A Walk-About London ...

After a horrible night's sleep due to congestion, headache and scratchy throat ... we were greeted with another day of bright blue skies and warm ... dare I say hot ... sunshine here. 

GRINS & GRATITUDES: We opted to walk over to Buckingham Palace ... and on our way over we noticed a counselling service being offered out of a small mobile trailer. It was called "Caravan Drop -In." It had such a welcoming energy about it.

It may sound strange, but in all honesty, neither one of us had any real desire to pay a fortune to see the changing of the guards. As luck would have it though, we bumped into a couple of nice guards in their finest red regalia and those big tall puffy black hats ...I'm not sure what their official name is! Anyway, they were not at all stuffy and proper ... and ... they were kind enough to pose for a picture! 

We then wandered the streets to get our bearings for where "Wicked" will be playing tomorrow. It's sad because we have seen so many homeless people on our travels around London. And a couple of them had made the steps of the theatre their temporary home. After that, we sauntered fairly aimlessly ... until we found ourselves at Bag O'Nails. I really wish I'd been hungry enough for the All day Sunday Roast ... but I opted for one of their other classic pub favorites... the lasagna!!! Yes. I never expected to find pasta at the pub ... but there it was!! And ... it had a pureed texture to it. Great taste but it seemed odd for lasagna to feel like whipped mashed potatoes in your mouth! John enjoyed the fish and chips ... rated it 9.5/10!

GROANS: On the map it looked like we could walk to Harrods ... just to experience the posh, pomp and circumstance of the West End of London. It turned into 16,888 steps or a 12.26km walk. I had on the wrong shoes for a trek of that magnitude... but ... John' eyes were the size of dinner plates as he noticed all the high end vehicles ... McLaren, Rolls Royce, Porsche, Austin Martin ... all the super cars. John said some of them would be worth upwards of $250,000!!! 😯 GAH: It's hard to fathom that most of them are driven by older men ... but ... many of them seemed to be accessorized with younger women. 😉

GRATITUDES: We stopped at the 'chemist' (aka pharmacy) to get some bandaids for our wounded feet ... and ... continud our walking home. It was then that we stumbled upon Caffé Concerto ... and went in for afternoon tea!! And so ... we sipped our tea with fancy chandeliers over head and lively jazz music tickling our eardrums. We thoroughly enjoyed this old English custom ... but we had enough to feed two more people!

GRATITUDES: On the bottom tier there were sandwiches with the crusts cut off in four varieties: cucumber and cream cheese ... smoked salmon with cream cheese ( John's favorite) ...egg salad... and ham and pickle with a dijon mustard ( my favorite!).
The second layer offered us four hot scones with whipped butter and teensy tiny little pots of strawberry conserve! And the top layer was generously filled with SIX decadent desserts! Wow!! I am not sure where we expected to put it all ... but ... we gave it our best shot!!!

Okay ... we are calling it a night early this evening! Hoping to get a better sleep ... fingers crossed!Read more