The title for today comes from a turn of phrase that’s popular in our household, used thusly: It’s not necessarily true that we came all this way just so we could have dim sum, but it’s not not true, either. Lisa is a huge fan of quality dim sum going way back to her formative years in San Francisco. John didn’t know diddly squat about the the tasty packages until he met his bride, but he’s been making up for lost time. So, when it became clear that London had one of the most robust Chinatown presences outside of… well, Chinese towns, it was clear that at least one of our days would be given over to the best dim sum we could find.

Now, here’s the dirty secret of getting “the best dim sum in Chinatown”: who really knows? We (that is, Lisa) did a ton of reading of reviews and blogs, and she came to the consensus opinion that we wanted to go to Dumplings Legend where they have a fantastic menu of what we’d call “classic” options as well as their own take on many things. Great! That being said, when we came out of the tube station and wandered into Chinatown, the place we had chosen was largely indistinguishable from a dozen other restaurants on the street. I’m pretty sure if we had gotten lost and wandered into the “wrong” establishment, we’d still have had a really good meal. That being said, Dumplings Legend gave us exactly what we wanted, which is a scrumptious meal, both fresh and reasonably priced. If you find yourself there and overwhelmed with the options presented to you, you can rely on our vouching for them.

When we were done with our meal, we scooted back to our home base in Whitechapel. As we described in our post from day 1, there was an interesting exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery of an extensive video installation; we wanted to see more of what was available so we popped back in. The videos were ostensibly all about the movement of human bodies, but these being artistic pieces there was pretty wide latitude in what they actually were. One video that John particularly liked showed dancers who were facilitating the movement of other people who suffered from different disabilities. In one portion, an old boxer who clearly had taken a lot of blows to the head was trying to go through his old shadow-boxing regimen (which frankly would have been painful to watch if he was alone), but two dancers held on to him and helped him execute his maneuvers. In another, a woman who was herself a dancer but now suffered from severe Parkinson’s Disease was partnered with a younger, healthy dancer. Together, the older woman would indicate the motions she intended and the other woman did her best to subtly execute them for her. There was a different video that captured fishing celebrations that occurred in a small African island, featuring people dressed up as aquatic life and so on. The last one we took in essentially put cameras on a young teen boy and a young teen girl and provided no stimuli at all. They just sat and entertained themselves as they saw fit. You know; art.

If these seems like a more perfunctory recitation than usual, well, that’s the spirit of the day in truth. The next day was the start of our “true” adventure and we were getting a little antsy by this point. We had collected leftovers from a couple of our meals and made a picnic out of them for dinner. We packed ourselves up, re-shuffling where things were because of the luggage constraints of the train (more on that to come) and then got ourselves early to bed. We would be up and out early the next day in order to make it to the station in time. A story for another day… like, next week.

Believe it or not (and honestly we can barely believe it ourselves at this point) we were back on the road again after a very brief intermission back in Braga. We’ll have more to say on this subject later. However, any notion of tiredness sloughed off of us whenever we remembered what this next trip was going to be. See, ever since she was a little girl, Lisa has wanted to take a trip on the Orient Express. For any of you who don’t know, there’s a famous murder mystery by Agatha Christie that has been made into at least two pretty good films. The train features heavily, and the imagery of this art deco masterpiece on wheels can easily capture the imagination. This has been an item in Lisa’s bucket list basically since the idea of a bucket-structured list was introduced to her, and when we firmed up our plan to retire and move to Europe she immediately planted a flag for this trip. Which, you know, great!

The trip is not as simple as “get on choo choo, enjoy life.” The experience begins at Victoria Station in London, where you board a *different* but still shmancy train for a trip to the coast. Then you get on the not-chunnel train that is used for freight, cargo and the like, make it to Calais, and then board the actual Orient Express. We’ll talk about all of this in more detail later. But first, because we are who we are, we took the fact that the journey begins in London as a signal to front load a few extra days there and take in the sights. Gods we can be predictable sometimes.

