(Wednesday, Sept. 30) With one last day to spent in London, we pondered our choices: Go to Windsor to see the Queen (who is probably hanging out in Buckingham Palace)?; visit the Tate Modern, one of many art galleries we failed to get to during past stays?; go to a matinee performance of a Broadway musical? Too many choices, too little time.
Being devout disciples of Rich Steves, and knowing that we’d be sitting on a plane for 10-11 hours tomorrow, we opted to do his “Oxford Circus to Piccadilly Walk” since we’d not spent any time in that part of the city before. We would end up finding Gesus (pronounced “Jesus”) who would liberate us (unfortunately not from our sins of gluttony committed over the last month) from shopping boredom and show us the way (to getting a good Chinese lunch at a reasonable price).
After leaving our hotel around 10 am, we walked the two-three blocks to the Marble Arch Tube station and rode east on the Central Line two stops to Oxford Circus. (There is no circus there unless you count the menagerie of people, buses, taxis, and road workers tearing up the street). I turned on the “Location Services” of my (sometimes) trusty iPhone in order to use its Compass feature to orientate us, but interference coming from someplace (probably all of the steel in the cars and buses on Oxford and Regent Streets), caused it to spin aimlessly. With no sun in the sky, we couldn’t easily get our bearings, and set off in the wrong direction, then asked if we were headed toward Piccadilly (“Sorry, go back the way you came”).
One of the first stops on Rick Steves’ walking tour is the Liberty store, started in 1875 by a Mr. Liberty and still going strong. The store was rebuilt in the 1920’s in the half-timbered Tudor Revival style popular at that time. Remnants of two British warships from the Age of Sail were used in the construction. It was here that we met the charming Gesus, Concierge of the Liberty store. Cindy had been admiring scarves on the first floor when he approached us to see if we had any questions. We spent the better part of an hour chatting with him about our travels and his in Europe, the history of the store (he gave us a three-page handout on that topic), how Liberty compares with the better known stores such as Selfridge’s (“hot stuff” for the “younger set”) and Harrod’s (way high-end), and the current collaboration between Hermes (the French fashion house) and Liberty to create a collection of special scarves, several of which had been made into a fabric “chandelier” which hung in the store’s central section. After initially wishing us a pleasant day, he decided to take us on a tour of the store. He showed us a bolt of cloth similar to the material used to make the Hermes scarves, took us through the Christmas Shop which just opened about a week ago, and tried to show us the former office of Mr. Liberty which is now Asused for special events (and was unfortunately booked for today).
We roamed around the Liberty store for a while longer, than set out to find “Cha Cha Moon”, the restaurant he had recommended. We thought it was just down Carnaby Street, asked (and were given incorrect) directions from two other people, then stumbled upon it ourselves. Inside were long wooden tables and an open kitchen were a half-dozen worked away in a kitchen open at the front to the dining room.
After lunch we continued our walk toward Piccadilly where we browsed the selection in Waterstone’s, Europe’s largest bookstore, caught the tail end of a fantastic free lunchtime piano recital at St. James Church, had tea and cake at Fortnum and Mason and browsed their famous selections of food and wine gift baskets (sorry, we would have brought back the “Windsor Basket” of goodies to share with you --- what’s 1,000 Pounds Sterling among friends --- but it was marked “Not Suitable for Export”).
After considering a final window shopping foray at Harrod’s, two stops on the Tube away from where we were, and five stops and two line changes to get back to our hotel during the rush hour madness in the Underground, we decided to end our last day in London this trip in the same way as we ended our first day in London on our first visit three years ago: We took a walk through Hyde Park.
Since it was 4:30 pm, the bike was alive with bicyclists (although far, far few than we encountered at any time of day in Amsterdam), a few joggers, and a fair number of walkers. As we neared our hotel, we checked out the pub around the corner (drinkers spilling out on to the sidewalk), the fishmongery and restaurant in the same block (half the restaurant was set up for a big party), considered going out for Indian food, and finally decided to just “do Italian” again tonight at the same restaurant where we’d eaten last night.
