Picadilly Pub Crawl

The day dawned bright and early unfortunately - the kids decided to get up far earlier that Jamie and I had planned for after having a few beverages out for Heidi's birthday the previous night. Typical of British weather, it was a beautiful and sunny morning, so once Charlie had jumped on my head and Hamilton has spent a noisy 2 minutes licking his man-gear, the prospect of another 30 minutes of sleep seemed somewhat distant.

After having a quickish couple of cups of coffee, we decided to head into town to the Maplins to pick up a UK to US power converter so that I could play some extremely violent video games on my Canadian x-box while Jamie is away in Jersey later this week - exactly the sort of games my mother wouldn't have let me play when I was young (sorry mom...).



Once we got into town, we realized that we'd forgotten to eat breakfast (other than, obviously, my coffee) so we decided that lunch was in order. We'd gotten off the tube at Embankment station, which has a conviently located Wasabi Japanese take-away just outside. We picked up 20 quid worth of sushi and walked the relatively short distance down Pall Mall to St. James Park just outside Buckingham Palace to eat. We found a convient little bench and sat down to eat our sushi, getting some very odd looks from people walking past - apparently raw fish isn't that common in London.

After lunch, we quickly realized why we try to avoid central London in the summer at the weekend:


On the other hand, where else in the world can you see this sort of thing while you're just walking down the road:

(I'm assuming these blokes are something to do with the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, but I'm not sure. Soon after they went past, a little street cleaner went past and swept up all the horse mess - talk about efficiency).

We walked through the throngs of people and through Green Park on our way to find a nice pub for a quick pint. We ended up at The Blue Posts on Bennett St where we had a nice Guinness and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc while we perused a brochure on quality pubs in London. We decided on a new mission for the summer - to visit every pub in the brochure by the end of the year - ambitious I know, but that's just the sort of people we are.





Next was The Captains Cabin, then The Devonshire, then we met Jeff, Ryan and Maxi at The Glassblower just off Picadilly Circus. Finally, we wandered down the Strand for a final bevvy at Edmunds Wine Cellar under The Coal Hole at The Savoy Hotel.

We came home for a tasty dinner of fillet of beef with good ole Canadian "Montreal Steak Spice" with roasted mushrooms, courgettes and red peppers with spicy couscous. I really should be a professional chef, cause damn I'm good. And modest too.