What a fabulous weekend we’ve just had in London! As my friends will already know, we do try to get to London at least once a year, we just love the busy-ness of the place and can always find something to do.
This trip was carefully planned, I’ve wanted to see The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s Theatre for years so that was Friday evening’s plan, followed by a visit to Cahoots Underground, a 1940s themed bar that’s also been on my radar for a while. Saturday was going to be fabric shopping and mooching and Sunday was a tour of Lord’s Cricket Ground. Oh and I needed to fit in a trip to the legendary Liberty of London to ogle the fabric, which I had no intention of buying!
I’d chosen the Travelodge at Marylebone for our stay, it’s an area we have never visited before and close to Lord’s which would be convenient for Sunday morning, it’s a lovely area with a community feel about it and lots of beautiful architecture and streets with independent shops and cafes too. After checking into our hotel, I soon had us out of the door and on the tube to Oxford Circus, from where we would be a short walk from Liberty. Not being shoppers at all, we’ve actually never ventured down Regent Street or Oxford Street during the day so I’ve never actually seen Liberty before. It’s an impressive sight it has to be said, even Patrick said ‘wow’.
Once inside, it really is an amazing timber building with galleries all around a central atrium. It’s so big that we just decided we would walk around each floor and browse. Some of the clothes were rather ridiculous and I can’t imagine who might wear such creations, some were pretty normal looking dresses, shirts, trousers but at about 10 times the price I’d want to pay. Nothing was particularly special for the thousands of pounds on the price tags. Eventually, I found the fabric department. Liberty lawn cotton is much coveted by dressmakers and crafters, the patterns are beautiful and the fabric is so fine and light. I didn’t intend buying any as at £30 per metre I think it’s overpriced, but Patrick persuaded me that I should buy enough for a dress, it seemed a shame to have been to Liberty and not come out with a fabric purchase! Mission accomplished we retired to the Argyll pub just down the street for a restorative Old Peculier before taking a leisurely stroll back through pretty Marylebone to our hotel.
On our walk back, I particularly wanted to visit Daunt Books, a beautiful bookshop on Marylebone High Street that I’d read about in blogs. It certainly didn’t disappoint, the main floor filled with books of all kinds, gorgeous wooden shelving with stairs down to a children’s area and a galleried landing above us with books in many different languages. The smell of a bookshop is just wonderful and although I am a true Kindle convert (I love the convenience of it), I couldn’t resist buying a couple of books which caught my eye. The experience made me nostalgic for the time before Kindle, when I would go to the bookshop or the library and just browse. We needed to be back at the hotel to get changed to go out by about 5:30 so after a little more wandering, we headed back. I don’t think we saw very much of Marylebone though and I fully intend to go back during one of our future London trips.
I’d decided I wanted us to dress up, not fully 1940s but a little bit formal and vintage, for our visit to the theatre and Cahoots, I was wearing a black dress with brown polka dots and a circle skirt and had pinned up my hair, Patrick had on smart trousers, shirt and waistcoat. I think we scrubbed up well if I do say so myself. We were eating at one of our favourite restaurants in London, a chain but usually very nice, Bella Italia on St Martin’s Lane. Patrick had a pizza which was good but my tortellini was stodgy and floating around in what appear to be a watery oxo gravy. Not impressed on this occasion I’m afraid. So on to the theatre, The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running play at the same theatre and a board in the foyer informed us that this was performance number 30,003. We had a drink in the rather tatty looking bar before taking our seats in this small, intimate theatre. I really enjoyed the show and the experience. The story was a typical ‘who done it’ and it was funny, it kept me guessing until about halfway through the second half when I guessed ‘who done it’. I can’t tell you though, we are sworn to secrecy.
