2017.07.25 – 2017.08.01 – London (England)

Our week in London at Jessica’s flat simply zoomed by even though our days were fairly light from a tourist perspective. Along the way, Jenny and Freddie (Jessica’s cat) became good friends – as we see it.

We got re-acquainted with the Tube and the city buses as we headed out on Tuesday 25th for some late afternoon shopping. Victoria and Jenny visited a few of their favorite clothes stores while I visited some bicycle shops. We were overwhelmed by the amount of shoppers on the streets on a Tuesday afternoon. Although London’s streets didn’t seem to be overly bike friendly, we noticed over the years following our visit of 2011, 2013 and 2015, a significant increase in cyclists braving the roads. We also noted that London’s bike sharing program was clearly well established and very popular. Although many bicycle shops were selling high-end foldable bicycles that can be brought on the subway, even during rush hour, the vast majority of cyclists were using average road bicycles. We saw one tandem locked on the sidewalk. We had breakfast and our evening meals in the flat while catching up with Jessica’s London life.

On Wednesday 26th, Jessica took the day off work to join us for the long awaited visit of the Warner Brothers Studio Tour London on The Making of Harry Potter. We had bought our tickets on-line for the visit – some five months ago. We took an Uber to the studio some 20kms out of town while arriving well in time for our 11:15am scheduled entrance. We snapped a good number of pictures along the way, we even learned to fly a broom and we have video proof of it – well the studio has! We completed our visit of the two studios “J” and “K” (for JK Rowlings) over a three hour period. We called again on Uber for our return ride to London. Following our visit, Jenny and I agreed to add to our retirement bucket list the viewing of every Harry Potter movie – failing to read the books.

On Thursday 27th , we tried our chance at meeting up with members of the Royal family by visiting Windsor Castle – some 25 miles outside London. Windsor Castle was one of three residents in which the Queen shared her time. Although, the line-up was significantly shorter than in Versailles, we did manage to wait some 40 minutes. The visit was somewhat disappointing as we did not meet or even see anyone we recognized.

On Friday 28th we opted for another day trip – this time to the town of Bath some 115 miles from London. Similar to the previous day, we used the train to get to our destination. We enjoyed walking the streets and discovering some of Bath’s unique architecture. We visited a small museum dedicated to the popular novelist, Jane Austin, who lived in Bath for a short time and was inspired by the town for some of her writing. Jenny reiterated her appreciation of Jane Austin by adding to her retirement bucket list the reading of all her novels.

We returned to London just in time for our 8:00pm reservation at a neighborhood tapas restaurant. As we’ve noticed since our arrival in London, all the restaurants and bars seemed to be doing well. TripAdvisor reports more than 18,000 restaurants in London!

Although clouds were out in numbers, we headed out on Saturday 29th to the Camden market in the north of town, one of the many lively markets scattered in various neighborhoods of London. In the late afternoon, as rain had started to fall, we sought refuge in a cinema for a viewing of Baby Driver. On our way back to the flat, we had hoped to stop at a BBQ rib restaurant for our evening meal but we ended up ordering some take-away (their words for take-out!) to eat at Jessica’s flat as the waiting time was over one hour.

In the spirit of the age old British tradition, we went for a Sunday Roast brunch at a local old men’s pub located in the middle of a very busy flower market. Later in the afternoon, we visited the small but very insightful museum, Geffrye Museum, a few blocks away from the flat. The museum presented the evolution of the London homes from the 17th century onward. We had a very light evening meal given our earlier brunch.

On our last day in London, on Monday 31st, we spent the day very much like our first day in the city – doing some shopping. We even visited the famous, large and very expensive Harrods department store. Jessica suggested a unique restaurant in the neighborhood for our last meal in London. Although we waited 40 minutes, as reservations were not possible, it was clearly worth the experience to try the steak at Flat Iron restaurant. Except for a couple of daily specials – the restaurant only had one menu item and a few choices of sides. On the way back to the flat, we met one of Jessica’s neighbour and good friend – Shannon – with which we chatted for more than 40 minutes.

On the day of our departure, we had an early wake up reminisce of our past usual work life wake up time. Jessica had booked a private car service to bring us to the airport for our 11:30am flight to Montreal. We had a brief farewell at the door entrance of Jessica’s flat.

Although I had forgotten to move our neck pillows to our carry-on luggage, we had a fairly enjoyable flight which arrived 40 mins earlier than expected. We can consider ourselves quite lucky as we learned that on Monday some folks on two different Air Transat flights from Europe spent over 15 hours on their plane after being diverted to the Ottawa airport due to bad weather. Our luck continued when we tried to catch an earlier Greyhound bus back to Ottawa. Finally a good friend drove us home from the bus station allowing us to complete our full travel circle!

One final tidbit of curiosity we picked up during our trip. As it was the first trip in Europe in which we cooked some of our breakfasts, we learned that eggs in Europe were found on the regular shelves and not in the refrigerated area. The internet has answered (many times) this difference.