We slept in this morning after last night’s wonderful anniversay experience. We went to the Botonist for Brunch around 10:30. LJ had blueberry pancakes and I had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. I’ve certainly had my yearly requirement for salmon since I’ve been here.
Outside the Botonist
Our neighborhood
We’ve had such great luck with retail therapy over here, we don’t think we have room in our luggage for everything we bought. So we went to the Post Office and bought a box to put our dirty clothes and some other stuff in. We took it back to the Post Office and shipped it to ourselves. It cost over $100 to mail that silly box! Oh, well. We’ve had better ideas.
Early afternoon we took the tube to Green Park Station which lets you out at St. James Street. There we wandered through the Ritz and past Christies which had amazing artifacts in the windows. We went to Wolsely’s at 4:00 for tea. The building was originally the headquarters for the Wolsely automobile which went out of business during the depression. The building is perfectly restored and looks like the set of a 1920’s movie. It was really elegant and beautiful.
Big Ben and Parliament
After tea we went to look for a very old pub called the Red Lion, but we never found it. Sometimes directions in guidebooks are somewhat less than perfect. Anyway, we found a perfectly wonderful little pub called the Golden Lion and we stopped for a glass of wine.
We went back to the flat to pack and get ready for the long flight home tomorrow. It’s been such a memorable trip. I really hope to be back soon.
We started the day with breakfast at the Abbey Hotel in Bath. LJ finally got his traditional English breakfast, eggs, wiggly bacon (as opposed the the American streaky kind), broiled tomato and baked beans. Ugh! The we took off to tour the Roman baths. How amazing! They were beautifully preserved and the tour is set up so you are given real insight into who used them and how they were run. 
There are now two levels to look at the underground pool. The second level walkway above the pool was added in the late 1800’s. Here are a few pictures of the baths and museum.
We checked out and took the train back to London and arrived about 2:00pm. Back at the flat, we cleaned up and went to tea at the Botonist. It was just delicious. They have a wonderful pastry chef. One of the special pastries we had was a nutmeg custard tart that was really special. The scones and finger sandwiches were really good. I had no idea how much food was served at tea. It really is a meal. I was very glad our dinner reservations were not until 9:00.
We took the tube to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant, Fifteen. It was 45 minutes by train from our flat. The restaurant is really cool, as you might expect. It had a young, hip vibe with crazy graphics and very young, beautiful servers. Ours was a Brazilian guy named Fabio. LJ and I had the 4 course tasting menu. Almost the best thing we had was the amuse bouche. It was a scallop with fresh ginger, lime juice, cilantro and a tiny something crunchy. It really did jump in the mouth. My first course was a salad with baby greens, a grilled peach, burrata cheese (which is an artisanal cheese made with mozzarella and cream), toasted almonds and balsamic vinegar. LJ had prosciutto di San Danielle with Italian black figs, gorganzola dolce and pea shoots. His next course was risotto bianco with mushrooms and truffle pecorino. My primo was potato gnocchi with Cumbrian pork ragu. LJ’s secundo was pot roasted pork with apricot, rosemary and white wine. Mine was char-grilled salmon with spinach and black olive sauce. Finally, desserts were honeycomb semifreddo with lemon sorbet and strawberry limoncello soup (LJ), and elderflower panna cotta with gooseberry compote (me). OMG! Yes, we took a taxi home and collapsed. This was the actual day of our 40th anniversary and what a day to remember it was.
Jamie wishes happy 40th
We got up very early and had a toasted crumpet at the flat and were on our way to the tube station by 7:30. We caught the train to Bath at Paddington Station 
and were in Bath Spa (that’s what they call it) by 10:00AM. We had hotel reservations at the Abbey Hotel, a 5 minute walk from the station as promised. The hotel let us stow our bag while we met up with the walking tour outside the Roman Baths at 10:30.
AND WE WALKED for 2 1/2 hours. It was a wonderful tour! We went by the home of Beau Nash who was responsible for the popularity of the Bath as a resort for London swells in the 1700’s. He was interested in having all the titled folks visit, but also the middle class. According to him, the titles had names, but the middle class had money. We stopped in Queen’s square where there is an obelisk in the center as an homage to the Romans.
We walked on to the next park called the Circus. It is a larger, round park with 3 crescent shaped buildings surrounding towering plane trees. They are residences now. The Roman architecture is awe inspiring. We walked on to the next major architectural area which was called the Crescent. Outdoing the Circus built before, this has one huge crescent shaped building, now townhouses. One was purchased by Nicholas Cage for 4 million pounds (about $6.64 million by today’s exchange rate).
In our tour group we were happy to meet John (Gio The Blogger) and his wife Dana from Chicago who were traveling on to Italy (jealous!).
After the tour, we ate lunch in a lovely little French restaurant called The Arch. I had sea bass with a poached egg on top, and LJ had pork tenderloin. Everything was delicious. After lunch we shopped. I bought two tops and a caftan and a pair of shoes, and LJ bought a T-shirt. Fitting, right?
