Impressions of London

FRIDAY
The nice thing about living in Europe is that it is so close to all the other places in Europe. Last weekend Husband and I spent in London, arriving at Heathrow at 1:30pm on friday. After checking into the Royal Elizabeth Hotel, across the street from Hyde Park we went out to explore Hyde Park and Kensington.
Kensington was quiet neighborhoods, parks full of flowers behind wrought iron gates. Spring was in full bloom: flowering fruit trees, magnolias, daffodils and tulips.
Suddenly we came upon a row of little shops, one of them a natural health shop where we immediatly found the Bach Remedies I had hoped to obtain.
We also went shopping at Marcs & Spencer to get some gifts for the girls at home.
Visited the Natural History Museum (what a fantastic collection of minerals!) and had english "tea": in our case cafe latte with cake.
Dinner was in the hotel restaurant: It was advertized that the prices were surprisingly reasonable and that they used herbs grown on the premises in the cooking. Tor had a caesar salad, I had fettucini with wild mushroom sauce. The prices were indeed surprisingly reasonable, but the dishes surprisingly lacking in creativity, though obviously made of high quality ingredients.

SATURDAY
Saint Pauls Cathedral (from the outside), Tower of London and Tower Bridge, a walk through the financial distict, and the houses of parliament, westminster cathedral, horse guards, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing street.

I particularly liked the gardens and birds in St James Park: not just ducks, geese and swans, but pelicans as well!
Back at the Royal Elizabeth I had a bath and we watched a horse race on the television, before dressing for dinner and a show. Dinner was at an Indian Tapas restaurant. A wonderfull meal with different and exotic flavors: we orderes a seafood platter with sesame shrimps and ocopus rings, a salad with marinated mango, risotto with steamed veggies and small banana pancakes. These were so good I had to ask for the recipe. Apparently it is just a batter of overripe bananas, rice flour, and egg fried in butter. I must try it sometime.

The Musical: Mamma Mia was fantastic. Music by Abba, and what dancing! It was an experience, quite worth the outrageously expensive tickets.

SUNDAY
Woke up to snow. Large white flakes whirling in the air, Hyde Park covered in a blanket of white. We went to the Florence Nightengale museum, where the old and new Saint Thomas Hospitals lie along the river Thames.There we immersed ourselves in the life and work of Florence and the history of nursing in England.

We visited speakers corner at Hyde Park. Turned out to be mostly preachers.
We visited the British National Museum, where I found the exhibit of british history with artifacts from the celts, Romans, anglo Saxons to Norman and Vikings of special interrest.
Outside the chinese population of London had gathered with waving flags, british and chinese to see the passage of the olympic torch. As the time approached more and more police gathered. The torch itself was preceeded and followed by police on motorcycles and in cars, and surrounded by running chinese and police running and on mountain bikes. Later we read that the relay had been beleaguered by protests because of the chinese oppression of Tibet all along the way.
The tibetan protesters that we saw however were peacefull. Next day The Daily Telegraph headlines read: " The only way the progress of the torch could have been more magesterially mishandled would have been if the flame had flown into Heathrow's Terminal Five, and then got lost in the baggage system."
Dinner that night was at Abu Ali, a lebanese restaurant in the middle of the muslim part of the city. Men sat under an awning smoking water pipes and drinking coffee. Inside a disk displayed the food. Behind it the food was prepared. guests sat at respatex tables and chairs. The TV blared music and news from an arabic station. Across the street was the Islamic Bank of England. We had lebanese salad, lamb kebabs with rice, grilled haloumi cheese while soaking up this foreign atmosphere. At the end of our meal we were offered baclava "on the house".


MONDAY
Mme Tussauds wax cabinet. Chocolate Latte at Nero's. A walk in Regents Park. Perhaps the best for birds, with a large variety of ducks, geese, and swans. Here we saw ducklings. And the blue herons nesting i the willows. Then back to the hotel to check out and then the 10 minute walk to Paddington Station for the train to Heathrow. Since both our bags had arrived safely when we did, we confidently checked them in again.

Afterwards I regretted that I hadn't packed the gifts, and my toiletries, at least some of them in my hand baggage. Our plane was delayed out of Heathrow. They had had to switch planes at the last minute as the original one had technical difficulties related to snow. Could that be why they sent my bag to Italy for sorting? In any event, only Husband's bag arrived in Oslo. Luckily he had packed the Nike pants which we'd gotten on sale at Lily White's (the famous 5 storey sports store). What with the bag being lost and the plane delayed we didn't get home until 11pm.

We've spent the past 3 days on the phone making futile attempts to find out what has become of my bag, and never even getting through to the lost baggage office. Then out of the blue the baggage guy called to say he was on his way and where do we live. Hooray! I've got all my stuff and the trip is at an end.