London Day 13 - Caravan, Wallace Collection Battle of Agincourt, Importance of Being Earnest with David Suchet

10/24/2015

Oct. 25 is when Britain changes its clocks back an hour to GMT time. When it's summer, it's BST time (British Summer Time). Yay! I'm gaining an hour! I seriously need it because it was 2:30am when I finally sat down to bed, but now it's 1:30 :)

Camden Canal

Patricia and Stephanie took me to their favorite brunch restaurant, Caravan, this morning and treated me to a delicious meal. The vibe of the place is very Soho (the NYC one, not London's). Indeed, the whole neighborhood has a Soho vibe because it used to be all warehouses around here. "Here" being the borough of Camden, just north of King's Cross. 

For the longest time, Camden had a reputation of being a very rough neighborhood where prostitutes worked the streets, according to Patricia. But a couple years ago, Boris Johnson, the colorful and blunt mayor of London, kicked everyone out of Camden, razed all the buildings and began afresh. So the whole area is new development and pretty much looks like San Jose downtown. 

Since it's getting gentrified, property values have risen significantly. We walked to the restaurant, which is housed in the same huge building as St. Martin's Art College, London's best art school. Also housed here is a gigantic Waitrose that's even bigger than the one near our apartment. Incidentally, when Stephanie and I went to the V&A a couple days ago, she took me via the Russell Square tube station. It's a lot closer to our apartment than King's Cross! It's basically just behind Waitrose. Oops! And it's a lot easier to get down to the trains at Russell--you go into the station and directly onto an elevator down, so I think I'm just gonna hop onto that station to go directly to Heathrow on Monday. 

Caravan restaurant

Interesting bathroom faucets...

The food was delicious! I had the Channel and Swan smoked salmon with a baby potato and pea salad mixed with tarragon dill mayo. Yum-my! The cut of the smoked salmon is very different from what we're used to. They cut it sashimi-style instead of thin slices, so it's like you're eating sashimi only the flavor is slightly smoked. 

For the salad, they also mixed in cubes of the smoked salmon, so the texture's a lot like chirashi. And the flavor was soooo good! I totally want to make this when I come home! 

I also ordered a salted caramel hot chocolate that was pretty good--you can really taste the salted caramel. 

I tried some of Patricia's jalapeno cornbread and it knocked my socks off. I've never been particularly impressed with cornbread that has other things mixed into it, but I was so, so surprised by this dish, that it could be this good! 

Jalapeno cornbread (under the runny yolk)

The restaurant opened at 10am and by 10:15, it was completely packed. When we left, the line was out the door. Now why can't we get these kind of restaurants in the Bay Area? I've been very disappointed with the brunch places around us.

Roast ham with duck shavings

Doesn't really  look like there's a cavernous restaurant inside, does it?

After brunch, Patricia showed me how to walk to Camden Market alongside the canal. She said it's a very scenic 15 minute walk from the restaurant but because we finished brunch around 11:30, I wanted to go straight to the Wallace Collection instead. Museum instead of shopping? Gasp! I think I'm all shopped out for the year after last week (don't quote me on that). 

Though I did drop into the massive Waitrose just to see if things are different here. Turns out, their prices for certain things are cheaper than the Russell Square location. Muscavado sugar is 1 pound here for 500 grams; the one near us sells it for 1.26, if I remember correctly. I bought a fair bit of stuff and lugged it back home before heading out to the Wallace Collection again.

I walked Tavistock all the way down to the heart of Marylebone (pronounced Mar-lee-bone), where I passed by:

Alas, 27A Wimpole Street does not exist. Although there is a 27 Wimpole Street.

Marylebone flower shop. So appropriate, considering the My Fair Lady theme, isn't it?

Historically, Marylebone's always been a posh place to live (people here are ruder though--three people mowed me over at the local Waitrose without saying sorry). In the Regency era, Mayfair was the poshest, then Belgravia and Marylebone. 

Given its poshness, lots of celebrities lived or used to live in Marylebone. Charles Dickens, Madonna, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney to name a few. Wonder why not George?

