A big motivation for this trip was to experience a classic English Christmas, thereby checking off several things on Lisa’s To Do list. (Which is like a Bucket List, but without the drama.) Accordingly, we needed to see a panto, eat goose, pop a cracker, and enjoy a just-flamed pudding.

We had a bit of an adventure getting to the Greenwich Theatre for our panto — we took the DLR! This is a kind of a train that goes from various places in central London out to . . . the suburbs? (Kind of. Sort of.) a bus based on a map that showed us getting out at a park, crossing it, and being only a couple of blocks from where we needed to go. No problem with the bus, off we popped, alighting at Island Gardens, right on the Thames. Lovely place. Really. But on the opposite bank of the river from Greenwich.

Our hearts sank. Had google been day drinking that early? Look for a bridge. Nope. Look for a boat or taxi service. Not there. Then we spot a metal-topped round building and go have a look. Hooray! It’s the Greenwich Foot Tunnel! Sure enough, that was the walkway our map indicated.

This very long tunnel is not for the weak of knee — there are hundreds of stairs and although there are elevators at each end, it’s not guaranteed they both will be in operation. (We, for example, had to walk down the stairs, but were able to take the elevator up on the other side.) Annoyingly, lots of people abandoned their rented scooters on the stairs. It was, nonetheless, kind of awesome.

Having a bit of time to kill, we wandered Greenwich, home of the famous “Mean Time.” Paraphrasing from Wikipedia: As the United Kingdom developed into an advanced maritime nation, British mariners kept at least one chronometer on GMT to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have longitude zero degrees. While synchronization of the chronometer on GMT did not affect shipboard time, which was still solar time, this practice led to GMT being used worldwide as a standard time independent of location. However, the daily rotation of the Earth is irregular and has a slowing trend; therefore atomic clocks constitute a much more stable timebase. On 1 January 1972, GMT as the international civil time standard was superseded by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), maintained by an ensemble of atomic clocks around the world. The Shepherd Gate Clock (below) at the gates of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich is permanently kept on Greenwich Mean Time.

That was interesting, but we were actually there to see the Monument for a Dead Parrot. Located on the grounds of student housing, this sculpture is pure silliness. Not much is known about it except that it is the work of Jon Reardon and was installed in 2009. The bird is a Yellow Crested Cockatoo, which is in the Parrot family. Presumably, the monument refers to the famous Monty Python sketch, but that is not confirmed.

We booked Dick Whittington and His Cat for our panto (link goes to a proper review). The tale itself — intrepid country boy makes his way to London and rises to fame — was fun, and we felt we could let our inner children out to play for a few hours. It was glorious! The children booed the Rat King, ate ice cream at intermission, and tidily deposited their detritus in proper receptacles. The panto itself was a rock n roll time-traveling adventure full of laughter and bright colors. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Smashing!

(A note about pantos, formally called pantomimes: nowadays they are almost entirely children’s shows and based on children’s stories, like Peter Pan. But their roots go back to the 18th century and the commedia dell’arte, the Italian tradition of improvisational theater. The stories of the commedia dell’arte had many stock characters in them such as clowns and jesters and always had a villain. Traditional plots were woven into fairy stories and folk tales, then gradually evolved into the dozen or so familiar stories of the panto repertoire that are still used today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pantos changed to accommodate the popularity of music-hall entertainers, adding more comedy and music.) 

We enjoyed a late lunch at Davy’s Wine Vaults, which we highly recommend. They were cool about allowing us to order in waves — appetizers, then mains — which was great because we had a good chunk of time to fill. . .

Before meeting right by the London Eye to go on a bus tour of the Holiday Lights. Apparently London has been doing Christmas lights since 1954, although they switched to re-usable (low energy) LED lights several years ago. Angels soared above assemble above Regent Street, contemporary installations lit up King’s Cross and Coal Drops Yard, and iconic Chanel perfume images floated above Bond Street. It was fun, although the level of traffic — foot and vehicular — made for slow going. We don’t think we’d do it again, although walking might be fun.

One of the habits we’ve been trying to break is our tendency to go to our old favorites, revisiting favorite places throughout the world rather than branching out and trying new delights. In 2024 we made it to two countries we’d never been to before (Austria and the Netherlands) and poked around in bits of Portugal that we hadn’t been to, in particular the Alentejo region. That being said, we absolutely do have favorites that, for one reason or another, keep calling to us. This past summer, we spent a couple of weeks in London house-sitting for friends of friends, and since we’ve been to London before we named that series of blog posts “London 2024” to differentiate it from other trips to London. Surely that would be enough to tell them apart, right?

Right?

Turns out, nope. John had been seeing notices and rave reviews for an exhibition at the National Gallery that was bringing together works by Vincent Van Gogh from all over the world in what was being touted as a “once in a generation” event. Turns out those words are catnip for ole John boy; see Exhibit A, our detour to Florence for a similarly-described display of the works of Donatello. Still, we’d been to London plenty already, and tickets were going to be tricky to get for such a popular event, so it just sort of sat in the back of his mind, lurking for just the right moment to pounce.

