London fine dining and fashion secrets from me and Queen Elizabeth II

I know my close friends and family worry about me heading off alone for such long periods of time but now that I’m back traveling, I am reminded that it is – for me – a far less lonely place than the emotional floor plan of our condo…this is the chair where Ron…this is the bathroom floor where the paramedics…here is the counter lined with chemo pills…

I am, somehow, happiest living out of a small suitcase for weeks and weeks but do struggle with the same issues on most trips.

Food remains a problem: It’s not good to give me too many options. London apparently has about 40,000 assorted places to eat. When confronted with the need to eat while traveling, I would historically walk Ron around for an hour or two, looking at posted menus, failing to commit to anything, until Ron would agree to a Filet-o-fish or some Kentucky Fried Chicken just so he could head back to the hotel to get ready for bed.

For my first solo London meal, I diligently wandered around…Din Tai Fung…Shake Shack…fancy Italian…sushi…and designed the above meal from the nearby Tesco convenience store and then “cooked” it in my (extremely) mini kitchen.

I started off my day with a London Walks Hello London tour, where tour guide Claire took us to uncrowded vantage viewpoints for the otherwise packed Sunday Parade – where the King’s Guard and the Regimental Flag are displayed on a short parade route. There was another single woman on my tour and I had a fun spontaneous lunch with her afterwards, ditching my carefully crafted afternoon museum plans.

I started out on this trip with a firm itinerary for each day and I can see that I’m going to do some ignoring/reworking as I travel. In the same way that I planned and rerouted this 5 week trip continuously, I seem inclined to rework my London days so far. The Tate Britain museum got cancelled for lunch and then I randomly strolled into the National Portrait Gallery.

This is the first portrait the gallery got hold of – back in 1856, when it was gifted by Earl Francis Egerton, who we’ve never heard of. My critical artistic perspective of the painting is that I’ve never seen Shakespeare with an earring before, and I think he wears it well.

Here are the Brontë sisters from 1834, painted by their brother Patrick. This portrait was lost and only re-discovered in 1914, folded up on top of a cabinet in Ireland – in possession of the second wife of Charlotte Bronte’s widower:

The Portrait Gallery also has some more contemporary pieces, like this one of Dame Judy Dench, from 2004:

The following day, I had scheduled the Victoria and Albert museum and the Natural History Museum. Instead, I scored a ticket to the Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style: the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of things the Queen wore. There were great displays of outfits – and pictures of Queen Elizabeth II wearing them over the decades.

I think that exhibit is designed to take a few hours, but by disregarding the carefully-designed audio guide, I was able to be in and out in 20 minutes and still managed to process and digest the theme (I think!) of the exhibit: I am not fancy enough to have a royal title. As proof of this, I offer my own “Her Life in Style” – an inside look into 35 days on the road with only a carry-on suitcase and two pairs of Birkenstocks:

And added fashion bonus that the Royals didn’t provide – my laundry room:

From the QE2 exhibit, it was only 1.7 miles to the Natural History Museum, and so I decided to walk and try to actually tour a site on my itinerary.

A typical walk in Europe means I’ve got a few friends with me…Ron or Kris…cross-checking me on the GPS but today, of course, was just me and I’m totally certain my phone knew it…that there was no one to chime in, to question, to advise. It took me an hour and a half to walk that route…with my GPS brazenly making back-to-back statements like turn right on Croyden, turn left on Croyden, turn right on Croyden…as I walked a totally straight line.

I believe the Natural History Museum is supposed to be fantastic, but I exhausted myself walking across London while the GPS chimed continual re-routes and then I stood in line outside for an hour and so the only thing I wanted to do inside was find a seat. But here’s the exterior, from 1881:

Here’s the floor tile I pondered as I rested, which I thought was pretty:

I decided we would all be satisfied if I approached the building from only an architectural aesthetic and just not look at any of the 29 million animal species on display except for this one giraffe and giraffe skeleton that was near the exit:

Here’s the Earth Hall escalator, which was broken, so I could not ride…but it’s just spectacular:

Here’s a video of the actual ride:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI52vwBJpV8/

And here’s Hintze Hall and the Hope the whale, suspended in the hall in 2017. Hope is a blue whale…the largest animal in the world at 25 meters long – stranded off the coast of Ireland in 1891 and purchased by the museum for 250 pounds that same year.

From the Natural History Museum, it was only 2 miles back to the hotel and so I set out and had the most wonderful stroll through London…my favorite kind of walk with all sorts of fun sightings:

There was a Lotus showroom that had a V6 Elmira – about $125,000

Here’s a better picture, taken by someone not in the middle of a 6-hour trek across London:

This Lotus Evija Fittipaldi apparently costs around 2 million:

This car?art? was outside a Kensington hotel and probably retails for less than the Lotus above…I could not tell what it was but maybe a Karman Ghia or Thunderbird encased in a silver dental crown?

Here’s Burlington Arcade, from 1818, with about 40 shops/cafes. This is England’s oldest and longest shopping arcade – where the wealthy shopped in a more refined atmosphere:

Burlington Arcade was damaged during the Blitz – on September 11, 1940:

Here’s Royal Arcade, from 1880:

I’ve got two more days in London. One thing I’ve done well – in contrast to previous travel – is to actually attend my ticketed evening activities. I attended the ENTIRE showing of The Play that Went Wrong and sat through a whole candlelit sinfonietta performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at Saint Martin-in-the-Fields church, from 1724: