Month: August 2017

High on a hill, on a very large plot of land in Leicestershire sits a beautiful castle name Belvoir (pronounced “Beaver”).  It has been the home of the Manners family and the Dukes of Rutland since the early 1500s.  Prior to that, from the middle 1200s until the direct line of the family died out in 1508, it belonged to the de Ros family.  This was a group of my numerous knightly ancestors.  At that time, it was a Norman Keep.  The current castle is the fourth to be built on the site.

As part of a 1997 visit to England, we did a small group multi-day tour out of London that included a private visit to Belvoir.  It is still a private home, but they do have tours and occasionally allow filming at the castle.  It is both magnificent and homey at the same time with spacious, luxuriously decorated rooms for entertaining and cozy rooms for the family.  It is another of my favorite castles.

We were shown around the place by the butler.  The Duchess came by while we were gazing at the famous Holbein painting of Henry VIII.  She chatted for a few minutes and then went on her merry way.

One of my favorite rooms was the very large Entrance Hall filled with arms and armor.  I know some people find it odd for a woman to like antique weapons, but I do.  It’s like holding a piece of history in your hand.  So I have a few daggers, pistols and swords that I have picked up here and there on my travels.  Some are real.  Some are reproduction.  All are American Civil War or earlier and remind me of where I was when I got them (and, for the real ones, who might have owned them before).

The tradition of afternoon tea began at Belvoir in the 1840s because the time between lunch (at around noon) and dinner (after 7pm) seemed too long for a visiting Duchess.  So they came up with a meal of tea, scones, sandwiches and desserts to tide them over.  Usually when I have a high tea at about four or five in the afternoon, I’m much too full to have any dinner.  Back in those days it seems they used to really pack the food away.

We spent the night in Nottingham.  After a quick visit to the castle in the morning, we headed for Haworth in Yorkshire — home of the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne).  Their father was the curate of the church and the family lived at the parsonage, which was across the graveyard from the church.  The graveyard surrounds the house on two sides and the moors on a third.  It’s a pretty atmospheric (read “gloomy”) place.  I could definitely picture Heathcliff and Cathy meeting out there on the moor — despite Wuthering Heights not being my favorite Bronte book (that would be Jane Eyre).

There were six children in all.  The two eldest girls died pretty young from tuberculosis, which they caught at boarding school.  Both Charlotte and Emily had been sent to the same school but were brought home when their sisters died.  The school was the model for the boarding school in Jane Eyre.

The only boy in the family was Branwell.  He became addicted to a combination of alcohol and laudanum (a type of opium) and spent a lot of time in the Black Bull Pub, which was not too far from the house.  It is next door to the church.  I wonder if Daddy Bronte came over from the church from time to time to check on his wastrel son.

It seems the girls had enough imagination to transport themselves elsewhere and enough talent to write it all down.  Poor Branwell, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be able to escape his drab existence other than through alcohol and drugs.  A real shame.  We were able to spend some time exploring the church, house, cemetery, and a fair amount of the village.  So I felt I soaked it in pretty well.

From Yorkshire we went over to the Lake District to Grasmere, where we spend a couple of nights at the Prince of Wales Hotel.  It had once been a manor house and was built around 1855.  The hotel was right on the lake and a short walk into the village.  It looked like a hotel I had once seen in a Sherlock Holmes movie.

Our room was up on the top floor of the newer wing, added after it became a hotel.  There were three floors in the oldest part of the hotel and four in the newest, so we looked out over part of the roof.  We were told that it rained every night in the Lake District and then cleared up every morning, which was one reason why everything was lush and green.  I have to say that the two nights we spent there, it did just exactly that.

The full day we had in the Lake District began with a very short walk over to Dove Cottage, which was in a cluster of old cottages very close to the hotel.  William Wordsworth had lived there from 1799 to 1808.  Then we went up one of the taller hills (more like a short mountain) to see the view.  From there, we drove by Beatrix Potter’s home and on to Ambleside on Lake Windermere for lunch and a boat ride on the lake.  Apparently some of the pilots in the RAF like to buzz the Lake District, especially Windermere.  So we had a loud jet pass overhead while on the lake.  Rather startling and kind of ruined the mainly Victorian vibe.

Before returning to Grasmere for the afternoon, we visited Ullswater, considered by many to be the most beautiful of the lakes.  You won’t get an argument from me.  Put me next to or on a lake with mountains all around and I’m a happy camper.  My blood pressure automatically goes down and I feel calm and restful.  I also get a smile not easily erased.

