Off to London for Another 3 Days

We took the train back to London and this was an adventure in itself. Dale and I have routine; we get all of our bags at the door before it opens at the station. One of us passes the bags to the other, we work quickly so that we get everything off and don’t hold up the other passengers.

This time, 1^st, I wasn’t finding the tickets I needed in the machine. The train to Victoria came and we figured we’d wait for the next train, like 1 hour. But the conductor yelled across the tracks asking if we were wanting that train and we said yes. He came across the bridge (a bridge with lots of steps) and helped us get our bags over the bridge and onto the train. “We’d sort it out later” he told us.

We were on the train and the conductor came and sat down. He figured out which trains we needed to get back to our hotel and told us where we’d need to change trains. We bought our tickets then settled in. The conductor then came back, he’d emailed ahead to get us help for our bags at the next station and where we’d get off, at Blackfriars.

We got to a station where they were to leave some of the cars and we sat, then an announcement came, there was no driver to move the cars. Then another announcement that we had to change trains, no engineer. The conductor came over and told us that we were lucky as the train we were changing to right then went to Blackfriars, so we didn’t have to make any other changes.

On Saturday, we’d planned to go back to the British Museum but I really wanted to go to see the house/museum of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I tried to find us a walking tour but there was nothing available until after we left the area. So, it made sense to just go to the museum and skip the tour. We made our way to the museum and took the tour. It was actually quite fun, however, I didn’t recognize many of the scenes, even though I’ve seen many of the shows. It has been many years so I’ll just say it is because we haven’t seen anything for some time.

Sherlock Holmes Living room

221 Baker

From the Sherlock Holmes Museum we decide to walk to the British Museum which was supposedly 40 min away. I ended up having to deal with an issue at home so it took longer. By the time we got to the museum it closed, it didn’t close until 5pm but people couldn’t enter after 4. I was starving and out of sorts by then.

I realized that we were fairly close to the St. Martin’s in the Fields Crypt café and that was on the way to the Shakespeare Globe where we were headed. The Crypt café has just plain church food, wine, beer, coffee all served down in the crypt. The food is plain but there is lots of it. So, there we ended up with dinner and a nice glass of red wine.

A real church meal

We went on to the Globe Theater for a performance of 12^th Night. This performance was put on by some American students from Rutgers University. The drama students come in their junior year for 6-months to study in London. We have seen several performances at the Globe over the past few years and they are really fun. This was no different except that we could understand everything! The Shakespeare actors have British accents so we don’t always catch everything.

Waiting for the performance

The performance was so great, actors didn’t miss their lines that we could tell. And they were hilarious. We laughed until we cried.

After the performance we were treated to mulled wine and Dale got some tarts. It was, though, great to see some American kids who were so good!