LONDON: DAY 3

For our third day in London, we had planned to wake up early, visit some museums and have lunch. But when we got up, we decided to scrap the museum plans and have a leisurely Sunday morning instead. For breakfast, we got pastries at one of the local chain coffee houses, Coffee Republic. Now, when places in London say they serve coffee, what they really mean is that they serve espresso and espresso drinks. Tom likes to drink drip coffee and when I asked the employee if they had any, she said, "what's that?". So he got an Americano instead.

I ordered a hot chocolate, which tasted like Swissmiss. And Tom ordered two pastries, which are below:
Overall, it was a lot like Starbucks (except I had refused to go to the Starbucks a few doors down). Afterwards, we started on a little walk to head up to Harrod's. A few friends had suggested that we buy a picnic lunch at Harrod's, and then eat in the nearby Hyde Park. However, when we arrived at Harrod's, it hadn't opened yet, so we headed to Hyde Park first and spent an hour sitting, reading and people watching.

When Harrod's opened at noon, we headed off to check out their famous food halls. The food halls at Harrod's are quite expansive and are organized into lots of different room- like seafood, charcuterie, fromagerie, etc and what's interesting is that almost each room also has a little food stall so that you can dine indoors if you want (there was an oyster bar, a wine bar, a rotisserie, etc.)

Here are some of the pics I took:

PastriesMarzipan Fruit (do people ever eat these?)Sushi (ok, honestly that didn't look all that tasty)And some prepared seafood items:It wasn't exactly cheap, so I picked up a few pastries and went for our backup plan. Near Harrod's is a restaurant called Leon- a local chain that specializes in Eastern Mediterranean take out food (but you can also eat in). So we headed over there to pick up our main meal before going back to Hyde Park. It had a hippie-like decor, lots of casual and comfortable chairs, low tables and strings of little lights. We headed to the back and placed our order, and it was up in a few minutes (it was really like healthy fast food). We also picked up a baguette for Tom, so he could munch on the cheese he had bought the previous day at Borough Market, and took everything back to the park where we found a bench.

From Leon's I had ordered a sweet potato falafel sandwich. I'd never had sweet potato falafel before- it was much softer and squishier than normal falafel, and it was also sweeter, but I enjoyed the flavors and found this to be quite good.
Meanwhile, Tom wanted to try a couple of things, so he got appetizer portions. This was their baked "chicken nuggets" in a yogurt sauce.And this is an order of lamb meatballs. Tom enjoyed both dishes, but he like the lamb meatballs more.To finish off lunch, I had bought two tarts at Harrod's- one is a pear and almond tart and the other is a strawberry tart. Both were well made and delicious, and not too expensive (in pounds that is- they were 2.5 pounds each), but of course, that means I paid $10 for two tarts.

After lunch, we headed up to Islington, in the northern part of the city, to visit Jayna. I had also wanted to visit a chocolate shop up there called Paul A. Young. They actually had a pretty interesting array of chocolate flavors, and is one of the few chocolate stores I'd recommend in London. But what they also had was ice cream with chocolate sauce. It came it lots of different flavors- I got a walnut brownie ice cream with chocolate sauce. The coolness of the ice cream forced the chocolate sauce to harden the minute it hit, so it formed this hard shell. The best part were the toasted almonds and hint of cardamom.Jayna ordered a rose infused ice cream and Tom got a chocolate ice cream with chocolate "pearls". I think we all enjoyed our snack. Then we spent the afternoon walking around Jayna's neighborhood. We stumbled upon a small local street fair, where we got to hold owls! while Tom took pictures of us.

After all the walking, we headed back to Jayna's to rest a little and have tea. But before you knew it, it was time to head back to our hotel and get ready for dinner. My cousin, Cynthia, lives in London, and she wanted to take us out to dinner to a Spanish restaurant in her neighborhood called Cambio de Tercio. It is a tapas restaurant, and much fancier than any of the other places we'd been to on this trip. When Cynthia arrive, the waiters were all familiar with her, and she started ordering right away- a platter of ham, sangria, and we also pitched in and ordered a few things. Here's an order of gambas al ajillo on the left, and my favorite pimientos del padron on the right. The shrimps were delicious, but the pimientos weren't the best I'd had (I like the ones at Toro more). Here's my order of a portabello mushroom carpaccio- very thinly slice mushroom with olive oil and salt. It's a simple dish, though not my favorite. I think I prefer my mushrooms cooked. Meanwhile, everyone else at dinner was enjoying their various dishes of pork. Tom was able to order Jamon Iberico- that special Spanish ham made from black footed pigs raised only on a diet of nuts. I think he enjoyed that.

And I finished dinner with this pretty platter of ice creamsI don't think they were homemade, but the strawberry was my favorite. And I liked the plate that they served it in. Overall, dinner was really good, and we had concluded yet another busy day of walking and eating.