We were up and out early on Friday morning to catch a train to London. Dwight had business meetings there, and I was along for the ride! We got there at about the time of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, and the cab taking us to our hotel was about the last vehicle allowed to pass before the road was closed off. What a sensation it was to have all those hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people roped off and filling every sidewalk while we drove through. It was as if they had all come to see our taxi pass by!
The Royal Air Force Club was perfect: great location, great room, great price! Dwight's contact was there to meet him, so they got right down to work while I hopped on the Victoria Line and made my way to the William Morris Gallery. William Morris was a nineteenth century English artist, poet, and publisher but is perhaps best known for his fabric designs. While his patterns have never gone out of style, he seems to be getting more attention lately, at least among quilters who are drawn to his classic floral motifs and pleasing color palette. The gallery is located in the building that was his boyhood home, and it provides a well documented, chronological account of his life and his development as an artist. The docent on duty was kind enough to allow me to take pictures. I think some day I will do a program at my quilt guild about his work. After leaving the museum I made my way back to the hotel, stopping en route at Liberty House, Fortnum & Mason, and some of the other Oxford, Regent, and Bond Street shopping Meccas.
After breakfast on Saturday, Dwight and I hit Harrod's, which was having one of its biggest sales of the year. The place was absolutely mobbed, but we stayed for a look around. It is impossible to resist some of the temptations to be found in their food halls, and I made a few small purchases. From there we did a bit of museum, church, and park hopping until time to pick up our tickets for the afternoon performance of Mamma Mia!. What a show! What a SHOW!! For years I have heard people rave about Mamma Mia!, so I knew we would enjoy it. I wasn't prepared, however, to be so totally overwhelmed by it. All I can say is that you should never, ever pass up the opportunity to see it if you haven't already. It's out as a movie now, and I suppose we will go see it, too, but I don't see how it can even approach the impact of seeing it on stage.
After the theater, we went for a pizza at Spacca Napoli on nearby Dean Street. Earlier in the day, we had stopped at an Italian gelateria for an ice cream cone to tide us over until dinner. The young man working there was Italian, so I asked him about an Italian restaurant I had seen not far from there. He said that if we wanted to eat good Italian food, the place to go was Spacca Napoli, and how right he was!! Best pizza we ever had outside of Italy, and even better than some we'd had in Italy! They even had my favorite Italian wine, prosecco, produced in my favorite prosecco town, Valdobbiadene. That plus a pizza, hot from a wood-burning oven, made the perfect end to our day on the town.
Back at the hotel, we checked email and found one from our neighbors alerting us that our irrigation system had stopped working. Luckily, our lawn man had been there and sized up the situation in time to override the power problem and save our dying grass. A couple of calls back to Florida and our minds were at ease once again. Where would we be without good neighbors?!
We continue to enjoy lovely July weather here on the Dorset Coast. The sun is out, the sky is blue, but the temperatures are in the sixties...delightfully cool. Dwight came home at lunchtime to go for a run and came back with this report: A woman walking her dog along the same path he was running had said to him, "I don't see how you can run in this heat!"
The Royal Air Force Club was perfect: great location, great room, great price! Dwight's contact was there to meet him, so they got right down to work while I hopped on the Victoria Line and made my way to the William Morris Gallery. William Morris was a nineteenth century English artist, poet, and publisher but is perhaps best known for his fabric designs. While his patterns have never gone out of style, he seems to be getting more attention lately, at least among quilters who are drawn to his classic floral motifs and pleasing color palette. The gallery is located in the building that was his boyhood home, and it provides a well documented, chronological account of his life and his development as an artist. The docent on duty was kind enough to allow me to take pictures. I think some day I will do a program at my quilt guild about his work. After leaving the museum I made my way back to the hotel, stopping en route at Liberty House, Fortnum & Mason, and some of the other Oxford, Regent, and Bond Street shopping Meccas.
After breakfast on Saturday, Dwight and I hit Harrod's, which was having one of its biggest sales of the year. The place was absolutely mobbed, but we stayed for a look around. It is impossible to resist some of the temptations to be found in their food halls, and I made a few small purchases. From there we did a bit of museum, church, and park hopping until time to pick up our tickets for the afternoon performance of Mamma Mia!. What a show! What a SHOW!! For years I have heard people rave about Mamma Mia!, so I knew we would enjoy it. I wasn't prepared, however, to be so totally overwhelmed by it. All I can say is that you should never, ever pass up the opportunity to see it if you haven't already. It's out as a movie now, and I suppose we will go see it, too, but I don't see how it can even approach the impact of seeing it on stage.
After the theater, we went for a pizza at Spacca Napoli on nearby Dean Street. Earlier in the day, we had stopped at an Italian gelateria for an ice cream cone to tide us over until dinner. The young man working there was Italian, so I asked him about an Italian restaurant I had seen not far from there. He said that if we wanted to eat good Italian food, the place to go was Spacca Napoli, and how right he was!! Best pizza we ever had outside of Italy, and even better than some we'd had in Italy! They even had my favorite Italian wine, prosecco, produced in my favorite prosecco town, Valdobbiadene. That plus a pizza, hot from a wood-burning oven, made the perfect end to our day on the town.
Back at the hotel, we checked email and found one from our neighbors alerting us that our irrigation system had stopped working. Luckily, our lawn man had been there and sized up the situation in time to override the power problem and save our dying grass. A couple of calls back to Florida and our minds were at ease once again. Where would we be without good neighbors?!
We continue to enjoy lovely July weather here on the Dorset Coast. The sun is out, the sky is blue, but the temperatures are in the sixties...delightfully cool. Dwight came home at lunchtime to go for a run and came back with this report: A woman walking her dog along the same path he was running had said to him, "I don't see how you can run in this heat!"
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