London, episode 9. In which we love a parade.

It was during our first visit to London that I enjoyed my first visit to Paris. If you recall, we chunneled to Paris on the Thursday of our 2007 Spring Break, spending a very long day walking and touring and walking and snapping photos and walking and (you get the idea). Previously pictured (Paris, episode 4) was our sole souvenir of that memorable (and very long!) day, a colorful souvenir poster purchased from a vendor along the Right Bank of the Seine as we meandered our way towards the Louvre (and towards tourist exhaustion).

Hanging just above that souvenir print now is this little gem which caught our eye back in London three days later as we awaited the grandest and most colorful St. Patrick's Day parade we've ever witnessed. Having performed the previous day (on the 17th) at home in Ireland, many of the parade's musicians and performers were treating Londoners and out-of-town visitors to an exuberant encore. The London streets were not only lined with expectant spectators and boisterous tourists, there was also the occasional street vendor and local artist waiting to help the right tourist capture a special memory. Mari and I fell in love with this sweet little depiction of an iconic London image, a simply colored oil-on-canvas that we were thrilled to purchase from the artist. It now hangs framed on our "travel gallery" wall, waiting to greet guests in our entryway. Watching the parade that blustery Sunday morning with Mari is one of my most treasured memories. It was the final day of our first European adventure after all.

Or so we thought.


Pictured below my favorite image from London's 2007 St. Patrick's Day Parade (bagpipes!) is the incredibly photogenic and bucolic bed & breakfast Mari and I enjoyed the next day, the day our direct flight to Houston left without us.

Long story short (only because it's not really that interesting, not yet anyway), we arrived at the airport past the allotted window to check in with our American-sized luggage so our seats had been given away. (No on-line check-in a decade ago.)

As I am sure you are aware, there is an old adage which is old and an adage for a good reason: everything happens for a reason. That bonus day suddenly tacked onto our first trip to London was one of our best vacation days ever. We spent the day in a beautiful little airport-proximate town (main street pictured below B&B). We even did some shopping at a few charity shops and enjoyed a wonderful pub dinner.

There's more,

but I'm a gentleman

(so I've been told).

Before we get to gettin' and finally make our return flight to Texas, I would be remiss were I not to recommend a final favorite. Right down the street from our first London hotel, just steps from the Earl's Court tube station, Mari and I discovered a local chain restaurant (which has since expanded to DC and Chicago!) that would top our travel favorites list and which we would return to at least once every return visit.

My passionate Portuguese eye could not help but spot the colorfully iconic Barcelos rooster hanging above the doorway of Nando's. (You can barely see the round sign on the far right of our photo.) As soon as I walked in the door, a familiar spicy aroma greeted me like the warm welcome of family. It was a treat to speak in my native language to a very friendly employee who would walk us through the menu and take our very first order for peri-peri chicken. I would eventually learn that not all locations are run by Portuguese-speaking employees, but the generous welcome and helpful smiles I have come to expect from the Portuguese are certainly routinely observed.

Why is roast chicken such a big deal when London is known for fish & chips? Mari and I enjoyed absolutely wonderfully flavorful local food during our week's dream vacation. We sampled bits of everything we could, including the Lonely Planet London City Guide recommended "best" fish & chips (Costa's Fish Restaurant near Notting Hill) and traditional pub fare like shepherd's pie. Not a bland boring dish in site. The roast peri-peri chicken at Nando's is not traditional English, of course, but it retrieved some very distant, almost forgotten, but very fond memories.

Among my favorite food memories are blistering hot summer days at the beach with my parents during family visits to Portugal. I'm talking about a "day" at the beach not just a day at the beach. My dad would always want to be the first one out on the sand to claim a spot, the best spot of course (close to the water, but not too close). We would be packed up with enough supplies for a week, not just the day, and that included a striped beach umbrella which Pai would stake into the perfect spot like a beach pioneer, claiming our territory, then he'd sway back and forth with it in his own special tango until the pole was buried far enough that he needn't worry about the umbrella blowing away while he was napping. We would help Mãe spread onto the colorful sand one of her homemade quilts, made from pieced-together leftover squares of fabric rescued from the trash bin at whatever local sweatshop she was working in that year. There would be a basket full of goodies and treats to sustain us for a full day of sun worship as well as an ice-laden cooler loaded with sandwiches, sodas, and water (sometimes an occasional adult beverage for Pai).

It was always a big production.


I always had a book, of course, and a spare should
I be more than halfway through my current read.
(Always a planner!)

If we were at the beach during one of our Portugal summers, though, we always hoped there would be someone grilling and selling frango churrasco, butterflied whole local chickens grilled to blistering perfection after bathing luxuriously in a peri-peri bath. That smoky, peppery aroma (even a little bit of the Portuguese coast's salty, sandy surf) hit me like a furnace blast when I first walked under that festooned wooden rooster and opened the door into the Earl's Court Nando's restaurant. At right is my own Barcelos rooster (purchased by my mom for me during my last visit to Portugal in the summer of 1985).

