London sunday

Sunday morning was a delight. The night before, I had made a reservation for the Sunday Coffee concert at Wigmore hall. These are concerts featuring up-and-coming classical virtuosos and small groups, an hour long performance followed by complimentary coffee or sherry. A steal at 12 pounds a ticket.

Saori picked out a breakfast place, the Riding House Cafe (21 on Zagat) which happened to be along the way in Fitzrovia. We showed up at 9:40, nervous about making the 11:30 concert, and with good reason. The place was bustling with activity, and the hostess asked if we had made a reservation for brunch. She put our name down and told us to wander around the neighborhood for 20 minutes.

We did, and when we came back, we were promptly seated. I was worried about the speed of service, but it was lighting. We were seated at 10:00 and had paid the bill by 10:30. It sounds fast, but it was actually quite perfect. We both ordered the big British breakfast: toast, poached eggs, breakfast beans, black pudding, and sausage. Everything was delicious. Clearly, they had taken great pains in the sourcing of their ingredients and meats. The coffee was fantastic.

From there, we had enough time to stroll through the posh neighborhoods to Wigmore hall, a turn of the century chamber music hall. Our seats were unfortunately at the back, but I was happy to have secured seats to the sold-out performance. The artist this morning was a young woman named Beatrice Rana, who played intense selections from Bach, Chopin, and Ravel on piano, including the famous Funeral March. She was very, very good. Lots of thunder from a piano, actually. After, we enjoyed our glass of sherry, and made our way to the exit and another swing through UNIQLO to pick up another few work shirts for me. Relatively cheap, good quality, good cut.

We caught the bus from Oxford street across the Thames and hopped out at the Southbank centre where we walked over to the Tate modern. They were building a new addition, also by H+dM but it wasn't very promising to me. The installation in the main hall was also disappointing, a fabric and wood piece by an American artist, which looked like the designers of the Beatles yellow submarine had tried their hand at aircraft and gave up halfway. We poked through the bookstores (we spent a lot of time in bookstores this trip) and headed across the Millenium bridge towards St. Pauls. We were starving by the time we got across so we poked into a few pubs, and resigned ourselves to a mediocre tourist trap near the church.

We knew it was a mediocre tourist trap going in. But one of the best rules of travel is to eat when you are hungry. The experience was exactly as expected. The food was mediocre, the service sucked, and they blared contemporary radio hits. At least it wasn't ungodly expensive. It will be quickly forgotten from our collective memory.

We took another bus back to Soho, where we wandered around