My trip to London, part two

Note: You should probably read part one first. Oh, and it's not like I was visiting London for the first time or anything (unlike my next-door neighbour); I did live there for ten years.

After our delicious lunch we headed down towards Leicester Square tube station. For all you Americans out there, Leicester is pronounced Lester, not Lie-sester or Lie-chester, or any other of those crazy variants you come up with!

Of course, we had to go via Old Compton Street. We love Old Compton Street. It's got a bunch of excellent shops, an amazing patisserie, and Ed's Diner at the end of it. It's the gay centre of London, which means it's also very smart, stylish, and pleasant to walk down. In addition, it's kind of like the Italian heart of Soho. We figured there might still be some evidence of celebration - y'know, what with Italy winning the World Cup and all. This is what we saw, just outside Bar Italia. Check out the Italian flags and the Forza Azzurri banner!


On we went...

This pic is of the crossroads where Charing Cross Road meets Shaftesbury Avenue, a few hundred yards from said tube station. It's probably one of the busiest bits of London, and no fun when you're trapped behind people who don't know where they're going. (Or, arguably, when you're stuck behind us taking pictures for our blogs...)


Going down Charing Cross Road I was intending to pop into Comic Showcase and pick up OMAC, as highlighted by The Wanted Man, but it had closed down. Gutted!

Anyway... I didn't buy the comic book, but we did get on the tube, heading to London Bridge, via Waterloo. Here we are at Waterloo station, waiting for the tube.


Once at London Bridge it took a surprisingly long walk to get to Vinopolis itself, but it's nice to have a leisurely wander through these parts. I'm not that familiar with this bit of London, but Wife knows it a bit, so she was my trusted guide. She done good and got us to Vinopolis safely. Once there, I exchanged my tickety voucher thing for two tickets proper. They counter girl also gave us a little map of where we were going and offered us a headset each. The tour, it seemed, would be self-guided. Fortunately the headsets were free; otherwise we probably wouldn't have taken them. This is because we had a terrible headset experience at the Pinacoteca di Brera, a major art gallery in Milan. But that may or may not be another story. We took 'em and off we went.

Those bloody headphone guides do a damn good job of taking the fun out of stuff. All the info was skewed. Stuff they said was there wasn't; stuff they said was to the left was to the right, and vice versa; and most of what was said was written up on the walls, so we could have just read it anyway.

But the point of the exercise is to sample (read "drink") wine. As part of the admission price, you get five tasting tokens, which you use to pay for whatever you fancy sampling from the three tasting tables scattered through the tour. You also get an extra tasting token for The Bombay Sapphire Experience, which apparently used to be an experience, with its own little room, but is now just a table where you can drink gin cocktails.

Wife isn't much of a drinker, so at table 1 she said I could probably drink most of her wine and stuff. "Oh, okay then. Y'know, I'll make that sacrifice..." We stopped at all the tables, obviously, and used up all our vouchers. I finished most of Wife's choices, except the Sherry from table 2, which she finished herself and enjoyed. I'm glad about that, cos I thought it was rank. But I've never really liked Sherry anyway, so that's fine.


And the gin cocktails (above)... I was feeling drunk adventurous, so I went for the one that had cranberry juice in it and something I'd never heard of: crème de mure (blackberry). It's the red one. It was a bit bitter. Wife's is the green one: it had kiwi fruit and apple. It was much sweeter - too sweet for my taste. She couldn't finish hers; I couldn't finish mine. Plus if I had finished even one of them, I think I'd have been quite ill.

Between the second and third tables was the Italy bit. It was funny because there were Vespas with little video screens in the windshield making it look as though you're riding through Tuscany. Here are the scooters. They all had one mile on the clock. What a waste of four good scooters, we thought.



Then at the last table we used almost the rest of our vouchers on Chilean and Chinese wines. I was interested in trying Chinese in particular, since I never have; and Chilean I like anyway. I had one left so I went back for a bit more from table 2.

And finally we had a shot of absinthe. There are two types on the market, apparently: absinthe and absinth. The one with an "e" on the end is the more original type and is still outlawed in France, the US, and some other places. It's very like Pernod, and nice.

Anyhoo, that all done and dusted we went and sat beside the Thames for a few mins then walked back to London Bridge station for the train home. I normally fall asleep on train rides home, but I successfully battled Morpheus to the last this time around. I was a bit tipsy, though. Still, didn't stop me finishing off the day with a nice beer at dinner.

All in all, it was a lovely day trip and a great excuse to spend some quality time together away from work and our computers. We have a busy time coming up, so it was good to take advantage of what may well be one of our last quiet days of the year.