London, Day 1

After a marathon night's sleep, we were up and ready to go.  Inevitably, when one arrives in a new location after several days of travel, there are a number of tasks with which one is faced.  In this case it was getting our laundry up to date and dropping dry cleaning in. We completed these tasks by 9:30 after a very nice breakfast.  In case we hadn't mentioned it the hotel includes a very good continental buffet breakfast with meats, cheeses, cereals, bread, rolls, croissants, etc.

The next items on the agenda were to get our Oyster Cards ready for use and to pick up tickets for Virginia to go down to Bath for a day. On the way to Paddington Station, we passed some of the beautiful eighteenth and nineteenth century row houses in the area.  Sadly they are now hotels in most cases, but their facades remain a sight to see.

Beautiful old buildings near Paddington Station

For those not familiar with the Oyster Card, it is similar to cards used in most big cities these days.  You pay for a specific plan (in our case for a week) and then can use the card as often as you wish within the designated period..  What is good about it is the cost on a weekly basis is about equivalent to two daily one way trips on public transport.  As a result, it offers a significant saving for us since we do a lot of travel by bus and on the tube.  Virginia's ticket to Bath was purchased and paid for ages ago from Hobart and to pick it up all that was required was to insert the credit card used at the time into a machine (for identification purposes) and type in the ticket number which was sent to us by email and, voila, out came all the necessary tickets.  How easy is that?

Picking up pre-paid tickets

Next it was time for some basic shopping.  For this we walked up to Queensway. The top end of Queensway is dominated by the huge Whiteley's shopping centre where many of the familiar high street names can be found, together with a choice of restaurants and a multi-screen cinema.Whiteley's was London's first department store and one of the most luxurious.  As a shopping centre, it is considered by many to be the most elegant in London.  The founder of the department store, William Whiteley, was murdered in 1907 by a man claiming to be his illegitimate son. There's nothing to spice up shopping like a little bit of scandal.  Anyway,we went to Marks and Spencer in the Whiteley's centre, and across the street to Boots where we finished our shopping.

Whiteley's

In the afternoon we we went to the Burlington Arcade.  Virginia wanted a pair of gloves and had noticed a very elegant glove shop when we were last in London.  The shop, Sermoneta, has more gloves than one can imagine.  I mean, after all, how much variety can there possibly be in gloves?  Well, let me tell you, gloves come in every colour and every combination of colours.  They come lined and unlined.  They come in all lengths and with all sorts of trimmings.  And that is just the women's gloves.  They have a full range of men's gloves as well!

Burlington Arcade

Once the new gloves had been acquired we headed for Fortnum and Mason's to refresh ourselves with a pot of tea after such an exhausting process. 

Tea?

Unfortunately we were unable to have tea there (even though Virginia had elegant new gloves) but we did have an interesting wander around.  Did you know that there are hundreds of blends of tea and Fortnum and Mason's appears to sell most of them and has been doing so for almost 300 years?

Heart shaped sugar

We were fascinated by the sugars for sale there.  They have brown sugar, white sugar, black sugar, heart shaped red sugar, sugar with the F&M logo, sugar shaped like butterflies and even more.  Amazing.  And since it is so close to Easter ( only 48 more days) all of the Easter goodies were on display as well.  Certainly they do a wonderful job of displaying their goods.  

 After having a cup of tea nearby we headed for Piccadilly Circus to catch a bus to take us back to the hotel.  On the way, we passed the beautiful Christopher Wren designed St James Church (1684).

St James Church, Piccadilly

From there we continued to walk until we got to Regent Street where we boarded a 23 bus to take us back to Paddington and to our hotel where we organised ourselves for dinner and concluded our first full day in London.

Regent Street