Some Klezmer
Visited St Mary the Virgin, Iffley, a late Norman church in the afternoon with Alan.
In the evening Barb, Alan and I attended the London Klezmer Quartet concert at the Isis farmhouse. Alan and I bought CDs of the group to take home.
Hyde Park and Back
We decided to try breakfast at the Indian place, Dishoom, since it seemed to be so popular. It was great. The restaurant is huge, three floors with at least two bars. It was designed to look like an old Bombay Iranian diner, lots of wood and chrome and old signage. The food was really good too. I had a naan roll with sausage and eggs, and the sausage had Indian spices. There was incense burning and the whole place smelled great. I did get a little sneezy there!
We asked Matthew the boat owner if we could take our time clearing out and he said 1:30 was fine, so we finished packing but left our bags on the boat and then headed toward Hyde Park. We got off at Hyde Park Corner and walked toward the Serpentine. It was another beautiful day in London. We cut through several gardens until we got to the Albert Memorial and the Royal Albert Hall. We continued walking to Kensington Palace and Kensington Gardens, then headed back. We walked by the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, obviously new since last time I was here.
Ed was enticed by all of the ice cream trucks in the park, so stopped in a little park cafe and got a cup of clotted cream ice cream.
We took the same train back to King’s Cross. After packing up our bags, we decided to take the Metropolitan line out to Hillingdon and get the X90 bus to Oxford there. Unfortunately our Oyster cards had run down so we had to top off with £5. Apparently prices had gone up since our Rick Steve’s London guide was published, so £20 no longer covered three full days. Ed had a bunch of trouble reloading them with his credit cards. We think it was user error.
At Hillingdon it was not obvious where to get the bus to Oxford. Buses from London stopped right by the tube stop, but we didn’t see any the other way. I asked the London-bound driver and it turns out the stop was a ways away. Alan did draw me a map but I forgot since I didn’t think we would go that way. We tried it to beat London traffic, not sure if it really helped. We got off at Headington shops and walked down Cuckoo Lane to Jenkins’.
For dinner we walked to the Butcher’s Arms, a Headington pub, with Dad, Barb and Alan. I had a steak and ale pie with mashed potatoes and peas, and a cider. Dad had nachos! We walked back past the Headington Shark, which is a giant sculpture of a shark embedded in a a house.
Is it the Isis, or is it the Thames?
We got up and got runs in before getting ready to go boating with Gregory’s family. Greg had gotten permission to take out his boss’s (boss’ bosses’?) boat which is moored at the Osney Marina on the River Thames. We motored along with Greg piloting and got a nice alternative view of Oxford. The boat was a Viking 26 and fit us all well enough, especially with some sitting on the stern and bow.
We tied up (with stakes & hammer & trepidation) at the Isis Farmhouse, another riverside pub! And had beer and cider and some ploughman’s lunch, etc. The kids played in the trees and with other kids, just like Tiff and Greg used to do. They are obsessed with babies, and when they heard one crying, Scarlett said “I’ll go cheer that baby up!”
After our stop Ed took over as skipper (turns out Greg was hungover but wouldn’t ask him – Becky would!) and we headed back to the marina. It was a lovely day for a boat ride.
After a few tries we got the boat moved in its slip and headed to Brasileiro, a Brazilian market Ed and I had found earlier, for food to grill out at Jenkins. We got linguiça, feijoada in a can, and frozen paode quejo. The grill did not work well, so it was a vey late dinner, but everyone loved the food. For dinner we had acai and some peanut cookies to crumble over it.
The kids had gone next door with the neighbor kids to watch a movie in their back garden, and Becky had fallen asleep so we sat outside with Greg and talked until fairly late before we all said goodbye.
Cheers!
Ed’s flight to Denver was at 11:30am so we got up at 7:45 even though Dad and I didn’t fly out until 4:20. We decided we would rather drive down in the rental car than drag our suitcases to the bus in probably rain later. A bittersweet goodbye to Barb.
No traffic or problems on the drive to Heathrow until just outside the rental car place where there was a serious accident that had closed the road. Ed was able to duck into Hertz though.
Dad and I had a long wait at the airport but eventually we finally boarded for Pittsburgh. I’m on the plane now over Nova Scotia I think with about an hour and a half to go.
Post-script 2021: What a great trip this was. Ed and I had been talking about going to England for awhile and he really wanted to go that September. With it being Dad and Barb’s 75th and 80th birthdays, I really wanted him to come with us and am so glad he agreed and Linda could join us too. We had great weather, got to see all of the Jenkins’ and Davis’ including four new kids and four new spouses. Ed got to go to a Premier League game. Dad and I got to go to Last Night at the Proms on his actual birthday. We stayed in a house that generations of our family knew well, across the street from the church where they are buried. Ed and I stayed on a houseboat right in London!
Little did we know at the time that we were getting this trip just under the wire before a pandemic. Six months later international travel was shut down and now two years later we are still dealing with this mess. All of us now marvel that we were able to just travel freely from all over to get together without a care in the world in September 2019.
Sometimes perfect storms work out.