Category Archives: England and U.K.

Today, met old friends in London at Camden Town contemporary apartment with fantastic views of Primrose Hill and Hampstead, in one direction, and downtown London in another, including St. Paul’s Cathedral and the BT Tower (which looks like something out of the Jetsons).

We stopped before lunch briefly in Camden market which was hopping on Sunday midday, full of people browsing in stalls filled with t-shirts, jewelry, jean jackets, junk…not as nice stuff as at Spitalfields but a much livelier, edgier scene. We picked up some delicious treats, fondly remembered from our trip to Lisbon years ago: Pastel de nata, a Portuguese egg custard tart pastry, dusted with cinnamon.

After an incredible lunch (how lucky to have friends who are such good cooks and generous hosts..last night another friend treated us to an elaborate dinner at her house in Mortlake) we took a walk through Regents Park as the sun was going down (early…at 4:30) and then took the 27 bus to Hammersmith, so I could do one thing always on my London list: ride in the front seat of a double decker bus. It never gets old! Thanks to our London pals for being such good sports in coming with and indulging me.

There are certain touchstones for me in London and Covent Garden is one, even though it has changed a lot since I first roamed around it over 4 decades ago. Neal’s Yard used to have a hippie bakery that served whole-wheat pastries and tea on the top floor overlooking the yard. That’s long gone and there’s a more posh feel but Neal’s Yard Cheese is still there so I got a wedge of Cheshire and a blue from Shropshire.

We stopped for coffee at Ole & Steen, a Danish chain of cafes, and a lovely mezze platter and spinach and cheese pie at The Lost Goddess, a Greek restaurant inBloomsbury. It was still drizzly so we went inside to The National Gallery to see a retrospective of Lucian Freud’s work, which had not only obese nudes but early work that seemed also folk art style portraits, flat faces on blank backgrounds.

It was a rainy day in London so we stayed close to home, or our temporary home, in Mortlake. Fortunately it was a light rain so we could walk, which we did along the Thames past scullers toiling in the drizzle, to Barnes, another suburb that feels more like a country village with a pretty green and old pubs and a good outdoor market with everything from cherry tomatoes, cakes and cheese to kimchee, beef jerky and sushi.

We took refuge in The Sun Inn, a pub that is kid and dog friendly so there were several of both. It proved a good place to come in from the damp, drink some cider, beer or coffee and nibble on halloumi fries, chips and avocado salad.

From Barnes, Dirck and I took the 419 bus to Richmond where we half heartedly joined the shoppers on George Street but more enthusiastically walked down the narrow shop-lined lanes leading to pretty Richmond Green and the grand orange brick Richmond theater. As befits the area that has become a film location for one of the most popular US TV shows, we soon chanced upon a “Ted Lasso Walking Tour,” a young woman holding a sign on a pole, guiding two tourists to see the sights.

We chanced upon Spitalfields Market during a visit to the nearby Great Diary Project, a remarkable effort to “rescue” ordinary peoples diaries, housed inside The Bishopsgate Institute. The market has lots of stalls with fun clothes, jewelry, crafts and woolens and the street leading to it also has alluring shops.

A short tube ride from Liverpool Street Station got us to Embankment (a short bit also via the new Elizabeth Line) where we met Evan, a graduate student from Des Moines who we’ve know since he was born. Great to see him and his enthusiasm for London.

After an excellent lunch down in the dark cellar of the venerable Gordon’s Wine Bar (excellent cheese and charcuterie boards, the closest I’ve gotten to a Ploughman’s lunch) we met up with Francine and headed to Peckham, a southeast London neighborhood that is starting to gentrify here and there (Bellenden Road) but still feels like the African and African-Caribbean neighborhood it is.

Brew pubs aren’t as big a thing here as in the US but we did go to a funky one, Brick Brewing, that has outdoor seating and cheap prices. After attending a popup art show with work by a friend of Francine and Russ’s, (made by filling hollowed pumpkins with black tar and dropping them from a rooftop onto a white canvas, creating a black splatter paint pattern with pumpkin pulp…no surprise this was work created during the covid lockdown) we had an excellent bits and bobs (Padron peppers, jamon croquettes, picos blue cheese) at The Tapas Room (which has several other outposts including in Battersea.)

Lovely to be back in London, especially on a warm sunny November day, no joke. We stopped at the National Covid Memorial Wall, a long stretch of wall along the Thames across from Parliament, with thousands of red painted hearts, many with handwritten notes remembering people who died during the pandemic (about 200,000 in the UK). Sobering.

We walked along the river on the south bank past the Tate Modern (where the blockbuster Cezanne show is the same show we saw earlier this year in Chicago) , walking over the wobbly bridge into the City of London past St. Paul’s to the third pub we happened upon, the Golden Fleece, which had something approximating traditional pub grub, although not my favorite (ploughman’s) and a good house beer of the same name. The scotch egg that Francine ordered was surprisingly delicious, with a very fresh egg with a soft orange yolk inside a savory mound of sausage and bread.

On to the Guildhall, the seat of government for the City of London which has an interesting free art gallery and amazingly, ruins of a Roman amphitheater (65 AD) in the basement. Who knew? Francine, of course. Nearby, we popped into a little pocket park near St. Botolph church that has a remarkable Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a wall with tiles honoring people who died trying to “save another,” including 19-year-old railway clerk William Donald of Bayswater who “drowned in the Lea from a dangerous entanglement of weed” on July 16, 1876 and 31-year-old inspector Frederick Alfred Croft “who saved a lunatic woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal station but was himself run over by the train” on January 11, 1878. Another Francine find!

We dropped in at my favorite London church St. Bartholomew’s, a 12th century Romanesque beauty that still offers Christmas concerts that I remember fondly. (Also featured in movies including Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love.)

After wandering past the large colorful wrought iron gates of a Smithfield market, we landed at a trendy coffee bar, Prufrocks, in Leather Lane, where I recall my pal Marion used to shop when the NYTimes bureau was nearby on Shoe Lane.

Dinner tonight was superb Indian food at Chook, Chook, an “Indian Railway Kitchen” in Putney.