Today was the first day in eleven days that we didn’t have anything scheduled and we could just lie about all day if we wanted to. We did lie about until about 1 pm, Mary reading, me worrying about our arrangements on Sunday to get from here to Southampton. We left our cruise tickets at home, which is no big deal – we can print out e-tickets – but the tickets at home had our boarding time on them and that is not on the e-tickets. I have been trying for three days to find out our boarding time, and finally today I figured out how to use my Skype application to call England from England and got ahold of someone at Cunard who told me that we don’t have any specific boarding time. She also said to me, “Oh, it’s the big celebration weekend!”

“It is?” I asked. “What is the celebration?”

“It is the celebration of Cunard’s 175th anniversary and all three ships will be in port at the same time which they never are, and they will all sail away together.” When I told Mary this she got very excited and she may have even started crying. She is very excited now about Sunday’s sailaway in tandem with the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Victoria. I’m excited too, but not so much moved to tears.

I was, however, moved to tears when we left our hotel at 1 and headed through Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens towards the bus/subway station. We had no plan for where we were going and we passed the most adorable Tea House Theatre and the Vauxhall City Farm and I was filled with happiness that we are staying in a residential neighborhood – it felt like it was OUR neighborhood too. And it wasn’t raining either. What joy! At the bus/tube station we needed to decide where we were going. I mentioned that I wanted to go to Harrods and Mary said, “Let’s go then!”

We got on the Tube – Victoria Line to Green Park and then switched over to the Piccadilly line Green Park to Knightsbridge and 15 minutes later when we stepped out of the tube station, there was Harrods. I thought we should find something to eat outside Harrods but Mary suggested we eat inside and I didn’t argue, even though I was worried that it would be overpriced and maybe hard to find food. Last September we tried to find a place to eat inside Bloomingdale’s in New York and it was hard to find the restaurants and the ones we wanted had long lines and Mary eventually just left and went back to our hotel. I thought it might be like that. Which it sort of was, though a bit different.

Note from Mary: I wanted to add some sort of correction here, to make myself look better vis-a-vis the Bloomingdale’s story. But I can’t – that’s exactly how it went down…

The last time I was at Harrod’s was in 1984 and I just remember it all being so grand and I really wanted to wander the store, starting in the food halls, which are still very grand, but it became clear very early on that Mary was not really enjoying herself and pretty soon she was saying she just needed to eat and we couldn’t find the restaurants and when we finally found one it was WAY overpriced, but eventually we found the Disney Cafe, which is for children, and only slightly overpriced. I wanted to leave the store and go somewhere else but Mary was too hungry so we went into the Disney Cafe and sat in little chairs with Mickey Mouse ear chair backs and paper menus on the table and a glass of crayons. The waiter took my menu away and then brought a different one back and we realized that the table for two was pre-set with one adult menu and one child’s menu (though we weren’t the only adults in there sans children). We ordered lentil soup and a Goat’s Cheese, Roasted Squash & Carmelized Red Onion salad. Then I decided to go find the loo. I asked directions and was told to go through Fashion Lab and turn left. It took me at least 15 minutes, maybe longer to find the bathroom and then find my way back to the restaurant. Fashion Lab was a maze and I asked at least five different people for directions until I finally found the bathroom. Then I had to ask directions to get back to the restaurant. Mary told me she had started to worry about where I was.

The waiter had delivered our food as well as water in Mickey Mouse cups and the food was decent. There was a birthday party of little girls next to us and they all had Mickey or Minnie Mouse or Merlin ears on and they posed in front of some Disney Princess for pictures. They also all wore shirts devoted to some boy band called The Vamps. The girls kept us entertained throughout lunch. We got our bill and paid and left and as we were leaving our waiter ran after us calling, “Excuse me, madame!”We figured one of us had forgotten something but he was just giving us two pairs of Minnie Mouse ears in a Harrod’s bag. So look at that, even at Harrod’s we managed to get something free! (sort of.) I was just as weary as Mary so we decided to ride the escalator up the floors and explore a little bit, but only a little tiny bit. Which we did, and then we decided to go back to Vauxhall (our tube stop) because I still wanted to go to the City Farm and the Tea House. We decided to do the Tea House first since we were both kind of exhausted. The Tea House is this adorable little building that is “an old Victorian public house that opened in 1886 on the site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens; immortalized as the ‘Vanity Fair’ in Thackeray’s eponymous novel.” (It’s the Vauxhaull Pleasure Gardens that were immortalized as the ‘Vanity Fair’, not the teahouse.)