After being dropped off at the hotel for free time for the remainder of the afternoon, several of us decided to hike into the village to explore.  On the way we encountered sheep, sheep and more sheep.  Among them were several baby lambs.  That did it.  We were all waylaid by the side of the road, trying to coax the babies to come close enough to be petted.  This didn’t interest them at all.  Some of them looked over at us and then turned their backs to trot off after their moms.  Most didn’t even look.  Didn’t even care why these strange-looking beings were calling to them.  After a while we gave up and wandered on down Stock Lane into the village.

Although a small village, there are enough tourists to account for the number of shops, cafes and tea houses.  After poking into a few shops and having a cream tea (the lighter version of tea with scones — no sandwiches or desserts), Mom and I headed back to the hotel.  By this time, the lambs were near the fence and gave us a greeting as we strolled up to them.  We were alone, so they probably figured it was safe to be friendly.  A couple of them even stuck their little faces out through the fence.  As we would with a dog, we held our hands in front of their noses for them to sniff.  When they didn’t run away in terror, we gave them scratches on the tops of their heads.  That seemed okay with them.  They trotted off happily and we trotted off happily.

In late January/early February of 1996, it got really, really cold in Minneapolis.  Now some people might say, “Isn’t it always cold in Minneapolis?”  But no.  It is only cold in the dead of winter.  Some parts of winter can be relatively balmy — such as in the 40s F.  The summers can easily be in the 90s with humidity in the 70s.  So I am speaking about abnormal cold.  It was several degrees below zero Fahrenheit for several weeks.  Mom and I looked at one another and said, “Road Trip.”  Of course, for us, that meant getting on a plane and flying somewhere.  The “where” we chose was San Francisco.  We could get a package deal with airfare, hotel, a couple of day trips, and transportation to and from the hotel and airport for a 5-day trip.  Sold.

When we got on the plane, it was minus 25 F in Minneapolis.  I believe it was in the 50s in San Fran when we arrived.  But that was 50 ABOVE zero.  It felt like heaven to us.  We even opened a window in the hotel room despite the fact that it was foggy and rainy for the first couple days we were there.  Then the weather perked up to the high 60s with sun.  The sea lions basked in the sun; we basked in the sun and all was right with the world.

The hotel we stayed in was cozy, old, not terribly large, and close to Union Square.  All the day tours left from Union Square, so it was a very handy location.  There was also a restaurant with a Sherlock Holmes theme and British food nearby.  That was where we had dinner our first night (we had had lunch at a cool place on a cliff overlooking the ocean called The Cliff House).  After that first night’s dinner, we mainly ate seafood for the rest of the trip.  I love seafood and want to get as much of it as possible when traveling someplace where I can get it fresh.

We took a couple days of hop-on-hop-off tours that took us all over town — to Japanese gardens, Mission Delores, the Presidio, China Town, Nob Hill, and loads of other fun and interesting places.  We spent time out on Fisherman’s Wharf more than once and ate at a couple different places there.  We also watched the sea lions with great fascination.  After one of our lunches, we walked over to where one of the cable car lines began and took the cable car back to our hotel.

Our two biggest highlights were (and I’m just giving these to you in the order of when we did them) a day tour of the vineyards in Sonoma and Napa Valley and an audio tour of Alcatraz.  The wine tasting tour included the Sebastiani Vineyards, Villa Encinal, Sutter Home, and Charles Krug.  Of this group, Sebastiani looked the most like an old, Italian winery.  It had been founded in 1904 and was family run at the time.  Villa Encinal was a relatively new, boutique winery that had been used as one of the locations for the 1995 film “A Walk in the Clouds”, starring Keanu Reeves.  Villa Encinal was as slick and modern as Sebastiani was old world.  It was also on a much smaller scale than any of the others.  Kind of a “Mom & Pop” style of winery.  I kept looking for Keanu Reeves to come striding up towards me through the vineyards, but no such luck.

Sutter Home had been founded in 1874.  It appeared to me that the large, Victorian house seemed like it would be a great place to live.  The winery had created White Zinfandel back in the 1970s and had hit on a goldmine when they did so.  I find that White Zinfandel goes really well with the Thanksgiving turkey, among other things.

