A Day Filled with London Museums

Three days after arriving in London, my husband's well-planned-out schedule had us enjoying an early breakfast at The Grove cafe in Hammersmith (quite close to our B&B), and then we took a double-decker bus towards Piccadilly Circus.  And a circus it was... people-watching in Piccadilly can be an all-day enjoyment, and you have to prepare yourself for both the historical and the comical, as I told my cousin F in one of my postcards to New York.

London fashion is beyond anything I've seen in our travels over the years..... layers of vintage clothing mixed with just-released-from-the-runway outfits..... and somehow, most of it works. Not for me, though.... I like classic styles that don't go out of style in fifteen minutes. But I did enjoy the people-watching, I have to say... and we did see it all..... including young men in skirts and tights, and one particularly daring man in an Alice In Wonderland outfit that would have had even the Mad Hatter blushing bright red.

We went to the Wallace Collection Museum.... a beautiful old mansion filled with paintings and artwork, chandeliers, mirrors and clocks, and furniture covered in the most luxurious fabrics I've ever seen. This home was truly a much-loved jewel box of priceless art and artifacts.... not to be missed, and if (when) we go back to London, I'd want to see this museum again. Even the carpeting and the ceiling woodwork and the staircases were intricately beautiful and ornate..... and we made sure to stay close to the vintage clocks as they chimed...... so lovely to hear, all of them.

From there we went to the Toy Museum on Whitfield Street.... once again, an old private home (not a mansion) filled with tiny rooms and alcoves and stairways... each packed with vintage toys and games, cards and blocks and stuffed animals, doll houses and marbles and dolls, horses and soldiers...... everywhere you looked, you found toys, toys, and more toys, of every decade beginning with the Victorian era.  Even the narrow staircases, which you have to walk through with care because of the different-sized steps and the lack of elbow room.... those walls were covered with vintage board games and tiny shelves filled with miniature toys.  I would imagine that children would love this museum, but it's definitely a no-touching zone, so kids would have to be on their very best behavior.

We had lunch that day at "The Green Door," a small cafe owned by a Greek family..... no menu....... he writes on a chalk-board every morning, listing what he has made for the day. When the food is gone, the 'closed' sign goes up and the door is locked.  I had baked fish and salad, and my husband had meatballs and potatoes..... totally home made and perfectly fresh..... and the owner gave us a piece of his wife's just-made carrot cake for dessert.  We told the owner we lived in Texas and found his restaurant on-line, and had written him into our itinerary that day for our lunch.  He was thrilled, and wanted to give us more cake.

After we said goodbye to our new Greek friend, we went to The British Museum...... they had thousands of books from the library of King George V.... and book-lover that I am, I was trying to read as many of the titles as I could. The one book that I remember--- "The State of Virginia," by Thomas Jefferson.  (A signed first edition for the king, without a doubt.)

In the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone is on display behind glass..... amazing piece of history. They also had one of the Easter Island statues set up on a huge wooden platform.  So much to see in that particular museum..... my husband got a map of the building, which had the highlights of the collection pin-pointed, so we saw all of those before leaving.  I would imagine you would need most of a full day to see everything the British Museum has to offer.

We found a small Italian restaurant for dinner later that evening.... "Bella Italia."  We ordered a very small pizza and split it. The restaurant was in the middle of a very busy area, but that particular street was closed to auto traffic, so it was a quiet meal.  So much of London is filled with buses, walkers, bicycle-riders, and noise, noise, noise......but a happy wholesome noise. At no time did we feel threatened by the city-life there.

We're still talking about how polite and well-mannered the British people are. One of the passengers on the underground train told us about the possibility of a 'tube strike' the week we were there. But the strikers themselves are so polite that they announced the day and time they might strike, as well as the day and time they would resume work.  My husband called it a 'polite strike.'  That strike, however, never happened, so we were free to come and go via the underground or the buses, without any problems other than getting on the wrong train, which we quickly corrected by getting off at the next stop and back-tracking. In the ten days of our trip, I think that happened just twice, which is pretty good considering we don't ever take public transportation at home. (Actually, there isn't any public transportation here at home.)