London England ~ Where are the Jays

Our first stop on our UK journey was to London. We were only there a couple of days before we headed up to Scotland, but we kept ourselves plenty busy while we were there. Happily for us, we did not experience a single rain drop while we were there, it was unfortunately cooler than normal though.

Delta Airlines dropped our half awake bodies off at London Heathrow airport at 7 in the morning. Early in the morning for me any day of the week let alone one that had 6 hours chopped off of it! A kind gentleman in Atlanta had told us to take the Paddington Express train into town so we did and took a taxi from there to our hotel. London taxis are wonderful. In the US, a taxi is just a car for hire. Not so in London! It’s door slides open kind of like a mini van door to a big open cavern with a bench seat for 3 on one side and the ability to pull down more seats on the other side so plenty of room in the middle for suitcases. They were always wonderfully clean and the driver has an intercom system to talk with you.

Very clean train stations and cars has made travel easy

Part of our trip to London was to accomplish a couple of tasks. We now have UK sim cards in our phones and Jeff got fitted for his morning suit for the Royal Ascot in June. Oh and I finally got a battery for my watch. We spent the rest of our time wandering and visiting some touristy things from our hotel in the West End.

After the suit fitting which took a very long hour and a much needed nap, we headed to the London Eye and South bank area. Riding the Eye ( a large Ferris wheel) was fun. We shared a large enclosed cabin with a family of four so plenty of room to move around and check out the view from all of the angles. It was a good first day activity since it gave us a little bit of a feel for where things are. We saw the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Shard and other new buildings plus the River Thames.

After the Eye we walked around the south and north banks before we headed back to our hotel since everything was closing for the day. We wandered into the Whitehall gardens. After dinner, we were in bed before 10 and slept soundly!

White Hall Gardens

Friday morning, we started leisurely and then headed out to the Tate Modern Art Museum. The main collection is free and that is what we did. By chance, they were into art making political and social statements so it was not the expected visit although we did see a Matisse. We were about to leave, when I realized they had a bar area up high that might have a view. The building is a former power plant. So up to the top we went and happily found 2 seats along the wall of windows. Side note here, while in London our lunch tended to be a glass of beer or cider and maybe a bag of crisps (potato chips). Very healthy I know, but tasty!

We had reservations for the Universal/Harry Potter Studio Tour for the evening so we hopped on the train and headed out of town. The studio tour includes 2 different large sound studios that are connected. We knew the tour took on average 3 ½ hours and had planned on eating dinner after the tour. Well halfway through the tour is a backlot café for the tourists which was good because we were hungry! Two fried chicken sandwiches and butter beers later we were ready to continue on the tour. The butter beers were as good as we remembered from the Universal Studio’s in Florida but the sandwiches left a lot to be desired. The tour – we had gotten an audio option which was a waste of money on us at least because it really had nothing to do with what you were looking at! The tour is amazing at times, impressive at times and theme parkish at times. There is a bunch of pre tour stuff, but when you start you are in the great hall of Hogwarts. From there you wonder around sets for most of the key scenes of the movies. Harry’s bedroom, Slytherin and Gryffindor's common rooms and a discussion of how they were designed to install certain feelings. Like no reds at all in Slytherin so it felt more ominous versus lots of red tones in Gryffindor.

The potions room was there and they told you what types of things they had used to fill the glass tubes in the room.

We went to the forbidden forest and Hagrids’s Hut.

The had a couple of really impressive versions of Gringrotts bank lobby. The first one was your basic bank lobby although an opulent one. The second one involved the scene when the dragon escapes from the underground vaults.

The tour ends with some interesting videos on how make-up artists make masks for people.

Saturday was our last full day in London and we knew we wanted to go to the theater so we headed off to one of the discount ticket spots. We got tickets for a play called “The Ocean at the end of the Lane.” The ticket booth was in Leicester Square which had statues around it of various theatrical stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Poppins.

After that we wandered on some pedestrian streets and ended up at Piccadilly Circus. The area is quite touristy! There was a shop there called “Lilly White’s” and turned out to be an athletic store – a very large athletic store – 6 floors. We checked it out and may visit it again in June when we are outside of London. We did get Jeff a new coat since he managed to get to London without his warm coat and we knew he would need it on our next trip segment.

From Piccadilly Circus, we wandered through China town on our way to Covent Gardens.

I had heard that Covent Gardens had been revitalized and a fun place to visit. All was true. We spent a couple of hours there including time for beer and croissants this time. There were stalls with small business people/artisans and some shops in buildings of more established businesses. I liked the mix of services: high end chocolate stores, custom perfumes and Chanel to inexpensive jewelry stores. Then it was time to get ready for dinner and the show.

We had walked past a restaurant that looked interesting so dinner spot it was – L’Oscar was the name. Turned out it was the name of a 39 room boutique hotel. If you head to London and the West End is a good location I would recommend staying there. The restaurant was on the darker side with birds out of opal glass and lit up scattered on the walls and little lights on the ceiling and nice big banquettes to sit on. The ladies' room had butterfly handles on the faucets. Seems it is a former church so the bar was the main chapel. No idea of cost to stay there but from a building perspective very cool. Then it was on to our play. The Ocean at the end of the lane If you want a well done, creative play then this is a good choice. It is not your typical storyline. Unless you consider storylines with serious witchcraft overtones as typical. The show was enjoyable, the theater neat so a nice final evening in London.