What happened to August 11?

  London, United Kingdom
Sunday, August 12, 2007

After taking off from Sea-Tac at 9:50 am on August 11, we landed at London's Gatwick Airport at 8:00 am on August 12.  Where did the whole day go?!

We zipped through Immigration and Customs and soon we were on our way to central London and our hotel by train.  We would be staying at London Bridge Hotel just down the street from the London Bridge Rail and Underground stations on the south bank of the Thames.  This is a fantastic area of London, a stone's throw from the river and numerous attractions including Borough Market, Shakespeare's Old Globe, The Tate Modern, and Tower Bridge, to name just a few.  But more on those later!

We arrived at the hotel just before 10:00 am, but, unfortunately, our room was not yet available.  So, we dropped off our bags and headed out for our first adventure -- Spitalfields and
Brick Lane in the East End.  At the heart of Spitalfields is its market -- a historic covered fruit and vegetable market that has recently been expanded to include antiques, clothing, crafts, and gourmet food.  (You'll never guess which one of those was the main attraction for us!) 
As part of the expansion, new buildings were added and joined to the old ones by a collection of glass ceilings to create a harmonious juxtaposition of old and new.  Tim bought a really yummy chicken sandwich from one of the vendors, and Todd bought a really not-so-yummy Greek cheese and raisin roll.  Tim also bought a cowboy hat to protect him from the sun for the rest of our trip, and Todd bought 3 sepia-toned panoramic prints of London to add to a few he purchased on a previous trip.  Before leaving the market area, we ducked into A. Gold, an old-fashioned shop selling a wide range of traditional and exotic British food.  Tim scored some clotted cream fudge.

We headed a few blocks east to Brick Lane, home to numerous Bangladeshi and Indian restaurants and food stores, including numerous Indian sweet shops.  Tim was like a little kid in, pardon the pun, a candy store, buying up all the pistachio burfi he could carry.  (All right, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but only slightly.)  Todd bought his fare share of carrot halwa.

The Brick Lane area is a bit of an ethnic melting pot and contains a sizeable Jewish population.  And so we paid a visit to the 24-hour Brick Lane Beigel Bake.  The place was packed, and Todd left with a fresh bagel filled with tuna, cucumber, and tomato.  Boy did that hit the spot!

Stuffed, we spent the next few hours at the Geffrye Museum, a physical history of English interiors housed in a set of converted almshouses off a beautiful walled lawn.  The focus is on English living rooms from the 17th century to the present, meticulously recreated along chronological lines.  The exhibits did a great job explaining the physical progression in the context of the social and political histories of the times.

Before heading back to our hotel, we popped back into Spitalfields to see Christ Church Spitalfields, which was closed for a service when we were there earlier in the day.  The church was built in 1729 by Nicholas Hawksmoor, a contemporary of Christopher Wren.  It has been recently restored and was quite beautiful inside.

We checked into our hotel, showered, and napped before heading out to dinner in Mayfair at the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Tamarind.  Everything we ordered was fantastic:  graham flour crisps and spiced chickpeas with mint chutney, sweetened yogurt, and tamarind chutney; Tandoori tiger prawns marinated with ginger, yogurt, cashews, coriander, mint, and spices; lamb shank braised with cinnamon, bay leaf, rose petals, and ground spices; and possibly the best dal makhni, baingan bharta, and stuffed naan (with dates, coconut, and poppy seeds) that we've ever had.

We headed home to sleep, very full and very happy.