Sunday, March 19, 2017

champagne wishes and caviar dreams

My body is rebelling against all the food and champagne I forced into it today, and the especially cruel double whammy of making it walk for hours in between food/champagne stops. But today was a lovely day in London town. I woke up in time to shower before writing for half an hour in the early morning hours (where 'early' equals '9am'), which was v. necessary. Then I walked over to South Kensington to meet Jen so that I could show her my favorite haunts.

We started with brunch at Muriel's - the wait wasn't bad, and my halloumi and poached eggs (the same dish I had earlier this week) was perfect. Then we ended up going to the V&A Museum quite by accident, where Jen got a v. oddly specific tour from me (and by that I mean that whenever we saw something I knew something about, I told her about it - this mostly means anything between 1790 and 1820). We saw some highly enjoyable fashion stuff, and some delightful furnishings/gold/decorative stuff, and then ended up trapped in an odd assortment of rooms related to theatrical productions that had a lot of creepy costumes and many blocked exits. #donotlike

So we left the museum and stopped by Roam so that Jen could see where I live (verdict: she liked it but we're both glad Google is paying for a hotel for her). Then we wandered up and down Kings Road for a couple of hours, doing some desultory shopping - of course, she's the one who wanted to shop and I'm the one who ended up buying boots. That's the story of my life, so #noregrets.

Then we took the tube one stop to Victoria, and we decided we were both too exhausted to walk for another hour, so I took one for the team and had a glass of champagne (real champagne! veuve clicquot!) so that we could sit at a bar for an hour. We then proceeded to the main event: high tea at the Goring Hotel.

The Goring Hotel, as I'm sure all of you know, is where the Duchess of Cambridge (née Kate Middleton) and her family stayed in the days leading up to her wedding back in 2011 (what, you didn't all know that?). It was also a favorite hangout of the Queen Mother, and the current queen still goes there on occasion. More importantly, I'd read that they have one of the best gluten-free high teas in London. So when I found out Jen was coming, I promptly made a reservation - and I have to say that it was spectacular.

My gluten-free tea was just as impressive as hers, which is a rare feat. We had four finger sandwiches - my favorites were the curried chicken salad and the salmon, but the cheese sandwich and the roast beef were lovely too. There were two scones apiece, and they were perfect - both on their own and as a vehicle for delivering as much devonshire cream and jam into my mouth as possible. And the desserts on top were too much - I didn't actually finish mine, since there were five apiece, but the macaroon was great and I adored the chocolate/coffee cake.

We also had two glasses of champagne there (real champagne again), so I was feeling very full and mildly tipsy by the end. We were both basically falling asleep at this point, which made for a low-energy goodbye - but I'll see Jen again this week, either for something impromptu or for the dinner we've reserved for Friday night.

I then came home, took a nap, messed around online because I'm too tired to think, and now need to sleep for real - goodnight!

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