Next Stop, Loverly London

On the long train ride back from Cornwall St. Ives to London's Paddington station, KO and I hatch the clever plan to check our cumbersome bags at the station and head right out to Windsor Castle.  Rushing from the train in the busy station, we find the Left Luggage booth and store our suitcases for a reasonable twenty pounds for the first three hours.  Negotiating our way across the multitude of platforms and  the teeming crowds, we hop the train and settle in for the fifty minute ride to Windsor.  The castle, the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world closes at five so we had to make haste to see it all.  Starting with the gothic St. George's Chapel, built in 1348, we walk where pilgrims journeyed in the Medieval period.  The Order of the Garter, honoring all the knights, is housed here and colorful banners fly above each of their honorary seats.  The famous are buried right under our feet, including Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.  Leaving the chapel, we head up the hill to the impressive home of Queen Elizabeth, built by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century.  Notable are the early nineteenth century apartments built in the Georgian style.  The enormous St. George's Hall dining room hosts the State Banquet and can seat one hundred and sixty people at one long table. Glad we don't have to cater that dinner!  The Queen uses the castle on the weekends and at other times and her residence is across the courtyard from where we are able to tour.

 

Heading back to Paddington Station to retrieve our bags and then venture on another train to our hotel near St. Pancreas, we are exhausted and hungry.  We opt to stay near this station because it is the hub for many different tube or subway lines and we can travel easily throughout  London from here.  All over this area are row houses which host numerous bed and breakfasts.  Ours is named Alhambra Hotel and includes a small room with private shower and an ample breakfast of oatmeal, croissants, beans, vegan sausage, optional eggs and toast.  The ever present Nutella, a chocolate and hazelnut spread, and various fruity jams are always on the table.  

We choose to dine at Mildred's, a vegan restaurant in Soho.  It is a colorful thirty five minute walk from our hotel, and it is wonderful to stretch our legs after sitting on the train for so long.  Mildred's has delicious food served in a bistro atmosphere.  The Porcini and Ale Pie,with earthy giant slices of mushrooms swimming in a rich broth and then covered with delicate layers of pastry dough, is a favorite entree.  They also serve a Detox Salad, for those of us who have over indulged in rich food, stir fried vegetables, risotto and bean burgers.  Mildred's is a safe choice for travelers on a plant based diet and an excellent and delicious choice for everyone else.

The next day, refreshed from a whole night's sleep and fortified with our English breakfast, we board the tube to the Tower of London.  The Tower of London was the scene of many gruesome executions back in the day.  If you displeased the King, you ended up here to be tortured with either the Rack(stretches you), or maybe you would be folded like a Tripod and squeezed tightly til you confessed.  Other fun included being hung upside down. One time they got a butcher to do the beheading.  He was drunk and after trying nine times to unsuccessfully separate the person from his head, he got his butcher knives and hacked the head off!  This is just one of the stories we enjoy on a Yeoman tour where, along with one hundred others, we are entertained with tales of the Tower.  The Tower of London was built in 1078 when William the Conqueror ordered the White Tower to be built inside the city walls.  At that time there was already a Roman wall surrounding the city and it remains in parts today.  The Tower of London is now home to the Crown Jewels.  Herding past them, we note the crown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation. It boasts 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and five rubies.  Among these stones is the famous Black Prince's ruby at 170 carats and the Cullinen II diamond originally 3106 carats when it was found in South Africa.  The rest of the collection includes scepters and swords encrusted in gold and jewels.  The Tower of London is both a magical and disturbing place to pay a visit.

 

There are many highlights to the trip and I will just mention a few so you won't zone out while reading this blog.  While in London it is easy to get tickets to a Broadway quality show.  The Half Price ticket booth in Gleicester Square sells same day tickets to that day's shows.  We attend the very enjoyable musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels while we are here.  

The markets in London are outstanding.  We find one near the Tower of London at St. Katherine's Docks.  Multicolored tents shelter the vendors who are selling lunch to the workers and tourists as the boats in the harbor moor nearby.  Choices include lacy boreks filled with spinach and herbs, gluten free and vegan crepes stuffed with mushrooms and greens, Spanish empanadas, Portugeuse fish and potatoes, paella in huge woks and Thai street food.  Beautiful homemade chocolate chip walnut cookies and Raspberry White Chocolate brownies are stacked high to the sky and Sticky Toffee and Fig, Carmelized and Orange cakes call out to us.  We almost resist!