Cut to an idle conversation with our friends Susan; the exhibition came up as a bit of trivia, not an invitation. Susan, however, thought it sounded mighty fine, and you may recall that Susan has already joined us for a theater-crawl through the West End once this year. That one little snowflake kicked off an avalanche of planning that had us putting together a holiday hop to London for Christmas time. Eep! Let’s be honest, though, it was hardly a hard sell to get us on that plane; London is an easy town to have a good time in.

And so, dark and early on the 22nd we hitched a ride with Susan to good ole Oh Pee Oh (OPO, or Porto Airport if you prefer) for a morning Ryanair flight that had us in London by noon, even accounting for the commuter train in from the airport. We checked into our usual haunt, the Hyatt Place London City East, which we just think of us the Hyatt in Whitechapel. We don’t own stock or anything, but we probably should; it’s not “the best” at anything but hits our sweet spot for price, convenience, and reasonable amenities. With just a little more time than it took to drop our bags we hopped back on to the Underground and made for the West End, thence to take in our first show, Hadestown.

Funny thing is, Lisa was excited to see this. If Lisa was told to list 20 facts about herself on a sheet of paper, “doesn’t like musicals” would probably make the cut; it’s just a thing thought of as “true” for her. And yet, she will also readily admit that the list of exceptions is slowly but steadily growing on her, to the point that her and musicals is kind of like John and drinking: it used to be an easy “nuh-unh” but now is more of a “well, maybe a little” kind of thing. Anyway, when the three of us were talking about possibilities and we described Hadestown in the broadest possible way (“Orpheus and Eurydice, with kind of a rock/bluesy music vibe” she instantly said it sounded interesting to her. And so we went. And so we loved it. All of us, absolutely had a ball with it. It turned out John hadn’t even described the music all that well but it didn’t matter. The performances, the music, the way they told a 3000 year old story in a fresh way, it all just worked. None of us had ever heard much about Hadestown until maybe a year or so ago, but (setting aside its 2010 pre-history in the summer stock-bestrewn hills of Vermont) it’s been in production on Broadway and the West End since 2019. Go fig. In any case, it was an easy “thumbs up” from all three of us, if you’re looking for a recommendation.

After the play we were getting tired, but fortunately Lisa had found a tip for a restaurant just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel, so we had a bite at Amber Restaurant and called it a night. We had another full day waiting for us on the morrow.

Amber was a delight! A super quick walk from our hotel (and therefore the Aldgate East station), its tucked in behind a new apartment building, past the Escape Room place with axe throwing and neon -infused indoor golf. The space is modern and welcoming, with a focus on sustainable woods and lighting that invites conversation.

The menu focuses on Mediterranean in the broadest sense, with almost everything made on the premises. Plates come in small and large, and guests are encouraged to share with one another, which we were happy to do. We tried the breadbasket (pita, sourdough. and challah), hummus gnocchi (in a sage butter sauce), kofte (bulghur and lentil, rolled in baby gem lettuce), lamb meatballs (served with labneh, burnt aubergine, sumac onions, and pickled peppers), smoked potatoes, and grilled chicken (marinaded in preserved lemons and herbs, serves with crispy onions, aleppo and zough). They offer mocktails, a seasonal rotation of wine and beer, and the usual other drinks.

The bread was fantastic, fresh and tasty. We loved the hummus gnocchi, smoked potatoes, and grilled chicken. The kofte was cold and we found it unappetizing. The lamb meatballs would be worth offering again and we wish we’d had room to try the Torched Seabream. We will definitely be going here on future trips to London!

We’re wrapping up tales of our trip to London. It turns out that we ate at interesting places more than we did just about anything else (… whoops?) so as we round third and head for home what we have to share are a collection of mini reviews for some of the places we ate while we were there. For example:

Beck’s Cafe is the kind of place we all want in our neighborhood. Good service, better food, large portions, and reasonable prices. What drew us was the promise of pancakes, and what they call jacket potatoes — Russets or baking in the U.S. J.’s breakfast was a classic: 2 hotcakes, 2 eggs, scrambled, with sausage patties and orange juice. He was in heaven. I went a different rout and ordered the jacket potato with sauteed mushrooms, onions, spinach, and cheese.

Something like this:

Yeah baby.

It was easily the biggest potato I’ve seen in my life, and covered with the veg. Perfect. I only ate half, and enjoyed the rest for lunch the next day. Add in a couple of fresh-squeezed orange juices, a latte for me, and the 15% service charge . . . the bill was a bit over US$50.

28 Red Lion St, London, United Kingdom

Cocoro Japanese Restaurant has several locations, we got delivery from the one in Marleybone. Cocoro was a nice change of pace for us in several ways. First, we hadn’t had any in the weeks we’d been in London already, second, the Japanese served at home focuses on sushi, a few commonly known appetizers (like gyoza), and sometimes with bits of other Asian cuisines thrown in. Teriyaki, yakitori, or katsu are unknown.

