Day Three - Another Circus, Notting Hill, Soho, Kensington Gardens and Palace
Another day, another notable circus, this time Oxford Circus, which is further north on Regent street and somewhat less of a draw than Piccadilly. We browesd some of the shops and stumbled upon a nice little cafe called Le Pain Quotidien, which turns out to be a very large chain worldwide. Nevertheless, it was a nice place for lunch and I very much enjoyed my mango salad.
(Click to Enlarge)
(Click to Enlarge)From there, we moved on to Soho and Covent Garden, areas dominated by shopping, street performers and entertainment facilities galore.
Next a quick tube shoot out to Notting Hill where we visited some of the nicer residential areas for which it's known. We strolled through some neighborhoods and out into the shopping district, but with no sign of Anna Scott, we continued onward to the Kensignton Gardens.
Kensignton Gardens is famous to generations of British schoolchildren as the setting of J.M. Barrie's book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, a prelude to the character's famous adventures in Neverland.
We took a gander at the Kensignton Palace, the official residence of The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester ; the Duke and Duchess of Kent ; and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, before continuing on through the Diana Pricess of Wales Memorial Playground, an impressive free playground that sees over 70,000 children each year.
We exited the park and ran right into a parkside pub called The Swan, so we stopped for a pint of John Smith's Extra Smooth and enjoyed a break from a long day of exploring.
Being in the area already, we thought we might locate the hotel we'd be staying at for the last stage of our trip, so we walked over to Hyde Park, but before we could find it we ran into the Duke of Kendall and decided to stop for dinner.
It was getting late, so we decided to give up the hotel hunt and instead head toward the Marble Arch, less out of interest in the Arch itself, but rather due to its proximity to the Underground station of the same name.
One last pint of Discovery at Blackbird's Pub back in Earl's Court and our first leg of the holiday was complete.
