As Ed McMahon used to say to Johnny Carson playing Carnac, "This is the last envelope," or in this case, the last wordy blog entry! (Big cheer from crowd!)
Friday, May 13, 2011 - Friday The Thirteenth did not offer any surprises and, in fact, it was quite a stellar day in London, England!
We had heard about how pleasant it is to walk along the south side of the Thames River, near the "London Eye" Ferris wheel and all the new waterfront sights nearby. We walked from our hotel down many streets to the Thames, and crossed over the Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridge toward the enormous Ferris wheel that has become a new landmark of London.
It's quite a structure... but also quite a line to ride it! Unlike a regular Ferris wheel, it rotates very slowly, allowing people to exit and enter the large gondola pods during the ride. Each glass pod looked like it could hold 20 people or more, and it's always packed. Takes a half hour for the full revolution, plus the wait in the cue. We passed and decided to move on to our second planned stop: The Tate Modern Museum.
The Tate is an amazing restoration of a former electrical power station made into a huge art exhibit space. Amazingly, admission is free, except for an additional charge for special touring exhibits, like the Miro show that was here for our visit. We were quite hungry when we got to the Tate after a three-mile walk from the hotel. So we had lunch at the Tate's very classy Cafe, enjoying some very interesting Bulgarian Pinot Noir and nicely prepared English lunch dishes, including snacks of olives and spiced mixed nuts.
After lunch we explored some of the Tate, and then headed back to prep for our big last evening in Europe.
Months before I had scoped out London West End theatre offerings. I had read about a show with pretty decent reviews, "Dirty Dancing," a Broadway-style musical version of the popular movie. So I secured very nice second-row center mezzanine seats for us some time ago. This show has an unusual play schedule: They do two shows on Fridays.... one at 5 pm another at 8:30pm. We had tickets to the 5 pm performance, a time I thought was great, giving us an opportunity for a non-rushed dinner after the show. The 5pm show is very much a cocktail event in the lovely Victorian theatre lobby. You can even bring your drinks on into the theatre in plastic containers to enjoy during the performance.
We loved "Dirty Dancing!" It was better than we expected and very entertaining. The music was a mash-up of recorded original song tracks from the early sixties, augmented with some brass musicians, a drummer and a bass--all of whom were hidden for most of the performance. The actors were all unknown to us, but were fabulous dancers. The only problem we had was that the lead actor/dancer looked so much like a young Dana Carvey it was freaky! We kept waiting for him to breakout into a "Church Lady" routine! He had an amazing buff, six-pack dancer’s body, but his haircut and face looked exactly like Dana! Even his voice was similar. This theatre, the Aldywich, didn't give out "Playbills," so we don't know the name of this Carvey look-a-like, but it was just a bit distracting.
But once we got past that, the show moved sprightly and provided a great afternoon of fun. I think I read that it might be heading to Broadway, because it has done quite well here in London.
Since the show was 2.5 hours, we had to make a pretty quick dash to our dining destination, Corrigan's of Mayfair, for our 8:30 reservation. I had read about Terrance Corrigan's Mayfair restaurant online, it being on several "Top Restaurants" lists for London. And he did not disappoint!
It's a classy and modern space on the ground floor of a typical Mayfair row building. After our mad dash in a cab, we actually got to the restaurant early, and were politely given the choice of being seated at our table, or having a drink at the bar. We opted for a bit of time at the attractive bar. Ronna had a glass of oaky French chardonnay, and I had a wonderful Lebanese Rose. We then moved on to our table.
For some time, I've been doing this thing on OpenTable.com that has been quite effective: When I make a reservation and it's just Ronna and me, I type in the box for special instructions: "A table for two not facing a wall, please." I hate being seated at a deuce table with one seat facing a wall... and this approach has helped a lot.
Corrigan's took my online request and gave us the best corner table for two in the restaurant! Even though the place was packed when we moved to our table, the corner spot with both seats facing out to the main dining room at a 90-degree angle was held vacant and ours! A fabulous beginning to a fabulous meal!