A little history of Marylebone courtesy of Waitrose

The wealthy really are different. A Marylebone bespoke men's footwear shop:

I wanted to see the Wallace Collection's special exhibit commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, but turns out it's a very tiny exhibit (thank God, otherwise I'd be here forever!). 

King Henry V's forces were outnumbered by the French, but a series of miscalculations by the French helped turn the tide to an English victory. This is the battle that Shakespeare immortalized in Henry V with the famous St. Crispin's Day speech (a crucial moment in the battle where Henry's rallying his army to fight):

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother...

Tom Hiddleston played Henry V last year in The Hollow Crown and the way he delivered that speech still echoes in my brain. I got goosebumps, he was so good.

I found the bit funny that Henry V was a propaganda film released on the orders of Churchill to coincide with the Allies' invasion of Normandy:

Sir Lawrence Olivier as Henry V

I caught the free 2:30 tour today. I did it twice yesterday because I had no idea what time the free tours were, so whenever a tour guide entered the room I was in, I just latched on for the remainder of the tour. 

Today, I wanted to hear it from the beginning, but because it's Saturday, they actually make you register and stick a sticker on yourself. There's significantly more people here today than there were yesterday, so they capped the tour at 25 people. Yesterday, there were no stickers on anyone. The tour lasts about 1 hr 15 minutes, and all three tour guides I've had focus on different things! One guide will skip a painting, another will focus more on that painting, etc. So now I have a very good understanding of the museum.

The Wallace Collection has an extensive collection of armors and weapons--like five huge rooms full of historical warfare artifacts! And many of these pieces are culturally significant too. There's a medieval sword from Henry, Prince of Wales, as well as this exquisite armor thought to have belonged to the Duke of Ferrara:

Afterwards, I went to Marks & Spencer. The Wallace Collection is in the borough of Marylebone, which is pretty close to Oxford Circus (a 5 minute walk). Turns out, when you hit Baker Street, you make a left...a minute down, you're at the flagship Marks & Spencer on Oxford Circus! I went into M&S yesterday and they had 3 different boxes of cookies open for sampling, as well as pineapple ginger bread pudding. Today, they had a roasted bell pepper pizza and sticky toffee apple bread pudding for sampling. Everything was so delicious! Now I want caramel apple bread pudding! And the cookies I tried yesterday were pretty good too. The lady suggested I try a white chocolate-enrobed biscuit because that's her favorite. So I did and it was delish! Though I wouldn't eat it every day, but still. There's a chocolate mousse underneath the white chocolate. The pineapple ginger bread pudding was really yummy too...made me think of when I was making this stuff back in the day.

There's just no words. Toilet paper made with Cashmere threads??? No. Words.

When I emerged from M&S, it was raining, so I took the tube back to the apartment to drop things off. Then I took the Russell Square tube (my new favorite!) to Leicester Square to go to the half-price off ticket booth. I figure it's my last night to watch a show, and I really wanted to see The Importance of Being Earnest again. The combination of rain and Saturday and half-term...there were so many people in the tube, security had to start regulating. They wouldn't let anyone enter the tube station via the way we were coming out! 

But even if someone wanted to enter, he/she'd have to be crazy. With so many people pouring out of the station, there's almost no way for anyone to even try getting in! It's like a fish swimming against a riptide current. Just getting out was tiptoeing along at a snail's pace, we were packed so tight like sardines. And it's so hot in the tube station, but cold outside. The weather has been remarkably good this week, aside from a little rain on Wednesday and a couple hours of rain today. It's called the British Indian Summer.

It was 6:30pm by the time I got to the booth and the show starts at 7:30. Yikes! It was too late for the guy to see any inventory on his end, so he called up the theatre to see what was available. They had one seat left! It was slightly restricted view, but since it's last minute, the discount was 20 pounds. The seat was the first row on the balcony, so awesome view, except I couldn't see a bit of the right-hand of the stage. No worries, since the actors stayed mostly in the middle. Love David Suchet!!!!! Be still, my heart! 

David Suchet is the one in the purple satin dress

After the show, I came home and began packing. Not fun; took me 2 hours...and I'm still 10 kg overweight. I think I'm going to have to return some of the stuff I bought tomorrow...