I got up and went for a walk/run up Cuckoo Lane to Bury Knowles Park. Then I showered and packed my bag for London so I could walk Linda to the bus stations for her bus to Heathrow. One more trip up Cuckoo Lane, my favorite lane.
We had arranged to meet the owner of the houseboat we are staying in in Kings Cross at 1, but he called Ed and asked if we could do two instead, so we walked to the London Road and had breakfast at a ‘brasserie’ which turned out to have a Moroccan flavor (presumably Moroccan owners). I had the Moroccan breakfast which had wonderfully fluffy eggs, merquez sausage, olives, feat and both French and flatbread with a little jar of honey, which I remembered from my last trip. It was quite good.
We finished packing up at Jenkins’ and then walked up Cuckoo Lane yet again for the bus to London. We took the X90, different line than I took with Dad but same idea. These buses are very nice, wireless and charging outlets, seatbelts, nice seats, bathroom, double decker.
As we still had a bit of time, we hopped off the bus as traffic slowed in London (at a stop!) and walked to Kings Cross. I just had my small backpack but Ed had his backpack plus his leather duffle and the almost two mile walk was more than we bargained for. But we did get there on time to meet Matthew, the boat owner. He was in his late 30’s, long blonde hair and had a Liverpool or other northern accent. He walked us through instructions for the boat – namely charging the battery and using the inverter to power the outlets, and flushing the toilet.
Ed ran the motor for awhile to charge the battery, and I went over to the Waitrose Grocery to pick up ice, water and yogurt for the morning. Waitrose is a new grocery store since I was last here, pretty nice.
We walked around checking out what King’s Cross has become. The houseboat is in Regents Canal, and the area around is the former coal yard. Now it’s Hipster City. There is a giant Google headquarters going up just across the street; we could tell because the elevator shafts have android logos at each floor (11 floors). The top androids have their arms in the air.
Ed had made three dinner reservations for our stay, based on recommendations from Tiffany. There were so many good looking restaurants that we decided to cancel tomorrow’s reservation at an Italian place. Tonight’s was for a place called Frenchie, and when I was googling the walking time, I saw that the reservation was actually for tomorrow, meaning that it was tonight’s reservation that was cancelled. Well, we had seen an upscale Indian place that we wanted to try away, but when we got there, there were about 50 people queued up. We tried another place which had a 40 minute wait and looked too trendy, so we headed a block off the main square and landed at Spiritland, which had cocktails and small plates and a female DJ playing jazz, etc. on turntables, and an excellent and striking looking sound system.
