London - Day 3

Saturday, 3 September 2011

 

A trip to London could not be complete without visiting Portobello markets in Notting Hill.  (Well, according to Sarah anyway).

 

Today was great weather, as it was during our whole time in London.  Catching the end of the mild English summer, we set out to explore the markets.  Jason had a coffee as soon as he could find a café to help him keep up with Sarah.  Actually, that was not a difficult feat given the volume of people traffic.  It took us two and a half hours to walk the distance of three blocks.

 

Before we got to the main market area, we saw a house with a plaque on it.  It was the home of the famous author and political essayist, George Orwell.

 

 

 

The markets were dense with crowds, and the stalls seemed an endless showcase of fashion, food, homewares, jewellery, and LOTS of antiques.  Most of it was girly and uninteresting to Jason, but being the good husband he is, he waited patiently for Sarah as she stopped at several stalls and shops.

 

 

 

 

But one place did catch our mutual interest, and that was the famous Hummingbird Bakery.  We bought an expensive cupcake to share, and as girly as it looked, Jason had no problem gobbling up his half.

 

 

 

 

 

We kept moving along at 0.2 kilometres per hour and realised it was lunch time.  Around the corner, we opted for an Italian restaurant where we had THE BEST antipasto platter ever.

 

 

 

We then caught the tube to the London bridge to check out the “London bridge experience and London tombs”.  Due to our lack of research, we actually thought it was a serious historical tour, but instead found ourselves in a kind of ghost train which was more of a ghost walk.  It started with ghoulish actors playing historical characters and sharing some historical anecdotes.  They were funny but we found it more gimmicky than informative.

Here are a few things we did learn...

• In the 1000's, the Vikings sailed down the Thames River and fought the Danes who had taken over.
• In the 1800's, the Thames River was polluted with rich people's excrement, corpses, chemicals and dead fish.

  Those actors then doubled as the various zombies/monsters/screaming people during a ghost walk that went for about 10 minutes.

  
  

  After that underwhelming experience, we headed to Westminster Abbey to catch the 5pm Evensong. 

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  We were not supposed to take photos of this, but Jason pretended to be ignorant of the various signs indicating this after the service had finished and had to be approached by one of the clergy.  Here are some of these illicit photos…

  
  

  

  
  

  

   

  Jason found the statue of Frederick Bonhoeffer rather interesting, as he is currently reading the New York bestselling biography…

  
  

  

   

  Some other landmarks we saw that day were the Big Ben…

  
  

  

   

  …and these statues near Piccadilly Circus…

  
  

  

   

  We walked around Soho for awhile and stopped for dinner at a French restaurant which was in a street lined with asian restaurants.  We did some more people watching over seafood.