London: Day 3
by Céleste | May 14, 2015
Our third day in London was rainy. Not a big surprise to us, but slightly inconvenient. We spent most of the day in museums in order to stay out of the rain, though we also tried to walk through some neighborhoods so we could experience them.
The Breakfast Club
For breakfast, we hit up The Breakfast Club, which has several locations in London, though we chose the Soho one. A friend of ours sent us a list of good London breakfast places, and this was at the top of the list. We waited in line for about 45 minutes to get into the restaurant. When they say London is all about queueing, they’re not kidding.
Vincent had the All-American breakfast (pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns), while I had a breakfast burrito with chorizo and eggs. We both loved our breakfasts, and washed them down with some excellent coffee.
Soho
After we ate, we walked around in Soho until we got to the British Museum. It was rainy, so we didn’t walk too far off the beaten path and we didn’t stick around anywhere for long. We also apparently didn’t take any photos.
The British Museum
The British Museum houses cultural and historical artifacts from around the world, with an emphasis on Britain and the former colonies, especially Egypt and India. Interestingly, we got to see the famous Rosetta Stone, which was such a pleasure, since it’s a huge part of human history. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a very good photo, because there was a school group there looking at it too, and they were kind of rowdy.
We also saw artifacts from Mesopotamia, Sumatra, and others from Egypt. We really enjoyed the section about clocks and watches, which I thought would be boring, but turned out to be really fascinating.
A word of warning regarding the toilets at the British Museum: the line is insane. It went around two corners, with probably 30 people in line. This was for the women’s restroom, of course; the men walked right by us smugly. Okay, they weren’t smug, I was just annoyed by the wait.
National Portrait Gallery
Next was the National Portrait Gallery, which as the name hints, contains portraits. I was primarily interested in anything by Hans Holbein (The Younger), who painted a lot of the key players in Henry VIII’s court, including Anne Boleyn and Thomas More. They had several Holbeins at the museum.
We also saw the Stewart wing and some random paintings of lords and ladies, though we were too tired at that point to continue taking photos.
St.-Martin-in-the-Fields
For a snack, we stopped at St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, a church across from the National Portrait Gallery. They had a cafe in the former crypt, and we had coffee down there while utilizing the wifi.
There were actually many churches and crypts with cafes in them, which we thought was ingenious. It’s probably sacriligious, but it’s a great use of space and makes some money for the church, so we didn’t really see a problem. It’s also a great way to get out of the rain, and many of the crypts/churches had pretty good food and excellent coffee. Vincent and I tried to imagine what monks and priests from the 1600s would have to say about that.
Piccadilly Circus and Chinatown
Next we walked through Piccadilly Circus and Chinatown. Honestly, it was too rainy at this point to really enjoy the views, so we hustled and took pictures before running into a pub for dinner.
O’Neills
We had attempted to go to a different pub, The White Horse, but much of the seating was taken up by someone’s party (damn you, Gemma!) So we walked around until we found another pub to eat at, called O’Neills. We were pretty sure it was a chain restaurant, but heck, it was new to us so we didn’t care.
All I wanted was some fish and chips. I wanted to make sure we had fish and chips before we left London. Of course, they were all out. Oh. Okay. Vincent ordered mac and cheese with bacon, and I begrudgingly ordered chicken tikka masala. It turned out to be good, and I tried to rationalize that at least I was still eating a London favorite.
I vowed to get fish and chips elsewhere, however.
We were tired and rained out by the end of the day, so we headed home early, watched some videos, and went to bed.
