Other Parts Of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Continuing Monday's saga....

We finished up with Hyde Park and walked down the street to the Science Museum.  I had looked online at it before leaving to see what was there.  You are not going to believe this, but they had a whole section dedicated to MATHEMATICS! (2nd floor, center, so that you know where it is for your trip!) Oh, I was sooo excited to go there! But before the 2nd floor there is of course the 1st floor to explore.

See Through Mini Cooper

Three Wheeled Car

A Sweater Made From the Wool of the Clone Sheep Dolly on Top of a DNA Analyzer

And then, and then....oh my oh my!  The 2nd floor in the center...The History of Mathematics! (Now, I do understand that not everyone shares my love of math, sad sad people, so I limited the math related photos in this post to four.)

Most Beautiful Sign Ever!

Slide Rule-These things are amazing!  They can do all kinds of math like multiply, divide, trig, roots, logarithms,
but not really used for adding or subtracting.  This is actually the first time I have ever seen one!

Now this is art!  I love spirals!

A dodecahedron (12 sided figure).  I want this for my house!

Sadly, we had to leave the 2nd floor but before leaving completely we wandered up to a few other floors.

Ew, but COOL!

I swear, they would wrap anything!  Silly Egyptians!

After some refreshments from ONE of the cafes in the Science Museum we went across the street to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  I wanted to go there to see one thing, some little pencil stubs with the alphabet carved in the lead tips. Before we got to them we had to pass through several rooms.

Renaissance Statues

Glass Chandelier Art in Grand Entrance

The picture above shows the pencils that I wanted to see.  They were tiny!  I have no idea how the artist did that!  I wasn't able to take a picture and they had no postcards of this so, I ripped it right off the V and A website.  I am sorry.  Please forgive me, V and A, Internet Big Brother, friends, and family.

After getting home and looking a little longer at the V and A website, I wish we had spend more time there.  But we had walked quite a bit already through Hyde Park and the Science Museum, so we were tired, hungry and getting cranky.  (When I say we, I am really mainly meaning my husband.)  Teehee.

We decided to hold off eating until we got to Harrod's department store.  I knew there were several restaurants there and was looking forward to the experience.

We went to the coat check first and then headed inside.  It was CRAZY crowded!  I do understand that it was the week of Christmas, but oh my goodness it was crowded! We saw only a small fraction of the store.  There are 32 restaurants and 330 departments on seven stories with over 1,000,000 (yes, that is one million) square feet of shopping!  They have a dress code and a motto! (Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere).

We didn't stay long, just long enough to get jostled and take a few pictures.

I am just happy that at least the birds had their feathers plucked. Seen in the Food Hall.

Egyptian Escalator

The man who owns Harrod's is Egyptian and this is part of his tribute to this fact.  The owner's son was the man who was dating and died in the car wreck with Princess Diana.  There were memorials to both of them in the department store.  This is one of them.

We didn't stay long because of the crowds and we never found any place to eat because it was just too crowded to try to find our way around.  So we spent 4 pounds ($6.00!) in Harrod's to check the coats and umbrellas for 30 minutes and that is the extent of our time at Harrod's.

We were really really hungry by this time.  We finally found a place to eat (read that agreed on a place) after a little more walking. We decided on a French restaurant called Cafe Rouge.  It was really good!  Frankie declared it his favorite meal of the entire trip.

Frankie had the Baguette Rouge: Char-grilled rump steak baguette with Dijon mustard and oregano mayonnaise, French fries and a salad garnish

I had a combination of four small plates:  (starting at back left to right then front left to right) Houmous-Moroccan dip served with crisped flatbread, Olives-Gold medal winning Petit Lucques green olives, Merguez-Spicy beef & lamb sausage with harissa mayonnaise, and Fromage Bleu-Blue cheese, walnuts and French bread. Yum!

After dining sufficiently, we decided to see what Piccadilly Circus was all about. We knew it was like the Times Square of New York, but that was about it. That is about all we understand it be even to this day. There were lots of souvenirs and people. Heard the f-word about 25 times and that was from only three different people!

One very interesting thing we stumbled upon was the M&M's World! As we found out, there are only 4 in the world, 3 in the USA and this one in London.  Well, of course we had to go in!!

Now over stimulated, we got on the tube to go back to the hotel. In the Piccadilly Circus tube station they made an announce to watch your belongings because pickpocketers (I think that is a word) worked this station! Well isn't just nice to know, as I grip my purse even tighter and give a quick glance to the people standing near me...were they one of them??

We really were going to head back to the hotel, but when the tube announcements keep saying the next stop is the one to Big Bend, well you just have to go see it!  We got off the tube and climbed the stairs out of the station.  The first thing to greet us was the mighty Big Ben Tower!  Wow! It was breath taking to see it for the very first time at night!

Then once fully up the stairs, all you have to do is look left and Boom!, there is the London Eye. Beautiful! 

While we were admiring the view, the clock chimed the hour and the lights on what we later found out to be, County Hall, started changing colors.  It was lovely!

We finally decided that was all we could handle for the day and actually returned to the hotel.  Would you believe were out until 11pm! Wahoo! Wild people!!

Stay tuned for more, this was only Monday and we were in London for a whole other week!