Turkey Day!

It's Thanksgiving back in the States. Our plans were to go to Stonehenge and eat a place called the Haunch of Venison. WERE.

                                       Cute place, right?

Moms had previously booked us on a small tour to get up there. As in up in Wiltshire.

The paperwork we got said to be at the meeting point - not far from where we were staying at 6:00 am. With the condition that tours were 1 hour later in the WINTER MONTHS. Repeated emails were sent to the company. None of them answered. What to do? All the arrows on all of OUR documentation listed 7:00. SEVEN!!!!!

We were early, so we wandered around the area and crawled into a Pret. They don't sell Diet Coke there, so I was sent on a mission to obtain a couple. Which I did from a local grocery. After using the restroom at the Pret, we make our way to the front of the Museum, the designated pick up point.
 

We get there at 7:00. And wait... and wait... and wait. Finally mom calls. The tour left at 6:00. 

I'll spare you the gory details of us arguing with the guy on the phone in freezing rain. Well crap. Absolute crap. What do we do now?

We hobbled back to the hotel.  Cold, wet and really, really annoyed, mom continues the phone assault on the tour company. Several hours and about thirteen million passes of the phone from person to person later, the problem was found. It seems our tour was booked through an outside company that had wrong information on their site. The actual tour company apologized for the many, many unanswered emails and did admit fault on that issue. The money was to be returned to the account from whence it came. Which was good because it wasn't a small amount.

Well, now what? We have this whole day free. What to do? 

The Crypt Keeper... from the '80s.

We'd planned to make a trek to St. Martin-in-the-Fields to do brass rubbings. Now, when I was a little girl, we did some brass rubbings at the big Cathedral. That was fun if memory serves. However, after years and years of people rubbing, the nubs on the brass plates were wearing out. The whole operation was then moved to St. Martins-in-the-Field. Which is a church on one side of Trafalgar Square. There's a big ole crypt there. Yeah, as in a crypt, crypt. As in a bunch of dead and buried people. And you can have lunch and tea there if you like.

We liked. We really did. We weren't actually invited by this dude, but it's a nice thought.

We did have lunch though.

The Crypt.

 

Mom had a nice soup and I had a flat thing of some type of veggie.
I also had something called a 'Curious Cola'. It was curious all right, curiously DISGUSTING!  I know, rare for me to say things are nasty, but that's the truth of it.

Mom enjoyed her soup with a Diet Coke, big surprise. We were early, rather close to when the place opened at 10:00. It's a good thing too, because man, oh man, around 11:00 that place filled up with a bunch of people. A bunch of OLD people. 

I'm really struggling to not make a joke about old people having lunch in a crypt. Trying really, really hard...  

Clarice

Anyway, after lunch we did do some brass rubbings. Well, we each did one. We ended up picking the same one. I chose the dragon because it reminded me of Clarice when she yawns.

Brass Rubbing

 Can you see the resemblance?
I'm not sure why momster chose it. I do know she did her dragon in a bluish color. Please excuse my lack of artistic creativity.
I tried though.

We took a taxi back to the hotel. It was around 1:30 in the afternoon and after having an eventful morning, a nap seemed like a good idea.


A few hours later, Hagi raised herself from her metaphorical dead. What to do? It was around 3:00 give or take. Too late to make arrangements for anything, too early to call it a night. We started out to do some shopping. I had a brilliant idea. Why not go to tea at Fortnum and Masons? It was one thing I insisted upon during the planning process. Miraculously, She Who Must agreed.

We took a taxi to Fortnum's because I had no idea how to get there. Chances were it was a couple of tube rides and mom wasn't up to a bunch of stairs.

We roll up in a taxi at 4:00 ish. Up we go to the top floor. We were greeted by an attendant. We didn't have a reservation, so we had to make one in person. There weren't any spaces available until 5:30 or 5:45. Okay, fine, we'll take that.

We went downstairs to shop. Fortnum's is a beautiful store. Filled with completely useless items.

<-----   I rest my case.

We had a while to kill and in the basement we came upon a wine bar. A wine bar can be a dangerous place. Oh well. In we go. We were seated in the corner near the kitchen. I don't even want to think why that was. I'm hoping it just happened that way. They had free wi-fi, and having a smart phone, I took advantage of it. I surfed for a minute or two. I was able to make a reservation for the tea room online for 30 minutes earlier. Huh. Funny how that works.

Our host gave us menus and let us taste a couple of wines. Blah. We got a sommelier over to the table. He was a nice guy with an indecipherable accent and made several recommendations. 

Okay... up until this point I have been skipping over the fact that Momster is a woman of a certain age. She has reached that time in her life where she is old enough to say what she wants when she wants and to hell with everything else. I don't know when this happened, but believe me, she is RELISHING it. Do you remember the old lady on the Golden Girls? Yeah, like that. Usually with me within earshot. Sometimes I swear she's trying to traumatize me for sport. 

The waiter dude gave us recommendations in his indistinguishable accent. I say that because I can usually tell. Not this time. Anyway, he offers us oysters from France. Mom flippantly lets him know she wouldn't eat anything from France, much less oysters. I had to physically stop myself from kicking her in one of her busted ankles. Thankfully he didn't really understand and upon further interrogation it was revealed that he was from Hungary.
Long story short, we had 2 glasses of wine. A cheap sweet wine whose name I forgot. But it was tasty.

At our new, internet assigned, designated time, we take the lift up to the top floor for our tea. Yes, okay, I admit, I was tipsy. Can't speak for momster, but I'm guessing she was too. We were shown to our table and I was forced to remove my hat. Evidently no one is allowed to wear a hat in the tea room. Or maybe just the Queen.  Whateves.

Mom was asked what kind of tea she wanted. She didn't know. The waiter asked her what she usually drank so he could make some suggestions. Hahahahha. Mom found this insulting. I don't know why. I stopped asking questions at this point. She ordered the sweet tea, I ordered the savory one. I did this purely because I knew it would gross her out.

Mmmmm.... Yeah... deviled egg and scones with salmon. Yummy yum. Mom gagged. Objective complete.

It was at this time that Hagi said to me... "Remember that time on Star Trek with the guy..." I looked at her, mouth agape, then burst into laughter. It was one of those uncontrollable laughters that don't end. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. Tears, in the most elegant of all tea rooms. Here was I making a spectacle of myself. Even with water resistant mascara I was doing a pretty good Alice Cooper impression. (See what I did there, sticking with the '80's theme?)  I couldn't help it. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. I still don't. 

We ate until we couldn't. Sweet scones and cakes eaten by mom, everything else consumed by me. All I can say is thank God I'm not gluten intolerant.

We got our left overs packed in elegant blue boxes. I made sure we got some extra lemon curd too. I do love, love, love that curd. We grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

I rolled into bed in extreme over indulgent pain. 

This was our first whole day.