On to Cahoots, which despite me having directions from their website, was quite a challenge to find. It is housed in a disused underground station and is a 1940s themed cocktail bar. We were a little early so had to wait outside until our time slot but when we did get in there, I was a bit underwhelmed. First thing was that the lighting was so dim, you couldn’t really see around the place. Nor could we read the drinks menu without using my phone torch. Next thing that hit me was the deafening music being played by a DJ, some of it was jazzy, possibly 1940s but some was rock and roll. However it was all far too loud to be able to speak or hear. Next was the clientele, now I didn’t expect everyone to be in 1940s attire, we weren’t ourselves but I did understand there to be a dress code and so expected people to be smartly dressed, a guy next to us had on a hoodie and a baseball cap worn back to front! At £15+ per cocktail, we just had one drink each and left, not because of the price as such, because if it had been a great experience, we would have stayed for another drink but it just wasn’t a great experience.
On Saturday, I’d asked Patrick if he minded us going to Goldhawk Road in Shepherds Bush as it’s a well known fabric district with lots of shops close together. We then planned to wander through Shepherds Bush market and maybe grab a bite to eat somewhere in the area as it’s another area we’ve never visited. Firstly though we made our way to a cafe I’d found on trusty old Google for our breakfast, Eddie’s Food Bistro was a very down to earth cafe and takeaway, filled with what looked to be locals, groups of workmen as well as tourists, it was incredibly busy but we managed to get a table and enjoyed an excellent full English. After breakfast we caught the train to Shepherds Bush, ready for some fabric shopping! I’d made up my mind that I didn’t want to buy any more printed cotton as I already have quite a stash of that. What I wanted was some printed cotton jersey or other such knit fabrics to make some tops. However this was in very short supply in the many fabric shops we trawled through and I ended up just buying a metre of a plain teal and a metre of a kind of tiger print. It was a real experience in these shops though, a bit overwhelming for me in all honesty, more fabric than I’ve ever seen in my life and I just couldn’t cope with the overload. I felt I was done with fabric shopping after that so we headed off to the market. It’s smaller than I expected but it was nice to wander through, oh and I bought some cotton fabric, you know, the stuff I don’t need any more of?
Having done with Shepherds Bush, we found ourselves at a bit of a loss as to what to do next but a bit of Googling found we were about 30 minutes walk away from Portobello Road market so we headed off that way. Wow! Nothing could have prepared us for the scale of it. The whole road, and it is a flipping long road, is market stalls on one side and shops and little mini market halls on the other. It’s full of everything you can imagine, fashion, antiques, food, it is a treasure trove and anyone who loves a mooch around a market could spend a whole day exploring. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of shopping but I did enjoy a browse around some of the stalls and shops as well as buying a nice hat for Patrick! We found ourselves almost at the bottom of the street when there was an ominous rumble of thunder. There was absolutely nowhere to shelter if it started to rain so we decided to head back towards one of the pubs we’d spotted on the way down. Luckily we’d just got in the door before the heavens opened and we ordered a drink and found the very last two seats, soon after that it was jam packed with sodden shoppers standing shoulder to shoulder just to escape the torrential rain. Once the rain had eased off to a manageable level, we headed off to get the train back to the hotel to freshen up before the evening.
Sunday was our tour of Lords Cricket Ground, the home of English cricket and a place I knew Patrick would love to visit. Firstly though we needed breakfast, sadly Eddie’s was closed so we went to another Google find, The Marylebone Corner. This one was a bit more ‘trendy’ for want of a better word and full of ‘trendy’ people, a bit of a contrast with Eddie’s the day before. The food was still good though and we headed off towards Lords with full tummies. As we were very early for our tour, we took a steady walk and found ourselves walking through St. John’s Wood Church Gardens, a very nice little park area with lots of other folks ambling around. We arrived at Lords, along with some other people obviously on the same tour and after a short wait, went in. Even though I don’t really know much about cricket, I found the tour really interesting and entertaining. Patrick loved it, especially walking through the Long Room, but I practically had to force him out onto the players’ balcony for a photo opportunity. The guide and the health and safety guy (presumably to prevent us falling off the balcony!) were lovely and gave everyone plenty of time for photos and looking around. We were also taken up into the media centre, where all the commentators and journalists sit during matches, what an amazing view that is! If you are a cricket fan (or even if you just like it a bit), I would highly recommend a tour of Lords.
So, after a fun-packed weekend we were ready for home. We stopped in a pub on the way back to the train for a Sunday lunch and a beer and then it was King’s Cross and our train home.
TTFN London, see you next year!