We had a super early flight out of Porto, bringing us to Gatwick airport. We handle the train into town much more smoothly this go ’round (last time we got on a train going the wrong way and had to pull a U-turn in a station several stops down the line) and hopped into our hotel. Alas, the room wasn’t ready for us yet, but that was fine; we dropped the bags and hit our first intended destination, the Whitechapel Gallery. We started our last visit to London this same way, for the very practical reason that it is a few doors down from the Hyatt that we’ve been staying at recently. There was a very interesting collection of short movies, loosely focused on the movement of the human body, and we took in several of those before kicking back to the hotel to freshen up a little bit and head out for nibbles.

We decided that have afternoon tea was the best way to transition into London life, and chose Roast for our venue. With large glass windows and fairie lights strung throughout, this is a visually appealing place, more know for its dinners than tea. When we arrived, however, there were two large (8+) groups of people enjoying Roasts “Endless Prosecco” tea service. Yes, along with your pot of tea you get glass after glass of Prosecco poured for a couple of hours (for 25 pound surcharge). Tea, as is usual, is a fairly standard offering. At Roast, your pot comes with three plates, the bottom of which offers you five sandwich quarters: chicken curry, egg salad, smoked salmon with butter, cucumber with cream cheese, and roast beef with horseradish. There is a currant scone with butter and jam. The top plate is for desserts: lemon meringue, sticky toffee, chocolate fudge gateau, and lemon cake. This is for each person, and would vary by season.

The sandwiches were very good: just the right amount of filling so it doesn’t squeeze out when you bit into one, and freshly prepared. We both really liked that there was a bit of a kick to the egg salad, and the curry chicken was meltingly good, but all the sandwiches were tasty. The scones arrived hot from the oven with unsalted butter and a tiny jar of jam. Butter was a little scant for two people (too much for only one, not quite enough for two) but the scone itself was perfect. We ran into a problem with the desserts in that the lemon meringue custard was not set, so breaking the crust allowed it to run right out. John managed to drip it into his mouth, but mine ran all over the plate, leaving a meringue top over crust. Disappointing.

The real bummer is that service was utterly “meh”. Our server took our order, delivered the tea, and then vanished. Another server brought our food, then vanished. I’d ordered a glass of prosecco (not the endless one) and it never arrived. No one stopped by to make sure all was well, or offer refills of water. We practically had to go get someone to bring us our bill and then had a bit of a debate about whether to authorize the 12.5% “service charge” they’d added. Not a practice we even think about, being inclined to generosity for such a tough profession.

It turns out that our spot for afternoon tea, Roast, is right in the heart of the Borough Market. Charming and historic, this is a must for anyone interested in high-end delicacies, artisan food, and organic produce. My mouth was watering at all the items displayed, from piles of pomegranates to fresh-prepared pasta. After tea we wandered the market, although many places were closing for the day. It didn’t matter as we have no kitchen to bring food home to, but if we’d been in an apartment, we would have shopped their for the visit. So good!

The rest of our day was spent unpacking and finding space for our stuff in a tiny room with two cubbies in the narrow closet, and two cubbies acting as nightstands. Somewhat disappointing as this was an upgraded room — clearly this is a hotel designed for short-term travelers. Off to bed, not to late . . . we have a big day at the V&A tomorrow.

“In ancient times,
hundreds of years before the dawn of history,
lived an ancient race of people.
The Druids.

No one knows who they were
or what they were doing.
But their legacy remains.
Hewn into the living rock
of Stonehenge.” ~ N. Tufnel

As we described in our last post, the whole reason for this quick trip across the Channel was an exhibition at the British Museum centered on Stonehenge. It was, however, part of a particularly busy day for us; the kind of day we mostly try to avoid nowadays. It just really couldn’t be helped. We had checked into our hotel in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London, which isn’t necessarily the most centrally located, but with that city’s outstanding public transit system who cares? Speaking of transit, we were in town for the opening week of the Elizabeth Line, a project 20 years in the making which adds a half-dozen or so brand new tube stations and miles upon miles of new track. I won’t pretend to be educated enough about London infrastructure to tell you whether it accomplishes its goals or not, but the stations are clean and modern, and the trains are likewise as comfortable as they are ever likely to be. We took it whenever we could, snug as bugs in rugs. However, our first stop was not via the train. Our first stop was, in fact, about 200 feet from the door of our hotel. Whitechapel Gallery.