Founded in 1861, making it the oldest of the wineries we visited, Charles Krug was also the last winery we visited.  It was actually my favorite of the group, both in regards to what the winery looked like and the wines it produced.  I purchased a new, state of the art corkscrew and a thingy for slicing off the metal wrapping around the cork in the gift shop.  They are still in use in my home today.

Mom and I were both feeling pretty good by this point as we had been sampling pretty much every kind of grape these vineyards crushed.  This is why it’s better to take a wine tour on a bus with someone else driving.  We probably would have gotten arrested if one of us had been behind the wheel.  When we got back to the city, the driver dropped us off at our respective hotels instead of just dumping us out in Union Square.  He probably didn’t want a bunch of tipsy tourists wandering around town, getting hit by cable cars or falling off of piers.

To get to Alcatraz, we boarded a ferry at Pier 33.  The water was fairly choppy on the way out to the island prison and storm clouds were gathering.  So, when we got there, we quickly took a look at all of the exterior bits first before heading into the main part of the complex.

The name Alcatraz is a rough translation from archaic Spanish meaning “pelican”.  In 1846 a lighthouse was built on the island, followed by a military fort in 1850.  Alcatraz was used as a military prison from 1861 to 1868.  In 1934, it became a federal prison up until it was closed in 1963.  As a federal prison, it held such notables as Al Capone, Robert Stroud (“The Birdman of Alcatraz”), George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Mickey Cohen, James “Whitey” Bulgar, and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis.  Although I don’t think that “creepy” would be the best nickname to have, I suppose it was good for a gangster who wanted a scary reputation.  I certainly would have given him a wide berth.  Of course, I don’t think I would have tried to become pals with any of those guys.

Between 1934 and 1963, there were 14 escape attempts.  The most famous one being in June of 1962, involving papier mache heads that were left in the beds of the escapees while they climbed the ventilation shaft to the roof.  A couple of the men were never found.  So they either drowned or were successful at their escape.  You would think that papier mache heads wouldn’t fool anybody, but when they are mostly covered up and the guards had no reason to be suspicious (and therefore most likely to see what they wanted to see) it makes sense.

The tour began with a person telling us about the history of the island and of the prison, including the 1969 Native American occupation of the island.  Then we received headphones and an audio player.  That’s when the tour really became interesting.  The narrative was accompanied by the appropriate sounds.  For instance, at one point, the recording said to enter a particular cell in solitary confinement.  Then you heard the sound of the door slamming and locking behind you.  It wasn’t really, but it made you jump.  The recording also took us through the entire 1962 escape attempt (including the actual cells and ventilator shaft), plus the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz.

The Battle of Alcatraz took you through each of the actual settings, giving you the shouting, gunfire, etc. as you went.  In the corridor where several of the prisoners were finally trapped and killed, you can still see the pockmarks of the bullets.  The audio experience allowed us to feel like we were right in the middle of it all.  It was unnerving, but educational.

All the while we were in the prison, there was a storm raging outside.  Quite appropriate.  The flashes of lighting and occasional clap of thunder went well with the Battle of Alcatraz especially.  One particular boom sounded just after the corridor became quiet again once the gunfire stopped.  Fortunately the storm was over when we needed to head back to the mainland.  Mom and I were relieved to have made our escape, but also thought that the entire tour was wonderful.

The “deep freeze” in Minneapolis was over by the time we returned.  We were back to a regular Minnesota winter.  Our break in San Francisco had been memorable and a lot of fun.

 

First off, I have to say, “I love the Black Hills.”  I really do.  They are beautiful, restful, and always fun to visit.  With the exception of just one little trip back in 1995.

Mom had grown up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so she had real ties to the area as well as a real love for it that she had instilled in me during our relatively frequent trips out there.  One of her childhood friends had a vacation home near Custer.  Usually, when we visited the Hills, we stayed with this friend.  This time, Julia would not be there, so we were renting the property from her for a week.

We normally flew into Rapid City and then rented a car.  But this time we had a puppy with us.  His name was Rembrandt and he was a not-quite-one-year-old miniature Schnauzer.  Fortunately, he loved road trips.  We had a harness for him that connected to the seatbelt, so he was securely fastened into the back seat.  He could sit up or lie down, but he couldn’t move around much on the seat or stand.  Most importantly he would not be thrown should the car make a quick stop.  We pulled over every two hours to stretch our legs, take a restroom break, give Rembrandt some water, get some food for ourselves, etc.  People in the vicinity seemed to be quite amused when I brought a dog out of the back seat instead of a baby or small child.

