Our 3 weeks away from home began in a town car ride to Sea-Tac driven by Mikhail, a charming Armenian jokester, connecting with him through our time in his country in 2019, just ahead of the Pandemic. We had a convoluted route to London, using airmiles by first flying to Portland with a 7-hour layover. We decided we were worth the cost of the Alaska Airline lounge ($60/person) to have comfort, food and drink before departing. Arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport at 3 PM on September 19, after our 9-hour flight, we took a pre-ordered ride from Booking.Com ($91 USD) to our 3 nights’ lodging at Montague-On-The-Gardens near Russell Square. With a “substitute” driver, a Brazilian named Tiago, trying to find us in the designated area for pick-ups, he, issuing multiple texts, we, taking photos of ourselves in front of various signages to help him zero in on us. We finally hooked up and 90 minutes later, arrived at our destination, tipping Tiago 20 GBP (24 USD), as we had great conversations, telling us about his 1-yr old daughter, etc. We were very pleased with the hotel’s ambience and its location…well-placed for strolling everywhere that mattered to us, e.g., 1 mile walk to the Theatre district, 2 miles to the Regent’s Canal.

 

Since we were pretty tired, that 1st night we chose to remain at the hotel and take advantage of the Leopard Bar with drinks like the “Berry Blush Martini” and “Manhattan on Fire” and food like Salt ‘N Pepper Squid or Korean Fried Shimeji mushrooms. The next day, we took our breakfast at Caffe Tropea in the gardens of Russell Square, a mere 5-minute walk from our hotel, dining on omelets and coffee, to the tune of 21.5 GBP. From there, we walked the mile to the Theatre District, which also houses the National Portrait Museum, where we made reservations for 10:30 AM the following day to see the Paul McCartney exhibit of his photos taken when the Beatles came to America in 1963. We had previously purchased online matinee tickets for The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre, whose origins date back to 1765. The theatre was only a handful of blocks from the museum so we headed over for our show which has been wowing audiences here since 1999!

 

By then, we had some slight showers and were anxious to get inside the theater. We purchased two Aperol Spritzers and found our reserved seats in the center balcony, watching the place grow to its capacity of 2,167. We were blown away by the extravaganza of this production, marveling at the acrobatic skills of actors costumed as animals, with humorous dialog, singing and using stilts…what a thrill! We later learned that this theatre entertains 760,000 patrons on an annual basis! Following the performance, we meandered back up toward our hotel, priding ourselves on being able to follow the hotel’s paper map, checking window fronts along the way, noting fashions in the store windows and taking in the whole of the London vibe.

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When we arrived back at our digs at Montague, I went to use my phone to look up some stuff and couldn’t find it!!!! Maggie thought I might have left it in our room, so I asked her to call me…Someone answered in a very thick British accent, saying “HALLO”?  Turned out that it was a theater employee, who had my phone as the area was swept after the matinee performance, finding it on the ground under my seat, where it had fallen out of one of my coat pockets. This led to our immediate turnaround to truck the mile back down to the Lyceum, in a driving rain, (no taxis were available) to recover my priceless phone. With the rain and the uphill stretch back to our hotel, we called for an UBER and sat at a pub until it arrived, first taking us to TAS, a Turkish restaurant close to the British Museum and our hotel. We reached our beds around 10 PM. Great food and a wonderful closure to a day that had included a near loss for Team Moffett!

 

On our final day in London, we took breakfast again at Caffe Tropea, before hustling the 1 mile south to our 10:00 AM appointment to see McCartney’s photo exhibit “1963-64: Eyes of the Storm”, numbering over 250 photos. We were there for almost 2 hours, taking photos of photos and then moving on to view the permanent exhibits of portraits & paintings from the 1500’s to the 1800’s. We followed that by walking the 2 miles north to the Regent’s Canal, home to Word On The Water, the infamous London Book Barge in the King’s Cross area.  I espied a small book entitled “BEAT POETS”, taking me back to my Beatnik days in the late 1950’s, making a purchase and then left to take in the London Canal Museum, during which Maggie discovered that her “sling” pack was empty…apparently some crafty pilferer had carefully opened it and emptied the contents, including her wallet, whilst it was slung over her back!! Well, that put a damper on the rest of the day. Fortunately, her iPhone was in her pants pocket and passports were in our hotel room. We pushed on anyway, traipsing to the museum, this structure’s history including storing ice for an ice cream maker starting in the mid-1800’s. This deflection helped to defray our worries, temporarily, about the missing two credit cards her driver’s license and her library card…no clue why she had that in her wallet :). By now, the day had turned very rainy, reflecting our moods and we were in no mood to walk the long walk back so we took UBER to our hotel, where we stayed for dinner and an early retirement to bed, needing some ZZZ’s before a 4:00 AM taxi would take us to Gatwick Airport for our 7:20 AM flight to Catania, Sicily. Due to the early start, our cab fare was quite expensive, 214 GBP (in U.S. currency, $265!).

 

Side Note: We decided to not call Bank of America about the card losses, since I still had the same two cards (and a 3rd if necessary which was not BOA) and we would check daily to see if any charges had been attempted, which never happened over the course of the balance of this trip which was another 19 days!