So, we went to town!

Chicken katsu, salmon teriyaki, miso soup, vegetable and prawn tempura, and gyoza all were ordered and consumed with great enjoyment. Total bill $55.

25 Coptic Street London WC1A 1NT

Recommend to us by our hosts as the best fish & chips in town, North Sea Fish Restaurant is just at the edge of our neighborhood, a very pleasant walk.

They are super busy, seemingly all day. Certainly we arrived a bit after their opening at 5pm and had to wait to be seated (although maybe it was more about a change of shifts, they seemed very low on staff). We were given menus . . . and then waited. No water. No order taking. Just a very long wait (about 15 mins). On the bright side, we knew exactly what we wanted when the waiter returned. We felt intimidated about asking questions, however, and I particularly felt rushed into choosing an item. Food didn’t take too long to get to us after that.

But it was oddly bland. Huge portion sizes — seriously large pieces of batter fried fish with large sides of chips (fries). But the fries were a lot more interesting than the fish, which at least didn’t tast fishy, just bland. Their onion rings were great. Fries are unlimited (the waiter made a big deal about that), so that’s great if you want to go to town on fries? With a glass of wine and soda, this was about $50.

Apparently they have a take out shop next door, and people say that’s the best place to go. Same food, fresh made, and half the price.

7/8 Leigh Street
London
WC1H 9EW

This post covers three places we really enjoyed, two a bit upscale and one that would easily be a “joint.”

Nostimo Mediterranean Gastronomy is a fancily named place that breaks two of my dining rules, normally a major warning sign, but the delicious food makes it so very worth it. We found it simply because it’s just down a bit from our grocery store and we were hungry. (The two broken rules were that there was a guy outside offering to set us at a table, and the menu had pictures of the food, not just text. I really wanted to leave, but . . . .Did I mention we were hungry?) So, with a bit of trepidation, we ordered. We started with the Fried Feta Cheese with Honey and Spanakotiropita. Then J. had the Pork Gyros (platter) and I had the Mixed Pork-Chicken Gyro.

We first had the feta dish (feta me meli) in Crete back in 2019, but it’s one of the most popular dishes in Greece. The combination of salty feta wrapped in crunchy filo pastry, alongside the nutty tang of sesame seed and silky honey is just a match made in heaven. Probably everyone knows about the traditional Greek spinach pie, and done well its delicious, as this was.

But, oh my the meat was incredible. Tender, tender, TENDER!!! Gloriously seasoned, moist, and DEE-licious. The bread was perfect, and the tzatziki rich. The portions are huge, it was a ton of food and we had leftovers enough for easily another meal.

Service was fantastic, and prompt. Highly recommended!

Brasserie Zedel is a Parisian brasserie with an Art Deco interior in Piccadilly. The reviews were good, and the interior reminded us of Paris, so off we went! It’s a truly gorgeous place, with a Hollywood-worthy bar, love music on weekends, a classic Parisian cafe, and an adults-only cabaret.

We were glad we had reservations, the place was packed! A high number of tourists was a bit worrying, and I would say that the prices and quality reflected a population that moves through rather than highly local. (That is, it was solid all around, but not outstanding. Also, they have two prix fixe lunch offerings — two courses for £16.95 or and three for £19.75– that would have dropped the price a bit. ) We settled in, and Lisa noticed they offered a chateauneuf-du-pape, and the simple lunch became an occasion. (It’s a wine nearly impossible to find in Portugal, and her favorite celebration wine. (Thanks to the Ryans. Hi Ryans!) We took our time perusing the menu, reminiscing over meals we’d previously eaten in France, and then ordered.

We started with onion soup (served in a classic lion’s head tureen) and garlicky (tender!) escargots. John then had the Steak Haché, a brasserie classic served replete with sauce au poivre et pommes frites. The meat was tender, the sauce silky and vibrant with pepper, the frites thin, crisp on the outside, tender in the center, and just the right amount of salty. Lisa had the sole meunière, hoping to create a Julia Child-esque moment. However, it fell flat being left on the bone and just a bit overcooked.

If you are in the Piccadilly area and looking for French food, Brasserie Zedel is a decent option, especially if you stick with the prix fixe option.

Finally, we have to talk about the glorious Ognisko Restaurant in the Polish Hearth Club. This is another place we discovered in 2022, following the bread crumbs of a mention in a blog . . . Founded in 1939 to maintain the cohesion of the free Polish community in the United Kingdom during the Second World War, the Polish Hearth Club is now a vibrant hub of social and cultural life for the Polish community. (Side track, 2024 is the 80th Anniversary of the Allied victory of the battle of Monte Cassino by the soldiers from the Polish II Corps under Generał Władysław Anders. Many veterans could not return to Poland as a result of the Yalta agreement and found their new home in the British Isles, partly because of the strength of this Club. As part of this Anniversary, Ognisko Polskie has created a series of podcasts which include interviews with veterans, historians and excerpts of diaries of those that fought in the battle.)

