#90 July 23, 2022 Nomad Diary. London Flat Pet Sitting. Heatwave. A Busy Week in London!
Adorable tiled mural at Hackney Downs Park
Saturday Activities. 23. We ride the train to Kenwood Mansion, well at least within 30 minutes of it. We get off of the train and enter the wooded walkways leading up to the Mansion. There are a bunch of different meandering paths, some ponds where people are swimming, and brideges, and people walking dogs. There is a lot of room to roam and many people are out and enjoying the morning.
We meander through the woods enjoying gnarly trees occasionally looking at the map and generally going uphill suspecting that we are going to find this mansion. We walk for probably 40 minutes and have passed an entry sign and are following inside an iron property fence from a bygone era. We arrive and find the restrooms and other people are having coffee at the cafe.
We find the front door and enter the home. We enjoy the self-guided tour, free art galleries, and massive grounds with wooded walkways and a view of London.
After we tour the house, we get a coffee and pastry. We take our time meandering back through the forest. We arrive at the base of the massive park's hill to find a farmer's market where we get sour dough bread, a quiche (which we eat for 3 meals) and Darrell gets a grilled sausage and onion sandwich as his lunch. In the evening we are back at our flat and walk to Hackney Downs park and find a cute and well done mosaic of pet dogs. I really enjoyed looking at this mural.
Mural at Hackney Downs Park
Week's Highlights.
Sunday. 17. Church at Kings Cross, London and near St. Pancras station. We rode the bus from our Dalston Kingston neighborhood to Kings Cross, about 20-25 minutes and 3 1/2 miles. We have time to walk around and get a coffee before going to the community center location. We had visited here two times in 2019 when were doing a British Isles cruise. We are like half of the attendees, visitors and tourists from the US. The congregation is still just coming out of the pandemic effects and about 8-9 members were there in person. There were an equal number of visitors who are tourists from the US. We remembered two local couples and their names! Even more amazing was that they remembered us too! After we were finished with worship, we decided to walk towards our neighborhood and to look for a lunch restaurant along the way.
We got about 1 1/2 miles and we found a pub to try near the Angel shopping center. This pub had a Sunday pork roast dinner on the menu for about $15 usd.
Monday. 18. The British Library is air conditioned. The heatwave is beginning. We are alert in the morning and ready to walk towards the library knowing that if the heat gets too much, then we can get on a bus along the way.
Monday. 18. The British Library is air conditioned. The heatwave is beginning. We are alert in the morning and ready to walk towards the library knowing that if the heat gets too much, then we can get on a bus along the way.
We are enjoying our walk and by 10:30 and half way there, again we are near the Angel shopping center. We discover a footpath running parallel to the main road and having shops all along. We take it into the shade and find a cappacino and pastry for our 2nd breakfast snack. We walk the rest of the way to the library and luxuriate in the air conditioning and the massive beautiful building with loads of amazing old books, beautifully done displays, the original Magna Carta, etc.
We stay for 2 1/4 hours until about 1pm. I'm very hungry and search google for a lunch place. I find a close Italian restaurant with high enough ratings to satisfy what we like and to get to fast and minimize our time outside. Darrell asks me if it is air conditioned and I don't know. We arrive and it is air conditioned, the food smells amazing and there are plenty of available tables! Lunch was fresh and delicious!
Tuesday. 19. The heatwave is full on today. We stay in our neighborhood of Dalston Kingston. We find a nice little sandwich shop dive to get lunch at. Later I make a skillet meal and salad for dinner. We focus on staying hydrated and sitting with the fans in our flat that has no air conditioning.
Wednesday. 20. The heatwave is still going, but should be a few degrees less today. We walked around our town. First to an excellent bakery near the beautiful Hackney Downs park and then found a take away dive and got some Caribbean food for lunch. I saw a sign in the take-away place for chicken soup. I asked the one man running the place what kinds of soup he had today. He says, 'just chicken'. I say, 'ok' and he goes to the back and fills a tall styrofoam cup, puts a lid on it and bags it with Darrell's chicken and rice order. We walk about a mile back to our flat and I open the soup and pour it into a bowl. As it's coming out of the cup, I see a CHICKEN FOOT!
Oh no! This is not the kind of chicken soup that I had in mind! Now I want to know how many feet are in my soup. I pour it all out with a total of 3 chicken feet. I think this is funny and not funny at the same time. I'm going to try to eat this because I have seen Andrew Zimmern on Bizaare Foods eat this soup and eat the chicken feet. They are pretty much grossing me out though. I end up piling the feet and a super-dense dumpling (also grossing me out! lol) on the plate and I eat the soup without these add-ins. It tastes pretty good and I enjoy getting some pictures for facebook and also convincing myself that I can do this. For dinner we walked about 15 minutes up our main road to a place called Tako that sells tacos that I will call works of art.
They are delicious and crafted by a very particular chef. It was a super evening meal after my chicken foot soup lunch!
Thursday. 21. The weather is so much cooler today. We ride the tube to get to Buckingham Palace and arrive near 11am. We get an ice cream cone at a stand as we get close to the palace.
Thursday. 21. The weather is so much cooler today. We ride the tube to get to Buckingham Palace and arrive near 11am. We get an ice cream cone at a stand as we get close to the palace.
The walk from the station to the palace is through a park with large trees strategically planted over 100 years ago. As we follow the crowd, we get a show of the horse guard coming outside the gate. Then we get to see the changing of the guards through the fence. The band begins playing their show and plays some marches, and then oddly they start playing ABBA rock tunes!
We wander to the fountain and take some pictures and see what we can see and decide where to walk next. We walk through a beautiful park with flowers and storks on a small island in a pond as we head in a meandering way toward Westminster Abbey. We see the Abbey and realize that we want to eat lunch. I find a place to walk to about a half a mile away and we head off. Once we get there, we discover that this pedestrian street is full of restaurants and street food vendors.
We walk the block to see what our choices are, and decide on a Moraccan panini wrap. We split one. It was delicious, and set us up to find a coffee and a pastry. On the same street is a french pastry shop that we go into and discover a sitting area in the rear that is practically empty as most people are just coming in to order take-away lunches. It is also air-conditioned and has clean restrooms, okay: toilets! lol.
We settle in with cappucinos and a pastry. We walk back to the Abbey and view it from the sidewalk. We decide not to pay the 50 pound per person entry to go inside. We get all the outside pictures that we want and walk on around to see the Parliament building and a little building from the 13th century called Jewel Tower on our English Heritage membership ticket. We go here for a self-guided tour.
Darrell in the Jewel Tower entrance. Westminster in the background.
Then we walk across the street to the garden next to the parliament building and view the Thames river. From here we walk around the block to see the bridge and on to a station to get back to Dalston and our flat.
Friday. 22. Darrell's homemade pancakes. Walk to the Museum of the Home and gardens.
Darrell makes delicious pancakes! And it's berry season here.
Lunch out. After this fairly disappointing museum, we decided to refocus on our English Heritage and National Trust properties that we have purchased memberships for free and reduced tickets. So far we have not been disappointed with these properties.
Nomad Notes. Learning to exchange pounds for dollars and understand the costs of groceries and restaurants is an enjoyable puzzle. Restaurants prices are complete on the menu with the tax already added in. In the US the tax and tip are added on top of the menu price. Here, sometimes the tip is added and if not, then it is a much lower tip expectation than in the US. No tip is ok here, but I think because of the pandemic and economic stress, tips are highly appreciated, and usually are 10%. When food is packed for "take away", "to go" in the US, there is no service fee added.
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