Wandering London, New Year 2005

During a New Year's trip to Manchester, we took a few days out and traveled to London. It was early January and while the weather wasn't sunny, we really didn't get rain either so you can't ask for better than that at that time of year. I had been to London many times but this is Graham's first visit since he was in school so he wanted to do some touristy things. We took the Megabus service to London which was great and checked into the Paddington Hotel on Gloucester Street. (see reviews for both in this trip journal). The first night was spent in a pub with a group of friends.

The first full day was clear with some cloud cover, temps in the single digits (celcius) so fairly comfortable for walking around. The included breakfast was continental, pretty standard stuff. Over to the Lancaster Gate tube station where there was quite a queue and we were told that we could bypass it, be ushered through the turnstiles and buy our tickets at the other end. We did that but then the day pass wouldn't let us out because it hadn't been used to let us in! Oops!

Our first stop today was the Sir John Soane museum, on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It's a small but eclectic museum close to the Holborne tube stop. I'd definitely recommend it (review for details).

Leaving there, we walked back over to Kingsway and found a narrow *real* "caff", Café Don Quixote. Cheap coffee and tea, sandwiches and sweets. Very unpretentious and not trendy in the least. Much more comfortable *and* quiet than Starbucks!

We started wandering from there, into the outskirts of Covent Garden around Drury Lane and Kemble street where we saw some very attractive restaurants and shops. I spotted a big brick building with lots of windows and a large fire escape. It looked somewhat out of place and drear but then discovered that it was the rear of the Waldorf Hotel, which fronts on Aldwych and is very elaborate on the public "face" with gilding and columns and archways.

We nipped into the church that stands in the middle of the road where Aldwych meets the Strand, St. Clement Danes. There has been a church here since the 9th century though it's been rebuilt several times including once by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682 with a tower added on a bit later. It was destroyed in the Blitz in WWII leaving only a bit of the church and tower standing. It was restored and dedicated to the RAF in the early 1950's so it looks a bit more modern inside with dark wood and lovely stained glass. There are regiment badges embedded into the stone floor and lots of Air Force regimental flags and symbols around the church. The Nativity was still set up as well though I'm sure that will be taken down today as it's Jan. 6, Twelfth Night.

Leaving there, we changed direction and headed south to the Thames near the Temple station. We poked around on the Embankment taking photos of the London Eye and Parliament over top of Waterloo Bridge and then went into the restaurant that was right there beneath the tube station, an Australian themed place called Walkabout. They had pretty good prices and a convenient combo for a main grill item and a snack. The snack was more than enough for me, and I decided to try the kangaroo meat pie. They have several kangaroo items as well as crocodile and barramundi on the menu. The meat was tender, and not bad tasting at all.

We walked along the Victoria Embankment, examined Cleopatra's Needle and the Sphinxes and made our way across the Embankment gardens where we saw a good sized fox run across the grass! That's the last thing I expected to see in the center of London!

Up to the Strand and along to Trafalgar Square. I have to say, seeing London in the dead of winter is great! No crowds or queues, and even the weather was acceptable.

En route to Piccadilly Circus, we passed Canada House and saw an ad for a little exhibit on things Canadian by Douglas Coupland so we peeked in, passed through security and had a look. Cushions made of checked flannel, beer cans, hockey gear, Kraft Dinner and old Eaton's and Canadian Tire catalogues! There was also a room exhibiting Canadian design innovations called Red and White. If you are a Canadian citizen, also know that you can go into the Commission and they have some computers set up so you can check your email and communicate with family back home, free of charge.

We walked past Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square where I noticed people standing around holding advertising signs pointing to various venues like ticket sellers, theatres and eating establishments. That has to be a pretty thankless job! We were heading for the tube to go up to Camden.

And what a difference between touristy busy central London and Camden further north! Camden does have tourists, especially on the weekends when the markets are in full force but you still find yourself slowing down and relaxing more. Camden high street is filled with shops both mainstream and alternative. Look up, there is lots of interesting signage and sculpture over the shops. There are street markets and the Canal Stables Market which is a bit less up and coming and trendy than the Camden Lock market where I found a lovely store selling Celtic style jewellery. The Stables Market is much more independent and raunchy, with lights spilling out onto narrow cobbled lanes and all manner of music filling your ears as you pass from one shop to the next, from metal growling to Roy Orbison's soaring voice.

We found a few shops that caught our interest including one that had some really nice Native American crafts and turquoise jewellery, stopped for a cuppa and a shared slice of cake on the high street and visited Resurrection Records.

We were going to go to Oxford Street next to see if any of the Christmas decorations were up. It's late night shopping tonight I think, unless Oxford is always late night, I don't know. We caught a bus but ended up just walking around, not venturing into the stores. We did find some really nice street decorations lighting up Regent Street and Carnaby Street though.

