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Afternoon Tea

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September 5th was Chuck's birthday so we celebrated by having tea! To know Chuck is to know that he does not drink tea. But when in England... A formal British afternoon tea was what he wished for as a way to celebrate. So I booked us a table at the Palm Court at the Langham Hotel. This is the very spot where afternoon tea was invented, more than 150 years ago!! It was all very elegant, with amazing service - the kind of place where they pull your chair back and flip your napkin into your lap for you. There were people of ages taking tea, including several families with young kids. It turns out that kids get some special delectable goodies but are also provided with a chef's hat... and a teddy bear! We had the more standard afternoon tea:  First they brought an amuse-bouche of sorts: a small glass tea pot with rose tea. Then they brought us complementary glasses of champagne. Then it was finger sandwiches. Followed by scones, plain and fruit, with clotted cr...
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Notting Hill Carnival

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One of the things that we were most excited and nervous about for our time in the apartment in Notting Hill was that we were going to be there during the infamous Notting Hill Carnival! The second largest carnival in the world, after Rio's, and the largest street festival in Europe,  it expected a crowd of 2 million people over the course of two days! Our apartment was 1 block from the parade route, which our neighbor told us was a perfect location. But we got a little nervous when we saw most of the businesses and many of the houses around us board up all their windows (and our neighbor gave us a bike lock to use on our front gate to keep people from using our below-grade doorstep to wee on!) While it was true that it was easy for us to explore the carnival and return to home when we felt overwhelmed, we didn't realize how incredibly LOUD all the groups would be. Each float had a massive truck with it with a sound system louder than I've ever heard; and to make u...
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Settling into Notting Hill

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We arrived in London first thing in the morning on Tuesday and took the train and taxi to our accommodations for the next two weeks: a 2 bedroom/2 bath "garden flat" in Notting Hill. (our flat is down the stairs behind the yellow sign) Garden flat means that we take a flight of stairs down from the sidewalk to enter our door. It also means that we have a small patio in the front and a larger patio in the back -- the front has very little privacy but the larger is more private (other than the upper apartments being able to look down on us). We are renting an AirBnB from a family of 4 that split their life between New York and London. They clearly are book and music lovers because there is a huge expanse of books and music CDs that line the long hallway. I think we should be quite comfortable here and we are only 10-15 minutes walk from grocery stores and tube stations, restaurants and pubs! Chuck and I were determined to stay awake until a reasonable London b...
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