Isn't there a Dylan song with the phrase, "a hard rain's gonna fall"? This weekend, the weather moved from drizzle to hard rain. But, we're tourists, even if long stay ones, so we soldiered on.
From a logic standpoint, as we've tried to sort out the various things we wanted to do in London, two of the guidelines we came up with were these. Museums if it were raining. And, street markets on the weekend.
So... Saturday we caught the bus up to Portobello Road. It's a do-once kind of market. In stuff I've read, I gather than at an earlier era it was innovative, hippie-like, independent minded. Our view as we walked up the road was... a sea of umbrellas ahead of us (so, it wasn't a view of what was for sale as much as a view of the umbrellas). OK, I'm over criticizing it. I was glad to get there because it's one of the famous market streets. And I was curious about it all.
We did have one very fortunate outcome from heading up there (no more than 15 minutes on the bus -- the apartment is in a great location). Maxine had been interested in a store called "Books for Cooks", both as a store as well as that they run a minuscule restaurant (6 tables) in the back. So, by 11am as we were getting tired of the driving rain and dodging the umbrella spokes randomly coming towards our faces, we spotted Books for Cooks and went in. Had dessert (or breakfast, if you need the cover that calling it a meal gives). And by then they were ready for lunch. So, mac n' cheese on a cold wet day that really hit the spot (how cliche! Both the description and the actuality).
Continued on after sustenance. Across the street from BFC was the storefront that they used for Hugh Grant's travel bookstore in the movie Notting Hill -- there's a plaque on the building to mark it.
Came home, did some reading and planning the week. Maxine made us dinner from food she'd bought Friday at the Borough Market. Then out again (I was being compulsive and Maxine was humoring me) to a nearby pub, the Nag's Head. Very classic looking, but a pretty sparse beer list. As usual, we had half pints so we (I) could try more. They were: Guinness, Adnams's Bitter, Broadside, and Gunhill. Then, home in the driving.
SUNDAY, a day of rest... No, not really.
Knowing that it was going to be a rainy day, a weekend day, and that the British Museum opened at 10am, we got up early enough to be there for the opening. A good thing too. We'd planned a 2 hour visit and as we were leaving, we could see that there was a line to enter that extended out the museum and down the block!!!
Amazing museum. The Rosetta Stone (a real stone, not the software product) is there. Last time I was at this museum, 25 years ago, the stone was behind a rail and you could (I didn't, I swear) reach out and touch the stone. Now it's behind glass, with mobs staring at it. Yet, it is really cool. Might even go so low as to get a T-shirt of it.
Saw lots of mummies. Saw a bunch of other old stuff. Saw lots of people. Saw even more old stuff. Got through about 25% of the museum (walking fast) in our 2 hours. We're planning on coming back, but it's a bit of an overdose -- there's so much and (again with the cliche's) so much of it is world class.
Afternoon we had 3pm reservations for Sunday Roast. Apparently it's something of a British tradition. We'd gotten a recommendation to a place called Hawksmoor. A very nice lunch, and really, all the food we needed for the day. It's a "beef" restaurant. Big cuts of meat. Baked potatoes. Gravy. That sort of thing. In a classic basement room (as a digression, there's a restaurant near where we live that, like Hawksmoor, has a vaulted brick ceiling. Except in Sherman Oaks, I suspect it's fake but here it was REAL...).
By the time we left, the rains of the weekend had stopped, so we walked for a while, enjoying the sun and the novelty of the neighborhood. Got home, then went out and walked some more. It's one of the things we'd planned on doing during the trip that had gotten short shrift due to the weather.
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