I know.
Too long, too long.

My sentimental souvenir rooster has been plucked temporarily away from the kitchen rooster collection only for this special photo shoot. Sentiment and a remarkably delicious and authentic roast chicken has kept me returning to Nando's again and again when Mari and I have the good fortune to be in London.

Give the colorful site a good browse, especially if you plan to be in the vicinity of a Nando's.

Even if you are just Texas-close, it's worth the extra miles.

nandosperiperi.com

A carefully coordinated combination of temptalicious memory-inducing Nando's peri-peri chicken, rich and seductively-complicated royal history, and warm British hospitality has tempted Mari and me over and over to several London revisits. Our first return visit would be five years after this first 40th birthday celebration.

Our London2012 experience begins next time.

London, episode 3. In which it is not such a lonely planet.

May our pale blue dot glow brighter today in memory of the victims of last night's senseless attacks at London Bridge and Borough Market.  May it glow brightly in honor of London's heroes as well.


This was the first picture I snapped that 2007 Spring Break.

I don't ever plan the first photo, it just happens.  Sometimes it is still at the airport, some simple welcome that will later be a reminder of our adventure.

Being our first trip across the pond (a trite expression which I will always love because it shows how easily connected we all are, never so far away to be forgotten or to forget family and friends--and pets--temporarily left behind) we were a bit overwhelmed by the size of our new favorite city, not to mention overwhelmed by the journey from the airport with our unmistakably large "they must be American" luggage.  Point of information, elevators are not a right in England, not at airports and most definitely not at train stations.

You and your luggage have been warned.

Mari and I are finally on the downward swing of the learning curve when it comes to packing light.  Our "problem" which I don't exactly consider a problem is that we like to shop.  We are fleamarket travelers after all!  We plan (always a plan, remember, and bubble wrap) for shopping, even though we never quite know what to expect.  We also didn't know exactly what to expect from ourselves and our 40-year-old bodies (at the time) as far as jet lag.  Other than being one of my favorite films (Juliette Binoche!), jet lag was really just an expression and had never affected me during prior international travels as a child and as a teenager during family visits to Portugal from New York.  What I knew at the beginning of our 2007 Spring Break, however, was that I was exhausted after lugging half my personal belongings halfway around London and that I absolutely needed a nap.

That first international post-arrival nap would become a most helpful and necessary natural cure for our jet lag.  It doesn't matter what time we arrive at our destination and stumble into our new quarters, a nourishing nap is first on our carefully and obsessively planned itinerary.  

After our jet-lag nap, Mari and I decided to just go out for an unplanned walk and explore.  Up top, Mari is exploring the densely-packed pigeons leading our way into the National Portrait Gallery.  Before heading out the door of our hotel room, I remembered to grab my new digital camera, a first for me, so we could mark our touristed territory, and thus goes the story of our first London photograph.

See?  Always a story.

Our first week-long visit to London was filled mostly with time-honored touristy sites (it was our first visit after all), culminating with that brisk visit to Stonehenge pictured at the head of episode 1.  That first trip abroad as a married adult was also the first time I put my list-making skills to the travelers' test.  Finding and booking a flight (absolutely flipping free thanks to accumulated reward miles on the airline formerly known as Continental), selecting and reserving a hotel (unfortunately far from flipping free), reserving and purchasing attraction tickets... as much done and paid for in advance as possible.

That last part is probably among Lou's Top 5 All Time Best Travel Tips:  pay before you go.  Don't plop down on your couch after unpacking (and giving your cat some lovin') to find a stack of credit card bills among your magazines and catalogs.  Paying in advance keeps you on budget and is also an extra opportunity to take advantage of hotel and car rental pre-paid discounts, usually ten to twenty percent.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge the help of a tried and true trip planning partner, that stalwart of reader-travelers and amateur travel gurus everywhere:  the lowly travel guidebook.  After a pretty thorough investigation in an actual, non-viral, book store all those years ago, I found this helpful not-so-little guide. Posing here with its Top 10 guidebook brethren (their alphabetical order a great equalizer of locations foreign and domestic, exotic and exciting, visited and yet unexplored), Lonely Planet's London City Guide was my constant companion for the six months leading up to our first London visit and an essential addition to my backpack during the trip.  There are lots of guidebooks out there, but Lonely Planet guides offer accessible and surprisingly entertaining depth and details with a bit of a puckish playfulness that supports my subversive nature.

lonelyplanet.com

The Lonely Planet site is also incredibly well-stocked and will give you a suitable sampling of the entertaining travel writing you can expect from the guidebooks.  The site's multi-layered layout and incredible photographs will further tempt your travel itch.

I do have some of my own recommendations, of course,

and (just a few) more photos (and stories) next time.