DAY OUT: London

 

After much careful night before planning, we set of from Euston to Heals and immediately our plans were thrown into disarray! Our planned jumping off point (Goodge Street) was closed, so we very quickly got off at Warren Street and walked down Tottenham Court road. Fortunately this didn't take much time and we were soon in our favourite home shopping store.

I bought a very small bar of Ocelot White Almond chocolate for £6, C&W prices so it needs to be good! We visited the designer room again and saw the incredibly expensive infinity mirrors by Timothy Oulton, they are very cool but the large ones are as much as a small car and even at 30% off and free delivery I don't think we'll be joining the 'Owners Club' anytime soon!

We perused some ropey looking sofas, and one rather cool black velvet one which Panda would relish I'm sure. Also there were some quite cool lights called 'Melt' by Tom Dixon which looked nice in red and blue but not so much in brown. 

From here we walked down Tottenham Court road towards the tube, but we decided to walk instead as it was a lovely sunny November day. Our next destination was the Old Bank of England Pub, where we had a table booked for 12:30.

On arrival we were very pleased to be shown to a booth on the right hand side of the bar and we quickly decided on pies and chips for lunch. Rose's was steak and ale and a reasonable size, while mine was chicken, leek and gammon and was literally twice the size! It was a struggle but I persisted and eventually the pie was defeated and consumed. A very nice meal in very nice surroundings, we'd definitely go back.

From here we walked down Fleet St (which becomes The Strand) and then cut through to Covent Garden. 

On the way there we passed a Penhaligons store on Bow Street that was literally pumping scent out into the street through a pipe! It smelt amazing and so when we found another Penhaligons in Covent Garden we went in and asked what that scent was. We were told it was called 'Halfeti' which is their best selling perfume. The lady in there was really nice and because we were the only people in the store it felt rather luxurious, like we were having a private consultation... we bought a small box of testers for £24 and we both left with the backs of our hands liberally dosed with scent. We both really liked the Halfeti, but Rose liked 'Babylon' even more (£175 for 100ml!).

We also came across a store called APM Monaco which looked like really expensive jewellery, but actually turned out to be more comparable to Swarovski in price, maybe a bit more. Some very nice items in the store, but we didn't purchase anything. 

We wandered around Covent Garden a little more, then headed out of the central area to find Kate Spade's shop. Some nice items in there too but again nothing outstanding that merited a purchase. So we headed off to The Alchemist on St Martin's Lane. We had had two personal recommendations for this place so felt fairly confident that it might actually be okay...

The service was a little slow, but when the drinks came they were pretty good. Certainly better than the last two cocktails we'd had in London! I had a 'Pina Colada' and Rose had a 'Bathbomb'. The 'Bathbomb' came with a 'bathbomb' which you put into the glass and it fizzed and sweetened it up considerably. My Pina Colada was more rum based than cream based, it seemed quite strong but it was nice enough. I wouldn't mind having it again sometime.

We headed back to Covent Garden to try and find Lulu Guiness' shop, but it was closed, so we headed back to Penhaligons for another sniff and then we headed off to Leicester Square. It didn't take long to reach there but we were really heading for Piccadilly and Fortnum and Mason.

We had a nice look around in here and bought a couple of bars of F&M chocolate to try (£6.95 so again, better be good!!) before we were accosted by a chap who looked like Alexander Armstrong. He wanted us to come over and try the Mince Pie and Marmalade Gin Liqueur he had made, apparently only 1000 bottles made and already half gone. He gave us a small taster and I must admit that even though I'm not one for drinking neat alcohol it was smooth as butter and tasted exactly like an orange marmalade mince pie.

We mooched around the store a little bit more and saw some hilariously awful Christmas decorations including a full size Cinderella pumpkin coach (£5000) and a dreadful owl thing (£325)...

Thoroughly appalled we took our leave and walked through Burlington Arcade (taking in the sight of over a hundred Rolexes in 'The Vintage Watch Co' window on the way) and emerging onto Bond Street. We carried on up towards The Eden Gallery hoping it would be open this time so we could see the Alec Monopoly artworks. Thankfully it was open, but the AM stuff wasn't all that exciting. In fact a lot of the stuff in there was a bit crappy, although there were some really cool pictures by an artist called 'Galy'

We also had a quick visit to Galleries Bertoux next door as well, but we were now starting to flag so we headed up to Oxford Circus and got the tube back to Euston and then went home.

All in all it was a pretty fantastic day, and really cool that we didn't do anything that we did last time we were in London. The weather was perfect for walking around London, not too hot, not too cold and it was great to see the Christmas lights around Covent Garden and Oxford Street.