For our next adventure...

We've booked our flights for a trip to Spain and Morocco from March 31 to April 11. Finally, someplace warm! And it's about time we ventured out of Europe.

We will be in southern Spain during Holy Week (Semana Santa), which is celebrated with processions, big floats with saints on top, and penitents wearing crazy pointy hoods. I am so very excited about the timing of this - I've long wanted to see it in person!

We're also very excited about Morocco. Can't wait to see some mosques, watch some snake charmers, and drink some mint tea in the sunshine!

Sunday in London

Sunday morning we had a full English breakfast in the restaurant of our hotel. It was quite good, but not super-fabulous. We checked out (despite having very strong thoughts of staying another night), left our bags behind the counter, and set off for another day's exploring. Unfortunately, the blue sky and sunshine were no more, so the pictures aren't as pretty. But at least it didn't rain on us.

Our first general goal for the morning was the Natural History Museum, which is near the other two we visited on Saturday. It is absolutely huge and the building is beyond impressive. When we arrived, though, there was a long line of visitors coming out the door. We decided to come back later, but never did.

The museum had also been the venue for London Fashion Week, which had just ended. That was fun to see. There were temporary venues set up all around the museum, which were not your average tent - many were multi-story and one had big chandeliers! (These pics are from the night before.)



Instead we briefly revisited the V&A Museum, where we saw some more interesting things and got a few more photos.




Next we headed towards Kings Road in Chelsea, always my favorite part of London. We had a good time window-shopping, fancy-car-drooling and rich-people-watching.



The cars were especially amazing. Everywhere we looked there were not just Mercedes and Land Rovers, but also Aston Martins, Bentleys, Jaguars, and even Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Here's just a couple - there are more in my Flickr set called "cars."



From there we walked up to Buckingham Palace, thinking maybe the state rooms might be open. They weren't open, so we just had another peek through the fence at the palace before moving on.



Then we made the excellent decision to take a taxi to Leicester Square to see about a movie. The comfy seats were so delightful after all that walking. As we drove past Trafalgar Square, we realized it was Chinese New Year! The square was absolutely packed with people and there were red lanterns strung everywhere. So we had the driver let us off there and we dove into the swarms.



We had hoped for some authentic Chinese street food, but Trafalgar Square just had a big stage with a Chinese woman playing violin music and some stands selling paper dragons. So we decided to head for Chinatown, which is just north of there, on a quest for noodles. That was definitely the place to be, although it was also very, very crowded!



In the end we did manage to get ourselves in line for a food stand, but it turned out we were on the wrong side for noodles and the only options were spring rolls and chips (i.e. fries). Darn! But the spring rolls and chips were pretty tasty, too.

We finally made our way out of the crowds and to Leicester Square, where there was a movie showing soon in the big Odeon cinema that hosts most of the premieres (including the Pirates of the Caribbean one I went to over the summer). We've both always wanted to see a movie here, and we finally accomplished it! We saw the 3:20 showing of Music and Lyrics, a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.



It was easily the best movie experience we've had here in the UK. There is just one auditorium, which is the very one where the movie stars watch the premiere with whoever manages to win tickets to such things. The auditorium was absolutely huge, with a balcony overhead and leopard-skin seats! The sound and image quality were noticeably superior to our Oxford screens. And we liked the movie, too. The only downside? Tickets were £12 (about $24) each for the cheap seats! Worth it, though.



Our last activity of the day was dinner at Wagamama, this time the Leicester Square branch. It was delicious as always. I had the "saien soba," which is shown below and was so very good. David had yaki soba and thoroughly enjoyed it. And we got dessert this time - white chocolate ginger cheesecake for me and coconut ice cream for David. YUM!



We planned to take the Tube from there back to our hotel, but tickets that far turned out to cost almost as much as a taxi so we hailed a cab instead. We had a very pleasant Englishman who drove very efficiently. He waited for us to pick up our luggage at our hotel and then took us to Paddington, from where we had a smooth train ride home. It was a very good weekend!

Saturday in London 2

After lunch we headed out to check out some museums. Along the way, we passed a couple good photo opportunities for my websites, including an architecturally interesting Mormon church:



and a Christian Science Reading Room (below). The book in the window is Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures by the founder Mary Baker Eddy, the main text of Christian Science besides the Bible.



