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Published: July 14th 2009
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Lunch at Covent Garden
Keep the coffee coming... Well, we definitely slept better. Everyone was still soundly asleep at 10am. We got moving as quickly as we could and headed out to Covent Garden for brunch. Got there at noon, too late for breakfast fare but had a nice lunch at an outdoor café with views of street performers. Weather was great - intermittent clouds but lots of blue sky and very pleasant temperature. Kids were moving a bit slowly and weren’t enthusiastic about exploring Covent Garden so we headed off. Sonia led a walking tour she had downloaded from the web which took us to Cecil Court. “Widely believed to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley of the Harry Potter books” this alley was home to some curious and odd little stores. From there we found our way to Brydges Place, an alley that goes through from one main street to another. It is clearly marked with a London street sign, but its less than three feet wide in most parts with solid brick walls extending up 30 or more feet. It widens out briefly where it serves as a beer patio for a pub then exits onto another main street. Kids definitely were unsure that we really
were allowed (or well advised) to be there. We stopped in at St Martin’s in the Field. You are just walking along this street and you see this glass elevator marked “CRYPT”. The fact that they had put a café into the crypt detracted from it a bit, but still an interesting diversion. Andrew would have liked to make a rubbing of one of the brass plate figures, but we opted to move on. From there we headed to Regents Park and had a nice stroll through the beautifully manicured Queen’s gardens. We were unable to get the kids to join us for “tango al fresco”, but they did enjoy shooting photos and running around the “island” in the middle of the park. Lauren got a big kick out of an old-fashioned w/c with an overhead pull-chain flush mechanism. From there we were right near Madam Tussaud’s, so why not…. The line was long and constructed in a way that made it impossible to understand how long it was until you were fully committed. The kids got a big kick out of it - it was like Hollywood star-spotting with a very high hit rate. We got a good shot
Cecil Court
Widely claimed to be the inspiration for "Diagon Alley" in the Harry Potter books of Lauren posing with Zach Efron… Oddly, the kids seemed to have no interest in the section devoted to British cricket champions. At that point we had denied Andrew his dearest wish of a ride on the London Eye for as long as his little heart could bear, so off we went by Tube again. The discounted “wax + eye” tickets we purchased at Madame Tussaud’s did spare us standing in a long line (queue, as they say here) and the trip around the giant ferris wheel was really quite impressive. Very cool views looking down on Parliament and Big Ben with the kids furiously snapping pictures. By the time that we were done, it was already well beyond time for dinner, so we headed off, but were extensively diverted by Big Ben - a London icon that Andrew was apparently aware of and needed to be up close and personal with and to extensively photograph. Finally, we headed back towards Kensington for dinner. After being turned away at the local pub (we thought Europeans routinely ate dinner at 9!) we found another pub where we had the pleasure of sitting next to large loudspeakers playing techno-beat. Good fish and
John & Sonia
In the Queen's gardens. photo by Lauren chips, and not a minute too soon. Kids to sleep exhausted again. Maybe we’ll go easier on them tomorrow.
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A little American tourist in an AIG t-shirt? That's a joke, right?