2018-04 - Hyde Park (London)

After a direct flight from Austin to London (two airlines now fly this route: British Air and Norwegian Air), we arrived in London on a spectacular, 70-degree, sunny day. We met up with friends at Cafe Nerro and caught a bite to eat there (the double chocolate chip cookie was yummy) before catching the Heathrow Express train direct to Paddington Station, London. What a quick way to get into town from the airport!

Our hotel was only about 1/2 mile walk from the Paddington Station. It is a historic building that now houses many tiny rooms. Interestingly, we had to take the lifts up and down. However, once we arrived on our floor and walked to our room, we had to walk down five steps to get to our door. The photo of the room on the Corus Hotel spreadsheet must be taken with a wide angle lens. There are two twins with ~1.5 feet between them. Talk about cozy!

Just across the street from our hotel is Hyde Park. We walked into the park and saw people getting soft serve ice cream cones from a Rolls Royce Phantom II. The ice cream was delicious! Hit the spot on this beautiful, sunny afternoon. Ice cream in hand, we started walking toward Kensington Palace. The park is criss-crossed by a myriad of paths. In between the paths, people were stretched out across the green areas of the park -- picnicking, playing frisbee, there was even a volleyball game in progress next to a large pond in front of Kensington Palace. On the pond, several varieties of ducks along with beautiful white swans floated around the edges, looking for hand outs.

A statue of Queen Victoria heralded the entrance of Kensington Palace. It had been erected by her niece for Victoria's 50th anniversary of ruling Great Britain, in the year 1868. Behind her stretched Kensington Palace, which really just looks like a very large house. Victoria was born and grew up in this palace. We didn't pay to tour Kensington. Instead, we walked around the Sunken Garden just outside the walls.

Then, we meandered toward the southern part of the park to check out the Albert Memorial. What we had thought looked like a church from the north end of the garden was actually a large, four columned, roofed structure over a golden statue of Albert. At the four corners of the monument were collections of sculptures representing the four continents during the Victorian age: America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The monument quite dwarfed Victoria's jubilee sculpture in front of Kensington Palace.

Below the Albert Memorial was blocked off street where guys were playing street hockey. Just across the way, there was a large, circular building for artistic performances, the Albert Royal Hall. It was interesting to see the combination of memorials with public spaces.

We continued walking until we arrived at a map which showed us that we had only walked through Kensington Park thus far. Hyde Park is actually the other side of a small river running through the park. We continued onto the Hyde Park side and walked to two smaller statues: the Isis statue and a Peter Pan statue.  Hyde Park side was much more crowded with people; and, there were tennis courts, fountains for kids to play in and numerous paddle boats.

After all this walking, we were hungry! Off to our very first pub visit at Mitre Lancaster Gate, a pub only a block from our hotel. I tried a local, English cider on tap, Aspall, as well as a salad and salmon with bread. It was great to have these kind of non-traditional pub options, along with all the pot pies and roast beefs. We even ate some caramel pudding at the end.