Woo hoo! Spring break in London!
Jun 6th, 2009, 11:37 AM
#82
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The Darwin exhibit was on while we were there and likely attracted larger than usual crowds, though to see it you had to have booked ahead. I wasn't specifically interested in it, so didn't bother. There was a butterfly exhibit in preparation at the time that looked like it would be interesting, and so perhaps that's attracting crowds as well.
As we'd been at the museum the previous Sunday, though, and seen it once or twice earlier in the week without a huge mob, I assumed that the crowds were largely the result of the Easter holiday weekend.
As we'd been at the museum the previous Sunday, though, and seen it once or twice earlier in the week without a huge mob, I assumed that the crowds were largely the result of the Easter holiday weekend.
Jun 7th, 2009, 06:40 AM
#84
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Yes, the butterfly exhibit was being set up outside, in a large tent enclosure. I was sorry to miss it, as I quite like that sort of thing. If any of you are as well and won't be in London to see the one at the Natural History Museum, note that there's a similar permanent installation at Callaway Gardens here in Georgia, a couple of hours drive from Atlanta: http://www.callawaygardens.com/calla...tterflies.aspx
Jun 7th, 2009, 07:27 AM
#85
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L'ultima cena
The other great thing about having older kids is that you send them home with the shopping while you go off to do something else. In this case the something else was a visit to Harrod's.
The point of the visit to Harrod's wasn't so much Harrod's itself, but the nice walk involved. I usually walk quite a bit when I travel, but teenagers (and husbands) tend to get a bit testy when asked to walk as much as I like, so I headed off on a more or less random journey in the general direction of Harrod's.
Since it was the holiday weekend it was, if possible, even more mobbed than usual. The food halls are my favorite. The usual weird mix of tourists: Japanese buying Krispy Kreme doughnuts by the gross (even though there's now Krispy Kreme in Japan), Americans eating overpriced sushi, everybody (including presumably insane locals based on their accents) buying Easter treats.
I managed to get lost a couple of time, so my goal of a nice long walk was met.
On the way back I also picked out a place for dinner: Kwality Tandoori, on Thurloe Place. I walked right by it on my way home, and the menu looked reasonable and the prices very reasonable and the kids hadn't yet had Indian (unless you count the microwave meal from Marks & Spencer that we'd had one night, which was edible but certainly not worth repeating), so I made a mental bookmark of the location (it's very close to the South Kensington tube station) and once home looked up reviews on the web which were fine (the usual mix of "not nearly hot enough" and "fantastic, the best home-style Indian in the UK").
So, back out we go for the brief walk to Kwality, and it turns out that my mental bookmark wasn't very good. In my defense I'll point out that the roads around the station are pretty confusing, and that there's more than one street called Thurloe. So after about 10 minutes of turning around in circles we settled on a different restaurant entirely, Moti Mahal: http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/restaur...urant-2009.php
There's another restaurant in London called Moti Mahal which is pretty well-known for upmarket, fancy Indian cuisine. This one is not it, so don't get them mixed up. There are even on line reviews for this restaurant that clearly refer to the other restaurant.
Nice interior, service pleasant. The menu featured all the classics and I ordered a variety for us, mostly milder items. I can no longer recall all the specifics, but do recall onion bhaji (good, but a bit oilier than I like), kebabs of some sort (very good), butter chicken, rogan josh, some sort of pumpkin curry and possibly one other vegetable dish (eggplant? okra?), and naan. The naan were outstanding. The raita was not. In general there was a nice ratio of main ingredient to sauce, and the spicing was complex but not overly hot (though I'll point out that both myself and my kids have a high spicy tolerance after years of ethnic food here in Atlanta). Some of the dishes were undersalted, which is find with me as it's very easily corrected at the table, and much preferable to the alternative. If I lived in the neighborhood this would be one of my favorites.
Entertainment was provided in the form of the table next to ours: an American ex-pat couple (that lived in the neighborhood; the wife was well-known to the staff) was entertaining a group of mostly adolescents. They were from a smallish town in North Carolina and had never had Indian food. Their initial caution was quickly replaced by enthusiasm, and extra orders started flying out of the kitchen. This was an eye-opening experience for my own children as well, as they couldn't imagine that there could be kids who otherwise seemed so similar to them who'd never had butter chicken or vegetable korma. Travel does broaden the mind.
For dessert we headed to Au Pain Quotidien (just across from Kwality, which I now found without any trouble at all) where I had an assortment of cookies, my daughter had strawberry cake (the pavlova being all gone for the day), and my son had something I can't recall. A lovely finish to our last supper in London.
