Back From London !

I am now back in the office this week after my break in London. We had a fabulous time and it has made me realise what a beautiful capital city we have. The weather was lovely and, staying with  our friends in their apartment over looking the Thames, we woke up every morning with a view of the river.

We started our stay with a little retail therapy! A journey by train and bus felt like an expedition but we soon reach Knightsbridge for our first stop. It didn’t take long to realise that we were both not rich enough and too large for most of the shops there, but window shopping was fun.

 Friday was the   highlight of the trip. We took a tour from Battersea Reach to Central London, past the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, Big Ben and the London Eye as we made our way t0 Covent Garden for a very late lunch at Rules Restaurant.

 Rules was established by Thomas Rule in 1798 making it the oldest restaurant in London. It serves traditional British food, specialising in classic game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings.  The food was delicious! I had fish and chips – very posh fish & chips of course! The best description I can find is from their own website.

“Throughout its long history the tables of Rules have been crowded with writers, artists, lawyers, journalists and actors. As well as being frequented by great literary talents – including Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, John Galsworthy and H G Wells – Rules has also appeared in novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Le Carré, Dick Francis, Penelope Lively and Claire Rayner.

The actors and actresses who have passed through Rules are legion. Down the decades Rules has been an unofficial “green room” for the world of entertainment from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier, and the history of the English stage adorns the walls. The sibling art of the cinema has contributed its own distinguished list of names including Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel,  Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore.

The past lives on at Rules and can be seen on the walls all around you – captured in literally hundreds of drawings, paintings and cartoons. The late John Betjeman, then Poet Laureate, described the ground floor interior as “unique and irreplaceable, and part of literary and theatrical London”.

they also do fabulous cocktails – I had a ” Kate Middleton” to round the afternoon off.

The weekend finished with a visit to the ” Cake Boy” Cafe, which is located in the same apartment block as our friends apartment. Eric Lanlard is a Celebrity Chef famous for his gorgeous cakes.He created Madonna’s wedding cake and Brooklyn Beckham’s 1st birthday cake as well as my friends Graham`s birthday cake too ! I came away clutching a signed cope of one of his books “Home Bake”

A little bird tells me that he may well be a cruising Celebrity Chef very soon !