Another friend of Mom’s lived in a small town in South Dakota.  She was interested in having us come and visit her (puppy and all), so we stopped off for the night en route from Minneapolis to Rapid City.  She was a very gregarious woman and welcomed us all with open arms.  Rembrandt was very friendly towards people and other dogs, though he did not suffer fools gladly when it came to another dog who was not totally in control of his or herself.  Because of this I was terribly surprised when he took a dump in the middle of Hazel’s living room.  He knew better.  Hazel laughed it off.  Rembrandt pretended nothing was amiss.  Mom and I were mortified.

We were coming from a different direction than usual when we reached the Black Hills.  It was also raining quite hard.  So we chose to stay on main roads as much as possible.  We didn’t realize at the time that it had been raining heavily for days already.  When we reached the bridge in Hill City that we needed to cross to get to Custer, we found that it was already having issues.  It ended up washing out just about an hour or so after we crossed it.

We got to Custer and decided to get just a few groceries to tide us over for a couple of days.  We would get more when we ventured out to go visit Hot Springs (the town in which Mom had lived as a child).  So I hopped out of the car, bought a few things and hurled the wet bag and my soggy self into the car.  The road to Julia’s vacation home was a dirt road at that time and so not the greatest on even a lovely, sunny day.  During the thunderstorm, we found ourselves crawling at a snail’s pace through the mud.  The bolts of lightning were actually helpful to let us occasionally see approximately where we were.

One bolt of lightning illuminated the gate to the property just as we were about to pass it by.  I opened the gate and then waded through the muddy water along the fence to find the key to the house.  Naturally, I slipped at one point.  By the time I returned to the car, I strongly resembled the Swamp Thing.  We both decided that I shouldn’t get back into the car.  So I walked a little ahead of it, with my flashlight in hand, to try to prevent any accidents with anything that might be in the drive or under the deck of the house (which was where we planned to park and where the door that the key fit into was located).  There was already a truck parked under the deck, so we could only get the nose of the car’s hood under.  We also had to squeeze past the truck to get into the door.  I unlocked and opened the door, then we had a mad dash to get everything and everyone inside.  By this time, we were all looking like we had seen better days.

The next day, after all bunking together in the main bedroom for warmth (nobody had thought that heat would be needed in mid-June), I decided it was time to take Rembrandt out for his morning constitutional.  At home he had a fenced in, nicely mowed yard.  Here he was dealing with wet grass that was taller than he was.  Although the yard was fenced, there was plenty of room for a small dog to get through the fencing, which was mainly designed to keep bison, elk and bear out.  So the little guy was on a leash.  He was obviously not in the mood and was letting me know it.

Because he was determined not to do anything in the tall grass, and the only places on the property where the grass was shorter had rocks (and the possibility of snakes), we went out of the gate and across the road to an area that had been mowed not too long ago.  While he was looking for just the right spot, we both heard a very loud growl.  Whatever it was, it was large and not happy.  I was envisioning a bear.  I looked at Rembrandt and he looked at me.  “You’re the appetizer,” I said, “But I’m the main course.”  With that, we high-tailed it back across the road and into the relative safety of the fenced property.  He ended up going in the high grass between the house and the very swollen French Creek.

We had decided to take it easy on our first day anyway (it was supposed to be a vacation after all).  So a little later on in the day, Mom was crocheting, I was needlepointing and Rembrandt was playing with a toy in the large living area on the first level up from ground level when a big storm came up suddenly.  This vacation house was a geodesic dome, so loads of glass.  It was hailing.  We took refuge in the dining room, which was still one floor up from ground, but had the least amount of windows (there was a bedroom above it).

Once the storm had begun to die down a little, I went downstairs to see what shape that level was in.  The previously sluggish toilet had become clogged and water was now coming up the drain in the laundry room.  The sewer began to back up and we could no longer get any water in the bathroom on the ground floor or the kitchen above it.  So I started calling motels in Custer to see if there was one with a vacancy that would take a dog.  In the meantime, Mom packed us up.  Once I got us booked into a motel, Mom called Julia to let her know what was happening and where we would be.  There might have been mobile phones in 1995, but we didn’t own one.

