Tooling around London

In which the suitcase becomes heavier…

Darn, I meant to turn on the distance tracker. I am sure there was a fair few km covered today.

Started in Leicester Square/Covent Gardens area, visiting Maison Bertaux patisserie (good croissant, awful coffee but fun chat with owner). They get consistently mentioned as the oldest patisserie in London and have good ratings, but didn’t seem extraordinary to me apart from the outstandingly bad coffee. Apparently they were trying out new beans which weren’t working out (address of coffee bean supplier earnestly supplied by owner!). Interesting art installation at Heaven’s Gate outside Tottenham Court tube station, passed the Banksy store on Charing Cross Road and sent a picture to friend Richa who took me to the Banksy exhibit in Vancouver last month (lots of fun!). To my amazement Foyle’s bookstore is still going strong, and as one of my favourite haunts in the past on a London visit it was great to browse around again. Acquired a paperback that looks promising for the next book club selection, written by and about someone who dropped off the grid…wishful thinking? In search of a Marks and Spencers with clothes I walked around to three, covering a fair bit of ground, before concluding that they are completely out of everything but the food business now, and that too is a pale shadow of its former self. Sad. No college cream biscuits to be had and the selection otherwise strictly limited.

Trying to find a store to get a watch and reading glasses was a challenge – eventually got a cheap Timex at Argos to replace my triathlon timex whose button to change the time to local time has ceased functioning. Works still for Canadian west coast time but is stuck there now. Reading glasses another challenge but finally acquired; dept. stores appear to have all disappeared here as well. Window shopped at one chocolate shop in Soho but decided it wasn’t worth going in.

Tons of Harry Potter shows and fun HP stores in the area… it’s obviously been good for the economy.

Next to Pierre Hermé for another chat with the girl behind the counter who trained as a pastry chef but didn’t like the pressure… alas no patisseries in the London store. Or perhaps that’s a good thing? as the next stop was Cedric Grolet to pick up the pre-ordered passion fruit patisserie. A very tony place in The Berkeley across from Hyde Park, minimalistic decor and one couple (sounded American) paying 125 GBP each for champagne and patisserie selection at the counter. The patisserie I got was also overpriced but absolutely exquisite piping of Chantilly cream and full of delicious fresh passionfruit… I’ll have to finish it at breakfast as it won’t travel, but it’ll count as fruit and dairy? as so much passionfruit inside. Yummm.

Back to my ‘hood for a (finally good!) coffee and Indian takeout (which was meh) before heading off to the last chocolatier on my list, Maison Samadi. Really interesting flavours, and the root cause of the worldwide pistachio shortage right now – literally – pistachio Dubai style chocolate bars went viral and have sucked up pistachios worldwide, leaving the market dry and the prices inflated. These are chocolate bars with pistachio cream filling +/- kunafi. Kunafi is a very interesting flavour, a lovely crunchy contrast to the chocolate; alas they only had these with white chocolate fillings right now… andanother chat with the girl on the floor resulted in a few samples and more research acquired for future tasting….

I limped home with the advil not yet cutting in, but the German wheat beer at the flat was far more effective for the pain than the advil! Or maybe it was the combo?

Had to sit and rest my sore leg, back to doing stairs one at a time, but that was dangerous as it is sleep time at home. Wrestled through by doing some hand washing and hope to get another decent nights’ sleep tonight to put me solidly in this time zone before joining the tour group tomorrow. With mixed feelings…