A Final Fantastic Day in London!

Jan. 28, 2019:

We awoke this morning to a glorious sunny day, albeit pretty chilly.  Which was good because we had several things on our schedule to accomplish!

Meredith, Jim and I are all big Sherlock Holmes fans (although we can’t quite seem to agree whether we like best in role among Jeremy Brett; Robert Downey, Jr.; or Benedict Cumberbatch). Accordingly, we headed off on the Bakerloo, Tube line to Baker St. station, where you can see the imaginative tile art honoring Sherlock Holmes. Then we popped out on Baker St. itself to visit No. 221B, where there is a Sherlock Holmes Museum and gift shop. Conveniently, it is located right next door to the biggest Beatles memorabilia gift shop in London!

After doing a little gift shopping for Merrie’s friends back home, we jumped back on the Tube to go back to the Westminster Bridge area to take a ride on the London Eye. This is a separate ticket, but you can purchase it online ahead of time and pick your own time to go.  Since the weather has been so rainy, and since we already got some good aerial pictures from the Shard at sunset, we decided to take advantage of this lovely clear day to go up this afternoon.  Hot tip, if you buy the VIP tickets, for a nominal additional charge (I think maybe £12 in total for the three of us), they will serve you champagne when you are up in the capsule. We bought the VIP tickets in order to avoid the line, but by buying the champagne, we also got the added benefit of having very few people in our capsule, so it was easy to take photographs from anywhere inside! The whole trip takes about 45 minutes, and I think we took photos every minute.

Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the bell tower at Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey behind Parliament

The Shard

We wandered along the south side of the Thames for a bit, and had a late lunch in one of the many restaurants there. Our final “must do” was a visit to a zany bar Jim found online called Mr. Fogg’s Society of Exploration. The whole place was a silly send-up of stuffy British clubs where upper-crust Britishers tell tales of their world travels.  Jim really just wanted to sample the Negronis made by the “mechanical mixologist “. The cocktail menu looked like Indiana Jones’ journal from some of his wildest adventures, and the drinks were equally wild.  Meredith chose a drink called the Rapa Nui, which came in a tiki head glass (like the moai from Easter Island) with a tuft of cotton candy sprouting from the top like pink flames.  All in all, it was a very fun experience!

Mr. Fogg’s Society of Exploration

The “Mechanical Mixologist” is in the center

The drink menu

Meredith with her “Rapa Nui”

A kiss for good luck!

For our final meal of the trip, we all walked into Kensington for Italian food at a very nice restaurant called il Portico.  Tummies full with great fresh, authentic Italian food, I think we are all ready to declare this trip a wonderful experience!