To be totally honest, I don’t know if we’d normally be hip enough to know about, much less go to, Whitechapel Gallery. Fortunately cooler people write reviews in newspapers about these things and, to date, they remain willing to sell their papers to the non-cool. The specific reviews that caught our eye were for an exhibition called A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020, and it was indeed a treat. Not only were there art pieces depicting the studio spaces of artists (for example photos of Pablo Picasso and Helen Frankenthaler in their studios), there were actual full-size recreations of several artists’ studios, including a corner of one room mimicking Andy Warhol’s Factory and the actual cage that Nikhil Chopra spent 60 hours in at the Havana Biennele. It was absolutely something different from what we normally would have sought out, and all the more illuminating because of it. John was vaguely reminded of an exhibition we saw at Tate in 2007 called “State Britain.” A law had been passed that required protesters to be X feet away from government buildings, where “X” was some absurdly large number. As a result, part of the circle formed by that distance actually passed through the Tate museum. Museums being what they are, they turned that information into an exhibition where the actual protest barricades drew the borderline exactly through the galleries of the museum. Anyway, it was an incredibly immersive experience. And all that before lunch!

From Whitechapel Gallery it is … enh, a 15 second walk to the nearest tube station. Two trains with a transfer later, we were popping up just a few minutes’ walk from the British Museum*. First, though, was a lovely lunch at The Shell. Random seafood isn’t always our go-to, but we’d just had a week of Italian exclusively, so something simpler felt like a good idea. (Expect a review on our Facebook page shortly.) Then we scooted to the Museum for our timed tickets into the world of Stonehenge.

It was a fascinating display, although if we’d thought about it much ahead of time we’d have been able to predict the nature of it. After all, the certainly weren’t going to haul the stones themselves to London. (Where would they find that many willing Welshmen for starters?**) Instead, the exhibit was focusing on shifts in human culture before, during, and after the age of Stonehenge’s “useful” period. Strange to think, but it was only a few hundred years after its erection that the focus of early religions shifted from skyward devotion to mysteries of death and the soul, at which point giant stone calendars, while useful, didn’t hold preeminence. Yes, Stonehenge became obsolete pretty darn soon after it’s completion. In any event, there were fascinating artifacts on display characterizing the culture within which Stonehenge would have been conceived and executed. There were also depictions of other henges, including an actual “woodhenge” made up of a circle of tree trunks that had been hidden completely underwater until a couple decades ago. A rare positive from global warming.

As busy as this all sounds, we weren’t done yet!

We had a date for tea in the Great Court restaurant, which is the mildly-fancier offering of museum food as opposed to the adequate-but-not-recommendable cafeteria fare otherwise available. Great Court offers high tea in the afternoon, made up of little sandwiches, scones, and sweet snackage. We’d hoped (and were happy to discover) that it made for a pleasant respite in the late afternoon.

Especially since there was an entire extra exhibition at the British Museum that we hadn’t even known about when we booked the trip(!). (See earlier posted thoughts on cultural events going on that are both under-publicized and truly fascinating.) In this case the exhibition was “Feminine power: the divine to the demonic.” This time the focus was on depictions of feminine spiritual beings across the planet and throughout history. One of the benefits of doing an exhibition with a “hot” contemporary focus is that loans from other museums seem easier to come by; we only know this from inference, but the exquisite collection of pieces from literally around the world seemed to support the theory. The exhibition did not have an activist viewpoint – that is, it wasn’t arguing for change. Rather, it was trying to scrape the crust off of these feminine figures that already exist and already are powerful but are rarely given full attention in the current dominant cultures. They weren’t being held up, they are up and merely wait for us to turn our heads in their directions. It was an incredible show.

Wrung out from this last art sprint, we lumbered back to the tube and into our hotel, where we made use of the on-site restaurant to put together a pretty simple meat and cheese plate for dinner. From there it was a good night’s sleep before our (relatively) early rise. After all, we had a train to catch.

*- before anybody asks: yes, we know about the Elgin Marbles and the broader problem of plundered loot on exhibit there. We didn’t look at any of that stuff (no really, we breezed past the Rosetta Stone without turning our heads). The case for boycotting the place entirely is compelling. Our reasoning here boils down to the fact that Stonehenge is, in fact, in England, so the particular exhibition is what they actually should be doing in the first place.

**- this may be the dumbest joke John has ever written, which is saying a lot.