Wednesday, 26 July, 2017 – weather: could have been worse

It is our final full day in London and boy do we have a lot planned. The weather is supposed to be awful with heavy rain for most of the day. It started wet, but not that bad, and then slowly improved as the day went on, as above said it could have been much worse. Having said that, I was fairly rugged-up in our first jaunt out into the world as you will see in the photos below.

Our first journey of the day is to the Borough Market. Two trains gets us there. It has been one of our favourites for a long time now. The idea is to take some photos and pick up some breakfast.

The following are my shots around the market.

Well, that was just the start of the day. We make our way back to the apartment where I shed the plastic rain coat and have a bit of a nap. Then it is back on the train again to Piccadilly Circus. We are off to see the “Book of Mormon” – I had bought tickets for it while still in Melbourne.

When we arrive, there are people everywhere. I ask where the box office is, as we need to pick up our tickets, and I am pointed to a long queue in front of me. We move to the back. It is a bit of a wait but the queue moves relatively quickly and we finally get our tickets, grab a drink and go to our seats. Julie has a long chat with the people next to her, nothing new there.

As for the show, BoM was loved by Julie who found it quite funny. I thought it was a bit silly but maybe it is just the old grump coming out again. It certainly was irreverent – attacking lots of things and beliefs. For example, near the start the two Missionaries arrive in Uganda and the locals, who are down and out, sing a song they join in with. The translation of the song title: “F**k You, God”. Any way, it was a sell out, Julie loved it, has won prizes as the best musical around, etc.

As we leave the theatre, it is still two hours before the restaurant that is our final part of the day is open so we decide we will kill time having drinks.

The Manager allows us to sit at a table at the back of the bar that was probably reserved for people ordering bar food.

We head out towards the train station but get a bit lost as the GPS lets us down, again. We eventually reach Piccadilly Circus Station and get going. We change to the District Line at Earls Court and, a good thing, the first train goes to Wimbledon, our destination. We then catch a bus to get closer to our final destination – it takes about 15 minutes for everybody to load on. Finally, after close to 70 minutes of travelling, we arrive – over 30 minutes later than we had indicated.

The owner remembered us and was a bit worried because we were so late. Any way we settled in and the Owner brought us a smoked drink which was quite tasty – turned out to be smoked cream sherry, an interesting start.

We peruse the menu and discover there is nothing smoked on it. He said that he likes to keep things lighter in Summer – you could have fooled me that it was Summer.

Our generous host brought us each a glass of Semillon to sip with the prawns. BTW: he had an interesting idea relative to corkage. Another table brought a magnum of a red, BYO. The corkage – the owner took a generous glass of it for himself. Original.

All very good and enjoyable. I decided I did not want to fight another long ride back so ordered an Uber – it worked out very well and not that expensive given the distance we had to go. The end of a very long and fruitful day.