Wow!… wow!!… WOW!!!: London 2013 – Day 3

The night before, lights out was probably 2a, and everyone but me had an early 7a bus ride to Stonehenge. I saw it last year so I decided not to take the half-day tour.

Here’s photo of us in our private hostel room. 30 more square feet would have done wonders. We were packed like sardines!

Here’s cousins Jessica and Kevin taking photos of Stonehenge.

I had aspirations to take do an early morning run. I even heard the 530a alarm go off for my cousins to get ready. Needless to say, I heard the alarm go off but I didn’t notice them leave the room. Next thing I knew it, light was flooding the room, and I was well rested. 10:30. Damn. There’s goes the run and the thought of getting to Buckingham Palace early.

I stopped at a local coffee shop for some scrambled eggs on toast and some Scottish smoked salmon. Yummy. The server had no idea what I was talking about when I asked for ‘regular’ or ‘drip’ coffee, so after some back and forth, I settled for a latte.

I made my way to Buckingham Palace to see if I could get into a tour. Hyde Park was bustling as I walked towards the palace. The walkway was marked as a Diana memorial.

I got there a little past noon but my tickets for Buckingham Palace weren’t until 330p, so I decided to head over to Holborn and Chancery Lane, the area where I stayed during my trip to London last year. I wanted to see if I still remembered my way and if anything had changed.

For the most part, things looked the same, and I passed by the same flat from last year. After some more walking, I stumbled into a really cool stationary, trinkets, and souvenirs shop just around the corner.

A little hungry, I snacked on some MINI pasties. Yum. Apparently they’re pronounced PASS-tea and NOT PACE-tea (of JT and Janet fame!). Whatever they tasted good.

After my short detour, it was 3p and I jetted back to Buckingham Palace for my tour time.

Cameras aren’t allowed inside, but I didn’t mind. Just no pictures to post here. To say I loved the tour would have been an understatement. I was awesome. White House x 100. It was so good. I just saw the state rooms, but the level of opulence and quality of preservation was nothing I’ve ever seen. It was so so grand. It was flat out amazing. Kept on saying wow…wow… wow. Highly recommend it for those who haven’t been. The 1.5 hours flew by! The audio tour was self guided, so I learned something too!

By now, my cousins were back from Stonehenge and were shopping near Oxford Circus. I met up with them but not before visiting Nike Town!

NFL didn’t have a huge presence in the store, but I’d say the Vikes (specifically AD) got the most pub!

Here’s an homage to my fav shoe: the Air Max 95

After some more shopping, we wanted to end our stay with a great London dinner. Preferably English food. So armed with Yelp in hand, we looks for a place that could accommodate our party of 8.

Here’s a picture of a random grocery store. Nothing special about it, other than everytime I see it, I think of salisbury steak! Haha.

We finally landed on a restaurant called Great Queen Street. Super chic looking, busy, but almost as a sign of fate, a huge table was available for our group!

The menu.

Started off with some charcuterie!

I ordered the quail and foie grais topped with cherries. All on top of the most perfect toast. OMG it was so so good.

Here’s my sister Kristine in front of her mackerel.

We wanted some dessert but decided to go elsewhere instead of the restaurant. We went to a Jamie Oliver (famous Brit chef on TV) in Covent Garden. Pretty casual place where we got mostly ice cream. I had the strawberries and crème fresh.