This was the view from our hotel window. However, today dawned cold and windy. I took these circular stairs to the leisure center to swim in the pool and enjoy the steam room and sauna. Local moms and dads were there with their babies and toddlers.
Went into Windsor for breakfast but weather not really conducive to doing anything there or at the hotel.
Ate breakfast at Browns along the Windsor riverfront, by the French Bros boats.
They already had a set menu for the day of the wedding but I had Eggs Florentine and Laurie had pancakes. No syrup and the white stuff is not whipped cream but yogurt.
Decided it would be a good day for indoor activities in London so walked to the station and caught the train to Slough.
It's a very short ride from Windsor-Eton to Slough, where you transfer to a train that goes to London's Paddington station. We figured it out. Boy, there were a lot fewer people here on Wednesday than there would be on Saturday, since this is how most Londoners got to Windsor for the wedding.
Once at Paddington, I got an Oyster Card and loaded it up with money to take tube rides. From here we caught the tube to South Kensington station, close to museums. We went to the Victoria and Albert.
Didn't get photos of some of the coolest things I saw there. One was the cast gallery, where they still have castings of great sculptures from around the world including the David from Florence and Trajan's column from Rome. The idea was for people to be able to see these things even if they couldn't travel to Italy. I thought that was awesome!
Following the curators' top 20 list, I told Laurie I wanted to see DaVinci's notebook and Shakespeare's original folios. Liked the Theatre exhibit where the folios were -- reminded me of my nephew Grant.
My favorite was the jewelry exhibit. You couldn't take photos but I took pictures in my mind of the spiral with every gemstone, the Londonderry jewels in the drawer -- especially the Order of the Garter loaned to Winston Churchill and even Beyonce's butterfly ring. Tried to buy postcards of these things in the gift shop but they didn't have any. I was charmed by these log bean bag chairs in the kids section of the shop.
We could have spent the whole rest of the day at the V and A but decided to walk over to Harrods since it wasn't too far away.
Freddi had told me to see the tacky Diana exhibit in the basement but Laurie said it's long gone since Mohammad Al Fayed no longer owns the store. But a lot of Egyptian decor still remains as you can see from this photo.
What a guilty pleasure it was to start at the top of the store -- Shoe Heaven -- and work our way down floor by floor via the main escalators.
We had a blast looking at things but my phone ran out of battery after I took these pictures in the vintage ladies room.
So I have only memories of the fabulous food halls on the first floor, which were my favorite thing. Laurie took this picture of me at an art exhibit by the same guy who did the glass balloon animals I liked last year in Charleston.
But neither of us got photos of the Waterford musical instruments in the windows -- the cut crystal guitar and saxophone remain a memory.
I took these photos of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben (covered in scaffolding), and the London Eye later in the week on a nicer day. But we took the tube from Harrods to the embankment and walked over London Bridge and along the side of the river where the Eye had just closed (6 pm) before walking back across. It was cold.
Feet getting tired, we tubed back to Paddington and caught the train back to Slough, where we transferred to Windsor. Here's a picture of Two Brewers Pub in Windsor near the Long Walk.
It's not the Duchess of Cambridge pub on High Street, where we ate supper at about 9:30p, but similar.
I got the best chicken and mushroom pie with mashed potatoes and peas -- fit my stereotype of an English pub meal perfectly and tasted good after a long day of exploring. Fortunately the taxi stand was right across the street and we headed home after another action-packed day. Changing hotels tomorrow.
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