 

The other impressive market we discover is the Borough Market near the London Bridge.  Our last morning in London we hustle over there to pick up fortifications for the long plane ride and find some last minute gifts.  Since the thirteenth century, farmers and vendors have been selling their quality goods here.  Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, daintily decorated tartes, salty olives in barrels, English meat and veggie pies, and the bean and rice salads I choose for my dinner on the plane can be found here.  The place is humming with excitement and I wish I could roll it up and put it in my suitcase to take home with me.

For our final meal in London, I choose Rules, an old establishment on Maiden Lane, where Charles Dickens dined.  Situated on a well trod cobblestone street, the 200 year old restaurant has only had three owners.  Rules specializes in game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings.  Stuffed animals grace the walls.  In addition to Dickens, Thackeray, Galsworthy and HG Wells, have dined here over the ages.  It has appeared in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, Rosamond Lehmann and Graham Greene.  Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and Lawrence Olivier sat on these velvet couches.  So those of you who know what a movie and theater buff I am will understand why I want to eat here.  I am not disappointed.  The atmosphere is regal and the waiters are right out of Remains of the Day.  KO and I share a delicate vegetable soup and Yorkshire pudding, a type of popover.  We order a Sticky Toffee Pudding to go and head for the airport.

It has been a wonderful journey, from the hills of Tuscany, to the busy streets of Rome, to the Roman baths of old, to the azure blue sea and overflowing flower boxes of Tuscany, to London's rich history of Kings and Queens and marketplaces and now back to the good old U. S. Of A.  I am so pleased so many of you have shared our journey and I hope I was able to make you feel like you were right there with us, enjoying the sites, history and food.  

A shout out to KO, who lugged our luggage (apt word eh?) everywhere without complaint, urged me on "just one more tour today" when my feet felt like they would fall off, stayed good natured most of the time, and took these most beautiful photographs with his keen eye.  He is an easy person with whom to spend two weeks of walking, learning, eating, and sharing experiences.  

So until our next journey....keep traveling healthy.  Susan

Heaven on Earth in St. Ives, Cornwall

 Heaven on Earth in St. Ives, Cornwall

There is no place on earth like St. Ives, Cornwall.  Located 5 hours by train from London's Paddington Station, it is a site to behold.  Everywhere you gaze is a photo opportunity.  Golden sand beaches melt into the sea which transitions from turquoise to royal blue and then dissolves into a cerulean sky.  Brightly colored flowers baskets of blue cornflowers, orange gerbera daisies, yellow nasturtium, Queen Anne's Lace, and purple pansies brighten every doorway and window box.  Cobbled walkways smoothed by age curve this way and that beckoning you to a secret path you can discover.
It could be the way to Smuggler's Arch, where, salt, tobacco and rum were brought after being pilfered from nearby ships.  Maybe you spy a blue door, denoting the home of a sailor, a black door of a miner or the green door of a farmer.  Perhaps you are on the route to Barbara Hepworth's home and sculpture garden.  She lived and died in St. Ives and one of her enormous sculptures stands in front of the U.N. In New York City.  Many artists have been drawn to this magical place because of the pink light that is cast on the town from the minerals in the sand and the clear blue unpolluted air and sky.  Known for mining and the gold, silver, tin and other materials found 2000 feet below the ground, St. Ives affected the Bronze Age and in the Third Century A.D. the town was trading tin with the Greeks.  Eventually it proved too expensive to extract the minerals and many miners were unemployed.  Their knowledge of the mines was so valuable that Mexico and other places ordered up 100 heads to come and help them. Hence, the term "headhunter" was born.   The miners' wives would prepare a turnover called a pasty for them to take into the mine.  It had a crimped edge and was filled with meats and vegetables for a hearty meal.  

There was toxic arsenic in the mine so they had their snack and threw the crimped edge away down the mine to ward off bad spirits.  This pasty became the empanada after these Cornish miners moved to Mexico.  There is the world's only Pasty Museum in Mexico!  The fisherman had a rich sea of pilchers, catching 90 million every year.  This oily, smelly fish permeated everything and is known to us as sardines.  When the mines closed, the fish stopped coming, and they think it was because the waters were no longer mineral rich.  Thankfully in 1934, the Holiday Pay Act was passed and St. Ives became a hub of tourism.  The railroads brought artists, vacationers and income to this oasis.  

The Little Leaf Bed and Breakfast, where we are lodging, is the home of Danny and Lee and their little girl.  They welcome guests with open arms and a broad smile and operate a spic and span establishment. Our vegetarian English breakfasts are delicious and so filling we can barely get hungry for lunch.  Lee and Danny also provide wonderful guidance on side trips from St Ives and restaurant suggestions.

