Cheese, Beautiful Cheese

All the guide books say you must visit Neal's Yard Dairy. I couldn't agree more. Neal's yard is little more than a small lane painted up  in colors that are guaranteed to cheer. Lots of art and lots of organic.


But the real reason to go is the Diary...the cheese. It's a small shop with three very congenial cheesemongers. Just being waited on is an education in the science of cheese, the samples come fast and generous. They have nothing but artisanal cheese and some is made at the dairy itself. Prices range from £4.95 to £47.95.  The place just reeks of cheese...for the first three minutes and then you cease to notice. Just take a good look...

We took home a Brie and a Cheddar, we bought a package of crackers and an apple at the mini Tesco across the street, and we ate in.

It's all about the food

It's all about the food in London's Chinatown. In an area that is only about two blocks square, there is one club left over from Soho's glorious 1950's (David Bowie sang here), one betting shop...and the rest is food - restaurants, take-aways, and markets. Everyone is either on their way to eat, have just eaten, or are walking down the street eating. The restaurants may be a bit brisk in their efforts to get you in and then out again, but many of them are only big enough for six to eight tables and you must get that tourist dollar while you can.  If our experience at The Golden Pagoda was any example, there is a lot of good food to be had.

A Lovely Story

In a football* league filled with spoiled and overpaid athletes, managers with more than a few screws loose, and ego-maniacal owners from almost anywhere but Great Britain, the Premier League occasionally produces a lovely story. There is one to be found in the aforementioned FA Cup Cinderella story where lowly Wigan schooled a team loaded with all the above-mentioned attributes.

Dave Whelan was a young fullback in the 1960 FA Cup final at the old Wembley Stadium between Blackburn Rovers and Wolverhampton. He was taken off on a stretcher after breaking his leg just before the half. From his hospital bed he learned that the Rovers had lost 3 - 0. He wept. His dreams of someday going on to play for England were shattered and he was never the same player again.

The end of his career in football was not long in coming and he went on to make a fortune in the retail business. He bought Wigan for L400,000 when they were in the fourth tier. Under his ownership a new stadium was built and the team rose to the Premiership. For the last three years they have struggled to remain up. They are, in the scheme of things, a small club with limited funds and it is likely they will be relegated this year.

On Saturday, Dave Whelan finally got back to Wembley. And when the game was over, he finally held the storied FA Cup in his hands. Virtually everybody in the sport, including a few supporters of the vanquished Manchester City Club, were thrilled to death for him. It appears he is a genuinely nice man.

                                       

A longer, more detailed version of this story can be found here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22466795

* This is the last time you will be reminded that when I say football, I mean soccer. When in Rome....

Problem Solved

In honor of Mother's Day, my darling daughter found an electronics shop open and hoofed it down there while I lazed in front of our local Starbucks watching the Thames roll by. So I'll share just a few with you right now - it's late and we just got back from the neighboring pub where I discovered two things:
   1) All Englishmen are NOT good at darts.
   2) There are some, not sure how many yet, but some nice Manchester United fans.



The view from our room at the Strand Palace Hotel

The view from our Starbucks to the Thames

 

Cecil Court AKA Diazon Alley

Our first Full English

Our first Full English (breakfast) was at three in the afternoon at a chain restaurant just down the street. Tomorrow we will have one at Simpson's on the Strand - historic & pricey. Stay tuned.

Mixed blessings

One always hopes that holidays will be filled with fun and adventure, new experiences, new friends and a wealth of photo ops. I can honestly say that today had all those things and I look forward to sharing many of them. Today also had a personally horrifying accident, a mortifying incident, rain, another mortifying incident, a camera issue, an enormous disappointment, and some pain. I do NOT intend to share any of these - don't ask. At some point, in a couple of months, I will find it all very amusing, then we'll talk about it.

Although the camera issue will prevent me from posting any photos today or tomorrow (everything but restaurants are closed on Sundays), it is fixable and recoverable.

We had sunshine this morning and after a good solid night's sleep we got an early start. We were at the nearby Starbuck's five minutes before it opened and sat out front in the sunshine gazing one short block to the Thames. It was one of those moments where I turn to my daughter with an enormous grin and say "We're in London. That's the Thames. I am one happy camper." We had a nice chat with a Englishman who lives in New York, and got to know a lovely barrista named Megan. We will be seeing quite a bit more of her I suspect.

Our first stop of the day was Cecil Court, a small pedestrian alley off the infamous Charing Cross Road loaded with old bookstores and other ephemera and print shops. The storefronts were all Victorian and there was a blue plaque indicating that the 8 yr old Mozart had lived there in 1764. It is also believed to be the inspiration for Harry Potter's Diazon Alley. It was heaven for this book-lover. In particular, the Children's book shop that specialized in first editions and noted illustrators made a strong attempt on my spending money. Since any one of the books would have effectively demolished my spending money, I was able to resist. The antique shop was just chock full of wonderful small and very expensive items. I did find a lovely small handpainted enamel of the Tower Bridge which I couldn't resist. It will go in my guest bathroom. Why, you ask, would I want to put something like that in my bathroom?

