 22, and were my perfect companions for exploring pubs. A half pint, some London atmosphere, and we were content.

First I'll mention the ones dear late Cholmondley-Warner had suggested when my older daughter and I were there four years ago:

The Hope on Tottenham St. just behind the Goodge St. tube stop.
www.fancyapint.com/Pub/london/the-hope/272
I found the music too loud for conversation. It's been refurbished since we met CW there; at that time it dripped authenticity but not charm. London Pride and cider are good bets.

The Newman Arms just off Charlotte St. in Fitzrovia.
www.newmanarms.co.uk/
Prettier, stays crowded. We stood outside. I wouldn't mind trying one of their pies sometime.

One evening MC, H and I took a bus along the Strand/Fleet St./Cannon St./etc., from Trafalgar Sq. to the Tower, hoping to sight Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese so we could stop on the way back. No luck. This was not the only time I half-wished London were a little more like Chicago: laid out on a sensible grid, streets that stayed the same name for blocks at a time, and numbers that made sense.

We got out at the Tower, walked across Tower Bridge and back. Beautiful windy walk, not many people on the bridge, MC wishing for her camera. Back on the bus, Fleet St. flitted by, and we decided just to ride on to the Coal Hole on the Strand. http://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/thec...estrandlondon/
This attractive dark wood pub was just crowded enough that we could stand at the bar and then snag a seat. We liked the cider here. Not at all infested with tourists.

Another missed pub I'd still like to try, but at an off time: The Princess Louise. We walked over on Friday evening, but I mistakenly took us up Theobald Rd. instead of Holborn. We realized our mistake and headed down Red Lion St to High Holborn then west, found the beautiful Princess Louise.
http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_de...php?pub_id=182
We circled around all of the intimate seating areas that circle the center bar, divided by etched glass and wood panels, but there was not a decent space for the three of us to alight.

We walked back to Red Lion St. to check out some of the places we'd walked by. There was an almost empty Indian restaurant that we passed three times, and each time the staff seemed to light up with the hope of paying customers; the last two times we avoided eye contact. The three pubs at the Theobald Rd. end didn't work: bad music, or the atmosphere wasn't right, so we settled on the Old Red Lion at the corner of High Holborn. Pleasant Victorian style atmosphere, just crowded enough, good beer.
http://www.fancyapint.com/Pub/london/old-red-lion/189

One tourist-guide-mentioned pub we walked into but didn't stay was the Museum Tavern, across from the British Museum. Both evenings we looked in it seemed too sedate.

Fitzrovia has plenty of choices. We liked the Fitzroy Tavern on a chilly evening near closing time. There seemed to be more women there, in groups and in couples, than the average, and the fish cakes were tasty. http://www.pubs.com/main_site/pub_details.php?pub_id=80
Apparently both George Orwell and Dylan Thomas hung out at several Fitzrovia pubs during their BBC years.

Another evening H and I drank our halfs at the Duke of York, another pleasant spot. http://94.236.109.234/Pub/london/duke-of-york/5

On H and my last evening in town, a Thursday that had started with a climb up the Monument and found us on our way back from the Thames Clipper at Embankment Pier, we walked around Fitzrovia looking for a quiet place to sit and grab a bite. Everything was mobbed at that time. including upstairs and down at the lovely Wheatsheaf http://94.236.109.234/Pub/2
and the Bricklayers' Arms. http://94.236.109.234/Pub/1292A

We walked back to a little Cosmo Place off Southhampton Row near our hotel, and The Swan. This was the first tourist-dominated pub we'd visited, or maybe it just seemed that way because we were wedged next to a very talkative couple of American young women, whose conversation was too easy to overhear. Still, the barstaff was sweet and the food was chain-type decent.

This is bricklayer's:
http://94.236.109.234/Pub/london/bricklayers-arms/1292