Corrigan is an Irish celebrity chef driven to re-invent boring English cuisine. He has really done it! I began with a starter of crispy fried whole egg with asparagus and leaks. You cut through the perfectly cooked egg, as the moist yolk provided a sauce for the vegetable and the crust a wonderful counterpoint. Ronna had an amazing Cornish crab salad--a martini glass filled with tasty fresh seafood with hand crafted melba toasts served on the side in a traditional toast rack.
Next came a butter-poached chicken breast with leeks for Ronna. I had an astonishingly-good braised rabbit roll, with red cabbage, onion and bacon cubes. Fab! We shared a wonderful over-the-top lemon concoction of pie, meringue, curdled lemon cream and mint. This was truly one of the best meals we've had anywhere... with expert service, in a gorgeous space. And it was no more expensive than a nice dinner in San Francisco. What a way to end our Anniversary Europe Adventure!
We walked back to the May Fair through Berkeley Square and Arden Street, only to discover that the large, street-front bar area of our hotel turns into a wild and crazy disco nightclub/casino late at night! There were lines of young-things waiting to enter, and plenty of gorgeous eye-candy of any persuasion you could imagine on the scene. Plus the prerequisite wealthy men and man-about-town wannabees. The thumping beat of the disco sound was like a magnet for me... but Ronna reined me in, reminding me we had to awake at 6:30 am for our flight to SFO. So much for my London disco fantasy! But she was clearly right! Between the on-site casino and what Ronna figured were hookers, I would have lost a fortune! And, years ago in London, we had already been there, done that.
Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 6:30am arrived early! But we had pre-ordered coffee and light breakfast for this appointed hour and it arrived on cue. When we had the problems with our "Message Waiting" light telephone the manager of the May Fair gave us complimentary breakfast as a consideration. So this worked out great.
At 8:30am we were in a cab headed to Heathrow to catch our 11:30am flight from London to San Francisco. Heathrow is the biggest airport in the world, and British Airway's Terminal 5 alone is larger than 75% of the airports in the US. There sure seem to be a lot of people who fly "Business Class!" Our line to drop off our baggage was just as lengthy as Economy class. But we were soon in the very large BA Club World Business Class lounge, clearly separate from the over-the-top First Class lounge which is a whole separate floor at Heathrow. We had plenty of time to get ready for our boarding, with lots of free food and drink. I love the cool Euro coffee machines that instantly make Cappuccino or Lattes on-the-fly from whole beans. So easy!
But being the biggest airport in the world has mixed blessings. The Club World host said our flight to San Francisco from Gate A10 was to be a "Coaching Departure." That meant you get on another dumb bus and drive to the airplane. You would think the world's biggest airport could have regular boarding jetways for their flights, especially the 400+ passenger 747s... but no, we drove for a good 15 minutes, under runways, over many tarmacs, thru other terminals and eventually reached our Boeing 747-400 airplane. We schlepped our carry-on stuff up the rickety steps of the old-fashioned outdoor stairway. Where were we, Burbank Airport? Ridiculous in my mind!
But I guess we shouldn't bitch too much. We were, after all, able to use our American Airlines AAdvantage points to fly Business Class to Europe and back, so we have to be grateful. But that's no excuse for lousy planning or plain stupidity at Heathrow. Build more jetway gates!
As I'm writing this, we are enjoying very nice service in the upper deck level of this amazing large airplane. Two capable Indian-English flight attendants are doing a fine job keeping me lubricated with plenty of Scotch to write this final chapter.
The flight is scheduled for 10 hours and 10 minutes, and we'll be happy to be home. But, this was one of our best European trips and definitely will be remembered!
I write this blog because I enjoy it and hope that a few other friends and acquaintances will find it interesting. But I also write it for us. Ronna and I used to keep a little notebook labeled "Travel Journal" when we were first married. I even glued in the wrapping of a really good pat of French butter I had once into the notebook! But I haven't made diary records or notes of our travels very much since--until the time of the Internet and blogs! Now I relish putting down in words our daily adventures. So some day, when I can't remember my name, I might be able to access all these musings and fondly remember how fortunate I've been to live such an incredible life with such a wonderful partner.
Until next time....
Warmest Regards,
--Bill and Ronna
Reading that last paragraph made both Wes and I teary. Very sweet and we loved reading it, too!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Briar