This should answer that question

We moved on to Leicester Square expecting to spend a good hour sitting there soaking up the ambiance and taking pictures of the new Charlie Chaplin/Little Tramp statue and the big Shakespeare statue in the center of the square. What we found was the staging area for a parade celebrating the 2557th anniversary of Buddha. We happily followed the parade into Chinatown (in the middle of London's Soho area) which is where we were heading anyway. The best part of the rather uninspiring parade was the two dozen adorable little Asian girls in their best dresses carrying small spring bouquets and the one adorable little blonde.

London's Chinatown is neither old nor very big. What it is, is full of restaurants. Every variant of Asian cooking is to be found there and we found one that served some terrific dim sum.

Our day ended with the FA Cup game. I won't bore those of you who are not remotely interested in football (that's soccer to you back home) with any details except to say the game is the culmination of countless games between teams at many levels. I am delighted to say that the underdog, the team with a small budget, relatively unknown players, a good guy owner, and a popular manager - a team teetering on the brink of relegation - thrilled us all in the 90th minute and made football history by vanquishing a team currently in second place in the top league with a virtually unlimited budget, world renowned and extremely well paid players, and a coach with a short fuse. It was brilliant!

As we were leaving Chinatown we passed a betting shop showing Wigan at 15 - 2 odds. We joked about placing a bet on Wigan, just for the fun of it, knowing we would be throwing our money away.  It would have been a very good idea.

Location, Location, Location

A universal truth – whether or not you are talking about real estate or the distance from the location where you exit your Heathrow flight to where you board the London Express train that takes you to Paddington station. Let’s just say it is a pretty long walk, which is another way of saying that pretty much every muscle and joint from my hips down are feeling the pain this morning.

On the other hand…I am looking out my hotel window at 5 in the morning and I see a blue neon light reading “Savoy Theatre” above a Union Jack sign reading “Let it Be…Beatlemania returns.” Next to it is the grand entrance to the Savoy Hotel – stuff of legend, a near replica of the image on one of my postcard from the 50’s. Even the taxi’s look almost the same. The guest list looks something like this: George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Noël Coward. Edward VII, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Truman, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Babe Ruth, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and the The Beatles.

Above the hotel I see blue sky and I know that if I were to pass through that famous entrance and walk out the other side, I would be looking at the Thames.

In about an hour, I will step out the entrance of my distinctly less luxurious hotel (yes, I could clearly hear my next door neighbor snoring through the paper-thin walls last night) and I will be standing on The Strand.

Well worth the walk.

Timing is Everything

My Mom had a rule for unacceptable conversation at the dinner table known as 'The Four D's' -  dirt, disease, death, and dentistry. It was not a joke, and in truth it pretty well eliminated distasteful topics. Well this entry is going to address two of them, disease and dentistry. But don't worry if you happen to be munching on something at the moment, there will be no details...

I have a collection of photos taken on previous trips to England that highlight the numbers 1 through 30. They are sent as daily emails marking the countdown to someone's upcoming trip to Old Blighty, so I began sending them on the 9th of April to my daughter and son-in-law in anticipation of our next big adventure. These daily missives are meant to be reminders that you need to be finishing up your itinerary, buying a few new outfits, getting your nails done, and doing all the fun little things you must do before you head to the airport.



Somewhere in London

When this one went out I was incapacitated with my first ever attack of sciatica - which made walking extremely painful.




Entrance to Winchester Cathedral Close

When this one was sent I was sitting in the dentist chair with a painful toothache of mysterious causes.




Tintagel in Cornwall

This one marked the day we started fitting my new upper partial plate - a process fraught with trial & error pain. You guessed it, my old one broke.




Jane Austen's last house in Winchester

This one went out today. After a three vicodin night, I'm on my way to the oral surgeon to see if he will pull the bad tooth this close to a flight. If not, I don't even know what my options might be...but none of them will be good. (I could have saved  lot of gas money if I had just pitched a tent in my dentist's parking lot)




Market Day in the Cotswolds

I can only pray I will be walking and chewing by the time this one goes out.





Canal Boat

Yes, timing is everything. No denying it, my timing on the lead-up to this trip has been dreadful, but when this one goes out - come hell or high water - I will heading to the airport.  I hope it will be with pretty toenails, a new haircut, a suitcase full of new clothes, and a detailed itinerary...but if not, I have a bottle of vicodin and a cane.