London trip, part two

In an effort to get all of the details of our London trip out of my head and into some sort of record-keeping format, I'm continuing our trip.

Day 3: Wednesday


Since it was going to rain on Wednesday, we decided to make it a museum day. We started with the amazing British Museum. A bit of an archeology nerd, I was inordinately excited to see the Egyptian wing in particular. I was not disappointed! The Elgin Marbles were (of course) also amazing.

We started out in the British Museum trying to figure out what to prioritize, since we knew the place was just huge, and we would never be able to see it all. Well, this quickly divolved into a "treasure hunt" of the list of the Museum's treasures that they hand out with the map at the information kiosk at the entrance. It actually worked out to be a good way to see a very diverse set of artifacts and to get a sense of the museum's huge collection.

After the British Museum caused us to wobble around due to the pain in our feet, we decided to do some shopping, mainly so I could find some better walking shoes than the ballet flats I had packed for the trip. With walking shoes purchased and Emily much happier, we went on to Berwick Street to check out some of the fabric and haberdashery stores in the area. I saw so many beautiful fabrics that I really wanted to take home with me, but I was saving my fabric purchases for Liberty of London.

We moved onward to one of my must-sees in London: Liberty of London! I carefully (agonizingly!) chose two pieces of fabric (one will be a shirt dress, the other a classic button down), and oogled all the amazing things in the store. I think Nico was growing impatient with me, but it is really a fabulous department store.


We kept walking, ending up in Covent Gardens for some delicious Indian food for dinner. We both love Indian, and had hoped to have the opportunity to eat a lot of it in London, but surprisingly, we had a bit of a hard time finding authentic looking Indian restaurants.

Day 4: Thursday

We had planned to take a trip into the countryside for at least one of the days on our trip. We agonized about the best method of travel, and ultimately decided that renting a car would give us the greatest flexibility, since what we really wanted to see was Stonehenge and some of the Cotswolds.

Well, let me save you the trouble: do not rent a car if you can help it. Nico is the only one of the two of us who can drive a standard transmission, and he had not driven a standard since high school (about 10 years ago). That, plus the fact that you're driving on the opposite side of the road and using your left hand to do the shifting, meant we had a bit of a rocky trip.

We also wasted quite a bit of time since we decided it would be easiest to rent a car at the airport (saving the congestion charge and hassle of driving in central London). The Tube ride to Heathrow is over an hour, and then once we got to the airport, we had to take a shuttle bus to the rental car station... plus we didn't have a map... it was a bit of a rocky start to the day.

Anyway, first stop: Stonehenge. It was truly amazing to see the stones and to hear how no one really has an explanation for how they were built. We were both in awe of the ancient site and were very glad to have seen it.

A Jane Austen fan, I thought it might be fun to see Bath, so we continued westward from Stonehenge. When we got to Bath we discovered with horror that the entire city was jammed with traffic and is built on a hill! It was a bit stressful, but we finally found a parking spot and ventured out to find some lunch.

We stopped at a pub and had -- no joke -- the best fish and chips of our lives.



We went on a tour of the Roman baths (the longest audio tour of our lives! seriously, someone needs to edit that thing), and wandered around Bath to see the Royal Crescent, the Royal Circus, and the pretty cheesy Jane Austen center.

Because evening was falling, and we knew we had a drive ahead of us, we simply decided to head back to return the car. We did get to see some of the gorgeous countryside on the way back, but missed the heart of the Cotswolds. Something to do next time!

Day 5: Friday

On Friday, we decided to hit up some more of the amazing museums in London. We slept in a bit, stopped in the fancy food shop of Fortnum and Mason (amazing, by the way) to buy a few gifts, and headed off to the National Gallery.

We tried to target certain areas of the museum, but it's really difficult to make decisions about which amazing pieces of art you're going to skip! We had a late lunch in the gallery cafe -- I chose to have tea and a scone with clotted cream and homemade raspberry jam. Amazing.

Next, we headed to the National Portrait Gallery. We weren't really sure what to expect out of this gallery, but it was truly an amazing look at the history of the British Monarchy through portraiture. We were a little more engaged towards the beginning of this museum -- at some point in the 18th century or so, we started to get pretty fuzzy on all of the accession order rules and who ruled when. So confusing! It was very neat, though, and I highly recommend a stop here. It definitely exceeded our expectations.

We had arranged to meet up with a friend from college who is now living and going to school in London near our hotel. After that, we headed over to Harrods -- arriving about 10 minutes before closing. We essentially ran to the middle of the store to see the Egyptian escalator and the Diana memorial before finding the "pet world" to pick up some little gifts for Eleanor.

We ended the evening at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is an amazing treasure-trove of items. We spent the most time in the fashion gallery and in the jewlery gallery. I thought the latter was particularly amazing! Before walking back to our hotel, we stopped for dinner at a small Italian cafe along the way.