Last full day in London

Today was our last full day in London (sad times), but we got to see and do some cool things and play the quintessential tourist for awhile too. From playing on the Princess Diana of Wales' Memorial Playground with Peep to strolling in Hyde Park and eating lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, it was a laid back kind of day, at least for the first half, followed by a mini shopping marathon...


I'm not sure I knew or perhaps had forgotten that we'd be going to the playground this morning during adults-only time (I know, it seems a little odd that there's special playground hours set aside for adults only), but it was actually pretty cool. The weather was pretty cool too, and I made the mistake of wearing a skirt, so it wasn't so easy to be climbing around on the big pirate ship or the platform playgrounds, even for fun photos. There were cute little school kids in uniforms—think twelve little girls in two straight lines—walking near the playground when we left, and a line of parents waiting to get in, but it was neat to be able to see and walk around in the playground when it was virtually empty. (In this Peter Pan picture, look for Peep on the lower right side towards the middle.)

After playground time, we wandered towards the Peter Pan statue and fountains in the park. There was a nice little cafe/restaurant that had amazing hot chocolate, and given the breezy cool weather outside, I was definitely glad for a hot drink. I also had a super huge blueberry muffin, which made for a nice late morning snack/early lunch. :) The park was strangely deserted for the most part, perhaps because of the weather, but following our snack we split into separate groups pending whether people wanted to go to Harrod's or the Hard Rock Cafe. The last Hard Rock Cafe I've ever been in was literally half my life ago in Washington, D.C., so it was fun to see the London one, which is also apparently the original Hard Rock. Merle was nice enough to split one of their huge burgers with me since the muffin put a damper on my appetite for lunch. Still, the food was good and it was a nice change (free refills!). The real touristy fun began after lunch, though. :)

We headed down as a group of six to Harrod's but basically gave up on the idea of sticking together in such a huge store. I had a mini list of souvenirs to locate, if possible, which happened to match up with some of Joanna's, so we navigated five stories together, including toy world and the book area (of course...a must for librarians). On a random side note, one strange thing I noticed, besides the poles that block people from taking strollers on the escalators, is that the sales people consistently check i.d. This is likely because my credit card doesn't have the special chip that cards here seem to, but still, it was kind of nice in a way that they do want to confirm you are the right person to be using that card. At any rate, Harrod's was quite the experience, especially the food halls (I got a picture of giant cupcake! Peep would love it).

My souvenir to-buy list was not satisfied at Harrod's, so we went on a quest to find a bunch of random stores and items that took us up and down Oxford and Great Russell to find everything, and I think it was successful. The crowds of people by the Oxford Circus underground station were totally insane; I think I was dreading huge and immovable crowds like that everywhere from the start, so we've really been fortunate not to have had major crowds and pedestrian traffic as we've toured the city. Now that the shopping blitz is over, I'm the proud owner of a bunch of random London knickknacks to commemorate the trip (a la charm bracelet charms, a tea towel, etc), but it is fun to be a tourist and do touristy things sometimes; we definitely see our share back home...

All in all, the shopping was fun, except that we were for some reason very hurried and walked at a pretty frantic pace. There was no schedule for the afternoon, so I'm not sure why we were in such a rush, but it did speed up the process and got us back in time to make dinner, do laundry, and pack for Paris! The dinner is going to be pretty special too, if the prep is any indication, because our baking directions want me to cook the quiche for twenty-five minutes and then let it cool for thirty, so I'm not sure how that's going to work out in the end since the "cooking" part is really just a reheat anyway. Oh well. It's one more fun memory for today. :)

Peep eyeing my muffin and hot chocolate

Giant cupcake!