The teahouse menu says this: “We are trying to be different. We will not hurry you. If you visit us on your lunch break, then have one, you will be more productive in the afternoon…” What it didn’t say, but we soon found out is that not only will they not hurry us, they will not hurry themselves, or even move at anything less than a glacial pace. We were seated immediately in some very comfortable arm chairs near a guitarist who was playing acoustic music. There was a stack of newspapers and we each took one and proceeded to ignore each other completely and read, which was lovely. Eventually we were brought a menu and then a bit later the waitress took our order. I chose the Cream Tea – scones with homemade jam and clotted cream and Mary chose the English tea – toasted crumpets with homemade jam and clotted cream. The waitress brought us a pot of tea fairly quickly and then we waited and waited and waited…. and waited a bit more for our food. Eventually she came and said to me, “Hey, we don’t have any scones today. Would you like crumpets or hot cross buns?” I didn’t want either so I asked if I could take a look at the menu and rethink my order. She brought me the lunch menu rather than the tea menu and then disappeared. The table in the middle of the room had various cakes on it and eventually I decided I would have a slice of cake. This woman came in and sat down next to the cakes and seemed to be eyeing the same slice I was and I was sure she was going to get my slice of cake. I will give our waitress credit. It took her awhile but she did get our order in time for me to get that slice of cake right before the other woman ordered it and the other waitress went to get it and, confused, asked our waitress, “Where did the such and such cake go?” In my belly, that’s where!!

It took another half a century to get our check and then at least 15 more minutes to get someone to take our credit card. At least four different waitstaff walked by our table, looked at the credit card sitting there, and walked on. Eventually Mary had to stop someone and explicitly ask her to take the credit card. After that it was about 10 more minutes and we were out of there. As we left, Mary said, “That was really nice until it wasn’t.”

Back at the hotel, the hotel labradoodle puppy, Waggers, was asleep on the floor of the lobby and I went to pet him and he woke up long enough to put his head on my foot and go back to sleep. It was lovely. I was just thinking this morning that we have been away from home long enough for me to officially desperately miss our cats. Mary went into the breakfast dining area and returned with 3 mini donuts so I had to go back there too and discovered that not only were there mini-donuts, but also two kinds of cake! I’m starting to really love this hotel. I put some cake and a donut on a plate to take back to the room, and then asked for some takeaway menus at the front desk. They gave me some menus that looked a bit crappy but I did a little websurfing in the room and eventually ordered take-out for myself from Nando’s “famous for our flame-grilled peri-peri chicken” and walked alone back through the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to the restaurant to get the food. (Mary had leftovers from her Wednesday evening fish and chips.)

We had dinner in front of the tv and then somehow I talked Mary into going downstairs and buying me a bottle of water from the pantry. (I was already in my pajamas, even though it was only 6 pm.) I added, “If they need Waggers to be in our room, you can bring him up too.” Mary found this very confusing and said, “That sounds too hard,” so I had to explain that it was a joke. She left and I began writing up this blog entry and she was back a few minutes later and I heard her say, “Come on, come on in!” and there was Waggers in our room!

I was very excited except that Waggers, like another sweet dog I know named Barnaby, went straight for my socks that were lying on the floor. I got them out of his mouth and into this ledge below the bedside table but he got one of them right back and then refused to let it go. He had a death grip on that sock. I thought the staff might be worried about where he was so I called and asked if it was all right that he was up here and the nice young man said no he shouldn’t be up here and he offered to come get him. I alternately snuggled with and tried to get my sock from Waggers until the young man came to the door. I didn’t try too hard to get the sock; I didn’t want to get bitten. When the young man came to retrieve Waggers I asked if he could also retrieve my sock from Waggers’ mouth. There was a lot of nasty growling from Waggers and we gave the young man a Saltine to try to entice the sock release but Saltines can’t hold a candle to my dirty stinky sock. Eventually I was handed a very wet sock and I apologized profusely to the young man for having to touch my sock.

And that was all the excitement for today. Now I am going to remote into Mary’s computer at home so I can watch some good old American tv.