Definitely time to eat, we walked down towards Soho and found a small Italian restaurant on Beak St. just at the bottom of Kingly and the parallel Carnaby Street. They had a set menu for £9.95 which appealed to us so we went in. There's a downstairs wine bar section I think but the ground floor restaurant where we sat is very small, only about 6 tables. The staff was excellent and the food was phenomenal! We had a creamed vegetable soup for our starter, with fresh parmesan and pepper. The chicken was stuffed with some sort of pesto that had mint in it and covered lightly in a fresh tomato sauce. Strips of grilled vegetables and small roasted potatoes rounded out the plate. It was delicious! For dessert there was creamy panacetta with an orange glaze sauce.

We dragged our feet back up Carnaby St. to Oxford, got a bit turned around looking for the tube entrance but there we were, back in our hotel room, after a very long day walking around. I can't believe we packed in as much as we did! Tomorrow we're planning to see the Wallace Collection.

I've been battling a cold all week, starting with a heavy head and now progressing to a chest cough. I haven't felt really ill with it but the coughing is keeping me awake and really annoying me. The bed in the hotel is a bit firm for me so between one thing and another, I'm not sleeping that well so I feel a bit rough in the mornings. Once I get going though, I'm not too bad but I still find I get tired sooner.

We just made it to breakfast this morning. Had a look at the maps and it looked like there was a Toy and Model museum around the corner so we tried to find it. We didn't but looking it up on the web, it's supposed to still be there. I wonder if we didn't walk past it, thinking it was on a street off Craven Hill instead of right on it. We did spot a Chinese restaurant though that we figure we'll try tonight for our farewell dinner.

We headed to Paddington station and discovered that there are no airline check in desks there anymore. Too bad but I think I'll still take the express to Heathrow tomorrow. Our first mission of the day was to figure out the route Graham would take for the coach station tomorrow so we took the tube to Victoria and managed to get there without any wrong turns. We then thought, ok, *I* thought we could walk through the back of Victoria station through to the front but we got turned around in a shopping center when we were looking for a toilet. Things aren't always well signed and I always seem to end up going the wrong way or the long way around and end up walking so much farther then I need to, especially when I'm tired or cranky. Which I was because of the cold.
Anyway, we found it and then sat and had a hot drink at a coffee shop in the shopping center before doing a bit more sight seeing. We walked up to Buckingham Palace and then through Green Park. Weather is semi-cloudy and the sun is warm when it isn't windy. Even then it's not really cold.

We found ourselves walking along Piccadilly and looking in the pretty windows of Fortnum's but we didn't go in. I must do that one day. We were looking for a place to have lunch and spotted a café sign up a side street called the Offshore Café (Sackville Street).

It looked like a good menu with fairly reasonable prices for that part of London so we went in. They have a nice variety of items, from all day breakfast offerings, Lebanese dishes, vegetarian options, burgers, salads, etc. The café isn't big though there's some seating at long wooden tables in a plain room downstairs. The main café is very nice with mirrors and interesting artwork and things on the walls. I'd recommend the café though and I think I'd like to go there again if I'm in the area.

From there we strolled up Old/New Bond Street, window shopping in the designer and very expensive shops. Bvlgari, Cartier, Donna Karan, Armani, Chanel and Versaci… all the big designer names and then some. And we didn't see anything in the windows that wasn't elaborate, vulgar, tasteless or outrageous and none of it would be anything we'd ever buy even if we had the money. Graham said he preferred Camden High Street! It was interesting to see where London's elite shop just for curiosity's sake. I really did think I'd see all these wonderful things in the windows that would have me drooling. Maybe there might have been some nicer things inside in showcases or something but nothing I saw in a window enticed me into the shop. Isn't that what window displays are meant for?

We arrived back on Oxford Street wondering where to go now. As I said, I had almost decided against the Wallace Collection but we weren't far from it and Graham thought it would be interesting so we walked the few blocks north to Manchester Square to find Hertford House where the collection is housed. This was the home of the 4th Marquess of Hertford who was the man who amassed most of the collection in the mid 1700's while living mainly in Paris. Nice thing was the free entrance! We really enjoyed the museum, a much more reasonable size than the V&A. Even then, there was so much to look at and you couldn't take it all in after awhile even though there's only two floors.

We left there near 5 o'clock and went into a café on Baker Street. We really didn't know what else to do at this point and we weren't hungry yet so we went back to the hotel to rest our feet for awhile before dinner.

The restaurant we found on Craven Hill earlier that day was called the Mandarin Restaurant, just a few blocks from Paddington station. The restaurant is small, and would most definitely be called "minimalist". There was nothing on the walls except a couple of prints that were black with Chinese writing on them. There are about 10 tables with two of them large and round to hold 6-8 people. The waiter that took our order was Italian or Greek I think which was a bit different but he might actually have been the owner. I have to say the service was very good and the food was excellent. We rolled ourselves back to the hotel after 9 and spent our last evening together.

In the morning, I headed for Heathrow and Graham to the tube. Our visit again always seemed too short.