One of the wonderful perks of a bed and breakfast is the people you meet from around the world. We were talking to a sweet and friendly young couple last night and it turned out they are from Hawaii. Next thing I knew, they were swapping high school names with KO and feeling that Aloha kinship!  Small world to find three Hawaiians in a bed and breakfast on the west coast of England.

We have discovered a vegetarian restaurant here called Spinacios.  My tummy was on the fritz last night from overindulging in scones, so I just opted for basmati rice, but KO enjoyed Sanbar, a split pea Dahl dish, with spinach and mustard greens.

 

The town bakeries boast gluten free and dairy free scones and pasties, so this part of the world is sensitive to food allergies, but they really fall down on greens.  Mostly we just see salad and mushy peas, with an occasional green bean, and loads of potatoes, mashed or in their jackets with toppings.  Fish and chips are popular.  Chips are fries and crisps are potato chips.  The bakery windows in St. Ives are mouthwatering.  Brimming with iced hot cross buns, lemon tea cakes, Eccles cakes and shortbread cookies, even the strongest of Macrobiotic women might have to indulge.  The cream tea with tall scones and strong tea is the tradition every afternoon and we have been embracing this practice with open arms.

So, it is with great melancholy that we bid farewell to Cornwall tomorrow and board the train for London.   We are discussing spending a week here next year and really getting the experience of mellowing out.  I hope you found this blog entertaining as I know I went on for quite awhile but I couldn't contain all the love I feel for this little slice of heaven on earth.

Cheerios From Merry England

Cheerios from Merry England

Last summer we enjoyed our stay in St. Ives, Cornwall so much that we vowed to return again this year.  How to visit Italy and then end up in Cornwall?  Not exactly a hop, skip and a jump away from each other!  We bridged the gap by flying from Rome directly to Bristol and Bath on our way to Cornwall, the English sea coast.

Arriving in Bristol in the evening, although it stays light until 10 at night, we set out across the canal, behind our lovely hotel, with a/c!, to seek a veggie restaurant we had researched on Happy Cow.  Happy Cow is THE resource for international and national vegan and vegetarian establishments.  We found, The Watershed, a combination indie movie theater and restaurant a few steps away.  We were so psyched to eat nachos drenched in hearty veggie chili, sweet butternut squash, delicate falafel, and a wonderfully creamy yellow pea soup.  Can you tell I was yearning for anything NOT pasta?

Everything was delicious and we considered watching a movie, but instead opted for an after dinner stroll.  People were everywhere.  There were future brides wearing fuzzy bunny ears carousing one last time with their girlfriends and men sporting Afros and 80s garb, hanging with their mates spilling from the pubs.  Music was streaming through the cool night air and the crowds were singing along with uninhibited enthusiasm and a freedom I rarely witness in the States.  Then it was off to sleep so we could rise again for an early train to see the Roman Baths.

The train to Bath carried us there in a brief fifteen minutes.  We opted for an overview of the upper town on the Hop On Hop Off Bus.  They have these tours all over the world and the beauty of it is that you can disembark to visit a site and then just hop on again when the next bus comes by.  Additionally, there is a wonderful live guide who filled us in on history, real estate prices and topography of the area.  

Back in the lower town we walked along the universally cream colored buildings where Jane Austen made her home many years ago.  We were on our way to find Acorn Vegetarian, a new restaurant in the center of town.  Our meal was exquisite!  White Onion Tarte served with greens and carrots on a cider cream sauce was delectable.  My spiced pea soup with orange coconut cream was warming and flavorful.  Included in my three course lunch was a Nut Roast with fresh spring greens, rosemary potato galette, parsnip purée and cider braised red cabbage.  The final course was a Chocolate Pot with raspberry sorbet and candied pistachios.  This was the most beautiful and delicious meal of the trip, hands down.  I got some good ideas I am looking forward to trying for the Healthy Chef business.

All tanked up, we headed over to the Roman Baths.  The Romans built these baths in 60-70 A.D. after they spied steam coming up through the ground.  A hot spring comes under the town and provides healing warm waters.   Many visitors felt that the waters had a curative power and came here to heal themselves.  We walked along the same stones those early conquerors did as we discovered the main bath house and the smaller baths nearby.  An informative audio tour explains the history of the Baths. How wonderful that these historic sites have been preserved for us to enjoy!  The far reaching borders of the Roman Empire were quite extensive and seem to exceed those I learned about England in my British Imperialism class back at Washington University in St. Louis.  

Returning to the hotel, we packed up for tomorrow's four hour train journey back to beautiful Cornwall.