Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Trip report: return to London, first visit to Oxford & Cardiff

Saturday, March 17 – London

Our original plan was to get up very early and go to Portobello Market, then come back to St. James Park for breakfast at Inn the Park. When my alarm went off neither of us felt that we could get up. I sank back to sleep for several more hours, and when we finally awoke, I actually felt human again. I could drink a real mouthful of water. Eating just might be an option today.

Ali told me that she had been worried the day before about how slowly I had been walking and how spacey I was about logistics and directions. Thank goodness I was feeling 1,000% better, as this was our last day in London.

I thought that we could salvage the breakfast portion of our morning plan. When we called Inn the Park for reservations, we learned that we would not be able to get there in time for breakfast even if we hurried. That was really too bad, because the breakfast menu is fabulous. http://www.innthepark.com/menu.asp?menu=2434 () Instead we made lunch reservations and planned to do the Cabinet War Rooms first.

Changing of the Horse Guards
Our walking route to the Cabinet War Rooms took us right past the horse guards themselves. It was a few minutes before 11:00 and a crowd was forming for the changing of the horse guards. We found a good spot in front and waited also. Soon the guards rode up, and we watched them for about 10 or 15 minutes. That was cool.

Cabinet War Rooms/Churchill Museum [admission £11]
We used 2-for-1 coupons for admission to the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum. Ali is fascinated by Churchill, and enjoyed all of it. I was glad to see it again. We had to rush just a little bit to make our lunch reservations (I hadn’t figured in the changing of the horse guards!) Luckily St. James Park is right across the street.

Lunch: Inn the Park [£52.31 for 2]
Inn the Park is a breezy modern structure located, well, right in the park (St. James). It is self-described as “serving the best of British food using the freshest seasonal produce from small independent producers, rare breed farmers, specialists fisherman and artisan producers; all who share the philosophy that fantastic ingredients are the cornerstones of good cooking.”

It was a gorgeous day, and we asked to sit outside. I was surprised at how many families with very young children were eating at this fairly expensive restaurant (there was a children’s menu, but it wasn’t cheap.) We had a lovely time – and ordered whatever appealed to us. Ali had the steak and chips and I had a butternut squash, spinach and mushroom Wellington. We each ordered a glass of wine with our lunch – I’m not yet used to doing this with my 21 year old (of course she would have been legal in London at 18) – and it was oh, so civilized.

As we finished up our food I was mentally running through our long list of things to do in the afternoon, but Ali persuaded me to slow down and enjoy the moment. We ordered a pot of tea, which was fabulous, and just sipped and soaked up the ambiance.

Afternoon planning
Coming to London, what I most wanted to see were Lewis Chessmen (and the Sutton Hoo burial ship) at the British Museum.

Last summer I visited the UK, and was thrilled to see the Lewis Chessmen in Edinburgh at the Museum of Scotland. These 93 chess pieces were made in the 12th century, and discovered on the Isle of Lewis (the story of the discovery and subsequent disposition of the chess men is quite an adventure tale). 11 of the figures are in Scotland (the ones I saw), the rest in the British Museum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen When we were in London later on that trip we went to the British Museum’s late hours, hoping to see its much larger collection of the little ivory figures, and were disappointed to find the Anglo Saxon galleries closed that evening. I was determined to see them this time before we left London.

Leaving lunch we headed in the direction of the British Museum, but of course there were a few distractions along the way.

James Smith and Sons Umbrella Shop http://www.james-smith.co.uk/
Nearly on the doorstep of the British Museum we found the James Smith shop, purveyors of umbrellas since 1830. Entering the store was like stepping back in time. Umbrellas and walking canes lined the walls and filled tables and cases. There was a huge section of black gentlemen’s umbrellas alongside canes of every size and description.

We turned our attention to the selection of women’s umbrellas. Ali had been looking for an umbrella as we shopped in London and Cardiff, but hadn’t seen anything she really loved. It seemed to me that a nice umbrella, procured from venerable London stockists, would prove to be a useful and sturdy, if expensive, memento of the trip. After considering several possible choices, Ali settled on a beautiful blue full sized umbrella with a carved wooden robin for a handle. I didn’t have a clear idea how we would get the umbrella home on the plane, (and probably should have inquired into having it shipped to us.)

Comics shop
Another stop was at a comic book shop (also very near the British Museum, but I don’t remember the name) that Ali knew from her previous London visit. In addition to classic comic books, the store carried books about comics and compilations of comic art. We browsed around for 10-15 minutes, and came close to making purchases, but in the end we didn’t want to carry any more books home with us.