Eventually we arrived at the Science Museum, which David had been wanting to visit for some time. It was really cool - like OMSI with all the interactive exhibits, but also stuffed full of historical artifacts related to science and technology.



I had made a very brief stop here during my solo trip to London in 2002 because they were having a James Bond gadget exhibition. This time they had a related special exhibition - "The Science of Spying" - but we didn't feel like standing in line for tickets. The rest of the museum is free.

We saw a wide variety of interesting inventions and technology old and new, including one of the light bulbs made by Edison (right) and the telephone made by Graham Bell (photo here). I was interested to learn that a British fellow invented the light bulb independently at almost the same time as Edison - his lamp is in the background in the photo.

Also on display were some of the earliest calculators and computers to be invented. There was a machine for calculating differential equations that took up a space the size of our apartment - how amazing that my hand-held TI-85 calculator now does the same thing.

We also really liked this big ol' supercomputer:



It reminded me of when I used to visit my dad at work when I was little, and we would go visit "the computer" in a big separate room.

There were lots of airplane-related exhibits, including an entire section on the beloved Spitfire that is often credited with winning World War II. This is the Rolls-Royce engine that powered it:



There were also rockets and rocket parts (below right), historically significant cars (middle), the machine used for splitting the atom (below left), frightening old dentist implements, an early MRI machine, and lots more. We didn't see all of it, but probably well over half. Good stuff.



Next stop was the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is right across the street from the Science Museum, and is also free. It was founded by Queen Victoria and the husband that got the fancy memorial in the park. Out front was an inscription saying that the foundation stone had been laid by Queen Victoria, "Empress of India." The old British Empire sure has shrunk since then.



The V&A has the usual mix of Renaissance paintings, classical sculptures, and artifacts from Asia and around the world. But it also has large sections dedicated to British art, from paintings to sculptures to a big room on ironwork.

And it always seems to have a big part devoted to fashion! I had made a stop here in 2002 as well, and there was the coolest exhibit that included the Versace dress worn by J-Lo and the wedding dress of Prince Diana. This time their temporary exhibition is on the stage costumes of Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue. It was free also but you needed tickets in advance, and they were all "sold out" for the day.

But there was still a permanent exhibition on fashion that was interesting, even a little bit to David. It showed the evolution of men's and women's suits from the 1600s through the 70s and 80s and to today, had a display on the evolution of the tracksuit with a Juicy Couture suit as example, and a big section on 60s fashion that was great.



And I was able to get lots of good photos of religious artifacts, such as mosque decoration, Buddha images and Hindu gods.



By now our legs and feet were beginning to complain, but we kept on trucking and headed for Harrods for those Ladurée macaroons I mentioned yesterday.

Along the way we passed the only church of the weekend, a large Catholic church called Brompton Oratory. We went in and sat down for a bit, but a service was about to start so we didn't stay long. Photos were not allowed but I did manage one blurry one from our seats. Part of the blur is due to the incense in the air, which we always really like.



Next stop was Harrods 102, a chic little grocery store, deli and sushi bar with all Harrods products. No macaroons in there, but we did get a slice of flan (for me) and brownie with nuts (for David) from the French bakery counter.

We then crossed the street to the main Harrods and people-watched outside while eating the brownie, which was to die for.



Harrods' always-impressive window displays had a musical theme this time, and one window featured the fabulous Little Miss and Mr. Men books I grew up reading (below left). I never realized they were English until recently, but as soon as I looked at them as an adult it was obvious! I always thought it was C.S. Lewis that contributed most to my Anglophilia, but perhaps these little books sowed the seeds much earlier.



We had a brief look around Harrods' glorious Food Hall but mainly made a beeline for the sweets section in our macaroon quest. We had some difficulty finding them at first, but finally realized that there is an entire Ladurée tea room in there! The entrance was right next to a Krispy Kreme counter, from which we each had a hot and incredibly delicious glazed donut.

The Ladurée within Harrods was just like the one in Paris, only smaller. It was snobby, beautifully decorated, and as usual no photos are allowed for some inscrutable reason. We ordered a custom box of 12 macaroons, with flavors including pistachio (the best), chocolate, lemon and vanilla. YUM.

Next on the agenda was dinner. Even though we weren't too hungry, we needed some real food to go with all the sweets and more importantly were very ready to sit down for awhile. We headed back in the direction of our hotel to a Chinese restaurant we'd spotted on the way called The Good Earth. (I really liked that book when I read it in high school.) It was a very good decision and we had a delicious meal with excellent service.