The other great thing about having older kids is that you send them home with the shopping while you go off to do something else. In this case the something else was a visit to Harrod's.
The point of the visit to Harrod's wasn't so much Harrod's itself, but the nice walk involved. I usually walk quite a bit when I travel, but teenagers (and husbands) tend to get a bit testy when asked to walk as much as I like, so I headed off on a more or less random journey in the general direction of Harrod's.
Since it was the holiday weekend it was, if possible, even more mobbed than usual. The food halls are my favorite. The usual weird mix of tourists: Japanese buying Krispy Kreme doughnuts by the gross (even though there's now Krispy Kreme in Japan), Americans eating overpriced sushi, everybody (including presumably insane locals based on their accents) buying Easter treats.
I managed to get lost a couple of time, so my goal of a nice long walk was met.
On the way back I also picked out a place for dinner: Kwality Tandoori, on Thurloe Place. I walked right by it on my way home, and the menu looked reasonable and the prices very reasonable and the kids hadn't yet had Indian (unless you count the microwave meal from Marks & Spencer that we'd had one night, which was edible but certainly not worth repeating), so I made a mental bookmark of the location (it's very close to the South Kensington tube station) and once home looked up reviews on the web which were fine (the usual mix of "not nearly hot enough" and "fantastic, the best home-style Indian in the UK").
So, back out we go for the brief walk to Kwality, and it turns out that my mental bookmark wasn't very good. In my defense I'll point out that the roads around the station are pretty confusing, and that there's more than one street called Thurloe. So after about 10 minutes of turning around in circles we settled on a different restaurant entirely, Moti Mahal: http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/restaur...urant-2009.php
There's another restaurant in London called Moti Mahal which is pretty well-known for upmarket, fancy Indian cuisine. This one is not it, so don't get them mixed up. There are even on line reviews for this restaurant that clearly refer to the other restaurant.
Nice interior, service pleasant. The menu featured all the classics and I ordered a variety for us, mostly milder items. I can no longer recall all the specifics, but do recall onion bhaji (good, but a bit oilier than I like), kebabs of some sort (very good), butter chicken, rogan josh, some sort of pumpkin curry and possibly one other vegetable dish (eggplant? okra?), and naan. The naan were outstanding. The raita was not. In general there was a nice ratio of main ingredient to sauce, and the spicing was complex but not overly hot (though I'll point out that both myself and my kids have a high spicy tolerance after years of ethnic food here in Atlanta). Some of the dishes were undersalted, which is find with me as it's very easily corrected at the table, and much preferable to the alternative. If I lived in the neighborhood this would be one of my favorites.
Entertainment was provided in the form of the table next to ours: an American ex-pat couple (that lived in the neighborhood; the wife was well-known to the staff) was entertaining a group of mostly adolescents. They were from a smallish town in North Carolina and had never had Indian food. Their initial caution was quickly replaced by enthusiasm, and extra orders started flying out of the kitchen. This was an eye-opening experience for my own children as well, as they couldn't imagine that there could be kids who otherwise seemed so similar to them who'd never had butter chicken or vegetable korma. Travel does broaden the mind.
For dessert we headed to Au Pain Quotidien (just across from Kwality, which I now found without any trouble at all) where I had an assortment of cookies, my daughter had strawberry cake (the pavlova being all gone for the day), and my son had something I can't recall. A lovely finish to our last supper in London.
Jun 14th, 2009, 07:07 AM
#86
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The long way home...
Actually, it wasn't really, just one connection, but living in Atlanta means that we have to make them much less frequently than most, and then only if we're going some place sort of exotic or out of the way. But because we were flying on skymiles and I could find a decent connection (more about it later) I did accept one this time for our trip home (the outbound leg had been direct).
Our flight was scheduled for a 10:45 AM departure. I'd successfully checked in on line at delta.com, and we only had carry on luggage, so planned for a 7:15 to 7:30 departure from the apartment. This was too early for ladies who staff A Place Like Home, so I agreed that we'd just lock up and push the key back through the mail slot when we left.
I had the kids shower before the went to bed and pack their bags, leaving out just the clothes they'd wear home. I got up early to pack our lunches and shower and pack for myself, and we were out the door by 7:30. I'd checked to make sure that the bus to Victoria from the stop around the corner was running (as it was Easter Sunday), and that one could, indeed, pay a cash fare (2 GBP each) upon boarding. I'd also already decided that if a bus didn't show up quickly and there were cabs available I'd probably just go for a cab, and in the end that's exactly what we did, hailing one easily. The fare was something like 10 GBP and the driver dropped us right at the door for the elevators/escalator that leads down to the correct platform.
