Today we got up late and around and then had a big day for 2 olds. We were gone from the now-famous hotel non-room (think small closet) for 13 hours!!! I have more steps than I have put on my surgically repaired knee since surgery, 7 weeks ago today. And it doesn’t hurt that much at the end of the day :)
First, after the manipulations of how two people get together in like a 6x8 space, we bolted for St Pancras station, where we caught the 1007 to Dover.
(the group of young people in front of us, post-college, talked incessantly, reminding us of the guy on yesterday’s plane. The one interesting tidbit was one had a friend accepted for fall in the Harvard MBA program and wasn’t sure about going, given our current immigrant welcome ): )
We’d never seen the castle there. Neither one of us got a decent picture coming into town, when you can see it way, way up on the hill.
but here’s a view from above:
I don’t know how many castle shots you want.
The one real boon was we were walking up the enormous hill (a thing this week) and saw a “mobility van” and haled it and got a ride from nowhere near the top to a lot closer to the top. :) It was a lot easier going down. The grades are ridonkulous.
BTW, it was nice today, though the weather promised was 18 and partly sunny. 14 and windy? Not quite the same thing.
We got back to the station 3 minutes before the next train (for an hour) to London arrived. Whew! It was packed so much that the people on the third stop from the end (Ebbsfleet, if you care) had to stand.
Notable was the woman who sat across from me in her jean jacket. Then, at the penultimate stop (John, that’s not the almost best stop :)), when the kid across from me got up, her friend joined her AND SHE WAS WEARING A JEAN JACKET?!?!?!😡 The good news on my jean jacket is that they found it and I can pick it up Sunday at Gatwick 🎉🥳
We then went to the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square, which turned out to be closed. But there was a QR and we found tickets to the Book of Mormon, which neither of us has seen and both wanted to. And they were good seats (Michael! 7th row back in the center)
Then .2 of a mile to Dishoom in Covent Garden. As some of you know, though I realize not many because some of you won’t eat Indian food ):, this is one of our favorite places in London. We went to their restaurant back when there was only one and now they have like a half-dozen.
They do small plates of Indian. Here’s a few pics —
My favorite, their Ruby Chicken, which is their take on butter chicken.
BTW, for dinner there’s always a line at whichever Dishoom you go to (they don’t take reservations). We were told it was 45 minutes to sit inside or right away outside. We choose outside, because we had a place to be. For that, it was a good choice. And the food was good, though heart-burn inducing. But it was windy as heck. at one point K got them to draw in their awnings out of fear they were going to break and kill us (😂). [This is the place also famous for us almost losing K’s brother Butch to a bicycler on the street as we left :))
Back across Leicester Square to the theatre.
IF you’ve not seen it, you can’t know how silly and sacrilegious Book of Mormon is. And very funny. I got a picture of the screen before it started (you’re not supposed to take pics during the play)
K said “we’re in the middle, we won’t have to worry about being trampled on.” Au contrair, Pierre!! We must have gotten up and down a dozen times. OC, two people accounted for several trips.
It’s not a long play; we were out before 10 and back to the closet shortly thereafter.
It was a v long day.
And the only way to finish is with the closing line from BoM: I have maggots in my scrotum. :)
The funniest side not of the day may be the guy we waited for taxis with in the taxi lot at the castle. He and his family were from South Carolina. They were there, then this evening taking the ferry from Dover to Calais (today you could literally see the French coast) and then to Paris. K asked what they were doing in Paris and he said he didn’t know, his wife did the itinerary. 😂. C’est la vie.
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