If you like Polish food, you will love it here. We started with a Peach Salad that included Feta Cheese, flakes of almond, and a pomegranate and peach dressing and the Grilled Polish Sausage served with Potato Salad. The peaches were a little under-ripe, but the overall concept of the salad was excellent. The sausage was fantastic! Smoky, rich, and perfectly grilled, the potato salad was a cool, creamy counterpoint that deepened the flavor. We moved on to Pierogi, filled with duck and dried fig, and Pelmeni, which are small dumplings filled with meat. Both were tender pockets of dough with delicious fillings. To balance things out, we get the side dish of “green vegetables” which varies seasonally — this time is was a blend of green cabbage and green beans with fresh herbs. A blast of flavor on the tongue. (Of special note, they make their own vodka, which we saw happily consumed by other patrons.) For us, this was plenty of food, although we wished we had room to try the Kaczka Pieczona (Roast Duck with Kasza, served with Apple Compote and Red Cabbage, served either half for two or whole for four people) or the Blinis (with Smoked Salmon, although you could get them with Caviar or Marinated Herring). In our previous visit we’d tried the Hot Smoked Salmon Salad with Beetroot, Cheese Pierogies, and Kaszanka (Black Sausage with caramelized Apples and sauteed Onion).

Highly Recommended!

When we arrived in London our hosts (clients? friends? the people who own the house we’re staying in, roll with us here…) did a fantastic job of getting our feet wet, giving us a little tour of a great market street and leading us to some truly fine eats. We were feeling very comfortable in general – plus the house made it easy get cozy – but once they left we still had a little bit of anxiety. Sure we were staying for practically three weeks, but we’re still in London. The options for culture and food and… well, everything are effectively infinite. As in, not actually, but you’ll die before taking it all in so mise well be. Feeling borderline overwhelmed with possibilities we spent a fair amount of time reading reviews and looking at maps, before realizing that there was simply no way to be certain about any of the possibilities, so for dinner that first night we ended up “throwing a dart” – family colloquialism for closing our eyes and picking something on the map randomly. Fortunately, Lisa never totally closes her eyes, and she hit a bullseye at The Life Goddess.

We love Greek food. It took being in Greece and eating nothing but local cuisine for nearly three weeks before we finally said we needed to try something (anything) else. Sadly, where we live now has no Greek food (although there are a ton of similar options in the doner kebab shops, its just not the same). We usually just make it at home, but when we saw The Life Goddess was a short walk, nothing could keep us from trying it. We are so glad we did, it’s a treasure. We started with some of the best hummus and pita we’ve had since Greece. Then Lisa had the beef stew “giovetsi” (braised beef in orzo with cheese and a tomato sauce), and John had a charcoal grilled fish over creamy arborio rice. Portions were generous and — be warned! — they do not do take away. So, if you don’t eat it, you can’t take home the leftovers. (We might bring our own containers next time.) Another restaurant we are looking forward to returning to again.

One of the things L. particularly likes to do when in the UK is have proper tea. Tea, as in high tea. Fancy serve ware displaying tiny sweet and savory morsels, accompanying hot tea, all to be consumed over a leisurely hour or three. This trip, we visited Dalloway Terrace, at the Bloomsbury Hotel. The Bloomsbury is a high-end hotel, but the tea is quite reasonable and makes a full meal. For 48pp you are served four types of sandwich: free range egg salad, roast beef with horseradish, cucumber and cream cheese, and harissa and apricot chicken. The classic sultana scone is joined by an Irish cheddar scone. The sweets layer was made up of an Earl Grey and blackberry dome cookie, lemon and poppy seed choux, pistachio and lemon Battenburg cake, peach melba tart, and a salted caramel madeleine. All of this is accompanied by unlimited tea or coffee. I’m not sure if this is true all the time, but we were offered more sandwiches and a takeaway carton for the sweets we couldn’t consume. In Lisa’s opinion, this was the best tea she’s had in all of her visits.

With our friend, S., we ventured out on a drizzly afternoon to a pub for what we think is the best beef wellington in London. I know, that seems outrageous in a city with (quickly checks) FIFTEEN Gordan Ramsey restaurants (about half of which serve this, his signature, dish). But the last time we were in London (in 2022), Lisa had a craving for it, but just couldn’t swallow spending £80 per person (easily) when she wasn’t sure she’d like it. So she dug around and found The Hemingway Pub.

Once again, this stripped down pub produced a superbly tender, richly flavored, and perfectly cooked filet of beef, wrapped in ham, slathered in mushroom pate, then covered with a flaky pastry crust. So many things can go wrong! Ah, but they didn’t. They don’t skimp on making this, so it’s a full 45 minutes from when you order before you eat, so be prepared to hang out. We shared some crispy pork belly steam buns and the courgette and Halloumi cake with a couple of ciders as we waited. (The menu changes frequently, with dishes reflecting the seasons.) Then the star arrived.