I'd pre-puchased our DaySave group ticket from Southern Railway before our departure (on line, ticket mailed directly to my home in Atlanta for no additional charge), so showed the ticket to an agent who also told me which platform to use. Uneventful ride to LGW, though this train was fairly busy with what appeared to be local daytrippers.
I'd expected to do nothing more elaborate at check-in than print out our boarding passes at a Delta kiosk, but despite having already checked in still had go to the counter. No wait at the Medallion desk, though the agent was a bit nonplussed when I told her we had no bags to check. "Really?" "Yes, really." As she couldn't see our bags over the counter she asked me to show her the biggest one, which I did by putting it up on the scale. Well under maximum weight, and obviously fine size-wise, so she shrugged and that was that, we were on our way.
Actually, it wasn't really, just one connection, but living in Atlanta means that we have to make them much less frequently than most, and then only if we're going some place sort of exotic or out of the way. But because we were flying on skymiles and I could find a decent connection (more about it later) I did accept one this time for our trip home (the outbound leg had been direct).
Our flight was scheduled for a 10:45 AM departure. I'd successfully checked in on line at delta.com, and we only had carry on luggage, so planned for a 7:15 to 7:30 departure from the apartment. This was too early for ladies who staff A Place Like Home, so I agreed that we'd just lock up and push the key back through the mail slot when we left.
I had the kids shower before the went to bed and pack their bags, leaving out just the clothes they'd wear home. I got up early to pack our lunches and shower and pack for myself, and we were out the door by 7:30. I'd checked to make sure that the bus to Victoria from the stop around the corner was running (as it was Easter Sunday), and that one could, indeed, pay a cash fare (2 GBP each) upon boarding. I'd also already decided that if a bus didn't show up quickly and there were cabs available I'd probably just go for a cab, and in the end that's exactly what we did, hailing one easily. The fare was something like 10 GBP and the driver dropped us right at the door for the elevators/escalator that leads down to the correct platform.
I'd pre-puchased our DaySave group ticket from Southern Railway before our departure (on line, ticket mailed directly to my home in Atlanta for no additional charge), so showed the ticket to an agent who also told me which platform to use. Uneventful ride to LGW, though this train was fairly busy with what appeared to be local daytrippers.
I'd expected to do nothing more elaborate at check-in than print out our boarding passes at a Delta kiosk, but despite having already checked in still had go to the counter. No wait at the Medallion desk, though the agent was a bit nonplussed when I told her we had no bags to check. "Really?" "Yes, really." As she couldn't see our bags over the counter she asked me to show her the biggest one, which I did by putting it up on the scale. Well under maximum weight, and obviously fine size-wise, so she shrugged and that was that, we were on our way.
Jun 14th, 2009, 12:09 PM
#87
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In flight...
Because I'd booked our flights closer to the date of travel than usual, our choice of seats was a bit limited, with no exit rows being available. Bulkhead rows are typically blocked for use by the gate agents, so I just went ahead and booked reasonable seats, with my daughter at a window next to me and my son across the aisle.
As boarding finished I realized that there were a number of empty seats and pointed out to my daughter that should could move back a couple of rows and almost certainly get two seats together (one of the seats had already been vacated by another passenger who'd moved to take up a center section of three seats). So she did and both of us had two seats for the flight. No AVOD, but she'd brought a DVD player and my son and I both read.
I'd packed sandwiches and fruit and vegetables and chocolate and cookies, so none of had to resort to <shudder> airplane food.
We arrived at CVG (Cincinnati), where customs and immigrations takes apparently zero time. I have absolutely no recollection of any of it, and neither do my kids.
Next stop: Sky Club.
Because I'd booked our flights closer to the date of travel than usual, our choice of seats was a bit limited, with no exit rows being available. Bulkhead rows are typically blocked for use by the gate agents, so I just went ahead and booked reasonable seats, with my daughter at a window next to me and my son across the aisle.
As boarding finished I realized that there were a number of empty seats and pointed out to my daughter that should could move back a couple of rows and almost certainly get two seats together (one of the seats had already been vacated by another passenger who'd moved to take up a center section of three seats). So she did and both of us had two seats for the flight. No AVOD, but she'd brought a DVD player and my son and I both read.
I'd packed sandwiches and fruit and vegetables and chocolate and cookies, so none of had to resort to <shudder> airplane food.
We arrived at CVG (Cincinnati), where customs and immigrations takes apparently zero time. I have absolutely no recollection of any of it, and neither do my kids.
Next stop: Sky Club.