My sweet and sour chicken was especially good, with all kinds of exotic fruit instead of just the usual pineapple. David had a beef dish with Hong Kong sauce that he really enjoyed. The only downside to the meal came with the bill - the "Chinese vegetables" (just bok choy in garlic butter) we ordered as a side dish were tasty but cost us £9.00! That's just darn overpriced.

Saturday in London 1

We had a fantastic time in London over the weekend. The transportation went amazingly smoothly for the UK, the hotel was great, the sights were interesting and different (only one church!), and the food was delicious. We explored two big museums, visited Harrods, saw a movie in Leicester Square, ate at Wagamama twice, and celebrated Chinese New Year with about a million other people. We are sorry to be back home.

We took the train to London Saturday morning, arriving at Paddington around 11:30am. Thanks to David's latest fancy phone, we were able to check train times en route and hopped off at Reading to catch a faster train. Hooray for technology!

Since we only had a small bag each, we decided to walk to our hotel. It was a rather long walk, but an enjoyable one since it took us through Hyde Park. The sun was shining so beautifully that we were actually too hot in our winter coats. We passed lots of walkers, runners, dog walkers, parents with strollers, and even lots of horses. There's a designated horse path next to the bike path and people path.



On the south side of Hyde Park is the Albert Memorial, really quite a spectacular monument. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her beloved husband Albert, who died of typhoid fever in 1861. It was completed in 1875 in the "revival Gothic" style.




We rested for a bit there while David plotted our hotel's address on the aforementioned fancy phone, which also acts as a GPS locator and satellite navigation system. It's really something.

Then we were able to walk the rest of the way without a care in the world or a map in our hand, just by obeying the instructions of a gentle but firm British woman's voice to "turn left in 200 yards." Her name is Jane. We also have the choice of Yoda ("in 200 yards, turn left you must") and John Cleese, but they can get old pretty quickly so we stick with Jane.

Check-in was smooth at the Parkcity Hotel and the receptionist was very nice. She was absolutely astonished when we told her we walked from Paddington - you'd think we told her we walked from Oxford. I thought Americans were supposed to be the ones averse to walking! Since we were a few hours early, she put our bags in storage for us and offered to put them in our room when it was ready.

Meanwhile, I sat on a comfy leather sofa nearby and flipped through a London magazine, in which I learned a very important bit of information - there is a Laduree in Harrods! Laduree is a snobby tea room in Paris that has the most incredible macaroons. I didn't even know I liked macaroons, and perhaps I still don't in general, but I sure like the ones they make. And David likes them even more. So Harrod's was firmly on the list for the day.

We were just about to head out when the receptionist said our room was ready. She took us up there herself, and informed us that we'd been upgraded to a deluxe room. Well, okay! I think that just means it's a little bigger, but I still felt special. (I took these photos when we got back that night and they're unfortunately rather dark.)

The room was lovely, and the huge bed actually said to us: "You really should take a nice nap before you go do all that walking." We were oh so tempted, but resisted.

The flat-screen TV was absolutely huge and had a personal welcome for us on it with movie previews playing in the background. The bathroom was glorious, with a big tub and awesome "rain" shower. Our shower is so horribly small and I dearly miss having a tub. I am still mourning the fact that we had to leave and can't just live there.



First item on the agenda for the afternoon was lunch, to which we were expertly guided by David instead of Jane. We went through the coolest avenues and back alleys on the way, which looked more like Spain or France than London.



We also saw a number of townhouses that we would very much like to move into immediately, such as these:



Our growling stomachs were very happy to arrive at Wagamama, our very favorite Japanese noodle place that we visit almost every time we come to London. Happily, there are about 20 of them in the city so we're never far from one. Most of them seem to be in a basement, but this was on the fourth floor which was a nice change, and the stairs were quite cool. There was a line since we arrived at UK lunchtime (1-2pm), but it went very fast.




That lovely dish above is my amai udon, which is a lot like pad thai only not in the least spicy and even more delicious. David had a super-spicy curry soup (obviously they do more than Japanese food) that he loved. We left happy as always, and I even remembered to buy a red t-shirt this time. Then it was onto the sightseeing, which I'll save for tomorrow.