Today was a very busy day for us. We slept in a little, got some breakfast, headed for Adam’s traditional morning macchiato (and my traditional morning chocolate twist), and proceeded with our day.

 

 

We took the tube to Hyde Park, and managed to cover the entire thing. Adam’s knee was brutalized, and my feet were crying by the end of the day. I had a hard time choosing pictures from the seventy-three bajillion, four-hundred and twenty million, three-thousand and forty-six pictures I took, but here are the 14 I managed to decide on.

We started at the northeast corner, at the Wellington Arch.

 

 

 

Next up, we entered the park. We wandered through the Rose Garden (which smelled amazing, of course). The next thing we hit was the Serpentine, which is a large body of water in the park. Further up, we crossed the serpentine to see the Isis statue and the Diana Memorial. On our walk to the next monument, I saw my first Rolls Royce! It was a really ugly banana-yellow.

 

 

 

 

We then headed out of the park on the west side to get a late lunch.

 

 

 

We headed to Zizzi’s for lunch. Being in a very wealthy part of town, we couldn’t be super choosy about where we went for lunch unless we were willing to fork out the dough. Zizzi’s is a local Italian chain. We ordered a pizza to split, and finished it off so that we didn’t have to tote around leftovers for the remainder of the day. Food was good, however we do generally aim to try local one-offs instead.

Back into the park, but only after we go on the detour that Adam insists upon to see more Blue Plaques of London (to be summarized at the end of today’s post).

 

 

Peter Pan led us to the Italian Gardens. We scrambled through these last few monuments, due to time constraints. We hit the marble arch, a statue of a giant horse head, and then the memorial to animals lost in war.

 

 

 

 

We headed back home to get ready for our play tonight. After walking all day, we were pretty gross and sweaty.

 

Once we headed out again, we left early so that we could wander around St. Paul’s Cathedral first, as it was in the general vicinity of the Globe Theater.

 

 

 

We headed to our show at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which is part of the Globe Theater. Our play tonight was Love’s Labour’s Lost, a comedy by Shakespeare. The play was really good, and we would both definitely recommend it.

 

 

 

Naturally, everything was closed or soon-to-close for late night food on a Monday night. We did manage to find a little hole-in-the-wall with a guy that clearly loves his job. He made an off-menu sandwich for a cabbie that was parked out front, and I got some chicken shawarma for back at the room.

As promised, a summary of today’s Blue Plaques:

• Percy Wyndham Lewis, a painter and writer that lived from 1882-1957.
• Sir Max Beerbohm, an artist and writer that lived from 1872-1956.
• James Clark Maxwell, a physicist that lived from 1831-1879. We walked way off the beaten path for this one, at Adam’s insistence (NERD!). However, I conceded that it was worth it, solely because I got to see my first Aston Martin in person. It was dreamy. 🙂
• Dr. Samuel Johnson, an author. He lived from 1709-1784. Out front of his house, there is a small statue dedicated to his cat, Hodge. If you go to this website, you can here him speak: speak2.co/Hodge

We didn’t get home until around midnight, which is why today’s blog is being written a day late.

Total steps: 30,513

 

ttfn

Emily and Adam