British Museum
I just love the glass roofed courtyard of the British Museum. It is such a great gathering space, with the information desks and gift shops right there. We were on a pretty focused mission to find room 41 – the Anglo Saxon room – with the Sutton Hoo and the Lewis Chessmen. We looked at the Sutton Hoo first. I somehow thought that it would be a complete ship that had been dug up and put on display, along with its treasure. But the ship had decomposed, so they had found impressions of the entire ship, but not the ship itself. And the treasure didn’t bowl me over.

The Lewis Chessmen, on the other hand, did not disappoint. They were displayed in a stand alone glass, lined up to face two opposite directions. I think I would have preferred to see them all facing the same way, but they were still wonderful. We were allowed to take pictures (without flash), so I documented them like crazy.

Although the museum has countless other wonders, we had both seen the major highlights on previous visits (unfortunately Lindow Man was still off display), so we took a few minutes at the gift shop (of course) – Ali bought some feng shui cat figure that promised to bring academic success.

Shopping on the King’s Road
At this point Ali was pretty much museumed-out. She expressed interest in visiting the vintage clothing store that her sister and I had found on our trip last year. It was pretty far away, but not too far from the Brompton Oratory, where we would need to be at Mass at 6:00pm.

London public transportation is wonderful; in a few tube rides we were at Sloane Square. We walked along the Kings Road, window shopping and enjoying the afternoon. We stopped at LK Bennett, where Ali bought some great gold espadrille flats (similar to the silver espadrilles her sister Jen bought at this same store a year ago.)

We decided to skip Jigsaw in favor of going directly to Steinberg and Tolkein. It wasn’t quite as far a walk as I remembered, luckily. There were lots of high end vintage things at Steinberg and Tolkein this time around. The sale rack was pretty slim pickin’s. We found a retro dress that was nice for Ali, but it had a broken zipper and was not worth the stiff price. Ali ended up buying a few neck ties, which were 50% off.

Brompton Oratory (actually “The London Oratory, Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary”) http://www.bromptonoratory.com/
We had just a few minutes to get ourselves to Mass, so we jumped on a bus to go back up King’s Road to the Sloane Square tube station. There was a whole line of police on horseback, but we had no idea why. Construction on the road meant that we had to get off well before Sloane Square. We hustled to the tube station, and found the tubes very crowded. We got off 1 stop later at South Kensington, and hurried the few blocks to the Oratory. Surprisingly, we weren’t all that late for Mass. As I remembered from our first trip, the Oratory was breathtakingly beautiful in appearance and liturgy.

Leicester Square
It was St. Patrick’s day, and Ali planned to meet up with her friends. Crowds of people were on the tube heading to Leicester Square. As were we. Thanks to the miracle of cell phones Ali managed to find her friends there. As best we could figure, they’d been drinking Guinness since much earlier in the day. They were wearing big Guinness badges and huge green hats. The girls weren’t planning to stay out too much later, however, as everyone was traveling the next morning: we were flying home, and they were flying to Italy.

Belgo Centraal (again!)
I left them to their devices and pursued a plan of my own. I had been obsessed with thoughts of the Belgo bread-and-butter pudding ever since we ordered it unsuccessfully on Monday. It was now or never. I wasn’t really hungry – our lunch had been very filling – but I figured this would be my dinner. I walked to Seven Dials and down to Belgo. There was quite a number of people waiting to speak with the host. The group before me was given a reservation for 9:45. Yipes, this was only 7:30!

I didn’t want to wait hours for a table (and what if they ran out of pudding again?), so I asked if I could order the bread and butter pudding for take away. I was told that no, Belgo does not do take away. Luckily, the host guy found one little table next to the kitchen that was available for the short time it would take me to consume my pudding, and with a wink, he escorted me there himself. I must say, it was worth it. I cut the pudding in half, and savored every mouthful of my portion, saving the rest for Ali to taste (they were kind enough to give me a piece of foil.) [£5]

This time I remembered how to get to the hotel from the tube station. Back in the room, I carefully packed for our trip home. We would each have our suitcase and extra small duffle bag for checked luggage. Flights from the UK allow just one smallish carry on item. I combined the posters and the umbrella in a cardboard tube. The umbrella was a bit longer than the tube, so I fashioned a makeshift extension out of a biscuit package and tape. The tube was too long to put into any of the pieces of luggage, but I figured we could just carry it on the plane and stick it in the overhead bin.

Some random news: It turned out to have been a big sports day; in rugby Wales beat England and in cricket Ireland beat Pakistan.