Despite not being under any kind of shelter during the hail storm, the car thankfully wasn’t damaged.  We loaded it up and went into Custer.  Rembrandt took it all in stride.  He was the kind of dog who was fine as long as he had us with him.  The motel was good and had a restaurant next door, so we could take turns having a meal while the other one looked after Rembrandt.  The grass was mowed, so no trying to get the puppy to do his business in the tall grass.  They also had a TV that worked.  We had been thinking about staying one more day so we could visit Hot Springs and then head home.  But the news said that more storms were coming in the afternoon of the next day and would last for the rest of the week.  That did it.  We would get up in the morning, have breakfast, and try to outrun the storm.

By the time we arrived in Mitchell (about midway home), we checked into a place that not only allowed dogs, but had room service.  After a good supper, we went to bed, listening to the strains of children playing in the pool a couple floors below in the courtyard.  The storm soon caught up with us.  Around 4:00am, we were jolted awake by a loud bang and a flash of light that seemed to be simultaneous.  The fire alarms went off.  We quickly pulled on our jeans (already sleeping in T-shirts), grabbed Rembrandt, his leash and our purses and went out into the hall.  Once we got downstairs, I figured we would be going out of the door into the night.  I was certain it was a fire.  The other guests were certain it was a tornado.  So we all clustered just inside of the exit door until we could either smell smoke or hear the tornado.  Everyone marveled at how well behaved and calm Rembrandt was.  He just sat in my arms and watched everyone.

It turned out we were all wrong about what was happening.  A bolt of lightning had hit the satellite dish on the roof.  The dish was totally fried, but no fire.  It seemed to us that the storm had been ticked off that we had tried to get away from it and decided to zap us in Mitchell.  Kind of a “hey, you think you can escape me, do ya?” sort of thing.  A little past 4:30am we were back in our beds, visions of home dancing in our heads.

We were wishing we had some ruby slippers to click the heels together and be immediately home.  Instead, we got up at 7:00am, had a good breakfast from room service, packed up the car again and drove home — thankful for our escape and the lovely weather back in Minneapolis.

It occurred to me that staying at this particular hotel might be an adventure when I saw that the desk clerk had purple hair and an earring through the nose.  Although it was a late Victorian building, it definitely no longer had a Victorian atmosphere.

The room was so small that we had to crawl over our beds to get out of the door.  I kept my suitcase in the space between my bed and the wall, hauled it out to get take things out or put things in, and then put it back again.  There was no room to leave it out or to unpack it.  Instead of a closet, the room contained a small wardrobe (which was just one more thing upon which I could bark my shins in the night).  The ceiling was higher than the measurement of the floor space — 14 feet.

The reasons we had chosen this particular hotel were its location (just off Trafalgar Square, so we could walk nearly everywhere), the fact that the Georgian hotel at which we had stayed before had gone up in price, and the fact that it was Victorian.  I love all things Victorian, as anyone who has ever been inside my house could tell you.  Although fairly modern on the outside, I have ignored that and decorated the inside with a mixture of Victorian and Georgian furniture, with the occasional medieval piece tossed in for good measure.

On this particular trip, I was focusing on a Victorian/theatrical/Charles Dickens/Sherlock Holmes theme.  We started by heading over to St Katherine’s Docks and having lunch at the Dickens Inn.  The building had been a spice warehouse back in Dickens day and converted to a pub and restaurant when this area had been refurbished as flats, shops and an area for docking private boats.

The hotel was located on Villiers Street (named after George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, whose house once stood on the site), a cobblestone street that connected the Embankment (a riverside park that had been laid out in Victorian times) to The Strand (a main thoroughfare which had been lined with theatres and restaurants back in the Victorian era and still was) — a crossroads of sorts, where the government agencies end and the theatre district begins.  If I went south, I ended up on Whitehall; north and west was theatreland.

Just up The Strand from Villiers Street is the Adelphi Theatre, where we went to see “Me & My Girl”, which was starring Karl Howman in the leading role (he had replaced Robert Lindsey when Lindsey and the show went to Broadway).  Nearly one hundred years earlier, in 1897, one of the Adelphi’s leading actors, William Terriss, was murdered by a deranged fellow actor just outside the stage door.  It is said that his ghost still haunts both the theatre and the nearby Covent Garden tube station.  I wonder why he’d be interested in haunting a tube station.  Doesn’t seem like that great of a place to hang out to me.  The wonderful Victorian restaurant, Rules, is just across the street from the Adelphi’s stage door.  Seems like a much nicer place to haunt.  But I suppose he has his reasons.

