Saturday, June 11, 2016

London 2015 Day 10: Exploring Oxford St. and Hyde Park

5/3/2015
London 2015 Day 10: Exploring Oxford St. and Hyde Park

We had our last breakfast at the Savoy back at Kasper's again. That place is so good. We got the Newspaper and on the front cover was news of the brand new Royal Princess!!! How exciting!! I got a Salmon Royale, again, for breakfast. :)

After breakfast before leaving, it was time for a 60 min "Deep Tissue Energy" massage -- not a bad way to spend the last few hours at the hotel! It was great. My sinuses were still pretty janked from having a cold, so it was nice that they had stuff like Eucalyptus oil to help clear my nose. It was very relaxing and really fixed my sore thoughts from all the hiking! What a great wrap-up that was, and already felt much better.

Spring had a massage as well, while I got packed up and went on a wander to go get an O2 Cell Phone SIM card.


We said farewell to the fancy Savoy hotel and took off to another great area, Hyde Park, where I would be staying for a bit longer. It was a super nice area. We dropped the bags and went for a walk immediately in Hyde Park. It was 16 C, basically summertime, and no rain here! So that was great and a good time to take advantage of reasonable weather in London :)


There was a funny bird in the water and a dog that was very interested in it. That didn't last too long, as the bird got wise to the scenario and took off.



From there we wandered to Harrod's in Knightsbridge. This was super fancy and it was fun to walk around and definitely not buy anything :) The Spirits Room was pretty cool and I checked out the Scotch, and the Food Hall was especially awesome. We got a Cheese Scone to share and wandered further. There was a 30 Karat diamond there!?!? Didn't even know that was possible. More wandering led us to a Disney Tea Room.





One thing I noticed that was quite different from 20 years ago is that the classic red phone booths were still everywhere, but instead of having phones in them it said "WiFi Here!" on top of the Telephone Booths. I thought it was a joke for some reason, but it was actually true! The telephone booths are now wifi hotspots for BT customers. Great idea, especially in a place where it rains a lot.

More wandering led us to Primark, which was super crazy and a Target-like experience. I got a couple of things and we mainly looked around and watched the madness in there. It was quite busy. Next we went to Marks & Spencers -- I tried to check out and it turned out they didn't give me a 2-for-1 deal on the grapes or whatever I was buying. Unfortunately, they had no clue how to enter this deal into the system and we waited for about 20 min to save £2!! Oh man, not worth it!



We checked in at the hotel and got my room. It was on the "Lower Ground" floor, which is a very nice way of saying "It's a Basement Apartment". We had a good laugh at the "Prison Bars" on the windows and the sillyness of the format of these basement apartments in London. It was funny and odd but actually super nice, large, and comfortable. I was a little nervous about it, but it will be good.

All this walking had made us hungry for dinner, so we headed to a local Indian Food plays in Bayswater, near Paddington. It was a really tasty spot, such an awesome find for a random local place! We got the standard order for us -- Chicken Tikka Masala and Saag Paneer. The Saag Paneer especially had amazing spices and was very creamy. We got a 2nd order of Veggie Curry and it was spicy and excellent. So great! We walked back to the apartment and scoped out some other things in the area, including grabbing an amazing deal of a £1 Cherimoya fruit at a local shop right near the apartment! Sweet deal :)



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