Living it up in London

As the beginning of a two-week trip to England, London was just the right combination of city excitement and an easy introduction back to the United Kingdom. I’ve been to the UK many times, visiting London often, Manchester, and Scotland among other places but it had been a long time since my spouse and I spent any considerable time there together. The idea for the trip came about at the suggestion of a friend to see Adele in concert in Hyde Park. We jumped at that chance and turned it into a multi-city visit that included other dear friends with whom we’ve developed relationships from past trips. I’ll cover this long trip in a few blog posts organized by areas where we were based (London, Windsor, Corsham, and Longstock).

The Royal Lancaster Hotel, London

London is one of the world’s largest cities and steeped in Western European, American, and world history. It’s an enormous city with one foot firmly in the past and the other very much in the future. I’ve experienced a lot of the historical London perspective but this trip really opened my eyes to how people live in and enjoy London on a daily basis. We really weren’t “touring” in London as much as just taking in city life. As far as traveling to England, we’d used a combination of points and cash, with the cash actually being credits from a pandemic-era trip that had been canceled. Flying from Washington, DC we had a direct British Airways flight (booked using American Airlines points) to London’s Heathrow airport scheduled to arrive about 11 am, thought we were several hours delayed as seemed to be common for travel in the summer of 2022. Unfortunately, the fight delays caused us to miss a lunch at the well-regarded Lyle’s (currently number 54 on the world’s top restaurants). As far as lodging, and after a lot of searching and deliberation, we’d booked a stay at the Royal Lancaster London hotel. I generally prefer Marriott hotels for either points accumulation or utilization but the available Marriott’s in London for this trip were not the very well-reviewed nor the most conveniently located for our stay. The Royal Lancaster is one of London’s classic old hotels, on the northern end of Hyde Park, and very convenient for the Adele concert. The hotel has a number of rooms that look over the park, numerous bars and dining options, including the highly regarded Nipa Thai restaurant. It was a very pleasant and calming oasis in a bustling city.

Lunch and drinks at Balans

After dropping off our things at the Royal Lancaster, we popped in a taxi to meet our friend at a restaurant in Soho called Balans Soho, No. 60, which is one of a small chain of fun all-day and late-night restaurants throughout London. It was great to catch up with him, have a meal that just hit the spot (I had a Korean chicken sandwich served on a doughnut!) and a few drinks to get energized and flight jet lag after the overnight flight. Soho is, among other things, known as the gay area of central London and the Adele weekend happened to coincide with London’s 50th Pride celebration so the city was festively decorated with Pride flags everywhere and the bars and restaurants were more crowded than usual. After our late lunch we spent the rest of the day walking around Old Compton Street and throughout Soho popping into bars and shops now and then. We partook at Village Soho, Simmons Bar, and The Yard Bar and spent some time in Liberty, where I finally (after 15+ years) got my Liberty print shirt! Tired, well lubricated and shopped-out, we headed back to the Royal Lancaster and an early evening.

Around town, Soho, London

The next day (Friday, July 1st) was the first of two Adele shows at the incredible BST Hyde Park outdoor concert series. This was to be our first time at this really astounding venue and series of shows – for 2022, besides Adele, the series featured Elton John, Duran Duran, and the Rolling Stones among others. But before the concert, we had plenty of time and my spouse and I wanted to see an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A, as it’s known, is one of the world’s top museums for applied and decorative arts and design. It’s located across Hyde Park from our hotel and since it was a beautiful summer day, we walked the short distance there. In the park we happened upon the Black Chapel established as part of the Serpentine Gallery’s exhibitions. This silo-like contemplative space had an air of a charred barrel and was a quick, but interesting, stop for us on the way. The exhibit we’d come to see at the V&A was called Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear and it was exquisite! A history of men’s fashion with an emphasis on what was considered masculine (and what was not), this collection primarily covered modern sensibilities to menswear and various iterations of what was considered “in” and “out”. Maybe in a nod to Pride weekend, it included photographs of New York drag kings and the tuxedo-gown that Billy Porter wore to the Oscars in 2019, among many items that stretched the boundaries of traditional masculinity. I just loved it. After the museum we met our friend for lunch at Caffe Concerto in their New Knightsbridge location on Brompton Road. Caffe Concerto is known in England and the Middle East for its wedding cakes and a number of cafes. Lunch was affordable and hit the spot after a busy morning, very acceptable but not extraordinary. After lunch, we took a very, very long Uber ride back to the hotel to get ready for the concert.

