We arrived in London at 1:10 p.m. Since we still felt weakened, we caught a cab to our hotel so that we didn’t have to heft luggage around on trains and tube.
driving past Harrod’s
We arrived at our hotel, Hazlitt’s, in Soho about 2:40 p.m. The hotel was an 18th century home to the writer William Hazlitt. It is very quirky with a variety of rooms with crooked ceilings and antique furniture. Our room was the Duke of Portland on the ground floor with an odd entryway.
old headboard
The girls were in Major Roberts on the top floor.
We walked from the hotel along Oxford Street to the Wallace Collection, the former home of the Marquesses of Hertford, two of whom were huge collectors of art, arms, armour and Renaissance and medieval objects. Paintings include Titian, Hals, Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Canaletto and Gainsborough. There’s a lot of Boucher and Fragonard.
We walked back from the Wallace Collection to Bond Street tube station. Sidney put her ticket into the slot the wrong way and we had to line up to get it fixed. When we got off at Tottenham Court Road, we headed the wrong way. We had to turn around to find Soho Street. We stopped at Tesco for some snacks. As we are leaving, I though I saw the actor Paul McGann.
Back in our rooms we had a snack and change for dinner. We took a taxi and got a driver who pointed out Buckingham Palace and other sights before arriving at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
We started with champagne, single malt and fruit juices, and were brougth “canneloni” of smoked salmon and avocado, crispy potato slices with cream cheese and garlic in the middle. Those amuses were followed by pumpkin soup with truffle garlic butter on a cheese pastry spoon to be mixed into the soup. After more than a day of little to eat, both Scott and I thought this was the best thing we had ever tasted.
We started with scallops, frogs legs, seafood ravioli and tuna and swordfish carpaccio.
ravioli
For mains, beef with Barolo sauce, Cornish lamb stuffed with walnuts and morel sauce
beef
lamb
and 1997 Chateau Talbot
and 1997 Chateau TalbotDesserts
lime parfaithot chocolate souffle with cinnamon ice cream
chocolate cylinder with ginger, coffee, chocolate and coffee granite
After dessert, we got mango mousse in a chocolate cornet, strawberry ice cream enclosed in white chocolate, white chocolate wafers filled with black currant, and chocolate wafers filled with passion fruit.
We decided it was the best meal we had ever had.
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