Many of the theatres in the area have interesting histories, but none so fascinating or as long as the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (where we saw “Miss Saigon”).  The oldest theatre in London, Drury Lane was founded in 1662 when Thomas Killigrew received King Charles II’s royal charter.  The King first met his most famous mistress, Nell Gwyn, at that same theatre.  Most of the present building dates from 1811-12 as it burned down a couple of times.

During one of the fires (in 1809), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (the playwright) was theatre manager.  As the fire raged on, he settled into a nearby tavern, quietly drinking a bottle of wine as he watched the conflagration.  When asked how he could be so calm while his theatre was burning down, he answered, “Can’t a man enjoy a glass of wine by his own fireside?”

One section of the theatre that survived the blaze is the grand staircase.  It is really two separate staircases, one on each side of a rotunda.  In the late 18th century, King George III and the Prince Regent had separate stairs built because they encountered one another one evening on the original single staircase, got into a fight, and the King boxed the Prince’s ears.  If the real Prince Regent was anything like the way Hugh Laurie portrayed him in the third series of “Black Adder”, I wouldn’t blame the King for boxing his ears.  The words “King’s Side” and “Prince’s Side” can still be seen over opposite doors.

The theatre is also reportedly haunted.  It is supposedly the most haunted theatre in England.  Several of the theatres in London’s West End are haunted.  Both Her Majesty’s Theatre (home since 1986 to “The Phantom of the Opera”) and the Theatre Royal Haymarket are both haunted by former managers.  I guess some theatre managers have difficulty letting go.

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is mentioned in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  Although he was a fictional character, many of the locations used in the stories were real, and some of them are still standing.  These include the Criterion (where Watson first met Holmes), the Charing Cross Hotel, Claridge’s, Covent Garden, the Albert Hall and, of course, the Victoria, Paddington, Waterloo, Euston and Charing Cross rail stations.  The Grand Hotel on Northumberland Avenue (called the “Northumberland Hotel” in the Holmes mysteries) is no longer standing.  But, across the street from where it once stood, is the Sherlock Holmes pub.  This was about two blocks south of my hotel.  The sitting room of 221B Baker Street has been duplicated behind a glass wall in the pub.  It sort of makes one feel like a voyeur.

Across the street from our hotel used to be a boot blacking factory where Charles Dickens worked as a child.  Around the corner on Buckingham Street was a house where Dickens lived briefly as a young journalist in 1834, and which he used as one of the settings for David Copperfield.  Just a few blocks away was a subway (an underground walking tunnel) where boys like those Dickens wrote about in Oliver Twist used to congregate to divide the loot after an afternoon of picking pockets.

Closer to the British Museum, on Doughty Street, is a house which used to belong to Dickens during two very productive years in which he completed The Pickwick Papers, wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, and began Barnaby Rudge.  This house is open to the public.  The day that Mom and I arrived to see it, we were greeted at the door by a young man dressed in Victorian garb and looking like he had just stepped out of one of Dickens’ books.  He gave us what ended up to be a private tour of the house.  The house was furnished as it had been back in Dickens’ day and contained some of his original handwritten manuscripts.

Smack in the middle of a very bustling are is the Old Curiosity Shop.  It was built in 1567 and hadn’t changed since 1700.  The proprietor of the shop had begun working there as a teenager and eventually took it over.  He owned an amazing collection of Dickens memorabilia.  He allowed Mom and I to go upstairs and see what he had.  We were the only customers in the shop at the time.  The main floor was still an antique shop, so Mom and I looked around to see what we might want to take home with us.  We both ended up with tapestries of Tower Bridge.  Mine still hangs in my bedroom.  I bought a small Toby mug (also known as a character mug) that sits on a shelf of an antique pier cabinet, that had belonged to my grandmother, in my living room.  Sadly, on a later trip, we found the Old Curiosity Shop to have been converted into an upscale shoe shop.  I guess that the charming fellow who had owned it reached a point where he couldn’t run it any more, had nobody else to take it on, and sold it.

To finish up our visit, we had high tea at the Charing Cross Hotel.  The room in which the tea was held was quite lavish and Victorian.  I could easily picture Holmes and Watson meeting with Sir Henry Baskerville there before setting off for Baskerville Hall.  The sandwiches were dainty, the scones delicious and the desserts amazing.  Oh yes, and the tea — Darjeeling.  This was our first high tea in the UK.  It would not be our last.