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kevin_standleeWe stayed closer to "home" at the King's Cross Crowne Plaza today, as we visited the London Transport Museum. This is the second time we've been here.
We could conceivably have walked to Covent Garden, where the LTM is located, but instead we walked to Russell Square Station on the Piccadilly Line and took it to Covent Garden. We walked through the market and found a little magnifier from one of the vendors in the market.
Here was our destination. We bought two admissions, which are actually annual passes to the museum. This proved handy later.
We spent a lot of the day at the London Transport Museum. See the Flickr Album for the other photos. Lisa took a bunch more, but we haven't had time to upload them and probably will not until she gets back from her European trip. Cataloging photos is very time consuming.
Lisa and I found the museum stiflingly hot, and it was very crowded, including a bunch of families with children that mostly didn't seem all that interested in doing anything other than running around shrieking. An exception was one young man who I observed while waiting for Lisa at one point. He was asking his father if they could take a different tube or train route home than they had come to the museum so they could see different lines.
We made a small lunch outside in Covent Garden with frankfurters and bratwurst from a stand in the Garden. There are few places to sit, but we found one. We were so thirsty that we went to a nearby Tesco Express and got some sodas, and while Lisa had a second hot dog, I got a Mocha Frappuccino from a nearby Starbucks. After lunch, we re-entered the museum and looked at the rest of the exhibits. However, Lisa and I were not feeling all that well (our legs were giving out), so rather than walk or take the Tube back to the hotel, I sprung for a taxi.
A few hours rest at the hotel left us both feeling better, so we ventured out again to go out to dinner for the first time in London. We had an initial idea of where to go, but we ended up somewhere else.
We took the Tube to Trafalgar Square.
Our initial plan was to return to the Sherlock Holmes restaurant, where we ate once during a previous visit to London. However, the menu was not at all what we remembered. Nachos and chicken wings just don't fit what used to be the Holmsian theme of the restaurant. We decided to look elsewhere.
Not far away we looked at The Clarence Pub Whitehall. This menu looked a lot better, and we were able to get a table in a corner not crowded too close to other people.
Lisa started with some excellent salmon paté with sourdough bread. (She wishes that they had given her more bread.) Lisa offered some to Kuma Bear, but he turned up his nose and complained that she was trying to feed him "putty."
My starter was a Scotch egg, which I like a lot. This also was good.
Both of us had the sirloin steak with garlic butter. I forgot to take the photo until I'd eaten half of mine. The fries were good, too. We enjoyed dinner, but we won't enjoy it that often, as it cost £89 ($114.50).
Walking back to Trafalgar Square, I was taken by these all-gender-inclusive pedestrian crossing lights.
We briefly investigated Charing Cross Station, which we've never visited.
On the way back to the hotel, we searched for a larger Boots than the ones in the train stations, as there were a few things that both Lisa and I were looking for, one of which was potentially covered by my healthcare savings account. I tried using my HSA account card, and to my surprise, it worked.
Getting back "home" was made more difficult by our increasing difficulty we're having climbing stairs due to our sore legs. (My pedometer registered 21,500 steps today.) I ended up routing us through the Underground to stations that were not step-free, and while we didn't have to do something like climb the spiral staircase at Camden Town, it still was challenging. And we still had the roughly 1 km from King's Cross, which was mostly level, but turned out to be at least twice as long as it should have been when I took us down the wrong road out of the KX roundabout.
Thanks to my navigation error, we missed picking up some groceries where mean to do so. Lisa instead returned to the tiny little convenience store across from our hotel where she bought things on our first night here. While the store has an extremely limited selection, Lisa liked the store because the proprietor was so nice and friendly, and she told him so as we made our purchases. Lisa told me that she was doing her part to maybe make the world a slightly happier place.
Eventually we made it back to the hotel. They have very helpfully given us a 2 PM checkout, so we can get breakfast relatively late, and spend time repacking for Tuesday night's trip on the Caledonian Sleeper, store our bags with the hotel, and figure something to do before heading to Euston on Tuesday evening for our sleeper train to Glasgow. I don't expect to post an entry on Tuesday night, but I'll probably put up a back-dated entry once we get to Glasgow and get moved in to the Crowne Plaza.
We could conceivably have walked to Covent Garden, where the LTM is located, but instead we walked to Russell Square Station on the Piccadilly Line and took it to Covent Garden. We walked through the market and found a little magnifier from one of the vendors in the market.
Here was our destination. We bought two admissions, which are actually annual passes to the museum. This proved handy later.
