Another day in London has come to an end! It may only be 10 PM as I start this, but I’m tuckered out after a nice day in my favorite city. I didn’t have the best night’s sleep, maybe because I was up too late working on my last blog post. I’m determined to sleep well tonight, so I’m not gonna stay up late! Famous last words, as they say. 🙂

When I’m in London on my own, I feel like I fill my days with more stuff/things to see/do, mostly because there’s just so much to see and do here! When I’m with friends though, my pace is definitely more leisurely, which is a nice change. As an example, the only thing we had planned today was another Hidden London tour, this time at Green Park (though the tour is actually called Dover Street: Alight Here for Green Park). Regular readers will likely know that I’ve done several of these tours (if my count is correct, this was my sixth) because they’re always well-organized, interesting, and offer some neat insights about London. Although there are some overlapping threads that get brought up in most tours (history of the underground, the impact of WW2 on stations, etc.), they’re always brought up in the context of how specific stations/lines were impacted, so they don’t feel repetitious. And there’s always a good mix of seeing cool, hidden spots in existing stations alongside tidbits about and tours of stations that are no longer open. They’re offered by the London Transport Museum, with a few tours running at any given time, and a seemingly quarterly refresh of which ones are on offer. Whichever ones are available whenever you visit London, I can assure you it will be worth your time and money to go! So…go. 🙂

On this tour, you’ll start in the current Green Park station, which is fairly busy as it’s so close to Buckingham Palace and is used by many as a connection point on their journeys to/from Heathrow. It was certainly busy today, though interestingly we all arrived from different points as Bill came on the DLR/tube from his hotel, Felicity came on the tube from our hotel, and I came on foot from our hotel as I wanted to get some steps in. And since Green Park is less than two miles from here, I figured I’d just walk! There are multiple entrances/exits at this station, which isn’t uncommon, but thankfully the good folks from Hidden London made it clear where we needed to meet, so we all made it there with no issues. The weather today was sunny and glorious, so the walk was excellent and the company on arrival was even better. After a couple of minutes, we spotted our guides, made our way over, got checked in, and were given the opening spiel. A Hidden London travel tip here – both the website and confirmation email for these tours makes it clear that you must wear closed-toe/closed-heel shoes, but someone came to this one in strappy sandals. The team seems to keep a supply of basic canvas shoes available for situations like this, so this person was still able to go on the tour, but it’s obviously an unnecessary headache for the guides to deal with. So don’t make them deal with it! After doing so though, it was time to go 30 meters underground for our tour.

So what about this tour, eh? The reason there are two station names in the title is because, while the station is currently known as Green Park (and has been since 1933), there was another station in the same spot called Dover Street (opened in 1906), built to help ease traffic along what we know today as the Piccadilly line. As with all of these tours, we got to go behind the scenes to offstage areas to learn about the role the station played during World War II. Like many stations, it was used to shelter citizens on the platforms and was also used to hide/protect some of the treasures from London museums. Additionally, it provided office and living space for employees and executives from London Transport, including a pretty posh (for a tube station) apartment for the chief executive. Over £45,000 was spent on that apartment, which is more than £2m in today’s money! Someone on the tour asked if there’s any documentation about how much time he actually spent staying in that space, but there isn’t. Given the fact that this station was specifically chosen for his apartment because it was very close to his house, it’s likely that he didn’t stay often. Our helpful guide, Pat, suggested that perhaps other senior executives may have used it in his absence though.

In addition to the role it played during the war, we also learned about how the station was expanded to accommodate two new lines that came later, the Victoria and Jubilee lines. Fun fact about the Jubilee line – it actually started life as the Fleet line, but because it was being built and was due to officially open around the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the name was changed (thankfully, they were already using a grey color scheme for it, which they were then able to claim was silver). We also learned a bit more about the ventilation process for the station, which may sound dull, but was actually pretty cool. Because trains push so much warm air ahead of them and pull cool air behind them and because the stations are underground (obviously), good ventilation is key, so there’s definitely a lot of science behind it. You’ll see that represented in some of the photos below, so give them a look!

This staircase is in one of the station’s old elevator shafts. Alas, as the sign says, you can’t use it to get out!

These were taken in two different parts of our meanderings through the tour, but I think it’s cool to see them next to each other.

These were also taken in different parts (clearly, based on the walls), but I think it’s neat to see different parts of our journey through the tunnels. I also think it’s neat that both Bill and Felicity coordinated their shirts to the tile colors at this station.

This staircase looked so cool that I deliberately took four photos of it – empty down, walking down, empty up, and walking up. A story in four photos. 🙂

After the view of the whoosh, our time at Green Park/Dover Street ended. While I can’t say this was my favorite Hidden London tour, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. As with all of these tours, there’s good stuff to learn and neat stuff to see, but this one just didn’t feel as notable as some of the others. I did find myself missing photos of what the space looked like during the war (our guides said they just don’t have any from that era), so maybe that contributes to it being lower on my list. As always though, I’ll recommend any and all Hidden London tours, so keep them on your London itineraries!

As for the rest of our day, we actually had ZERO plans! The weather was sunny and gorge though, so we decided to wander towards Buckingham Palace, since it’s so close to the station. I’ve toured the palace a couple of times, most recently in 2017, but we were just looking to stroll by to see it in the sun. We were ready to have some lunch (though I staved off a bit of my hunger with an ice cream cone, shown below) and thought we’d look for a nice Indian place. I found one on Google Maps that looked good, but when we reached it, the menu was pricier than expected (there was a “minimum spend” of £60 per person, which we weren’t feeling for a weekday lunch!), so I then found another one. That one, Bombay Bustle, also looked a bit pricy, but definitely better than the first one. So that’s where we went! We enjoyed a tasty meal of biryani, poppadoms, mehkani, and more. I need to eat more Indian food at home because I always really enjoy it!

On our quest to find Indian food, Bill found a couple of photo spots for himself. 🙂

The food we enjoyed and our smiles after we ate it all!

With full stomachs, we continued our wandering, with nothing particular on the agenda. Bill is a big fan of the band Oasis and he had researched the location where the cover photo for one of their albums, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, was taken and he was excited to a) see it in person and b) try and recreate that cover photo (it works out well that you need three people – two to be in the photo and one to take it). Felicity and I were down to do it, so Bill led the way on the pretty short walk to find it. It was actually pretty close to where we were and the street isn’t SO busy that we couldn’t find a short window of time to try and get the poses right for the photo recreation once we got there. I think we did a really good job of making that happen, but look below and decide for yourself.

It’s a damn good match, right??

With our album cover in the books, we wandered towards more familiar territory, as that location is pretty close to Chinatown and the West End. I got to check the box for a walk through Leicester Square, which I do on pretty much every London trip, and then we stopped in St. Martin-in-the-Fields as neither Felicity nor Bill had been inside before. It turns out there was a small ensemble setting up for a concert, so we stuck around to hear them play a bit. Then I suggested we stop at Halfway to Heaven, a gay bar around the corner, which was a very chill way to spend some time on a Friday afternoon.

Felicity had made plans with a couple of other friends to meet up for evening drinkies, which she was more than happy to have Bill and I join in on, but we opted to have a chill, early evening instead. After hanging out in our hotel bar for a little while (they have some decent happy hour drink specials!), we walked down the street to The Globe for another pub meal. This one was mediocre at best, so I can’t say I’d recommend it. I’ve had worse mac and cheese, but I’ve definitely had better!

And that was it for Friday! We’ve now also wrapped up Saturday, which was our Doctor Who-centric day. Come back to read about that soon!