Are you f%#$*ing serious? Yes.... It IS our last day. Wow. I cannot believe we are at this point of our dream trip. I don't want it to end but I do. It seems to have been a perfect amount of time. We're ready......for our last day in London!
First off we wanted to check out Buckingham Palace to see if we could catch the changing of the guards. We took the tube to Hyde Park and walked through the Green Garden towards the palace.
We spotted the Canadian war memorial, which seemed fitting after seeing all the Remembrance Day celebrations all week here.
We saw twenty young cadets riding thirty horses around the palace. Then we saw a procession of guards on horses come by that sent chills through my spine - it seemed so.....medieval and Royal at the same time. Unfortunately, they had changed to a once every two days schedule do here guard changing ceremony, so we weren't able to see that (funny enough, the girls had never heard of it.... I guess all things Royal are not as pervasive in this generation of Canadians as they used to be!).
Back on the bus, we headed West on the blue line towards Kensington and Notting Hill....neither of which I could mispronounce, which kind of sucked...
Yes, she's my bride, but that was not a veil, it was a rain poncho. Abby could now strike "experiencing rain in London" off her bucket list.
We made our way to the far end of Kensington Gardens where we got out at Notting Hill. It was time for lunch, so we dropped in at a nice looking pub called the Old Swan. The beer was cold....
...and the food was serviceable.
Notting Hill is the sight of the famous Julie Roberts and Hugh Grant movie, and by the looks of the place, you could see why they would make a movie there. It's very quaint with colourful rows of towns, nice looking shops and a large market street on Portobello road that sells all kinds of antiques and knick knacks.
Speaking of antiques, I spotted this Rolls Royce for private sale on the side of the road... I considered getting it for Probir, but he always says he'd prefer a vintage Porsche, so I decided not to put an offer in.
We spotted a Starbucks and headed right for it when Beth spied a Second Cup store complete with a Canadian Flag - it turned out to be the real thing, which delivered a very big post-coffee smile.
Beth wanted to show us the large Harrods in Knightsbridge, so we took the tube rather than wait for the bus. When we got out of the station next to the department store, there were a bunch of street performers - awesome. We also noticed a dog lying very still....
Until we realized that it was a sand carving - well done. We also saw Harry Potter doing a cool violin performance.
Harrods was busy on the main floor where there was a good mix of tourists and real shoppers. It wasn't all high end, but certain rooms were pretty much devoid of shoppers due to the scary high prices.
The food market was pretty spectacular. It looked like a Japanese department store but with even more flair and colour. Most of the crowds were checking out the food halls here - real Brits grabbing a takeaway lunch, Margaret Thatcher lookalike grandmas picking up some special ingredients, and of course Canadian backpackers taking pictures of everything.
The meat, seafood and poultry section made me salivate.... They had beautiful beef hanging up in dry storage cases.... It reminded me of the streak dinner we had in Toronto with RTD and Angela.... drool... drool....
Outside, the violinist had reached the end of his half hour time slot, and in rolled a comedian/magician.
We watched his whole half hour set, and it was really quite good. In true British fashion, he was quick with the tongue and had a gift for biting, sarcastic, witty humour. We loved it.
By the end of his performance when he made a ton of fruit appear out of small copper cups, a huge crowd had gathered. I can't say it enough - the way this city embraces its street performers is amazing.
When the magic was done, it was time to head over for an early dinner that Beth had made a reservation for. We did catch another performer, this time an accordion player, in the tube station below Harrods.
Dinner was fun. We started recapping - how many times we'd packed and unpacked, how many cooking courses, overnight trains, food tours, animal adventures, sporting activities, countries, cities, flights, meals away from home, movies.... The time has flown. And it hasn't. It's hard to explain really.
Dinner at the posh pub turned restaurant called Balls Brothers was fantastic. We had one more little adventure after dinner, so we were eating early, but we all managed to polish off our meals.
Robin was doodling in her book and made a little thank you note which was cute...
When we got outside Victoria Station, we told them we had one more thing to check off the to do list in London, and that was to see a good old fashioned theater production! We were going to see Billy Elliot in the nearby Victoria Theater.
Beth and I had only seen the movie, but the premise was a good one for kids - a young northern English mining town boy discovers a passion for ballet and struggles to stay true to himself and battle stereotypical negative views from the macho townsfolk. Man, I should write bylines....
The girls were pumped. After seeing theater after theater and advert after advert for said theater productions for the last three days, it was our time to join in the fun.
Spoiler alert, Billy did great and everyone accepted him and supported him after working out their conflicted feelings about boys in ballet through song and dance.....that, my friends, is irony.
We got home late.... Too late. The girls were zomked, but we still managed to pack everything up for tomorrow's early flight back to.....TORONTO!!!
Now, I can't wait.
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