This is our room in our hotel across from Buckingham Palace in, of course, England. Yes, indeed. Where ARE my corgis? We have been here the last two nights, cocooned in this delightful room. The striped walls you see in the photo are actually padded fabric. Each picture that is hung, makes a little indentation wherever it is fastened to these quilty-thick walls. If this is a what a padded cell is like…bring it on. 

Words are softer in such an accoustically serene environment. Life feels safer somehow. Perhaps this too, is the insulating power of wealth. Hard to believe the world exists beyond the lovely breakfast dining room filled with international visitors and piles of perfectly baked and cooked foods. It occurs to me in this quiet environment that we are otherwise mostly surrounded by hard surfaces where sounds bounce and clang at us.  I’m a convert to soft walls and thick draperies, at least in hotels…

We’ve been to two plays now…Jerusalem and Six Degrees of Separation. Both good but not necessarily amazing.

We left all our guide books at home and have been winging the food thing with great results. Yesterday on our trip out to Notting Hill, we decided to try Alounak.  It’s a Persian restaurant at 44 Westbourne Grove, where they make taftoon bread on site. Kevin ended up in a wine shop later, and in talking to the agent, discovered that the Alounak is renowned and has line-ups every night for dinner. The food was divine. So good that I asked for the menu again so I could get the name of every dish. I plan on searching out these recipes for mirza ghassemi, kashke bedemjan, salad shirazi and chelo-ikabab koobedeh – and of course, taftoon bread.

The other night I asked a woman, who was working the back door of the Apollo theatre, if she could steer us towards a good pre-theatre dinner. That resulted in The Lyric  on Great Windmill Street where I had pan-fried chicken breast on a plate of puy lentils, butter beans and chunks of chorizo sausage…all washed down with a lovely Ugni Blanc from France’s Colombard. I stole a few choice morsels from Kevin’s beer-battered haddock with chips and creamy tartar sauce but left his peas as they were a tad old and the only thing a bit disappointing for both our meals.  But he loved all the rest and especially the Timothy Taylor Landlord ale.

Here’s the thing; that whole meal was 24 pounds, or roughly $35.00 Cdn dollars. It rivalled anything we’d have in a Vancouver restaurant where we’d pay at least that much or more. Don’t look now, but Europe is becoming so much more affordable than it used to be.