London Calling.

LT takes breakfast at the Jesmond.

Once again, greetings from London! Allie and LT have just returned from the dining room at JD, where they were treated to a full English breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage, and beans (Why beans are apart of breakfast here, I will never understand. Also, this is Allie, in case the blog entry title and the bizarre parenthetical commentary didn't clue you in.) The current plan for today is fairly basic: go to St. Paul's, check out the National Gallery or the British Museum, or both, and see if Italo's is still open. Allie will have to buy a Tube ticket at some point today because, in a moment of sheer brilliance yesterday, she forgot to take her Oyster card out of her winter coat before leaving Parkwood. An Oyster card, for the non-natives, is a small blue card that acts as a sort of lifetime ticket for the London Underground. You can top it up whenever and put as much money on it as you want, and you can access all the different zones on the London Underground with it. See how forgetting it was such a brilliant move on Allie's part?

Allie in Russell Square.

After breakfast Allie and LT headed out for a Sunday morning stroll.  They went half a block north on Argyle and then turned left on the Euston Road, once again marvelling at the tall, many-turreted, red brick Victorian castle fantasy that camouflages the train station.  After a few blocks they turned left on Upper Woburn Street, intending to walk more or less in a straight line until they got to the British Museum.  In doing so, they had a chance to veer into the green garden-like spaces of  Tavistock Square, the Russell Square, and then Bloomsbury Gardens.  This got them to the top of Kingsway, which they trekked down until it it the semi-circle of Aldwych, where they took the right half of the arc past Somerset House.  They then noticed that the London Marathon was in its middle stages.  Groups of, in this instance young women in purple and some in white, or pink, of varying ages--some as young as ten (according to Allie)--striding west along the Thames Embankment.

The Globe!

They watched the huffing, puffing runners for a while, then realized they had to continue on their own London marathon walk.  They followed the Thames Embankment until it reached the Blackfriars Bridge (and by the way, another Blackfriars bridge is now under construction), then turned left to visit St. Paul's Cathedral.  Then, exiting St. Paul's, they crossed the pedestrian-only Millennium Bridge, where LT took a picture of Allie silhouetted by the Globe Playhouse.  Hoping the box office was open, they rushed into the Globe and were gratified that they were able to purchase two seats for the Tuesday, April 26 opening night of "Hamlet."  Their seats are not together, but they will still get to see Shakespeare's most famous play in a playhouse reconstructed to resemble the real old Globe where Hamlet was performed in 1600 or 1601.

A strawberry dessert in Covent Garden.

They retraced their steps, this time staying on the "bankside" of the Thames, and quickly touring the Tate Modern, where they saw Ai WeiWei's exhibit of about 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds carefully strewn in across the floor of at least half the huge warehouse-length building.  They didn't smell like sunflowers, but seeing so many, and imagining how they might taste, made both Allie and LT very thirsty.  After discovering that the National Theatre was closed for Sunday--thus preventing them from purchasing any theater tickets--they crossed back over the Thames on the Waterloo Bridge, made several gradual left-leaning turns and would up in Covent Garden, where they got an excellent table for two outside, under an umbrella at "Pain Quotidien."  They spent over an hour lingering over Allie's mixed vegetable quiche and LT's salmon, crab salad, prawn, rocket salad and rose wine.  Allie capped off the excellent lunch with a strawberry vanilla sponge cake that she courteously shared with her envious father.  It was a great lunch.  And it gave them time to rest their weary feet. 

LT in front of St. Martin's in the Fields.

Next, they walked a bit southwest and entered the National Gallery.  like Captain Ahab in "Moby Dick" LT seized control of all navigation and dragged Allie through the Italian Renaissance galleries--marvelling at the Byzantine-influenced Duccio's, the magically colored and mathematically perfect Piero della Francesco's, Botticelli's sublime "Venus and Mars," as well as Titian's "The Origin of the Milky Way" and "Bacchus and Ariadne" with their explosions of frenzied activity and pristine, perfect lazus lazuli blue sky.  After satisfying his obsessions with the Italian masters, LT compelled Allie to race into the French rooms so they could feast on Van Gogh's "Cypresses," and "Yellow Chair" as well as many Manets and Monets.  They plan to return many times later on next week.

Russell Square

At about 2:00PM, they visited the gift shop, then realizing that anything they bought they would have to carry back and forth to Bath tomorrow, they skipped the option of buying anything and navigated back to Argyle Street.  Again, LT was able to use his many memories of many weeks spent in England to steer a quick path back home.  From the National Gallery, they turned north up St. Martin's Lane continued on when it became Upper Monmouth, stepped across a couple tricky intersections, and reached Coptic Street, at the end of which they saw the imitation Greek facade of the British Museum.  LT pointed out the "Museum Tavern" which LT used to visit and at which in 1983,  he treated his bride to be Elizabeth to a  pint and a ploughman's lunch when she had first arrived a few days before their wedding.  Allie and LT walked around the east side of the museum, turned north on Montague Street and kept straight on until they reached Russell Square (which they had visited and photographed earlier in the morning at the beginning of their trek).  Exactly re-tracing their morning's journey, the walked up Woburn Place to Upper Woburn Place until it hit the Euston Road, where they turned right (east) and continued until they reached Argyle Street.

Back in room #2, they tired to "gmail" Wooster Street, but no one seemed yet up.  LT sat at the computer to input this blog entry, while Allie adopted her father's time-honored tradition of an afternoon siesta.  LT intends to use the googlemap function to see how many miles the father and daughter logged today, but he surmises it must be at least 5 miles, maybe much more.  Actually, LT having just used google maps to retrace his steps, he discovered that they traveled approximately 3.38 miles on their outward morning journey from Argyle to the bankside Globe.  And then traversed 5.05 miles on their return voyage from the Globe to lunch at Covent Garden and their exhausted but exuberant return to St. Pancras Station and Argyle Street.  An 8 mile jaunt!

LT in front of #52 Argyle St--where he and Eli stayed.

The story for today doesn't end there, however (This is Allie, by the way. Hello! Adding this paragraph and some photos, as usual.) After a short siesta and a chat with Mom and Hill on Skype, LT and Al set out for a much shorter trip, this time to the Marks & Spencer's in St. Pancras for dinner, and to very special place a skip, jump, and a hop a way from the JD. The special place? The Hotel Wardonia, a four-building B&B, one of which (#52, to be exact) was the honeymoon residence of Mom and Dad when they got married in London (we're actually only a couple minutes away from the council services building where they got married, too. Neat!) Photographs were taken, and after that, Dad and Allie returned to JD for dinner. Smoked salmon, artichokes, chicken ceasar salad, and chicken tikka masala with rice pilau and dressing. Bon appetit, and see you tomorrow, when we'll go to Bath!