Day 9 - You’ll find what you want in the Portobello Road

Message from Chris 

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day, so today we wanted to visit Portobello Market and perhaps keep it easy.  Portobello Market on a Saturday is a pretty unique experience that everyone should try.  Pick the smallest street in London, cram in 100,000 people, plus cars, trucks, baby carriages, all speaking different languages, and that's Portobello! 

Portobello Road

We got to the Market around 10:30 AM and already the crowds were building.  Our first stop was a great shop with pretty, silk scarves, and then onto the antique jewelery shops along the way.  We saw some lovely hat pins that would look great with out costumes that were made with semi precious stones.  We were getting hungry by now, so we stopped at one of our favourite pubs, the Duke of Wellington Pub.  Last year when we were here, it was a traditional pub with colours of red and black and decorated in fairly standard British pub style. When we walked in this time, we just about didn't recognize it as it had undergone a complete restoration and was now painted in California colours of soft cream and teal.  The food was still great (pea soup with cheese toasts, bubble and squeak croquettes, and pork belly lollipops), but the atmosphere wasn't the same.  

Delicious pea soup with cheese toasties

We found our silversmith again in one of the stalls just outside and I bought a small salt cellar with a wee spoon, and a matching cream and sugar set with sugar tongs.  Chelsea bought two lovely candlesticks from him as well.  Getting around was now getting more difficult, so we popped into a few shops for a while.  Chelsea found an adorable vest made from a light tweed wool material, soft brown with accents of baby pink and blue, with fox buttons.  

By this time we'd had enough of the crowds and decided to go back to the Hotel to drop off our bags and figure out what we were going to do for our last afternoon in London.  I think we had enough of crowds, and so we opted out of going to the Churchill War Rooms, but rather to enjoy Hyde Park by going boating.  

We walked through Hyde Park by the Italian Gardens one last time.  It's looking like fall today - the air temperature is crisper and leaves are starting to turn yellow and fall.  I love walking through this park as all age groups are out enjoying it - young familes, old people strolling hand in hand, or all the tourists like Chels and I.  We found the Serpentine Boat Launch and rented a paddle boat for half an hour.  What a work out!  Next time we'll rent the row boat as I'm sure it would have been easier than paddling around.  

Serpentine in Hyde Park

Too cute bird in Hyde Park

As it was our last night in London we didn't want to go far from the Hotel, so we ended up just going over to the Mitre Pub's Lord Craven Grill for a steak dinner.  It was a lovely dining room that they made on the second floor of the Pub for a more elegant dining experience.  Looking like a Georgian dining room, there were maybe eight tables total.  We were the only ones in there at first, Chelsea was snapping pictures like crazy because she liked it so much.  The food was delicious - we shared a salad and then I had a sirloin steak and Chelsea the rib eye.  It wasn't Alberta beef but pretty darn tasty.  We split a crème brulee and then headed home to pack.  Tomorrow we're leaving London and travelling by train to the seaside town of Brighton.  

Lord Craven Dining Room