I gotta say,it tasted even better than it looks. Served with sauteed vegetables, hand cut chips, and a red wine jus, this remains one of the better steak moments we’ve ever had. Oh, and it’s £40 for the dish, which easily fed three people.

One of the big draws for us in any major (English-speaking) city is the theater scene. We’re both suckers for a good play, albeit some of us more than others. Lisa likes to get out a couple of times on any trip, while John will happily take on an IV drip to park his butt in aisle seats, dawn to dusk. It’s never really a crisis, what with the lengths of trips requiring some discernment, but between the time available to us and the offerings in London’s vaunted theater scene, trouble might indeed have brewed. Fortunately for us, we had a wild card up our sleeve: Susan!

“Susan,” you ask? Why yes, Susan! A dear friend of ours in Braga, Susan (hi, Susan!) (ok, I’ll probably stop saying “Susan” so much now…) has only been to London a few times but she has fallen, hard, for the West End and all of its treasures. Turns out, she had already booked a guided tour into parts of England, and it was easy peasey for her to amend her itinerary to begin with a few days in London to meet up with us. In fact, our hosts were gracious enough to let her bunk in the guest room since we’d ensconced ourselves in the main bedroom once they were gone. Win! The upshot was that Lisa could take in the plays she wanted to, and John could link arms with our friend (you know who) to fill in any gaps. “But couldn’t John have just gone by himself,” you ask? Sure, but if you don’t haveta, why whouldja?

The long weekend of theater debauchery began with “A View From the Bridge”, by Arthur Miller. A little weird for the Brits to invest so much in a thoroughly American play by a thoroughly American playwright, but they knocked it out of the park so who are we to judge? John had seen the play 20-ish years before, and… ok fine, Susan had never seen it, so they went in with keen anticipation. Only, about 5 minutes in when a pair of illicit Italian immigrants appeared on stage Susan whisper-exclaims to John “oh I have seen this!” Which of course led to a phenomenon wherein we now keep an eye out for sketchy Italians to tip us off that we’re in a repeat episode of something. But I digress… (drink!) The nice thing about well-produced theater is it doesn’t really matter if you know the story – otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a production of “Hamlet” in the last 300 years. The cast, led by Dominic West (aka McNulty from “The Wire”) was excellent and it is an excellent if maddeningly fatalistic play, so a good time… well, an entertained time was had by all.

The next adventure for the theater buddies was “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club“, which is the same play as plain ole “Cabaret” but they’re doing a thing, apparently. It’s the same production that was moved to New York and just kicked up a fuss a the Tony Awards (writing in the year of our Lord 2024 for our future readers…). “Cabaret” is probably on the fringe of the “canon” of great plays, so the buddies were very sheepish, at first, to admit to one another that they didn’t really have a good time with it. Like, it’s a dark play about the rise of the Nazis within the crumbling husk of a decadent Berlin, but even so… great performances that will stick with us, but we both more or less felt like the thing didn’t hold together as a coherent show. You don’t need to tell us how wrong we are, we are aware that it’s a minority opinion. Nevertheless.

Lisa rejoined the troupe for “The Play That Goes Wrong“, which is a play you’ll either love or hate. There’s no message, there’s no life take aways; it’s pure farce. You either laugh or grind your teeth your way through the production. Fortunately, all three of us laughed riotously! Susan had actually recommended it, having seen it before, but from her giddy giggles you’d never have known that she could almost recite the script to you. For pure yucks with no interpretation required we all thought it was a great hit. Lisa then left the troupe again on our final evening, for “Showstopper! The Improvised Musical“. If you have ever seen the musical bits in “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” you know how this goes, only they produce a single, two-act play that more-or-less hangs together, filled with musical numbers based on topics and genres suggested by the audience. It’s kind of like a magic show, where sometimes you can sort of puzzle out how they make it happen, but to what end? Just enjoy the musical sleight of hand while it is performed before your eyes. The buddies enjoyed themselves and would probably go back again if the opportunity presented itself – it’d be a completely different show, after all!

The long weekend of shows was extra nice since we’d had some less-than-stellar fortune with other plays. As we’ve reported, “the Player Kings” was a bust thanks to ole Butter-toes McKellan, and we haven’t even bothered to mention (until now, ahem) a rained-out theater-in-the-park production. Thankfully the last few days all went off without a hitch!

A little while back we talked about our aborted attempt to see Ian McKellen in “Player Kings”. When those plans fell through, we decided we’d make the most of it so we still wandered through the streets of London, washing ashore in the famous theatrical district in the West End. After all, our planned tickets might have been kiboshed but our dinner reservation was still valid and we’d been keen for that as well. So, we pitched up on the front step of J. Sheekey and headed in for a relatively leisurely meal; after all, no show to scurry off to after!

