London: Day 7

 Wednesday, June 3

The first order of the day was to walk over to Café D’ Horizon for a proper full English Breakfast. This consists of eggs, toast, beans, sausage, mushrooms, and tomato. 

The next stop of the day was the biggest bookstore in Europe. It is a chain, but we visited the grandest of them all, the Picadilly Waterstones. Gloria had an advantage, having been there several times previously. There are four floors of books with a cafe on the fifth floor. For any true lover of literature, this is a disaster when you have limited time. I think I had made it to the second floor when I saw Leann, Nedra, and Katie on their way out already. And I was hurrying. 

I suppose hurrying might be a relative term, but I was definitely not browsing every book I could have. The problem with the situation is that as normal, when faced with many things that I love, such as a fascinating museum, an antique store, or, in this case, a book store, I get overwhelmed quite easily and can't make any decisions at all.

Thankfully the others didn't complain too much about standing on the sidewalk in the rain while Lindsay and I shopped. 

When we finally managed to pull ourselves away from Waterstones, we headed to one of the hilights of our entire trip, in my opinion: an afternoon tea. Gloria booked us into the most adorable little tea shop, called Tea Darling. It is a one-woman show, and there was only seating there for ten to twelve people, so it was a very one-on-one custom dining experience. 

The owner was a cheerful woman who greeted us at the door and seated us at a lovely table arrayed with lacy cloths, teacups, and flowers, the latter which she promptly removed, saying we would need the space for food.

First, of course, came the tea. I elected to drink Earl Grey, though I often prefer English Breakfast. Our hostess asked if I would like milk with it. When responded that I would, she informed me that I really ought to try it without because this Earl Grey was exceptionally smooth and nice, though she wouldn't judge me if I chose to add milk. 

I took her advice, and tried it plain first. It was the best Earl Grey I've ever tasted. I did try the last little dab in my cup with milk, and found that indeed, I preferred it without. 

The first course to arrive was sandwiches. There were four different kinds: English ham and mustard, cheese and chutney, cucumber, and egg salad. The cheese and chutney was my favorite by far, but there was mildly heated debate on that topic around the table.

After the sandwiches were cleared away, the scones appeared. Lovely, high rise mounds of goodness to top with clotted cream and four different types of jam. The owner told us it depended where one was from whether the jam or the cream was applied first.

We finished the scones off in an astonishingly short time. She offered to give us a breather before bringing out the next course. She also refilled our tea orders at this point. I switched to peppermint, but honestly should have probably stuck with the Earl Grey. She had a great time making jokes about how much sugar was being used at our table. I'm sure there are a couple of the girls who would like it to be known they did not partake in sugar, but I shan't give them the satisfaction of a mention.

The desserts arrived, a lovely array of macarons, tiramisou, chocolate cake, lemon cake, and some other things I likely don't remember or have names for. Everything was incredible.

The entire experience felt like something out of a story book. Tea lasted about two and a half hours, after which we also perused her shop downstairs. If you go to London, do visit Tea Darling. It's pricey, but I think worth every pound.

We moved on next to Hyde Park. It is a lovely, spacious expanse of green. Anyone who has read any novels from the regency era will know this was once the place to see and be seen, where ladies put on their finest walking gowns and paraded the pathway of Rotten Row, which still exists, by the way.

I was delighted with the Kensington gardens, right behind Kensington Palace, that contain a statue of Princess Diana. You can't enter the garden itself, but there is a vine-covered walkway all around it with viewing windows cut through  so you can see what is inside. 

While we were there, we were quite sure we saw the royal helicoptor take off. It returned perhaps fifteen minutes later. The palace is currently mostly used as offices and meeting rooms at the moment.

We continued traversing the many paths of Hyde Park and stopped for a bit by the creatively named Round Pond. There were so many different kinds of water fowl there, including ducks, geese, Egyptian geese, and swans. I was delighted to watch a swan come in for a water landing. It was the neatest thing, watching his feet come down as he skiied in for a landing, his large wings outstretched. It was pure science and poetry in motion, and I was completely enamoured.

On our way out, we spotted the Peter Pan statue which Nedra had really wanted (not) to see.

We then decided that wisdom would dictate heading back to the flat to start packing and such unsavory things, so that's what we did. A couple people grabbed Thai and Chinese take-away near the flat, while others snacked around. It did seem that peach rings and biscoff items were very popular in the group.

Slowly, everyone faded off to their bedrooms to be responsible and pack and go to bed. I think everyone was gone by 1:00 a.m. or so. Lindsay, Gloria, and I sat in the bedroom and talked for another hour about important topics, many of them school-related, but at last we, too, capitulated to the knowledge that morning was coming.

Step count for this last day was only a hair over 14,000, so not too bad.

I plan to write up one more little post with some odds and ends, and maybe a total step count, too. We'll see how that goes. I'm currently on my flight to Atlanta and I see the cart coming down the aisle to serve supper. 

So long for now!