LJ at the Arch
We had dinner at another French restaurant called Casanis. I had lamb chops and LJ had pork again. Everything was beautifully prepared. We walked back through the town to the hotel and fell wonderfully asleep. It was a great day.
We slept in today (for us) until 8:00, and I cooked breakfast at the flat. We ate leisurely and had coffee, then we dressed and readied for some retail therapy.
Shopping off Sloane Square and down King’s Road is some fun! 
I scored two pairs of shoes and some leggings and a flowing black top. LJ got a beautiful dress shirt. We ate outdoors at a boutique restaurant in Duke of York Square. 
We took all our purchases back to the flat and took the tube to Westminster again.
This time we visited the Churchill Center and Museum. This is the preserved underground bunker used by Churchill and his Cabinet during the Nazi attacks on London. It was amazing. It has been perfectly preserved from the day they walked out of the bunker. It has all the maps still hanging, and the bedrooms and communications rooms, strategy rooms, and conference rooms are exactly the way they were. It certainly brought that period to life.
Very hot and tired, we took the tube back to Sloane and a wonderful new bar/restaurant, The Botonist. It’s very modern and opens out to the square. They serve brunch and high tea there as well. We will definitely be returning.
Dinner Friday night was at a lovely new Indian Restaurant called Vama. It got very high ratings in the Times, and we thought the food was really good, if somewhat pedestrian. We had Saag Ghosht (lamb with spinach) and Chicken Korma with Garlic Naan Bread and basmati rice. After dinner we returned to our little neighborhood pub, the Phoenix for a nightcap.
Back to the flat for a good night’s sleep before an early and busy day tomorrow. Bath Spa!
We started the day with breakfast at a little neighborhood boulingerie on King’s Road-coffee and ham and cheese croissants. We then made our way to the tube to Waterloo Pier to buy tickets to a riverboat cruise down the Thames to Greenwich.
The weather was picture perfect, partly sunny and a cool breeze. The tour guide gave us the history of London on The Thames as we motored slowly down the river. 
I liked the Mayflower Pub which commemorates the place where the Mayflower ship launched for America. We de-boated in Greenwich about lunch time. We found a local pub and had fish & chips and a cold lager. (They actually serve it cold now.)
After lunch we took the boat back and got off at the Tower of London stop. 
We had done the Tower tourist stuff on our first trip to London years ago, so we just took a couple of photos and tubed back to Sloane Square. We stopped at a market and bought food for the flat - eggs and streaky bacon, beer and wine. All of the essentials. 
We also stopped in a stationary store and bought a card to write a message to Stacey Kent and Jim Tomlinson. She is a great jazz singer and he is a sax and flute player and their music is what caused us to make this particular trip. We’ll see them perform tonight in celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary. We wrote a note in the card saying how happy we were to be able to be here in London seeing them on our special occasion, and we asked them to play our song, “Never Let Me Go.”
We took the tube one full hour to Hornschurch and then walked another 25 minutes to the Queen’s Theatre. We were pretty glowing by the time we arrived, but boy was it worth it! Stacey and Jim and group were truly awesome! They were more improvisational than the last time we saw them in the States. And the highlight of the evening was when Stacey made a beautiful tribute to us and sang our song. We both sat with tears running down our faces. What a miraculous evening. We made the tube trip back in a kind of romantic haze.
Oh, by the way, we heard on our walk home from the tube station that Michael Jackson has died.
We left DFW late. AA flight 50 was supposed to leave at 4:45pm, but we didn’t lift off till 5:45. The couple in the center aisle seats brought a very unhappy little boy who looked under 2 years old. He screamed at the top of his lungs for the first 2 hours and was very fussy most of the trip. But that is just the cost of overseas travel these days. We made it and I’m thrilled to be landing at Heathrow.
It’s 10:00am and we’re at our flat at 11 Redburn Street, Chelsea, London. 
It’s quite small, but suits our needs perfectly. It has a small living room, one bedroom, kitchen and bath. It has a great shower (hard to find in London) and an efficient little kitchen.
And it came with Scotch. Who can complain?
After we unpacked and settled in, we walked the neighborhood to get our bearings. We’re a 10 minute walk from the Sloane Square tube station and we got a 7 day Oyster Card for use anywhere in the central district. 
We stopped at the phone store and got a little phone for L4.95 and loaded it with minutes so we’d be able to make restaurant reservations, call taxis and make any other calls we might want to. We took the tube to Harrod’s (that’s obligatory) and had lunch at the Green Man Pub. I had a salmon nicoise salad and LJ had a roast beef club. Both were even better than they sound. Nice start. We walked around Harrod’s and down Sloane past the top flight shops and tubed back to Chelsea. We both immediately passed out. We napped at least 2 hours.
We cleaned up and left for dinner in our neighborhood at a little cafe called Blushes. I had Parma ham, mozzarella and tomato pannini, and LJ copied me. We then took the tube to the National Theatre where we saw Helen Mirren in the Greek Tragedy “Phedre”. I have never seen such beautiful acting - even on the New York stage. It was stunning. Afterward, we stopped by a little pub near our flat called Phoenix for a nightcap.
What a great first day. More to come.
