London was a blast today. We got Riley into her new Panic Room with a classical CD on repeat and she was really quiet. We ended up taking the Tube into London which was a lot cheaper and faster than the train. We got off at Covent Garden and went straight to the British Museum, only to find that the display I wanted to see had been moved...in 2000. Clearly I need to travel more. We left the museum and wandered through Covent Garden, which was really cute and full of fun stores. We wandered through the Covent Garden market, which had a lot of shows going on and tons of craft/crap vendors. We then went to the National Gallery, and just in time for a rain storm to hit. So we sat upstairs in the bakery and had tea and a scone and watched the rain. The National Gallery was quite cool - we saw a great special exhibit and then the Impressionist section. I love that the museums are free, because we left after that and wandered around the corner to the Portrait Gallery. There was a special exhibit of Vanity Fair photographs that we saw, which was interesting. Who knew that Virginia Woolf and Fred Astaire were in Vanity Fair? After that, we were hungry, as it was around 3:00 and we still hadn't eaten anything. My sister wanted to find a vegetarian restaurant in Soho she'd visited before, but sadly it was closed. However, a lovely smell was wafting across the road from another small restaurant. We decided to go there. Luckily there was one table for two left (there were about 7 tables total in the place) and had a light lunch of cream of cauliflower soup and salads. I had a really nice octopus salad (the octopus was so amazingly tender) and my sister had a lovely cheese quiche thingy. While we were tempted by the sticky toffee pudding, we couldn't eat anymore. The restaurant was quite nice, with low ceiling and a lovely menu. It seemed like a quaint neighborhood restaurant and was quite a happy accident. Afterward, we wandered over to Fortnum and Mason which was quite a department store. The entire bottom floor was teas and biscuits and coffees, which we browsed for quite some time. Then we took the tube back (along with half of London) and returned to little Riley. I guess we need to leave her a red phone in the Panic Room, as she ate up some of the carpet while we were gone. Thankfully, it's repairable.
Tomorrow -- Wales!
