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Published: December 10th 2018
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Friday 7th December. The Holiday Inn Kensington Forum - where we are staying - has 906 rooms so is always busy and none more so than at breakfast time. But it wasn't long after breakfast on Friday that we headed off to 48 Doughty Street to once again visit the Charles Dickens Museum. We hadn't even got in the door when fellow Dickensian Paul Graham from Central branch turned up. Having last seen Paul in Sydney, when he attended our NSW Dickens Society conference, it was a pleasant surprise to run into him again! After a short chat to Paul, Kev and I enjoyed another visit to the first house which newlyweds Catherine and Charles Dickens moved into in 1837 which is now the Charles Dickens Museum. Literary London was abuzz with accounts of dinner with Dickens; the table display, the food, the guests and the conversation so it was good to see the Dining Room table set for Christmas.
Around lunchtime our friend John Faulkner arrived to escort us to the Rugby Tavern where Sandra, Paul, Maggie, Liz, Malcolm and Eddie were having Dickens Fellowship committee meeting, most of whom joined us for a drink once their meeting finished.
Finally, when it was time to say our goodbyes, John, Sandra, Kev and I went to have an early dinner before heading off to the theatre district to pick our tickets for The Book of Mormon from the beautiful Art Deco Prince of Wales Theatre.
What a great musical it was!! Just brilliant; brash, crude, offensive and so hilarious. Top marks to the creative team and the fantastic bunch of actors who made the show such a success. We LOVED it!! As so many of the shows in the theatre district finish around the same time it was a bit of a bun fight to catch the tube back to our hotel for Kev and I and for Sandra and John back to their home in Putney. Great night.
Saturday 8 December. Breakfasted and ready to head off, we caught the bus to Kensington Gardens but decided not to do a tour of Kensington Palace since we did that a couple of years ago. Instead we had a bite to eat and a drink at the café there. Once fed and watered we walked across the park to the the extravagant Albert Memorial which faces the Royal Albert
Hall. We had a bit of a look around, even considering buying tickets to a tennis tournament which was being held there but decided that if we did so we wouldn't have enough time to do all that we'd planned. I did enjoy checking out all the great Christmas shows which are on offer at the Royal Albert Hall before we walked back to the Gloucester Street Underground station to catch a train to Westiminster. Once there we had a bit of a look around the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Well it was only the outside of the Abbey as we'd arrived past the time visitors were allowed in and having been on an organised tour of the Houses of Parliament a couple of years ago it was only a walk around that edifice also.
The evening saw us enjoying a Dickens Fellowship Christmas supper with around forty othe Dickensians at a restaurant around Russel Square. It was great to socialise with fellow lovers of Charles Dickens, quite a few of whom I last met in Carrara, Italy for the 2017 DF international conference plus a few others who'd travelled to the Sydney conference in October this
Before heading off to see The Book of Mormon
At the beautiful Art Deco Prince of Wales Theatre year.
Sunday 9 December. We spend over three hours exploring the Churchill War Rooms which is part of the Imperial War Museum. It was a great experience to see the nerve centre where Winston Churchill, together with scores of men and women both military and civilian worked long hours in cramped subterranean offices in an effort to take the country from the brink of defeat to the eventual WW11 victory. There was just so much to take in, it would have been easy to spend all day there. The war rooms themselves were entered via the government building opposite St Jame's Park which was then known as the New Public Offices and is now known as the Treasury Building, chosen because of its closeness to 10 Downing Street.
When we emerged back onto the street from the war rooms there were police everywhere so I asked a couple of them what was going on to discover that they were there because of a demonstration in Whitehall which was not far away. So we headed to see what it was all about discovering that it was a Pro-Brexit rally. The police were doing what they could to keep the
Anti-Brexiters away from those holding the rally. We both took some photos of course and I had a chat to one of the women there who'd voted to leave the EU. It would seem that both sides of the argument hold very strong views so it will be very interesting to see the eventual outcome. The talk here seems to be all about Brexit.
Leaving politics aside there was still the serious business ahead to check out the Christmas lights around Piccadilly Circus once it was dark. And they were just gorgeous; I was like a kid in a lolley shop!! After getting our fill of the decorations we ate at the Brasserie Zédel which Sandra had told us all about. The brasserie - which was almost filled to the rafters - was in what had been the ballroom of an Art Deco hotel. The food was great, service top-notch and the place itself was really beautiful. You would love it Nicola!!
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