Constant Showers Bring May Flowers - in London

Wisteria at Hampton Court Palace.

Tulips in a bed of purple-blue.

A sea of daffodils.

roses in purple

Well, my knee started feeling better once I started walking about, but still wasn't great.  I'm thinking now I must have twisted it somehow without knowing it.  But anyway, I went to Hampton Court Palace on Thursday and the flowers in the gardens were simply unbelievable.  It was sort of drizzling the whole time, but it's not the sort of rain that you really need an umbrella for.  I took tons of photos of flowers and even though I've been there about three or four other times, this was definitely the best the gardens ever looked. 

No idea what these are, but they're gorgeous.

After a couple of hours communing with nature, I took the train back into London and met Stephanie and her friend for dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant.  And when I say authentic, I mean, we were the only non-Chinese people in the joint, and the wait staff ignored us as pointedly as possible since we were clearly in the wrong place.  Unbeknownst to them, Steph speaks some Chinese, so they had to at least acknowledge our presence by coming over and waiting for Steph to say in Chinese what we wanted to eat.  Once the orders were ready, they threw our dishes on the table and walked away.  Steph said it was par for the course there, but that it was the most authentic Chinese in town (and she used to live in China, so I guess she'd know).  I had special fried rice which was different than any I'd ever had before, but quite good and didn't feel as "fried" and bad for you as the kind at your average shopping mall Chinese restaurant.

see? Wild Boar!

From the Chinese place we walked to a nearby pub and sat around chatting.  The girls got drinks, and I munched on some digestives I'd picked up at the corner store (these are sort of like cookies, but the bread part isn't sweetened except for that one side of the cookie has dark chocolate on it).  They are delicious!

On Friday I went to Borough Market underneath London Bridge.  This is a giant food market that sells everything from bread to fish to fruit to exotic foods to pastries.  For lunch, I got a wild boar sausage sandwich which was amazingly good - especially for someone who is not a huge sausage fan.  Then I had fresh orange/mango juice, a chocolate chip cookie and a small scone (pronounced scon).  I then walked toward Tower Bridge (the big pretty famous one), took some photos, then crossed the Millennium Bridge (a walking-only bridge) toward St. Paul's cathedral which I marveled at briefly before catching the tube to Parliament.  I took photos of Big Ben and Parliament, as well as the outside of Westminster, went into a nearby chapel for a little while to escape the rain and cold, then walked up to Trafalgar Square where the National Gallery is.  That is my favorite museum in London and I wandered about admiring my favorite pieces by artists like Pizzaro, Degas, Van Gough, Sauret, etc.

Upon leaving the museum I went to Waterloo Station to meet Meera (who traveled with me in Utah last summer).  We caught up in the lounge area of the National Theatre before her sister Amy came to meet us.  We then attempted to find somewhere to eat for dinner.  I really wanted pub food and they tried to accommodate but every pub we found either 1) was full, 2) didn't serve food, or 3) didn't serve food anymore.  One we went too was terribly crowded and crazy but we finally found a table with menus on it and all decided on what we wanted after a good 20 minutes, then Amy and I went up to the bar to order the food for us all.  It took 10 minutes to reach the front of the bar and when we tried to order, the man said they weren't serving food anymore. 

St. Pauls way in back left, the city at twilight.

Long story short, we finally found a place, but it didn't have your typical British pub food that I wanted and it was 10:30 by the time we had our food.  Meera and I then had to go back to Stephanie's place to get all my stuff and then back to her place and we didn't end up getting to her house, south east of London, until after 1 p.m. At which point, I had to ice my swollen left ankle, which is now giving me much more trouble than my left knee.  (I sprained it last summer and it's never fully healed).

A Turner painting.

This morning (Saturday), we got up at 9:30 and got ready to meet Meera's sister and father for tea and then museum hopping as it was her father's birthday.  First we went to the Tate Briton which was nice to see again, as it had been a good long while, and I forgot they have two of my favorite paintings - The Lady of Shallot and drowning Ophelia. I'm not a big morbid.

From there, we went to the Turner gallery on the back side of the museum and saw tons of his work which made me think of my Grandma Bailey who loves him and is the reason I went there in the first place three years ago. 

part of the giant glass structure hanging in the middle of the V&A museum

After that, they had tickets to see a special exhibition called the Queen's Collection, and I decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum which I thought had a special exhibition on the decline of the post-modernist age that I wanted to see.  Meera said the walk would take twenty minutes, but it took an hour and I was limping by the time I arrived - only to find out, that exhibition recently ended and there was a new one about design.  So, I decided to go to the inner courtyard of the museum and take a little rest.  I lay across the wide, shallow steps with my feet elevated and listed to a book on my iPod and dozed for half an hour (as there was actually a slight bit of sunshine out and the courtyard was surrounded by the walls of the museum blocking the wind.  After that, I walked around the museum a bit more, noticing things I hadn't noticed last time I visited, and finally took the tube to Trafalgar Square where I was to meet Meera and her gang.  When I got there, there was actually a bit of blue in part of the sky, and everyone was quite ecstatic about it and taking photos left and I right.  But right before Meera and them arrived, some dark clouds started moving in and the wind picked up and it was bitter cold again.

a little bit of blue!

We walked to a Latin restaurant since it was Cinco de Mayo and I had a delicious enchilada with spinach, squash, cheese, chick peas and something else.  Wish we had them in the US like that. 

After that, Meera and I just came home and we were both very exhausted (I'm nearly falling asleep as I type this and she's already in bed).  Tomorrow we plan to have lunch with her family and then I'll have to begin the long journey to get to the ferry to take me to Holland (because it's a 'bank holiday' tomorrow, what would have been a fairly simple journey will now consist of a train, four tube line switches, and a long bus just to get to the overnight ferry).  Fabulous.  But, I'm so excited to see Lieselotte!

walking to dinner - London Eye and Parliament.