I fried us up some breakfast on Thursday, July 5.
(This is actually the breakfast I cooked on Sunday before we left, but it was all the same stuff.)
There weren’t any spatulas in the kitchen, so the eggs suffered some yolk breakage while I tried to get them out of the pan, but it was delicious. We had Wiltshire bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, tea, and orange juice. Num.
It was a quick walk up to BBC headquarters at Television Centre.
The building is shaped like a question mark, to fit in the unusual plot of land it occupies.
It was a really cool tour. Most of the shows we watch are filmed elsewhere (Doctor Who in Cardiff, Top Gear in a big airplane hangar outside the city, etc.) but we did get to see a couple of game shows being taped, which was cool. We also saw the BBC newsroom.
Somebody volunteered for the quiz show at the end of the tour…
He came in second place, and got a BBC Studios pen for his trouble.
We picked up some souvenirs at the gift shop, and got a picture with the Dalek:
Next, we made our way back over to Westminster to visit the Churchill War Rooms. Man, it was neat. Basically Churchill and his cabinet had a series of meeting areas, map rooms, and living quarters under what is today a Treasury building. When the war ended, the rooms were closed up and forgotten. They were rediscovered in the 1980s and eventually turned into part of the Imperial War Museums.
The whole thing was just so amazing, especially since they didn’t have to do much to restore the bunker – almost everything was left intact when the site was abandoned! They even found one officer’s ration of sugar cubes tucked away in a desk drawer. Lots of beautiful antique typewriters, too. And it had one of the cooler gift shops we saw on the trip, with lots of WWII memorabilia. We decided to get postcards for our dads here, since they’re both history buffs.
Then we met back up with James and got to meet Phil (@NES_4Life on Twitter), another of the “UK Contingent” of RNR listeners. We sat down at The Archduke, which is on the South Bank.
Salmon, potatoes with turmeric, broccolini, and a cool yogurt sauce. It was delicious.
After dinner and drinks, we found a grassy spot near the Eye and recorded some audio for Nick.
Then they both had to catch trains out of the city, and we crossed the river so my husband could set up to take pictures of The Shard on its grand opening night. We had about an hour before the laser light show was about to start, so I snapped a couple of pictures of the South Bank and then decided to go look for some dessert.
By the way, at 9:30 pm on a Thursday night in Westminster, it is really difficult to find dessert takeaway. Half the likely-looking places were closed, and none of the pubs and restaurants did carry-out. Apparently there is an additional tax they have to pay to do takeaway? Anyway, I walked all the way from Parliament Square up to Charing Cross before locating an Italian restaurant that did takeaway, and they didn’t have any plastic utensils. So I ordered something that I thought looked like it could be eaten with fingers and then made the long slog back to where my lovely assistant was standing. The laser show was well under way by the time I got back, it was crazy. I was glad I had used my car locator app to mark where he was standing, because it would have been difficult to locate him otherwise.
Thanks to Frankie & Benny’s for being open, doing takeaway, and making a damned fine chocolate brownie fudge cake, which was still warm by the time I got back to where Steve was standing.
From there we walked to Embankment station and rode to King’s Cross, with the wild idea of taking a picture of Platform 9 3/4. Which, it turns out, looks nothing like in the movies, because King’s Cross Station looks nothing like in the movies. Oh well.
Then it was back to the flat for some sleep.
Next: The Prime Meridian, crystal skulls, chicken tikka masala, and gelato