The decor of the restaurant is pretty typical (and pretty great!) for a restaurant smack dab in the middle of a theater district – photos spanning decades depicting the stars of the stage enjoying drinks and/or a meal on the premises. Some are timeless and instantly recognizable; others are clearly stars that burned brightly for a few years or maybe even just a production or two, but in the moment were worthy of memorializing. And now, you know… us. We started with drinks: a glass of Henriot Brut – Souverain champagne for me, and a (non alcoholic) Hive Mind for J. made of Everleaf Forest*, Chamomile, Agave, Vanilla, Lemon, Tonic Water. We took our time perusing the menu, chatting about the trip so far.

J. chose to start with the Burrata Di Bufala, Datterini Tomatoes, a creamy bubble of deliciousness with just the right amount of cracked pepper, bright olive oil, and just a hint of sea salt. Here’s a little tip – if there’s burrata on the menu, moving him off of it will be a task that makes you ask yourself if it’s even worth it – just let the man enjoy his creamy cheese for pete’s sake.

While I was tempted by the Heritage Beetroot Salad, I ended up choosing the Prawn Tempura. Six sticks of prawn in one of the best, crispy, tempura batters I’ve ever had. The prawns were sweetly tender, setting us up with high expectations for the seafood meal to come. (Speaking of convincing J. to move off of the burrata, after he tasted one of these he grudgingly conceded that I had “won” the first course!)

My main was the Fillet of Sea Bass, accompanied by steamed razor clam and a lemon and sea purlane sauce. Presented beautifully, the razor clams were nonetheless boring, but the sea bass was exquisite, its delicate flavor was balanced perfectly by the sauce. J. had the Monkfish & Tiger Prawn Tikka Masala which was rich and just a little bit spicy, just where we like it. (I bet you could ask for it to be as spicy as you desire.) Again, the monkfish and prawns were sweetly tender and not at all overwhelmed by the sauce. Impressive. I drank a delicious Florão (Quinta da Fonte Souto) from Portugal and enjoyed every drop.

Also worth mentioning is that J Sheekey now offers a set lunch menu. Starting at £33 for two courses (£39 for three), one can enjoy dishes like Buttermilk Fried Monkfish & Prawns, Roasted Fillet of Cod, and Miso Aubergine with Crispy Tofu. Based on our dinner, it would be a very tasty bargain and I’d be shocked if we don’t book it early the next time we make our way to London.

This was a superb meal in every way; highly recommended on every front! After dinner, we wandered a street whose name escapes us but could easily have been called “desserts of the world avenue”. Seriously, there was even a nata cafe. The variety didn’t really matter though; I’d spotted a great-looking gelateria and surprised J. with what has to be one his global favorites – a well-made scoop (or three ~ J) of Stracciatella. Thus sated, we indulged in a cab ride home. Considering the disappointment of the lost play it is the best praise possible that J. Sheekey turned it into a lovely evening out.

This next part of our London stories is meant to feel like our time there did; a lot of normal living, albeit in heightened circumstances, along with a smattering of “holy wow!” The daily routine was established pretty quickly; dogs will do that to a schedule. We started off getting up around 7:30-8:00am, but a couple days in there was clear evidence (ahem) that we needed to get an earlier start to the day. After some tweaks we settle on 6:30 as a safe bet to wake Molly from her bed and take her straight to a walk, which works like a charm. Bookend that with going to bed at a decent hour (because we’re going to be up at 6:30!) and we had the bones of a pretty regular schedule. We did little batches of shopping, which had as walking through the neighborhood every day or two to get to the market for a backpack full of vittles, and went about our usual hobbies; writing, reading for pleasure, hanging out or even staring at the boob tube. Of course, that was just the routine, from which we occasionally deviated…

When we initially scheduled this particular trip to London, one of the first pins we dropped on our map was for the “Sargent and Fashion” exhibition at the Tate Britain. (The Tate organization(?) also has the major “modern” art gallery in the city, but we’re fuddy duddies and gravitate to the elder institution.) Most people know John Singer Sargent, if they know him at all, as the guy who did the (infamous) Portrait of Madame X, or as Lisa calls it, “The Woman Who Glows”; she’s not wrong! He was a very in-demand protraitist whose client list would sound like a “who’s who” of high society… if you were rich at the turn of the 20th Century, at least.

Funnily enough, we didn’t get a great look at her on this trip – she gathers quite a crowd, natural light coming in from the ceiling windows led to a glare from some angles, plus – and this is one of those things we hear ourselves say and still don’t quite believe it – we’d already had plenty of time with her when we saw her at the Met in New York City. Instead, we explored this Sargent<-> fashion connection in greater depth. Well.

