A Visit to THE Dress, The Mousetrap, and a Final Curry in London

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We met our friend at our hotel around 6:30 and caught a taxi over to our other friend’s flat. He lives on the ground floor of a flat that is one of many in a complex surrounding a garden – he is also in charge of the garden, and is apparently the only person under 70 and the only man to serve on the committee.

We got a very quick tour of his flat and headed outside to see the garden. It’s not your typical English garden in that everything wasn’t pruned and clipped perfectly. They prefer it to be a natural garden, and it very much made me think of the Secret Garden. There is a long pathway around the garden with all kinds of plants, including huge hydrangeas with blooms the size of my head! There were small benches along the way to enjoy the garden, one of the oldest trees in London, and all kinds of small nooks and crannies to wander along in. There’s even a large one of those painted elephants that have been on parade around the world – apparently that caused quite the kerfuffle in the flats because they were worried that if one person was allowed to put something huge in their garden, they everyone would be able to. But he stayed!

It was interesting to peek in everyone’s flats as the sun set and interior lights came on. We went back inside after a bit and had a drink before heading to Daphne’s, an Italian restaurant, nearby.

It was a short taxi ride away and I sat in one of the jump seats, which reminded me why I never sit facing backwards (car sickness!). We arrived at the restaurant, which had a lovely, dark ambience. There was a lot of brick (which I love!) and just a nice warm feeling. I started with a mozzarella salad and then had the spaghetti – I just can’t pass up fresh Italian spaghetti. For dessert, I chose the semifreddo, which was lovely and refreshing.
But even better than the food was the company, and we had quite a wonderful evening before heading back to our hotel.

The next day, we mostly had free, which was nice! It turned out that a good friend of mine from high school was now living in London, and we happened to reconnect at the right time and arranged to have coffee that Tuesday morning. We met at the hotel and wandered down to Starbucks again, where we spent over an hour catching up. It was so nice to see her and catch up, and so funny that to do so, we had to be in another country!

Afterwards, my dad had managed to snag tickets to the Royal Rooms. Now, this may not be interesting to many of you, but that’s where the display for THE dress is. And by THE dress, I mean the wedding dress of the Duchess of Cornwall, Kate Middleton. We headed over to Buckingham Palace, and both my dad and I realized that we’d never been there before – not that strange for me, but he lived and worked there for many years!

We managed to arrive just as the changing of the guard was taking place, and the streets were absolutely packed with tourists watching the ceremony. I do love the red coats and tall fuzzy hats, so I was happy to catch a glimpse!

Once we’d queued up for our tickets, we headed into the rooms, and learned that no photography was allowed inside – very disappointing, but it meant we’d scoot through the palace quicker. As lovely as Buckingham is, my basic philosophy is that if you’ve seen one palace, you’ve pretty much seen them all. My dad was pretty happy that I felt that way, as he was definitely not as excited to see the dress as I was.

We picked up our audio guides, and were quite excited to see the entrance where the queen (or Queenie, as we like to refer to her) and Prince Philip welcome heads of state and other guests. The entrance is one that we’ve seen on tv many, many times, so it was neat to see it in person.

We mostly zoomed through the other rooms, where there were portraits up the wazoo (I’m more of a modern art kind of gal) and I joked that I wondered whether Kate ever walked through here thinking about how she could redecorate. As much as I can see she loves William, it must be slightly depressing to think that she’ll someday have to live in that huge palace with very little decision-making ability for her own home!

And finally, we were in the room with THE dress. Queenie was right – it is a bit creepy that it appears that the dress is being worn by someone, but there’s no head to it. But the dress itself is gorgeous.

Of course, we all knew that from watching the ceremony on tv (what, you didn’t get up at 4am to watch it like I did??), but in person, you can really get a sense of the level of detail and workmanship that went into the dress. It’s incredibly stunning. Though also a wee bit depressing to see how tiny the dress is, when Kate and I are about the same height, and I could certainly not squeeze my way into that!

We also got to see her shoes (they were my favorite, just loved them!), a replica of her bouquet, and the earrings that her parents gave her as a wedding gift. I felt badly for her that they were on display for so long – what if she wanted to wear them? They’re quite nice, and I know she’ll get them back when the exhibit closes, but it seems funny that things that belong to her are not at her disposal.

We also saw a replica of the wedding cake, which was enormous, and basically consisted of four smaller cakes as the base (and by smaller, I mean regular sized wedding cakes), and other cakes built on top of that. Just enormous.

After exiting the palace, we had the chance to see the back lawn, which was also immense. I could just picture my two dogs racing after a tennis ball there! They would love it! We spent some time taking pictures out there, now that we were permitted to again, and wandered down along the path and out of the grounds. The queen was home that day (the flag is always raised when she’s home), and my dad remarked that she must not get much chance to enjoy the gardens with so many people around, which is a shame. But perhaps she likes it that way!

Next, we were off to the theatre! Although I’ve been to Broadway, I’ve never been to the theatre in London. My dad had let me pick the show – he was hoping I wouldn’t choose a musical, and I didn’t disappoint him. I went with Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which is the longest running play in the world. It’s been running for more than 59 years.

We found out where the theatre was, and then popped in a nearby pub for lunch. I love a good pub lunch and this one did not disappoint – we had a big basket of chips (that’s French fries for you non-English) and I had a delicious toasted ham and cheese sandwich. It was just what I needed.

After lunch, we went back to the theatre, where I queued up for the ladies room. They keep the door locked before the show, and say they open it thirty minutes prior. But they didn’t. They were starting to have one angry crowd of ladies on their hands, but insisted they needed to do some security checks first. They FINALLY let us in, and we were very happy about it!

Then, we squeezed into the theatre – the theatre wasn’t full by any means, but the seats were tinier than coach seats on an airplane, and for some reason, they stuck another theatre-goer right next to me. And he hadn’t showered very recently. Fortunately, he moved over once the show got started, but it was just a bit odd that they’d packed a few of us together for seemingly no reason!

The play was excellent. And that’s all I can say about that. To keep with tradition, the actors ask you at the end of each show not to reveal the ending. Of course, some people aren’t good secret keepers, and it is out there on the internet, but I highly recommend not finding out before you see it – I kept myself in the dark, and it was a lot of fun to try to guess what was going to happen next. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

After that, we were good and exhausted. My dad suggested we stay in that evening at the hotel, so I worked on packing and watching the BBC. But then, he texted me to see if I was up for another curry – we’d said that we wanted to try to go to the Rajdoot twice (since we haven’t managed to find good Indian food pretty much anywhere else, including India). I had already changed into my pajamas, but I really wanted some masala, so I threw my jeans back on and we headed out.

The food was delicious, and I was so happy to have figured out what I should have ordered so I could enjoy a good meal. But unfortunately, it wasn’t a great meal because at the table just behind us was a trio of reprobates. Three businessmen, one from Ireland, one from Australia, and one from England. Their conversation was so offensive – I won’t go into great detail, but just picture that it involved the F word a lot, and making fun of disabled people - that we just ate and got out of there as quickly as possible. My dad said if he was younger, he would have picked a fight with them. But what a bunch of jerks.

At any rate, we picked up some wispas for my mom at the local Tesco (20 to be exact) and some candy for us for the evening, and retired to the hotel. We were to leave the next morning for Copenhagen, and our conference!

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