Skip to main content

St. James’s Piccadilly, Royal Academy, Piccadilly Street Bookstores (Part !)

 I slept about 11 hours last night! Fell asleep at 7:10 pm, woke up a bit at midnight when R was roaming around the room but put my eye mask on and promptly went back to sleep until 7 am. It was actually too warm in the room but can’t complain—better than being too cold? And the bathroom was so toasty warm that taking a shower was a pleasure.

We went back and forth about what to do but the pouring rain outside made our choices easier—it was going to be one of the art galleries. R had his heart set on going to the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly so, after a sandwich at Pret A Manger for breakfast, we took the Tube and walked down Piccadilly to the Academy. As we walked along Piccadilly, we noticed the beautiful small Wren church, St. James’s, so we stopped there for a quick prayer.

We just looked at the regular Collection, which is smallish but that was fine, the building is so beautiful and the bookshops inside the Academy are fun. We sat in the Cafe there for awhile, it’s quite lovely too.





After leaving the Academy, we stopped at Fortnum and Mason’s to admire their Christmas decorations and goggle at the throngs of people lined up inside. We spoke to the concierge, he said that it had actually been busier the day before and they’d had to limit people coming in. Considering it was only 11:30 and things got busier as the day went on, I think they probably did so again.







Richard was in heaven in Hatchards Bookshop, which is only a couple of doors down from Fortnum’s. He spent a good half hour swooning over all of the Architecture and Art books. We didn’t buy any books in the end; still several days to go and we have enough to read. However, we may well return before the end of our stay in London. The photos below are only of the fourth floor! After Hatchard’s we went to yet another bookstore, Waterstone’s and had a nice lunch on the 5th floor there. By this time the rain had stopped, blue skies were out and we headed off to St. Paul’s, hoping to catch the Carol concert there. Continued in Part 2.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

January 2024 and blogging

  I haven't posted on my blog for a long time. Partly that was due to not knowing what to write about and partly it was wondering if I wanted to put myself "out there" anymore. And in what way. I subscribe to a few blogs on Substack, which is a subscription-based blog. You can pay to have your own blog, you can pay for someone else's blog, and that means you get to write and post and get comments back from a whole lot of people. You can comment on other people's blogs--if you pay--or else you can just read the blog and not pay. Of course you might miss some of the "pay only" content--much like modern news media has teaser stuff but to read the whole article, you have to pay for a subscription. The Substack blogs cover all kinds of topics and there are a few "professional" writers--meaning they're journalists and writers who have published and been paid larger bucks than the $5 a month they get per subscription on Substack--but I think most ...
12 comments
Read more

Sunday in Richmond Park & Memories

  One of the reasons I came back to London after Ireland was to keep a date with my cousin Elizabeth: a Sunday morning walk in Richmond Park. When I moved to England in May of 1978, I rented a room in a house near Richmond Park. I'd heard of the room through a colleague at McGill University's Human Resources Department, where I was working as a Senior Clerk. Montreal had become a bit difficult for me to be in owing to a twice-broken heart and a feeling I wasn't going anywhere at McGill. It seemed like an omen, then, on the plane returning from South Africa in January of 1978--I keep promising to write about that--that I came across an article in a magazine about young Canadians living in London. I'd always loved the idea of being in London what with growing up on a diet of British movies and then all of the articles about Swinging London in the 1960s/early 1970s.  By the time I arrived at Mirabel Airport, I had the perfect antidote to my wounded pride over South...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life on board the Queen Mary

Passenger's log on the Queen Mary 2: Dec 9th - First Day at Sea Didn't sleep well--think it was the soused mackerel at dinner. Anyway, R and I woke up at about 6:00 am and discussed the order of the day. Quite the swell outside and I can feel the roll of the ship. (No seasickness thank goodness!) Despite the mackerel, I was hungry so we went to King's Court at 6:30 a.m. Buffet with loads of choice of course. We sat in an alcove looking out at the ocean. Our server was from Croatia, Slavan. I asked him my burning question of the day--why did we get a free bottle of wine but a regular bottle of Diet Coke cost $3.75? Diet Pepsi is $1.00 less. Fruit juices are free on tap. Coffee, tea, milk, ditto. But you have to pay for soft drinks. Very odd. Slavan says it is because Cunard can't get a good contract with Coke. Hmmm.... our local School District back in Sierra Vista can negotiate .50 a can for the soda machines in the teachers' lounges but Cunard has to cha...
Post a Comment
Read more