A day paying homage to London icons (Wednesday 3rd July 2013)

Today was a relatively leisurely day just wandering around some of the better parts of London. We started off with a coffee at Starbucks in Victoria station – not for the coffee but for the internet. I have been struggling to get a good signal at the hotel. Caught up on my email and posts to this blog and Emily re-connected with her friends on Facebook.

Next we caught the Tube to King's Cross station to make the obligatory visit to Platform 9 ¾ . I also wanted to check the lay of the land for our early morning visit to St Pancras International in a couple of days time. After that it was back on the Tube and out to St John's Wood to make the pilgrimage to the Abbey Road crossing. We paid our respects in the usual fashion. A North American girl took our photo doing so and we then reciprocated for her. I checked out the street cam later in the day and found our footage and took a snap of it (google “Abbey Road street cam”). We made the crossing just after 12:12. Kerry stands out dressed in red. The area around St John's Wood is particularly nice. Rather leafy, quiet with the streets lines with stately homes and apartments. Somewhat like Toorak with apartment rental prices in relative proportion.

Abbey Road is very near Lord's so we wander by there and popped into the Lord's Tavern for a pint. After lunch in a nearby cafe we strolled down Park Road past Regent's Park to Baker St. The queue to the Sherlock Holmes museum was way too long so we kept going. A photo of Kerry in front of images of the great detective (taken down in the Baker St Tube station) will have to suffice.

We alighted at Oxford Circus and headed down Regent St. The curve of Regent St makes for an interesting street-scape. By now the town was jumping, streets full of shoppers and office workers out getting lunch. Off Regent St is the famous Carnaby St in Soho which was the place for young people in the Sixties in London. It was the centre of fashion, music and the hip scene. Emily's appreciation of the music of that era made it a target for today's travels. Indeed, the references to this part of London to be found in popular music of the last few decades, abound, Dire Straits “Wild West End”, The Kinks “Lola”, The Beatles, Gerry Rafferty's “Baker Street”, Jethro Tull's “Baker St Muse” to name but a few. It truly is magical to be in the place where the inspiration for these works was born.

Piccadilly Circus was full of people and traffic going every which way. Very colorful. We sat at the bottom of the fountain in the centre for 10 minutes just to watch the world go by. Wandered up Shaftesbury avenue (we were passed by the No. 19 bus – Dire Straits reference) and with weary legs found our way back to the Crown and Anchor. Well, it's not that we like sitting in pubs (much) it's just that our friend, Jim Brennan, set me a challenge. Jim, I've started my list.

We found St. Martin's theatre, picked up our tickets for the evening performance of Agatha Christie's “The Mousetrap” and went for a pre-show bite to eat at the Tower Cafe nearby. We spent time chatting with the owner , an Albanian who we named Farouk, and couple from San Francisco who were taking their grandchildren to see Matilda.

St Martin's theatre is very nice on the inside with lots of wood paneling, polished brass and a massive circular, domed glass skylight. The performance by the cast were very good and one quickly became engrossed in the plot – a classic Agatha Christie whodunit. As one might expect there were many twist and turns, snippets of clues here and there, eccentric characters, shady and suspicious characters and few laughs thrown in along the way. The audience was surprised to learn that the perpetrator of the crimes was.….... I'm sorry, I can't tell you. We all swore an oath of silence after the play had concluded!

The West End was really alive when we exited the theatre and this is 10:00pm on a working day. We were tempted to resume the Jim Brennan challenge but opted to head home instead to rest up for our last day in London tomorrow.