There is a great, and very cheap bus service that has quite a few routes around the UK, it's Megabus. This is a very good service, with bright, clean double decker busses with on board toilet. They do express services between various UK cities for dirt cheap, as cheap as a pound for a one way fare, sometimes rising up to as much as 3 pounds closer to the departure date, depending on availability. You can book them online and by telephone and there's a 50p booking fee. Take the email or a text message on your phone to show the driver the booking number. We booked two tickets down to London and one back for a grand total of £7.50. National Express is now matching some of these deals but I don't know how limited their seating is. I find busses a bit cramped but this was no worse than any other bus. Definitely check it out. In London, the bus arrives and departs from the Green Line coach station, right across from the Victoria coach station. Check their website for routes and locations of the bus stops. Quite often the bus may not use the main bus station, but stop outside on the road or it may use a different station than the National Express one. Most routes go to London. Other destinations from your departing point may be limited. There are usually comfort stops as well.

The Wallace Collection is one of the lesser known museums in London but it's actually one of the better ones. The beauty of it is that it isn't as enormous as the British Museum, Victoria and Albert or the Natural History Museum. It's probably most like the V&A in that much of it's collections consist of art, decorative arts, paintings, jewellry, curios, furniture stemming from collections of the first four Marquesses of Hertford as well as the illegitimate son of the fourth Marquess, a man named Wallace for whom the museum is named. A lot of the items are from the 18th and 19th centuries, Baroque through Victorian but there are also Rennaisance and medieval things on display such as the 2 or 3 rooms of excellent armour and weaponry from all over the world. We really liked that. There is also a famous painting by Hals, The Laughing Cavalier which is a favourite of my partner. This museum has many interesting items and beautiful paintings. The museum is large-ish but not so overwhelming. You can do a fairly comprehensive look round in a couple of hours and then pop over to James Street (between Manchester Square and Oxford Street) where there are quite a few nice little restaurants lining the street.

It is housed in a lovely 18th century building which started off in life as the Spanish Embassy but was soon after the home of the Hertford family. They used the house later, to keep their huge collections and it was opened as a public museum in 1900.

Entrance is free. No photography is allowed. There is disabled access via a ramp and lifts inside. There is a restaurant in the courtyard and a gift shop as well. Opening hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with no late openings. It's not that difficult to get to, you can walk north from Oxford Street on Duke Street or east off Baker Street via George Street to Manchester Square. Loads of busses traverse both streets and it's closest to the Bond Street tube station.

The Sir John Soane museum is a small museum in a house on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. This was the home of Soane, a renowned architect, for awhile in the mid 18th century. He was quite a collector and this house is filled with all kinds of interesting things, artefacts, artwork, antiques, and antiquities. There is a picture gallery but it was closed when we visited in 2005 due to some renovations elsewhere. There is a sculpture gallery as well with a high domed skylight. You aren't allowed to take photos in the house but sneaked one of the dome!

There is also a crypt where more of the antiquities are including a sarcophagus that was absolutely astonishing. I've been to the Egyptian room in the British Museum before but I don't remember getting a close look at the sarcophagi. This one was limestone and covered inside and out with hieroglyphics and an etching of a goddess on the bottom inside of it. Originally the markings were filled with a luminescent blue-green paint and they did have a piece of stone with the painted hieroglyphics preserved under glass. It must have been very impressive when the whole of it was like that.

There's some beautiful antiques and furniture in the rooms where the family lived and entertained. He added lots of wonderful details like hidden skylights and used mirrors effectively. It was interesting to see two small portraits of Napoleon, one as a powerful young man and one at the end of his life, defeated and held prisoner.

It's interesting to see that the walls are painted bright vivid colours. I never think of colours like that being fashionable 200 years ago but they were. Most of the 20th century, here at least, you usually saw pastel colours on walls or wallpaper. I loved the deep crimson in the dining room/library which was lined with old books and glass cases and the bright lemon yellow made the upstairs receiving room very sunny.

This museum is free though you must ring the doorbell to get in. There are a lot of research materials available as well. The website has a lot of information on Sir John Soane and the museum's history. It's not very accessible for people with mobility problems. There are steps to get in and staircases in the house and no lifts. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. First Tuesday of the month has late opening to 9 p.m. THey do have a loo but it's in the basement.

To get there, the closest tube is Holborn and walk down Kingsway from there and then left into Lincoln's Inn Fields. The house is about the middle of the block.

I booked the Paddington Hotel through Londonnights.com which is a pretty good hotel booking service, by the way. The hotel is very convenient for transportation and is located on Gloucester Terrace, only a block from the Lancaster Gate tube and a couple of blocks from Paddington Station. Hyde Park is only a block away and there are busses that run along Bayswater road. You check in at the Royal Court Apartments across the street and are given a key. There is no lift in the Paddington Court so keep that in mind if you don't climb stairs very well. The breakfast is included though continental only. You can get a cooked breakfast if you pay extra. Cereal, toast, tea/coffee, it's enough to get you started.

Our room was a double bedded one and was very large. There was a small fridge as well which was convenient for keeping fresh milk for our coffee and tea. The bathroom wasn't big and the shower stall had no shelf for holding the soap or shampoo so that was a bit inconvenient. There was a dvd player in the room as well. We booked for 65 pounds a night for very off season but it might be a bit more than that now.