Walking with dinosaurs and some yummilicious roast duck

Day 12 (Fri, 13 June 2014)

As our trip drew near to the end, we decided to take a more leisurely day by going to the Natural History Museum. Instead of taking the Tube, we chose to take the London red bus! It was an easy 18-minute ride, stopping right across from the museum entrance.

The Natural History Museum is housed in a beautiful, historic building. Entry is free and there was a line before the museum opened this Saturday morning.

The museum is famous for its dinosaur exhibits and when you enter the main central area, you immediately come face to face with the 32 m-long replica Diplodocus carnegii skeleton.

The dinosaurs exhibition features the skeletons and various fossil parts of different dinosaur types.

There's even an animatronic replica of a full scale T-Rex. As close to Jurassic Park as you can get!

In the mammals section, there's a model of a 25m-long blue whale.

Entering the core of the earth.

We'd spent more time at the museum than we intended but the kids really enjoyed it tremendously. Now for a spot of lunch! We took the Tube down to Covent Garden to visit Covent Garden market. Covent Garden market is quite a high end one, with fancy restaurants and shops.

This is where buskers gather to show off their tricks and skills. A levitating man:

A string quintet:

As we walked by this pub, a waiter handed us a 2-4-1 coupon, so we decided to eat here.

Burgers and pasta. Reasonably tasty fare at good prices!

A short walk away from Covent Garden is the Royal Opera House, home to the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet. The first ballet presented here was in 1734.

We caught sight of a harpist lugging her instrument to work. Talk about occupational hazard...

These are the number of ballet shoes the Royal Ballet dancers wear out in a week.

Upstairs at the foyer restaurant, there was a jazz band and lots of elderly couples dancing. It was like a scene out of the time of the Great Gatsby.

Since it was still early, we took the Tube down to Knightsbridge to take a look at Harrod's.

The famous food hall:

The toy floor has some very special Lego exhibits:

And of course, the Harrod's bear.

That evening, we were ready for some Chinese food! This would be the first time we had Chinese food on the trip, if you didn't count the unpalatable pseudo-Chinese we had in Paris. Following the recommendation of my friend Lilian, we went to Four Season's at Bayswater for their famous roast duck.

We ordered half a duck, kong pao chicken and stir-fried beef. The chicken was dismal - tasted nothing like kong pao sauce and the chicken slices were large and tough. The beef was tender and very tasty. But the star of the show was obviously the duck. Greasy and flavourful, the texture reminded me of the roast goose we had at Yat Lok in Hong Kong.

Two thumbs up!

Shakespeare country and university town

Day 11 (Thur, 12 June 2014)

Today, we were taking a day trip to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon with Anderson Tours. We chose Anderson because their prices were reasonable and they have a very convenient pickup at Earl's Court.

Our first stop was Shottery, a hamlet within Stratford-upon-Avon to see the thatched-roof cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.

Anne Hathaway came from a well-to-do family and her cottage was large with a very pretty garden.

In Shakespeare's time, only the well-off could afford beds. They were usually four poster beds because the canopy protected the sleeping occupants from squirrels, bats and other rodents that would drop from the thatched roof. Eeks! The base of the bed was tied with rope that regularly needed to be tightened to provide a firm support. That's where the expression "sleep tight" comes from.

This was rumoured to the bench where Shakespeare and Anne Hathway cuddled at her home. Unverified though.

It's fascinating how many English idioms originated from Shakespeare's time. In those days, a table consisted of a movable board on top of a foundation (as pictured). People sat on benches around the table and the head of the household sat on the only chair, giving rise to the expression "chairman of the board." The cups were stored on a side board which eventually became known as the "cupboard".

If you were a welcome guest, you would be served warm bacon smoked over the fire, hence "a warm welcome", whereas if you weren't, you were served a "cold shoulder" kept on the rack. Isn't English interesting?

Next, we made our way to the main section of Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, England's greatest playwright. 2014 marks the 450th year of his birth.

We paid entry to Shakespeare's birthplace. It was here that he was born, grew up and spent the first five years of his married life with Anne Hathaway. (Incidentally, Shakespeare was only 18 when he married Hathaway who was 26 and preggers with his child. Scandalous!)

Like Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare came from a well-off family. His father was a glove-maker and his clients were from the upper crust. Only the rich wore gloves, not to protect them from the cold but as a fashion statement.

The house is preserved as a heritage trust. There's a mural on a wall in the garden, depicting all Shakespeare's plays.

The garden is very well kept and flowers were in full bloom.

In the garden, a dramatist offered to do plays, sonnets and songs on request. Lesley-Anne asked for Macbeth and the player gamely obliged. He was very good too!

This was my fourth time at Stratford-upon-Avon and I still love it. It's such a picture-perfect town.

Back on the bus, we drove by the village of Cotswold's before arriving at the city of Oxford. Most famous for its prestigious university founded in 1167, Oxford is home to 30,000 people, of which 21,000 are students.

Unlike most universities in the US, Oxford is not one large campus. Instead, it consists of 39 different colleges sited in different parts of the city. Oxford is the oldest English-speaking university in the world. Famous writers who studied at Oxford included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. We were brought around on a walking tour and saw different buildings like the Bodleian library, Sheldonian Theatre and a church.

This is Christ Church, one of the most famous colleges, counts among its distinguished alumni, greats such as Albert Einstein and 13 British Prime Ministers. Lewis Carroll too, studied here and Alice, the Dean's daughter with her funny-toothed cat that used to sit up a tree, became the inspiration for Alice and the Cheshire cat in his classic children's tale, Alice in Wonderland.

The Christ Church meadow.

Where else would you find taxis dressed in periodic tables?

We had some free time and stopped for a spot of cream tea. Scones with jam and clotted cream, yum.

After the visit, we were dropped back off at Earl's Court station. 7pm and still bright!

Close by was Earl's Court Tavern so we went in for a pub dinner.

That evening was the World Cup kickoff match between Brazil and Croatia and the pub was all ready for the big screening.

But we were just there for dinner. Kenneth wanted to try the typical English roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and it was so deliciously tender with fantastic gravy. The pork and apple burger came not just with a juicy pork patty but was topped with slices of pulled pork and the marinade was, according to Andre, "out of this world". We hadn't expected the meal to be this good - it was a scrumptious surprise.