Blog ≫ 2023 ≫ London weekender: Sunday and home
Next morning one advantage of driving to the hotel and parking at the hotel. We could load all our stuff into the car so we were free for the day. Often we're having to leave a bag at the hotel and then work our way somehow back to the hotel and then back to the station at the end. It can be a rush and a hassle, so much so that before the driving plan we were planning to travel super light. Here it was easy. Everything is in the car all ready to go, no train. I didn't enjoy having to drive home, nor even knowing I'd have to drive home. I was thinking about it all day. A small bit of this driving plan at least was good.
You can say the day has started well if you spilled curry down yourself before 10am, and that's exactly what I did. I got a curry roll for breakfast from some slightly crappy market stall, while the others all had empanadas. We had a nice walk around the market, through the actual market, the bigger market, Greenwich market and I saw a place doing furniture out of reclaimed materials that I really liked. They had tables made out of old dance floor they could make to your spec, and they had other tables with features made of London brick, orof cast iron coal covers stuff like that. Tempted to get in touch, but at least I can link to their website and you can see the kind of things that I mean.
T2 and Clare went on a old-fashioned carousel which he spied when we first walked around Greenwich. They enjoyed that, T1 and I were much too cool.
We went back to Grind coffee again, and an ice cream place just next to it that the boys went to a couple of times as well. Can't remember exactly when they went. I think they went after our initial Pizza Express. They got ice cream then, but they went back again at least one more time.
We headed into Greenwich park and had a nice walk through there. Walked past the little boating lake and sun dial and there's quite a big play area there, so T2 enjoyed that very much. T1 did more of the walking around like we would do like a grown up. He's such an adult now in some ways. Then we were looking for a place to stop just for a sit down really. We saw a big pub on the edge of the green that I initially dismissed...
... that's where my dictation runs out so I'll have to remember what I was going to say. I've done well with this little write-up though, I'm finishing it only three and a bit days after it happened. A contemporary account by anyone's standard.
Back to the sun dial for a minute, the sun dial was wrong. Well sort of. They are for half a year if you thinkabout it, the sun dial is on Greenwich Mean Time, and we were on British Summer Time. There's no turning a sun dial back or forward an hour is there.
I initially dismissed this pub, The Greenwich Tavern, as it looked a bit big. Also being on the corner of the park it seemed a bit "obvious", but as we were walking past their little courtyard garden looked nice, so we went in and sat down. Then we saw the food coming out and it looked good too, so we stayed for lunch. I had a avery healthy buddha bowl type thing (everyone calls them a poke bowl these days, maybe there's meant to be an accent over the "e"? Poké bowl?) with tofu and beans and avocado and rice and bits and bobs.
We drove home. Not quite the same way as we came up, but uneventful. Then I got a takeaway from Phoenix, and we're up to date.
Estimated 1066 cups of coffee from my espresso machine1 probably comes to £1.32 a cup (including actual coffee and now servicing1 but not the 'leccy).
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