A Travel Blog
On our final night in London, we made it out to Clerkenwell and The Eagle pub, which is one of the first pubs to begin what became known as the “gastropub” movement.
The phrase has become worn out in recent years, but originally, a gastropub was simply a pub that served very good food. The Eagle opened in 1991 and recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.
London is such a vast city that even a full week spent exploring as tourists meant we barely scraped the surface of a few neighbourhoods.
In between all the other major landmarks, museums, pubs and restaurants we visited and blogged about, we also came across other things that caught our interest. Here’s a random compilation.
Our time in London was suddenly running short, but conveniently many of the remaining essential London sites we wanted to see were quite close together.
Our first stop on the Westminster side of the river was Downing Street. Due to understandable security concerns, the street is gated from Whitehall and heavily guarded. The Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing is barely visible through the bars.
Nearby, we saw some democracy in action, in the form of a loud protest on Whitehall.
We made good use of the Millenium Bridge, built over the Thames in 2000. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge, and after the initial opening it was closed for 2 years to fix a “wobble”. We’re happy to report it was nice and stable when we crossed.
For dinner, we took the Tube to the Kings Cross area of London, which is currently undergoing massive redevelopment to convert former industrial areas into public squares, parks, offices and restaurants.
A vibrant new public square has been constructed along Regent’s Canal, which was formerly used to ship materials to and from the factories that lined the banks.
On one of our last mornings, we visited the Spitalfields outpost of Yotam Ottolenghi’s mini restaurant empire for breakfast. The food is upscale Middle Eastern.
We have an Ottolenghi cookbook at home which is beautiful, and although the recipes are pretty complicated the few we’ve attempted have turned out well. It was nice try the real thing.
May 20, 2016 is our 10th wedding anniversary. Josie had always wanted to see Oxford, having read many books and watched many dramas set in that town. This seemed like a perfect reason to take a train and get out of London for the day.
The trip from Paddington Station to Oxford took 56 minutes and cost us £25 (about $50 CAD) each, return. We enjoyed random views of the lush English countryside from the window of our train.
Although the café and a-la-carte breakfast options in our hotel were pretty decent, one of the things I always like to seek out when traveling are good third wave coffee spots. London has no shortage and we lucked out by finding the Gentlemen Baristas Coffee House just a few blocks south of us.
In addition to gentlemanly service, the coffee house has excellent coffee and tea, as well as porridge for an unusual (to us) breakfast option. We visited mainly during the week, when most customers were taking their orders away, which left us free to hog a table in the atmospheric brick and wood back room.
We usually steer clear of obvious tourist traps while traveling, but some places, like The Tower of London, are world-famous and perpetually jammed with visitors for a good reason.
I had visited the Tower in the late 90’s, but Josie had never been, and since we both have an interest in history it was an easy decision to visit again.
One thousand years of colourful and gory history is an easy sell.
It was a stereotypically grey English morning when we headed down to the River Thames at Bankside, not far from our hotel. We descended to Bankside Pier at river level where we purchased tickets for the Thame’s Clipper boat service, which would take us a few miles southwest to the Millbank Pier.
Despite the risk of rain, it seemed a more scenic way to travel than taking the Tube, and it gave us a close-up view of one of the world’s most famous rivers in all its grey-green muddy glory.
The Borough Market is very close to our hotel, off Southwark Street near London Bridge, and it is one of the best food markets we’ve ever visted.
A maze of tiny paths and squares under the railway arches is filled with food vendors and specialty stores of all kinds, open mainly during the day. In the surrounding laneways are many small restaurants and pubs that open into the street during the evenings.
One of our first stops in Soho was the Algerian Coffee Stores on Old Compton Street, which has been around since 1887. The decor is a mix of Victorian and modern. They sell roughly 80 types of coffee beans, as well as tea and chocolate. There are no tables, but they’ll pull you a shot of espresso for £1 to drink while standing. I had one and it was delicious.