Wednesday the 31st through Friday the 2nd of June: Playing catch-up again because of our long full days and nights, and so I'm going to have to gloss over details. Wednesday, in the morning, we hung out at the Costa Cafe, and then did laundry at a nice laundromat right around the corner from the hotel. It didn't take us longer than an hour and so by early afternoon, we dropped off our clothes back in our room, and took the tube to Leicester Square where we got tickets to play: The Lady in Black. From there, it was a short walk to the National Gallery, where we looked at beautiful paintings by Seurat, Signac, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Canaletto, Parmigiano, Cassatt, Holbein, El Greco, Valesquez, Rembrandt, and so many others. In one of the galleries, there was a string quartet giving a free Beethoven concert, so we sat on the floor there and listened until they were through. That was such an unexpected treat! Then we walked to our play, and even though our seats were up on the upper-most level, last row, we still had a fine view, and the show was quite a thriller. Afterwards we went to a little cafe for a panini and coke, and took the tube back to the hotel for the night.
Thursday June 1st, we were back at Cost Cafe in the morning for a planning session. We decided on renewing our room in our current hotel, buying a BritRail Flex pass for 15 days, and using the next week in London solely for doing day trips before heading to York and then Edinburgh for travelling Scotland. After putting the finishing touches on our plans, we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus where there was a tourist information center that sold BritRail tickets, amongst all kinds of other things. We expected some difficulties because the little sign behind the counter said we needed to have our passports and flight tickets with us in order to buy the tickets, but they didn't enforce this, and we got our passes no problem. From there, we went to London Dungeon, the ultimate low-brow entertainment spot in London, and had a great time getting all grossed out and freaked out, despite the exhorbatant cost, long line and obnoxious kids in our group. It was good, disgusting fun. Afterwards, we had a really nice leisurely walk alongside the River Thames to the Royal Festival Hall to see what was going on there. The show for the night didn't sound all that interesting, so we decided against staying, and instead, took the took back towards the hotel, but got off a few stops early so that we could explore some areas we hadn't yet seen. We ended up having dinner at a Pizza Express, which was nothing like what we expected, and instead, was really very nice, and super tasty with nice comparitively low prices. We stopped at the little corner shop for some snacks and went back to the hotel.
Friday the 2nd of June would be our first of many road trips out of London. Today, was Windsor Castle, and oh what a treat it was. One of the funny things was hearing the automated voice on the train announce at each stop "Mind the gap between the train and the edge of the platform.". Now, on the tube, you frequently hear "Mind the gap", and we just thought is we hilarious that on the train, they actually took it so far as to not only warn us against the gap, but to also explain exactly where the gap was, just in case we couldn't figure that out for ourselves. Hilarious. So proper. So British. Another thing was the many, many times the train conductor came over the loud speaker system to apoligize for the train being delayed by 3 minutes, and how terribly sorry they were for any inconveniences that this may have caused. And then a few more times when we were 5 delayed by 5 minutes, and a few more times when we were about 10 minutes behind. The entire trip was only about a 52 minute ride, and not only were they continually apoligizing for our slipping tardiness, but they also took the time to explain exactly why we were being delayed (congestion on the railway). Once in Windsor, it was a short walk through the tidy little town to the ticket office, and inside the castle walls where we explored the State Rooms, Queen Mary's dolls and dollhouse, St.George's Cathedral, and the Royal Collection of arms and paintings. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day. We saw the changing of the guard, and then walked to Windsor Park where the long straight gravel road leads from the castle to a huge monument on the horizon. We walked more through the village and had a very nice conversation with some super friendly folks inside an art gallery before we headed back to the train station for our ride to the Waterloo station in London, and eventually back to the hotel. To cap the night off, we walked around for a little while around the hotel and found a little family Italian restaurant where we shared a tomato and mozzarella appetizer, Vee had a smoked salmon salad and I had a chicken breast with prosciutto and cheese, and we shared a home-made tiramisu for dessert, all of which was delicious.
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