Hyde Park and the Black Chapel

Fashioning Masculinities at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The concert was an absolute blast! Adele’s first large concert in many years (there were more than 65,000 attendees), it was very festive with everyone in a great mood to hear to this amazing singer and vivacious personality. We’d opted to get the “Ultimate VIP Diamond Experience” tickets which included a separate entrance, private seating and bathrooms, more secluded dining options with some free food tickets, free drinks, complimentary t-shirt, and more. It was well worth the expense and also allowed us to have a number of options to view the concert in a much more relaxed atmosphere than general admission. Opening acts for Adele were Kacey Musgraves and the singer Gabrielle, a ‘90s British icon. Everyone had a great time at the show ad of course Adele was just fantastic. The following day (Saturday) was the 50th year of Pride in London, with over a million people crowding the streets. After a long day and a late night Friday, we look in some of the parade and loved being part of celebratory mood of the city. It was a very long parade with over 400 organizations and 30,000 participants itself. Tired but with full hearts, we ended our day with Thai room service and a movie at the hotel!

Adele concert and Pride in London

Back in tourist mode on Sunday, we joined our friend for brunch and a visit to the Portobello Market in the Notting Hill neighborhood. This large well-known market features a little bit of everything and the neighborhood itself is pretty interesting, with a lot of good shops and restaurants. Saturday is probably the best day to go, but Sunday was just fine for us – there were still a number of stalls doing business, most of the restaurants and shops were as well, and lots of people enjoying the beautiful day. A bit on the hungry side, we started our day at Electric Diner, an old-fashioned diner with a French-American focused menu. It was absolutely packed but we snagged three spots at a counter facing the window looking out on Portobello Road, perfect for people watching. I really enjoyed the poached eggs on avocado toast and the pisco-based cocktail Almost Naked & Famous. We spent a few hours walking through the area with a stop at the food stalls and stores, including some nice purchases from the menswear store Stumper & Fielding. It was such a beautiful day we opted to walk back to our hotel, about 30 minutes, with a stop for a beer at The Sun in Splendour pub along the way. We enjoyed it British style, standing along a counter on the sidewalk. After seeing our friend off for his flight back to Spain, we ended our evening with a traditional Sunday English roast at The Cleveland Arms. The roast was very typical and very delicious – beef, horseradish, potatoes and gravy, vegetables and a Yorkshire pudding – but the settling was special as this was my spouse’s “local” pub when he lived in London many years ago. Warm and inviting, the place certainly had a broken-in feel and I could easily picture a lot of late-night conversations and debates happening at that bar. A short stroll around the neighborhood for old times’ sake and a night cap at the hotel bar rounded out another full day.

Portobello Market

Monday (July 4th) was our last full day in London before heading out to Windsor and exploring more of the countryside. We started our day with an early visit to the massive British Museum. The museum has been around since the 1750’s and holds more than 8 million objects covering the span of human history and beyond, one of the largest and most comprehensive collections in the world. It’s impossible to see in one day (without exhausting yourself anyway) so we focused our attention on a few special exhibits (one on Stonehenge [which we would see later] and one called The Feminine Power). We also took the time to see the controversial Elgin Marbles, looted sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens and we saw the Rosetta Stone. A few hours were enough of a visit for this trip and we headed off for lunch at St. JOHN restaurant in the Smithfield area. Founded by the chef Fergus Henderson, known for “snout to tail” cooking, the restaurant sits in a former ham and bacon smokehouse near the central meat market. Now a light and airy dining room, the menu is very British and focused on all the parts of the animals it features. My spouse enjoyed ox tongue but I chose a safer hake and fennel dish, both delicious. Feeling quite stuffed, we walked around the neighborhood a bit and checked out the old, but still in use, Smithfield wholesale meat market. There’s been a market on this site for over 800 years! The remainder of our day was a bit of this and that, tying up some loose ends and getting packed up for our onward journey. We ended the day with a walk around Hyde Park and the Mayfair area. We attempted to have a drink at the Connaught Bar (at the hotel of the same name), very well known for it’ martinis, but unfortunately did not plan well to know that there’s almost always a line to get in. After waiting a bit, we were sadly informed that there would be no spot available for several hours. It’s best to go early to have a drink here. It was another nightcap at the Royal Lancaster, which was just fine.

Treasures of the British Museum

Smithfield and Mayfair

After a varied but wonderful time in London, we were off to Windsor and the countryside the next day.