We spent a lot of the day at the London Transport Museum. See the Flickr Album for the other photos. Lisa took a bunch more, but we haven't had time to upload them and probably will not until she gets back from her European trip. Cataloging photos is very time consuming.
Lisa and I found the museum stiflingly hot, and it was very crowded, including a bunch of families with children that mostly didn't seem all that interested in doing anything other than running around shrieking. An exception was one young man who I observed while waiting for Lisa at one point. He was asking his father if they could take a different tube or train route home than they had come to the museum so they could see different lines.
We made a small lunch outside in Covent Garden with frankfurters and bratwurst from a stand in the Garden. There are few places to sit, but we found one. We were so thirsty that we went to a nearby Tesco Express and got some sodas, and while Lisa had a second hot dog, I got a Mocha Frappuccino from a nearby Starbucks. After lunch, we re-entered the museum and looked at the rest of the exhibits. However, Lisa and I were not feeling all that well (our legs were giving out), so rather than walk or take the Tube back to the hotel, I sprung for a taxi.
A few hours rest at the hotel left us both feeling better, so we ventured out again to go out to dinner for the first time in London. We had an initial idea of where to go, but we ended up somewhere else.
We took the Tube to Trafalgar Square.
Our initial plan was to return to the Sherlock Holmes restaurant, where we ate once during a previous visit to London. However, the menu was not at all what we remembered. Nachos and chicken wings just don't fit what used to be the Holmsian theme of the restaurant. We decided to look elsewhere.
Not far away we looked at The Clarence Pub Whitehall. This menu looked a lot better, and we were able to get a table in a corner not crowded too close to other people.
Lisa started with some excellent salmon paté with sourdough bread. (She wishes that they had given her more bread.) Lisa offered some to Kuma Bear, but he turned up his nose and complained that she was trying to feed him "putty."
My starter was a Scotch egg, which I like a lot. This also was good.
Both of us had the sirloin steak with garlic butter. I forgot to take the photo until I'd eaten half of mine. The fries were good, too. We enjoyed dinner, but we won't enjoy it that often, as it cost £89 ($114.50).
Walking back to Trafalgar Square, I was taken by these all-gender-inclusive pedestrian crossing lights.
We briefly investigated Charing Cross Station, which we've never visited.
On the way back to the hotel, we searched for a larger Boots than the ones in the train stations, as there were a few things that both Lisa and I were looking for, one of which was potentially covered by my healthcare savings account. I tried using my HSA account card, and to my surprise, it worked.
Getting back "home" was made more difficult by our increasing difficulty we're having climbing stairs due to our sore legs. (My pedometer registered 21,500 steps today.) I ended up routing us through the Underground to stations that were not step-free, and while we didn't have to do something like climb the spiral staircase at Camden Town, it still was challenging. And we still had the roughly 1 km from King's Cross, which was mostly level, but turned out to be at least twice as long as it should have been when I took us down the wrong road out of the KX roundabout.
Thanks to my navigation error, we missed picking up some groceries where mean to do so. Lisa instead returned to the tiny little convenience store across from our hotel where she bought things on our first night here. While the store has an extremely limited selection, Lisa liked the store because the proprietor was so nice and friendly, and she told him so as we made our purchases. Lisa told me that she was doing her part to maybe make the world a slightly happier place.
Eventually we made it back to the hotel. They have very helpfully given us a 2 PM checkout, so we can get breakfast relatively late, and spend time repacking for Tuesday night's trip on the Caledonian Sleeper, store our bags with the hotel, and figure something to do before heading to Euston on Tuesday evening for our sleeper train to Glasgow. I don't expect to post an entry on Tuesday night, but I'll probably put up a back-dated entry once we get to Glasgow and get moved in to the Crowne Plaza.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-06 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-06 06:18 pm (UTC)You do realise that the "Charing Cross" shown is a replica(ish) of the original, demolished by the Puritans during the Civil Wars - & it stood where King Charles' statue now is.
That point is the Zero-point for UK road mileages.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-07 07:52 am (UTC)Thanks for the history on Charing Cross. We'd never been there because we'd never needed to take a train from that station.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-06 06:30 pm (UTC)I'm arriving at the Con, from London (Where I live) via Edinburgh, on Wednesday - see you there, I hope.
Glasgow's railway history is fascinating & complicated.
Three major railways + the Clockwork Orange & Two underground systems, Five major railway-locomotive manufacturing works. Two closed termini - Buchanan St & St Enoch.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-08 01:33 pm (UTC)