The link to fashion was frankly tenuous, but it turned out that we didn’t care. Apparently he was known for paying extra attention to how his sitters were styled. They couldn’t just show up in a favorite frock, he told them what to wear and then tended to work with the cloth to produce specific effects. One example is his Portrait of Lady Sasson (link to the image). From the exhibit:

Sargent manipulated the cloak, wrapping it around Lady Sassoon to foreground the play of light on the fabric. The bright pink lining of the cloak, barely noticeable in real life, creates a sinuous diagonal streak which guides the viewer’s eye across the surface of the portrait.

The collection included many we hadn’t seen before including children playing with Japanese lanterns in the garden (Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose), and the ridiculously sensuous Dr. Pozzi at Home. The latter’s vividly scarlet dressing gown made for a particularly dramatic contrast with the starkness of Madame X.

There were dozens of his pieces on display, and he truly was gifted within his chosen subject matter, so it was a delightful afternoon in the galleries.

Then it was “Bonus!” time. This is a consistent phenomenon (that John has decided to name right this very minute) wherein we discover an exhibition outside of the scope of what we were ostensibly visiting a museum to see but is really cool in its own right. We’ve tripped over an extensive review of Beatrix Potter’s sketches and drawings paired with an exploration of her pioneering conservation efforts. Recently in Vienna we went into the Albertina museum to see the sketches by Albrecht Dürer but wandered into an exhibition of spray paint abstraction that was created completely in situ; John particularly loved this one. This time the “Bonus!” was Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, which cataloged a selection (certainly not all) of female artists who were passed over or ignored by the art establishment for centuries. Note that the timeline is mostly set to have a nice round number; it’s not like women have been on easy street in the art world since 1921, alas…

Going out for a day like this is about as long as we were comfortable leaving Molly alone for. Our hosts had told us that we could stretch it further comfortably, but you know how it is when you’re taking care of somebody else’s pets (or kids for that matter) – they can take whatever liberties they want, but the last thing you’d ever want is to push the limit and have an issue arise. We trotted back home and wandered the streets with our sleepy little tour guide. Another day down, another day richer.

Right off the bat, we’ll tell you that we aren’t going to knock our stay in London down on a day-by-day, post-by-post experience. The whole point of wanting to spend a long stretch of time in a city like London was to do it in a more residential fashion. Whole days went by where the big excitement was taking our furry ward, Molly, on a novel route for her afternoon stroll. Sometime the adventures consisted of things going wrong! Not that nothing happened, just not multi-paragraphs worth every single day. Case in point: one of our first big events was to go and see our good friend, Sir Ian McKellen (who is totally not really our good friend), in a condensed version of Shakespeare’s Henry IV-based history plays in which he was taking the lead as Falstaff. As our other good friend, Robert Burns, wrote: the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…

The first event that felt like it was going to go wrong was a long-planned (as in, over three visits and almost a decade) spending time at the British Library, and it didn’t take long to manifest. On our first full day in London “on our own” we were up, had brekkies, and made the lovely 15-minute walk (did we mention that our hosts have a hellaciously good location??) to present ourselves at the Library to see their Treasures of the British Library Gallery, a basically permanent exhibit of some of the most intriguing elements of the holdings. This is a room we’ve known about since our first visit to London in 2007, but any time we’ve tried to carve out time for it we’ve either been dead on our feet and unable to concentrate for long, or our schedule went off the rails and we basically dragged our friends through a 15-minute Point-and-Oggle-a-thon. This time we were getting to the Library nice and early, and we had even checked on the website to make sure that they were open that day (a hard-won lesson from other trips *cough Louvre cough*) We knew the Magna Carta exhibit was (temporarily) closed,* but otherwise we were golden. Soooo you can imagine we were a bit nonplussed to see this sign outside the gallery.

Fortuitously, we were there on June 17th and decided to wait. (If you’re wondering, as near as we could figure the sign had been up for at least several days already.) A little after noon the gallery opened, and we were let in to see the treasures. “Hodgepodge” isn’t quite how to describe it, but it’s definitely more of a “greatest hits” vibe than a single unifying theme. There was a gorgeous collection of ancient (as in, some went back almost 1000 years) religious texts from all over the world, including a Gutenberg Bible. An interesting exhibit exploring what a book lined one wall, including books in non-traditional shapes – including one that you wear around your neck (see image_. Other oddities include the original lyrics to “Hey Jude”, the original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland, and a sequence of “first folios” that actually include the first four iterations. There were hours of quiet meandering and contemplation.

