Friday 8th June London
Raining and blowing in London today as it has been since
Tuesday. Slightly frustrating start to
the day when the headphone/microphone I had bought with us to use for Skyping a) didn’t work for either when talking to Anne and b) jammed up my USB
wireless mouse which took me ages to sort out. Fortunately working at end of
the day.,
Had our regular breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and fresh pain au
raisin (from the M&S food about 100 metre away from the hostel), coffee
made in room with the immersion heater in our lovely set of Swiss aluminium
camping mugs and then set off to walk to
NZ shop in Covent Garden.
Took us about an hour to get more than a kilometre or so as
there are 2 spectacular churches within that distance, both suffered major war
damage but have been restored beautifully. The first was St Brides in a small
lane off Fleet St where there has been a church in various forms for 1500
years, and where one of the first printing presses in England was used and it
has subsequently become the “Fleet St” or Journalists church with many of the pews
bearing the names of companies and individuals active in the media. St Brides
has significant Roman ruins in the crypt. The second church was St Clement Danes
further down the Strand, where there has been a church for 900 years and whose bell rings out the rhyme “Oranges and
Lemons” ( we heard it at 12 noon but it may ring at other times). It is the
official church of the Royal Air Force and has lots of memorials to RAF fliers.
The floor of the church is an open space with hundreds of badges of RAF units
embedded in the floor and the pews on either side can slide over when there is
a large congregation. There is also a magnificent organ that was donated by USAF personnel.
So then on to Covent Garden (on the way managed to score 8
cartons of very nice greek yoghurt in street giveaway so that was lunch and
dinner!!) to the NZ/Australia/Canada shop which was fairly “underwhelming” but
where I did manage to buy a decent NZ/Europe power plug. Then off on Tube to
Knightsbridge and then walked to Albert Hall to buy tickets for a Proms Concert
in August when we are back in London. Tried earlier in day to buy “last minute tickets”
for ”War Horse” or “Singing in the Rain” but nothing less than 42 GBP so passed
on that.
Interesting on way to
Albert Hall to pass the Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate that I remembered as
the scene of a major hostage siege in 1980. Read about it on Wikipaedia when we
got back.
Wandered our way home again dodging the showers via St
Pancras to check out left luggage facilities for when we go to Paris with Caro
and Emily, and Holborn to check out access for us with all our gear on way to
Heathrow to pick up car on Sunday.
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