Hey, I’m in London – cool! But you already knew that, didn’t you? But you don’t YET know what I’ve been up to. Okay, okay – you probably guessed that I started my first day back in London with a walk…and you’d be right. But I also squeezed in a repeat visit to a museum I’ve been to once before, plus a new experience, and then a fun night with friends. I’d say that makes for a pretty good day, but obviously I’m biased. 🙂

To get things started, my walk was truly a glorious one. The sun was shining, the birds were singing (well, I assume they were, over the din of traffic on Cromwell Road), and I even got to wear SHORTS because the temp was so nice! As with Friday’s walk, I wasn’t really sure where the road would take me, but I figured I would stick to Cromwell, walk for awhile, and then divert off at some point. So that’s what I did! And much to my surprise, I pretty quickly ended up in Hyde Park! I guess if I had consulted Google Maps, I wouldn’t have been so surprised, but I knew I wasn’t going to get lost either way, so it worked out fine. I wasn’t following any particular path through the park, but instead just walked until I’d gone the right distance to turn around (“right” meaning as far as I wanted to go). The whole way through, I enjoyed the sun and snapped some photos, so check ’em out below.

A side chapel and a confessional.

I passed both of these monuments on my walk – the Wellington Monument on the left and the Cavalry of the Empire Memorial on the right.

From there, it was back on the streets of London to make my way back to the Xenia. Really glad I discovered I have such a good walking spot so close to where I’m staying! And I’m even more glad to have such pleasant weather to enjoy that walking time. And on top of that, I’m glad to be staying in a hotel with an included breakfast that runs until 11a because that meant I had time to get back, shower, and get down to enjoy a very tasty meal. You likely noticed I haven’t been having breakfast on the trip so far, but because this one is included and because I could eat it so late (it’s definitely enough food to last me through the day that way), I decided to dig in. I was thinking it would be an order-from-a-menu experience, but it’s actually a very nice buffet. Plenty of options, but not overwhelming, with super attentive staff (a running theme at this hotel). Having had it two days in a row now, I can confirm it’s quite tasty!

With a walk AND a tasty breakfast done, it was time to get on with the rest of the day. As a group, we didn’t have anything “scheduled” until mid-afternoon, so I thought about a museum visit, possibly to one of the two I walked by. In talking with Felicity, she said the Natural History Museum skews much more towards dinosaurs and things of that nature (not too surprising) and that the V&A might be more interesting, which I agreed with. Though I did visit the V&A once several years ago, I didn’t have any strong memories of it, so I was happy to go back. It really is quite the museum, with a permanent collection of over 2.2 million objects and the world’s largest collection of applied arts, decorative arts, and design, not to mention a rotating assortment of temporary exhibits. Both the big exhibits currently running were sold out for the day, so those were off the table, but we had a good wander through some of the rest of the museum. As with all national British museums, there’s no entrance fee, but there is a suggested donation of £5, which we were happy to pay.

We were both feeling easy-breezy about what to see in the museum, so we mostly wandered. Felicity did suggest going through the Re:Imagining Musicals exhibit, which proved to be really interesting! I’m a lover of movies and enjoy stage shows as well, so I figured there would be some cool stuff to see and there definitely was. We also saw some cool jewelry and other artwork, which you can check out below.

Just a couple of the cool jewelry pieces we saw.

All of this artwork is by Beatrix Potter and is part of a exhibit called Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature.

On the left is an Elphaba costume from Wicked and on the right is a third edition of the book that inspired the show.

Two pieces of Rocky Horror ephemera – a 1973 program on the left and a 1981 costume design for Frank-N-Furter on the right.

I mostly took these photos for Bill, as a screen-used stormtrooper costume and a jacket worn by someone from The Who are both of interest to him. 🙂

This jacket dates back to about 1870 and belong to circus owner and clown Charlie Keith.

With a nice museum visit behind us, we moved on to our scheduled event, a Tea Experience/Masterclass at Twinings. This one was all Felicity’s idea and she had actually planned to attend one when she was here last year, but it was canceled because of the official mourning period after Queen Elizabeth II died. So when we started planning this trip, she brought it up as something to do and we were game for it! I don’t actually like tea (or coffee, for that matter), but it sounded like a really interesting way to spend a couple of hours, in the same way that the Scotch Whisky Experience in Edinburgh was interesting (I also don’t like scotch or most brown liquors). And it really was! Our instructor, Liam, was really well-spoken and clearly had a LOT of passion for tea, which made it really interesting to learn from him. And Twinings as a company is also really interesting. For example, they’ve occupied the same space on the Strand since 1706 and they have the world’s oldest continually-used company logo. Pretty cool, eh? Also, I feel like I really did learn stuff! For example:

• Tea is native to China. This may seem like a gimme, but India and other Asian countries also seemed like strong possibilities.
• There is precisely ONE plant that tea comes from. And that one plant has TWO varietals that are used for tea. That’s it. Of course, it’s possible to cross-breed to create other plants, but as it grows in nature, there’s just the one plant.
• ALL tea has caffeine. Yes, that includes green tea. While it’s possible for something like green tea to have very little caffeine, it can’t have zero. If the tea you drink says it’s caffeine-free, either the manufacturer is lying or it’s not tea at all, but rather an infusion (lavender tea, for example, is an infusion, not actually tea).
• The teas that DO have less caffeine are made with leaves from the lower part of the tea plant, rather than from the top part. The older, lower leaves “give up” more of their caffeine to the higher, newer leaves.
• There are six different types of tea (which you’ll see in the photos below) and they should all steep for different amounts of time at different temperatures.
• You can, and in almost every case, should reuse tea leaves. This does NOT mean you can steep them, re-dry them, and then steep them again a week later, but you can easily make a cup, drink it, and then make another cup from the same leaves and still get good flavor from them.
• The Twinings family no longer owns Twinings, but they still work closely together.
• Earl Grey tea must have bergamot in it. If it doesn’t, it’s not Earl Grey.

And that’s just a sample of what we learned during our two-hour class and tasting! For a price of £45 each, I felt like this was a worthwhile, interesting experience. Even if you aren’t a tea drinker (like me), I think you’ll find it enjoyable. I didn’t come out of the class liking tea any more than when I went in (I did try all six and some were certainly better than others, but it still isn’t a beverage for me), but I definitely learned a lot and had fun doing it. 🙂

There aren’t a lot of things to take photos of during an experience like this, but of course I managed a few, both during the class and on our way there from the V&A.

This is what helped guide our experience. It was really cool to see the differences between the dry and wet tea leaves!

With one fun activity done, it was time for a quick pitstop back at the hotel before the next one. Felicity once again came in clutch by booking us into a pub quiz at Retro Bar! Of course, I always visit Retro when I’m in London, so I was happy to have an excuse to go there to do something other than get a drink. We ended up being joined by a couple other friends (though they weren’t “officially” part of our team, since they cap team size at six) and we had a fun evening hanging out, drinking, and ultimately coming in second place in the quiz. I think there were only four teams, so the competition wasn’t exactly stiff. 🙂 And most of the group continued on to another bar afterwards! Not me though – I can’t hang that late in my old age. Haha!

Stacey, Felicity, and Jason again, waiting for the rest of our friends to show up. Also, Felicity showing off the sign on our table.

Both another Retro patron and our very own Stacey got chosen to play an over/under game. Happily, both of them won!

And that was the end of our Tuesday in London! It’s sadly now almost noon on Thursday, so we’re down to the final countdown. Today will be pretty low-key as a few of us have to head out pretty early tomorrow morning. Guess we’ll make the most of London in the meantime!