Less zombie, more human

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The rumors are true, in general the English are an exceedingly polite people. They do love a Southern American accent, no increase needed, although a pint of cider for me automatically produces an increase.
I slept in until 9:45 yesterday! Norris had breakfast & got me up. I grabbed a banana & we got coffee from Starbucks down the street. Coffee at hotel is good but is next to cafeine free from what we're used to. We decided to just mess around. Since it was Sunday & nice weather any of the touristy stuff would be ridiculous so that's what we did. We took the tube from Embankment & just started wandering. We stumbled on a cheese & wineshop that was on my list to visit called La Cave Fromage. It had all the raw milk (illegal in the US) cheeses & seriously good bread. I couldn't have any cheese 😞 but Norris said they were really good. I snacked on the baguette slices he had with his cheese tray. After that we found a cool wine shop called The Standard. It had a mechanical wine pour system wherein you buy a card & each different pour of wine is a certain price based on the bottle price. So you can have a sample taste, larger sample or full glass. I tried a white wine blend from the Bordeaux region which was okay, a French pinot noir & a Canadian ice wine (similar to Riesling - very sweet dessert wine). It was a cool shop. After that we wandered through the National History Museum. The crowd after the dinosaur exhibit got to me & it was getting stuffy indoors so we walked back out & up to & through Hyde Park, which is like Central Park of London. We saw the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain & it was very nice. On a day I would have Denver in jeans & long sleeves there were many children in shorts & sundresses playing in the water. Temperature perspective! Back through Hyde Park & to the tube again. This time we emerged in Notting Hill. The walk from the station to Portobello Road Market is full of tourist junk. The neighborhood sections of Notting Hill live up to the "posh" description. Some of the smaller houses sections remind me a lot of Rainbow Row, color wise not architecture. We found the much lauded Portobello Road Market & unimpressed were both glad we didn't venture out there on Saturday when it's supposed to be very busy & in full swing. Sunday afternoon was enough to see it wasn't really our thing. It was again, like Charleston, if you've been to the Market there you're good. There was a cool section with international food stalls & they had several great looking things but as it was almost 5 everything was shutting down. We'd skipped lunch but just had a snack from Tesco so no big whoop. Back on the Tube & stopped to switch trains at Picadilly Circus so I said let's just walk up to street level around the station & see what the fuss/complaints are about. Yeah, I took one photo of the statue & we spent about 5 seconds looking around & we were done. The London of Banana Republic shops, the M&M store & signs warning of pick pockets is not what we came to hang out in! Back on the Tube. There were a bunch of line closures for maintenance this weekend so we had to do a lot more station switches than we normally would have. We had dinner at The Globe, cider for me & wine for Norris & we both had pies with mushy peas. His was steak & ale & I had chicken & leek. He is definitely in pub food heaven here! With the 5+ hours of walking we did today I didn't worry about calories too much. One more stop at Tesco (urban supermarket; like a slightly bigger, less gritty bodegea) for waters, wine & Revels (chocolates with several different centers & you can't tell what it is until you bite in to it - the orange is gross) and we were back to the hotel. I think it was around 10:30 when I fell asleep & I woke up at 7:30, so an almost regular sleep with sleeping in for me! Norris is still sleeping so I'm going to try to sneak & get dressed & go for a run. There is a nice 3 mile route from our hotel down the Victoria Embankment & through a small park to Buckingham Palace & back. Not sure yet what we're going to get into today. We may do some tourist stuff around London like tour the Tower & go see the London Bridge & Buckingham Palace, then window shop High Street/Kings Road so I can drool around on English luxury goods or we might take the train to Windsor & see the castle. We'll see what he wants to do when he wakes up. -ABL

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