The next “might go wrong” event actually did go wrong, spectacularly. It almost even went double wrong thanks to my spam filter, but I’m getting ahead of myself. As mentioned above, we made a point of getting tickets to “Player Kings” once we confirmed that we were going to London. It’s a variant of an exercise that is actually fairly common, condensing “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Henry IV, Part 2” into a single production. If you don’t know, productions of Shakespeare’s plays are almost always cut down, sometimes quite significantly, because tastes (and attention spans) in theater attendance have changed over the centuries and we don’t commonly sit still for 4+ hour plays. (If you’re curious what that’s like, check out Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 production of “Hamlet”; sit comfortably if you do.) Splitting the story of Henry IV into two whole plays almost never cuts the mustard. Besides, to modern audiences (and even audiences of the day perhaps, but I super-extra digress) the main reason to see these plays is for the tragi-comic character of Falstaff; he gets great line after great lines. The character is/was so popular, in fact, that he was brought back again as one of the protagonists(?) in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”; he’s the “Better Call Saul” of the Elizabethan Era. Aaaaannyyyway… point is, condensing the Henry’s and highlighting Falstaff is not uncommon; what was uncommon was getting Ian McKellen as Falstaff. We were super excited… so imagine the disappointment when my news feed somewhat randomly spit out an article that McKellen had suffered a bad fall from the stage the night before and this night’s show was cancelled. The official notification from the box office had hit my spam filter, so if I hadn’t checked the news we’d have made for the theater completely unaware; eek. In the end we decided to make the most of it and honor the dinner reservation we made at J. Sheekey – a meal so interesting that we’ll be publishing a completely separate review of it shortly! The end of the “Player Kings” story is a dud, sadly. Sir Ian clearly wanted to tough his way through his injury in classic “show must go on!” style, but first one show, then two, and finally the rest of the run of the show was kiboshed. They had been cancelling/ rescheduling his performances, but once he was definitely down for the count his understudy was called upon to take the stage. I’m sure they are a fine actor, but there was a reason Sir Ian’s name was on the marquee. Having secured refunds for the tickets we decided to bank our losses and live to another day.

* Closed because climate activists damaged the case protecting the document. Thankfully, the irreplaceable document was undamaged and even the damage to the case was minimal. The two octogenarians responsible have been charged.

On John’s list of long-term goals (“bucket list” is too morbid for his taste) “living in one of “the great capitals” for a long stretch” rates very high. Not moving to one necessarily but spending more than just tourism-time there. Paris, New York, London, Rome, somewhere like that. The idea is that he has the barest understanding of what goes on in a place like those for people who live there, and the hints he’s picked up have been tantalizing. Concerts, plays, exhibitions… all sorts of events that are too “small” or too fleeting to make any sort of news in the wider world, but absolutely intriguing if you know about them. Plus, the difference of living in a neighborhood like a resident rather than just a vacation rental customer. Welp, serendipity is a hell of a thing. By definition you can’t plan for it, you just ride the wave when it comes along. When friends of friends needed a pet sitter for several weeks and their usual source – the mutual friends – weren’t available, we were asked to step in. We’d probably have done it in any case, but the fact that they live in central London was a stroke of good fortune.

The details of the sit were straight-forward enough. Their friends (well, our friends too, now) live on a Mews, which is not a thing we really understood before; history aside these days they’re just small streets sandwiched between larger avenues, and they allow for relatively quiet stretches in the midst of all of … everything. It’s a mix of residential and a few businesses, zoning not being so much of a thing in London apparently. They have one elderly pooch, a sweet girl named Molly who doesn’t need much special care, just the usual love and attention, with maybe a few extra, short walks because none of our bladders are like they used to be, eh? She had recently taken ill and had a condition that could make her very wobbly (almost like bad vertigo) but it comes and goes and under (the “new”) normal circumstances she was a snoozer and a sniffer. A good girl, in other words. Their home is a lovely place that could be described as “rambling” only vertically; four stories with a Merry Poppins view from the terraces on the roof – seriously Dick Van Dyke was out there somewhere, racking up overtime.

When the day came we made the almost normal trip for us, Porto in the morning and landing in Stansted airport by lunchtime. One train, the Stansted Express is a direct line from the airport to Liverpool Street Station and runs every 15 minutes all day every day. From there we took a black cab later (we later figured out how it could easily have been a second train, but alas…) and we were walking ourselves up the Mews and into Molly’s abode. Our hosts (who Lisa had met once but John only in Zoom calls to date) instantly made us feel at home and we spent the day settling ourselves in and learning our way about while they went about their normal lives and packed up for their trip to the States. One of their hobbies is tinkering with home automation – they didn’t just hire someone to come in and install a fancy, bespoke system, they’ve been learning how to integrate software with devices that lock and unlock doors, adjust lights, raise and lower blinds and so on. It’s really neat and has John pondering a new hobby, but it also requires knowing what’s-what so many buttons and switches were fiddled with.

Our hosts took us to Moro for dinner. It’s a charming little place in the neighborhood serving — of all things — Moorish cuisine with a Spanish influence. Although it’s an old favorite of theirs, we each tried different things. A tomato soup with fig and cumin, wood roasted turbot tranche with tomato, chickpeas and fried aubergine, charcoal grilled lamb with roast carrot salad, charcoal grilled sea bass, spinach, pine nuts and raisins, and a mixed vegetable mezze made for a filling meal. The flavors were complex, but not overly spicy. It was perfectly delicious; we loved it and will return again. Once we got back to their home we got another round of walkthroughs for care and maintenance, a last stroll of the pooch, and then all heads down for the big shift change on the morrow.